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That comment box on your favorite blog not quite big enough to type out your thoughts? Web designer Cameron Adams offers a bookmarklet that makes any web page text area resizable in Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Just drag and drop that baby to your toolbar, and click it the next time you're typing into a web form that's just not spacious enough. Mouse over the corner of the text area and click and drag to resize. Handy!
You may have heard of Google's "Master Plan," which was sketched out on a very, very long whiteboard in the lobby of building 41 at the Googleplex. Back in September the original Master Plan was erased because it was getting, in the words of Google's Chris diBona, "a bit crufty." Fret not, however--this 1.0 version of the Master Plan is not lsot forever--this week Google lifted the veil of secrecy and the complete, original Plan can now be seen in a panable, zoomable widget at Spanish Brazilian Google-watching blog UnderGoogle. There's a lot t here about robot monkeys, Babylon 5, cattle mutations, weather control, "fish pods," google.gov, and lots more geeky fun. This was my favorite bit of the Plan, though: "Having achieved happiness, humankind is left wondering what is the point. After briefly distracted by reality TV, discovers enlightenment, which leads mankind to reject the trappings of modern life like in a bad ST-TNG movie."
By now Google is undoubtedly well on its way to concocting Master Plan 2.0, so none of the information in version 1.0 is likely to save us... but it's fun to read, at least.
Goodbye Google Answers — Wow. Google is shutting down its Google Answers service. The company has announced that new questions won't be accepted after the New Year, though the site will continue to let people view the question archives. Killing off the service, which never seemed to catch on much …
Source: Search Engine Watch Blog
Author: Danny Sullivan
Link: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061129-050815
Answers deleted — What a relief. Google is finally trimming its product line, closing down Google Answers. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time the search company has ever shuttered a service, if one doesn't count Google X, a Google search page redesigned in the style …
Source: Valleywag
Link: http://www.valleywag.com/tech/google-logfile/answers…
Don't cry for the Zune just yet — Microsoft's challenger to the iPod takes second place in digital audio player market in first sales week, according to report. — NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Reports of lackluster sales of Microsoft's Zune that surfaced earlier this week might be a bit premature.
Source: CNNMoney.com
Author: David Ellis
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/29/technology…
Gaia was working on reverse engineering Google Earth seeing as there was no open source API that has been made available yet. The work stopped when Gaia received a request to discontinue the project from Google's Michael Jones. The project was well on its way to producing a full-fledged open and customizable application. Gaia was being built to support Keyhole authentication, 3D views and layers. Jones, Google's Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local search served the email papers and told the proj ect team that they do not own the data, and neither does Google. It is licensed to Google on the restriction that it is not to be accessed or used outside Google's client software. If this project was released in mass to the public, Google's license to use the raw data could be in jeopardy, forcing Google to potentially shut down their satellite mapping application due to the possible disruption of services, and loss of trust from data providers. For the whole letter from Jones visit the Gaia website.
The New York Times pretty much says it all in its article's lead: "YouTube is coming to mobile phones - or, to be more precise, a small slice of YouTube is coming to some Verizon Wireless phones." The web video giant has struck a deal with Verizon to bring "an unspecified number of videos selected and approved by the companies" to Verizon customers who subscribe to its $15-a-month VCast video streaming service. YouTube's senior director of business development Kelly Liang sa id, "We'll select content that has the broadest appeal and the highest entertainment value." According to the Hollywood Reporter, the deal will also let Verizon cameraphone owners upload video recorded on their phones directly to YouTube.
It's been obvious for awhile now that YouTube needed to get moving on bringing its library to mobile devices, but is this deal too limited in scope? I think if they select the right videos, and enough of them, it could be a success--I've often wanted to show a certain video to friends while away from the computer, and if I could summon them on my phone while at a diner, there would be some value in that (not that my cell phone is actually capable of doing anything so advanced). And being able to upload videos directly from their phones might prove very alluring to videobloggers. But this certainly isn't the deal I was hoping for.
by Gina Trapani
Your spouse has contacts stored in Outlook at the office, and you've got some in Gmail and in your computer's address book at home. How do you coordinate your holiday card list? With Google Spreadsheets, that's how.
Those of us who are still old-fashioned enough to *gasp* send snail mail holiday cards that we might even *double gasp* write in ourselves with an actual pen can still use tech to get organized. Today I've got a quick rundown on how to use Google Spreadsheets to create and collaborate on a holiday card list, with a little extra mail-merging and label-printing thrown in for good measure.
Wherever your contacts live - whether it be Gmail, Outlook, or Thunderbird - your address book surely supports an export function. Export your address list as a CSV (comma-delimited text file) file from each of your address sources. The raw CSV will require a little massaging to get it ready to go into Google Spreadsheets. Open it up in Excel using the Text Import. Be sure to set the delimiter as a comma, or else it'll be a mess.
Once your address book is open in Excel, get to cleaning things up. Trim down your list to just the people you want to drop a holiday card and remove any columns you don't need for snail mail, like email, notes, cell phone number, etc. Shoot for six fields across:
First name, Last name, Street Address, City, State, ZIP
Leave your CSV file open.
Point your clicker at this extremely simple and public Holiday Card List spreadsheet. Anyone signed in with a Google Account can view it, but you can only edit your own copy, so choose File -> Copy Spreadsheet from the menu to make your own writable copy.
I added in a few sample entries in this Google Spreadsheet for illustration purposes, so feel free to delete those before you get started.
Now comes the fun part, the part which makes me want to press each individual Google Spreadsheets developer lovingly to my bosom (in a very platonic, virtual, metaphorical way): select the cells in your local Excel spreadsheet, hit Ctrl-C to copy 'em to clipboard, and then paste them into your Google Spreadsheet, and boom, everything goes into individual cells the way you'd expect. It's magical.
Wash, rinse and repeat for all your exported address book CSV files until you've got all the names and addresses you need in your sheet. When you're done, hit the Google Spreadsheets Collaborate tab and invite your spouse to view and edit this sheet. This way she can do the same and add any other folks to the list.
You'll notice I put in a few extra columns after the address information: "Received 2005," "Sent 2006," "Received 2006." See, here you're going to track your holiday card comings and goings, so that next year? You don't have to go through this entire rigamarole again.
Once your holiday card list is finalized by the ball and chain and yourself and stored safely up in the Google cloud until next year, from the File menu choose Export > .xls and save that final spreadsheet to disk.
But Gina, you say. Couldn't I just work from a master Excel spreadsheet on my desktop the whole time? Why get Google involved at all?
Well, Grasshopper, with Google Spreadsheets you get collaboration between you and your other holiday card-sending compatriots, plus the ability to check off who sent you what when. So when a few unexpected's send your wife cards at the office, she can log on, add their name and addresses. Then, back home you can run off a fresh, last-minute "holy crap I forgot about these people" mailing.
Now that you've got your list set up, it's time to address some cards. To print out your own mailing labels, download a Word template, like this here 20 per sheet jobber (which, sadly, requires Internet Explorer to download. I know.)
Open up that bad boy in Word, and from the Tools menu, choose Mail Merge. From here it's just a matter of following along with the Office wizard. When it comes time to import your addresses, choose the .xls file you saved above. Be sure to hit "Map Fields" to tell Word what fields are what when you merge.
Obviously, you'll need to pick up package of mailing labels to print these out on (this template works with Avery 8161 and 5161). Or you can be cheap like me and just print 'em out on paper and tape them to your cards. The bigger your mailing list, the more worth it the labels become.
Alternately, the US Postal Service offers a pretty neat option for the lazy and/or busy: upload your spreadsheet to their site, along with a photo (or choose one of theirs), and they print out custom holiday cards AND mail them for you. This one's perfect for busy parents who want to send out a recent snapshot of the kids with the least amount of fuss.
I haven't tried it myself, but my brother did it last year and he had nothing but good things to say. The cards come out well, the pricing is reasonable, and you suffer no paper cuts or printing crises. The service is called NetPost, and while the web site isn't the most intuitive thing in the world to navigate, it's worth sparing yourself from messing around with all those cards, envelopes, labels and stamps.
This article was inspired by Lifehacker reader Donn, who asked the readers how to deal with his card list. As usual there are a ton of great responses in that discussion, including:
Thanks all for your fabulous ideas. How are you coordinating and collaborating online this holiday season? Let us know in the comments.
Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is slowly getting won over by the browser-based office suite. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
Happened upon a neat Google Docs feature I hadn't noticed before: the ability to upload a document via email.
Very much like Flickr's upload photos by email feature, Google Docs provides you with a secret email address. Send a new message to that address and the text of the message or its attachment (Word, HTML and RTF supported) gets uploaded to Google Docs, with the email subject line as the title. Very handy, especially for files you're emailing to co-workers you'd like to back up online (just BCC your secret address.) Spreadsheets doesn't yet support this feature, but looks like that's coming soon.
A nifty little Flash app called Flicker Time grabs photos of the "momment" and generates a dynamic digital clock with them.
Enter the tags you'd like the images based on (or none for totally random choices), and Flicker Time assembles the clock: digital numbers made of images, with an analog ticker in the background. Mouse over any image to see a larger version, and be sure to hang in there for at most a minute to see the neat-o transition, where images fly in to create the new digit. This sucker requires a fast connection, and it's more of a time waster than a time saver, but it's could be a fun alternative to your screensaver.
The folks at Yahoo! have added a little feature to Yahoo! Mail that recognizes addresses and phone numbers. The new features will automatically recognize and underline all phone numbers and addresses in mail messages, and easily get directions or view locations. The new feature will also allow for the ability to instantly add addresses to your address book. Google's Gmail has had this feature for a while, however they have taken a much more subtle approach by tossing a link in the corner. So with this new Yahoo Mail feature, I hereby announce the start of email wars. Challenging Google, Yahoo!, and MSN to come up with an d release some additional helpful features for its users. What would you like to see added to online email applications to make your communications easier? How about some folders in Gmail? Or a notepad?
Increasingly marketing firms are using popular social networks on the Web as part of their campaigns - creating fake user profiles to sell their products. On one hand this is not a good thing for social networks, because the last thing they want is to be clogged up with marketing campaigns masquerading as users in their systems. But the reality is that marketing campaigns are becoming a popular aspect of social networks now - and in virtual worlds such as Sims - and so they help drive page views and therefore advertising for those social networks.
One interesting marketing campaign crossed my desk recently, which has stats to show how successful it was (see below). Niccolò Magnani from the Italian office of MRM Worldwide told me about a campaign he ran for an Italian beverage company called Campari. Now I should at this point warn you that the following material is not necessarily work safe!
The theme of the Hotel Campari website is of a raunchy hotel. Purely for research purposes of course, I browsed around the site. It is a Flash-driven website with sensual music and a lot of interactivity (mainly involving the opening of doors). The campaign and website features the lovely Salma Hayek too.
To complement the website, MRM developed a social network campaign based on youtube, myspace, flickr and many more.
The MySpace profile features the same soft porn music as the Hotel Campari website - and is fronted by a "28 years old" female from Milano in Italy, called "Red Passion". Her interests include "Photography, movies, traveling..." and she is a fan of the movie Eyes Wide Shut. She is on MySpace for "Dating, Friends" and lists her orientation as "Not Sure". There are also some, ahem, photos of her that adorn the MySpace page. All of this of course is a fake profile, but I guess the casual MySpace user might think it's real should they come across it (especially ever hopeful teenage boys).
As for the Flickr site, it has a lot of photos and once again comes across as a real person's Flickr site (well, a real person who lives the high life in Italy that is!). The YouTube profile features some videos from the campaign, prompting one YouTube user to comment: "masks are cool". You get the picture.
Campari MySpace
Campari Flickr
Campari YouTube
Niccolò told me the results of the social networks campaign have been very good. The Hotel Campari website got 170,000 views. For the social network sites, they got more than 3,000 "friends" and 2,500 comments across the sites. The number of views across the social network sites is currently around 92,000.
All up, 13.5% of the total traffic to Hotel Campari was thanks to the social networking sites. Niccolò also told me they achieved "a lot of buzz around the website" and he pointed me to a del.icio.us page showing relevant links.
On the strategy of the social network campaign, Niccolò said:
"Our strategy was to focus on viral seeding and social networking, no traditional media adv online. I have no idea of the exact number of people going from Social Networks to Website [...] because we worked with a lot of social networks.
More than quantity, what I like to point is the quality of the relationship between users and Campari. Client is very happy about the close relationship between the brand and the users.
What I like is that we created a community of people that we can further talk about red passion."
Some people might argue about the quality of the community - because the profile of "Red Passion" (the 28 year old Italian woman) is fake. How can you have a real social networking community around a fake, marketing-driven user profile?
But there's no arguing that as a marketing vehicle, the fake social network profiles did their bit to drive traffic and interest in the Hotel Campari website. We're going to see a lot more of this type of usage of social networks. From a business angle, it makes sense. But on a personal level it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, because most of the appeal of social networks is that you are networking with real people. So I'm interested in knowing what Read/WriteWeb readers think about this...
Google is unexpectedly terminated Google Answers, its question-and-answer site that allowed expert searchers to get paid for answering questions. The service will stop accepting new questions in the coming days, and will stop accepting new answers by the end of the year. In their post to the Official Google Blog, Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher, whose very very first project at Goolge was Answers, don't really give an answer for the service's closing, but say that "Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time -- and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product."
Though the pay structure meant that Google Answers' answers were generally very thorough and accurate, it would seem that Yahoo! has found more success with its recently-expanded Yahoo! Answers. If you want to see some of the best answers (and questions) Google Answers produced, I recommend checking out Best of Google Answers.
It's going to be a busy month or two for Microsoft, as the business launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 is set for November 30 and there are a number of complementary initiatives that will see the light of day soon. One is the Expression suite of web design tools. Expression Web is part of the suite and is a standards based Web Design tool, which will replace Microsoft's staple WYSIWYG webpage editor Frontpage.
Expression Web is for building web pages, but there is another tool in the Expression product suite called Expression Interactive Designer; which is the designer environment for things like WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, from which the New York Times Reader was developed) and WPF/E (a cross browser solution).
As part of the upcoming launch, I spoke to Leon Brown (responsible for the Expression Tools Suite business throughout the Asia Pacific Region) and Ray Stephenson (a Regional Manager) from Microsoft. Both are on their way to New Zealand next week to promote Expression and other things - interested kiwis should check out this page for the schedule.
Currently in beta, Expression Web is a tool designed to complement the release of IE7 and Windows Vista, as well as existing internet-enabled software such as Media Center and XBOX 360. Although it will essentially replace Frontpage over time, Leon and Ray told me that Expression Web is a complete re-write and is designed to be a true professional-level web design product.
Probably the defining feature of Expression Web is that it enables standards based design - so rather than dealing with proprietary Frontpage extensions, designers will be able to more easily design standards-compliant websites. Also it handles CSS and XML much better than Frontpage. Further details on the product are here.
Also Leon and Ray told me that Expression Web will reduce the working gap between designers (visual people) and developers (coders). Technologies such as Ajax in the web 2.0 era have intertwined the two disciplines in any case, so Microsoft hopes to make that easier with this new product.
Expression Web will compete with existing web design tools such as Adobe's Dreamweaver and GoLive. In fact, Leon Brown used to work at Adobe as a Senior Product Manager. So perhaps reflecting Adobe's relative dominance in the web design tools market, Microsoft is squarely aiming at taking back some of that mind share and business from Adobe.
There's more news coming soon about the Expression suite of tools, but in the meantime Microsoft platform designers should check out this page for the transition process from Frontpage to Expression Web. Frontpage itself will be discontinued in late 2006.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
We have written before about the innovative Amazon Web Services Platform. This stack was officially announced by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during the recent Web 2.0 summit and is now considered part of the core business strategy for Amazon. While analysts, competitors and Wall Street are pondering what to make of this move from a business sense, in this post we look at who is utilizing Amazon Web Services - and how. This post is based on personal communication with those people, along with the set of success stories available on the Amazon Web Services site.
The fact is many small, medium and even large businesses (even Microsoft), rushed to put Amazon Web Services to use. Why did they do it? Because Amazon offers a decade of experience in running one of the largest internet enterprises - and has wrapped this expertise into a set of pre-packaged services and APIs.
To remind you, here again is the Amazon Web Services Stack:
The Amazon Web Services stack is impressive in its scale and also well thought through. Amazon is methodical about this strategy and is aiming to create an offering which can truly be called an Operating System for the new Web. Many companies have already recognized the power and ROI of the Amazon platform and are literally betting their business on it.
Webmail.us is probably the most compelling success story for Amazon Web Services because of its huge ROI. It is an established business with over 27,000 customers. It had a real and simple business need - improve the cost and reliability of its backup system. After considering many alternative solutions, the company decided to utilize Amazon S3, The Simple Queue Service and the Elastic Compute cloud to address all of its needs.
The company claims to have improved its backup process and cut costs by 75%. The Webmail.us success story on Amazon contains a paragraph that nicely summarizes the technical and business gains:
"Amazon's Web Scale Computing model shifts the focus from do-it-yourself to let-the-experts-do-it. It allows businesses to scale up or down based on requirements and demand, and provides pay-as-you-go billing models. This combination allows businesses to turn fixed costs into variable costs, while knowing that their data or services will always be available."
SmugMug is another interesting success story. It is a straightforward one, because it uses Amazon S3 exactly how it was intended to be used - for storing large media. Today SmugMug hosts over half a billion photos on Amazon. And here is the real "wow factor" in this story: one week after writing the first line of code, SmugMug was storing all of its new images in Amazon S3.
The Amazon S3 API consists of just a few simple method calls. It is equally easy to implement in Java, PHP, JavaScript, Perl, C#, Python and many other languages. As the SmugMug success story illustrates, a simple API means a very quick and painless adoption.
To pepper this with more numbers: SmugMug is now backing up all of its new images to S3, which amounts to 10 terabytes of data monthly. The SmugMug site has not gone down since adopting Amazon S3 and it estimates it will save half a million dollars on its disk storage annually. So, as the company points out, S3 makes it possible for SmugMug to compete head to head with bigger companies that have deep pockets, without having to raise massive amounts of cash for hardware. So this is game changing.
As soon as S3 came out, many companies recognized an opportunity to deliver business and personal backup solutions. The model is simple - charge a small premium on the top of the Amazon S3 storage costs.
With that approach it is essentially a user acquisition battle, where the implementation and marketing become paramount. Altexa targets small businesses, while ElephantDrive and JungleDisk target consumers - but all of them share the benefit and ease of use of S3. In their success stories, the companies emphasized incredibly quick (literally a few days) adoption, cost savings and reliability.
The success stories that we have covered so far are mostly using Amazon's S3 storage service. Scanbuy however is utilizing the Amazon eCommerce API to bring unique comparison shopping solutions to mobile phones. Their claim to fame is allowing the users to lookup prices by simply scanning the barcodes of items in a store. This is a clever approach that is made possible by a combination of technologies.
One of the key technologies here is the Amazon eCommerce API, which offers unlimited and complete access to most Amazon items. Scanbuy uses the API to fetch the latest pricing information, letting the user decide if they are really getting a good deal in the store. And as the company explains, they simply could not have done what they are doing now without the Amazon eCommerce API.
So why are analysts not sure what to make of the Amazon Web Services? In an article in BusinessWeek entitled Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet, their main concern seemed to be: will businesses use this? Well in this post we've shown that for some businesses, the AWS stack provides a set of very compelling value propositions - both technical and business. And having real business success stories with ROI and cost savings in the 50-75% range, makes it basically a no brainer.
We think that the real question is: does this work for Amazon? Is it ready to be a software and Web Services company? Will Amazon be able to scale this business indefinitely... and most importantly: are the margins high enough for it to be worthwhile? We have to believe that Jeff Bezos and the Amazon team did the math - and that the answer is absolutely yes.
Readers opine on the twits in tights and taking a bite out of Apple's iPod. Plus: Links to our most commented-upon blog posts.
Yesterday we compared a new service called BitWine to Google Answers. Apparently that was the last day we could make that comparison because at 10 p.m. last night, Google announced that they would be closing the service by the end of the week. So if you’ve got a pressing question, ask now or forever [...]
Yahoo! is getting in on the group text messaging biz with the launch of their new site, Mixd. TechCrunch was tipped off to the site’s existence today but we have not been able to determine how long it has been live. Mixd allows users to set up groups and text or share photos within those [...]
Stickis, which we covered briefly back in October last year is launching its service this afternoon. Stickis, at first glance is a FireFox and Internet Explorer plugin much like other web annotation programs, such as Fleck, Diigo, and Trailfire. Stickis does do the webpage “sticky note” annotation of these programs. However, Stickis is not just [...]
One of Jessica Cutler's former lovers sues for $20 million, claiming "gross invasion of his privacy." In Sex Drive Daily.
Not satisfied with your Zune's measly 30GB hard drive? The folks at iPodMods have detailed instructions on replacing it with a 40GB, 60GB, or even 80GB drive.
This "repair guide" includes detailed photos of each step of the Zune's dissection (though not its reassembly), with a special section devoted to replacing the hard drive. According to iPodMods, you can swap in one of Toshiba's Zero Insertion Force drives--which they just happen to sell.
Looks like fairly easy surgery, though you may wonder about spending $240 on an 80GB drive when the Zune itself costs $250. Of course, bragging rights don't come cheap.
Popular online task-manager Remember The Milk has added Google Calendar integration so you can see your to-do lists in your favorite online calendar.
The new feature adds a little check-mark icon to each day in the calendar. Clicking it lets you review and add tasks, complete or postpone tasks, and so on. It also works with Remember The Milk's recently added Google Maps integration, meaning you can see where your tasks take place--great for, say, planning an errand route.
You'll need an account with Remember The Milk, of course, but it's free--and if you're not already using an online to-do manager, you're sure to love this one. Thanks, Deborah!
If you haven't tried Google Checkout yet, now may be the time. A new holiday promotion gives you $10 off when you buy at least $30 worth of goods from a participating store.
For those unfamiliar with it, Google Checkout promises speed and security for your online purchases. Just give Google your credit card and billing info [insert Big Brother joke here], then shop online like you normally would. When you're ready to buy something, look for the Google Checkout button. One click and you're practically out the door (virtually speaking). Meanwhile, you can track all your orders and shipping statuses in one place, rather than bopping from site to site.
This holiday promotion isn't quite as good as the $10-off-$20 deal we wrote about a few months ago, but 10 bucks is still 10 bucks. And just about every major e-tailer now supports Google Checkout, so it's easy money if you're already shopping at, say, Buy.com or Toys 'R' Us.
Mac OS X only: Freeware program WebDesktop brings the functionality of Windows Active Desktop to the Mac... sort of.
WebDesktop places a resizable, overlaid web page on top of your Mac's desktop wallpaper with the option to vary opacity while active/inactive. You can point WebDesktop to any web page, meaning that you can use it for fun active desktop productivity tricks. You can set the page to refresh at intervals, so if, for example, you put your favorite productivity blog on your WebDesktop, you can have that bad boy refresh obsessively so you always stay on top of the latest content. WebDesktop is Mac OS X only freeware.
ZSubway is a collection of New York City subway maps and schedules that you can download to your iPod (and some other portable media players). It's amazingly simple - just a bunch of images, really - and yet immensely useful.
This is something all cities should have, in my opinion. When I think of the ways mobile technology is "revolutionizing" our lives, I think the most important changes come in the form of these seemingly small things. No, there's nothing flashy or exciting about subway maps. But ZSubway ranks very high on the usefulness scale. No more having to carry a map around with you, or look for a map (much less a schedule) in a deserted station, or call a customer service number. I don't know about you, but every min ute I save is precious, and convenience is much more important than bells and whistles.
So let this be a message to other cities - it's time to get on-board and provide iPod-friendly transit maps.
While in San Francisco earlier this month, I met up with Laszlo’s Founder and CTO, David Temkin, along with CMO Kent Libbey. Laszlo has an open source Ajax application development platform called OpenLaszlo - which has been used for external apps like Pandora (online radio and music sharing) and ishares.com (Barclays sharemarket app). OpenLaszlo was released at the end of 2004 and claims to have over a quarter of a million downloads to date. Meanwhile Laszlo received an $8 million Series C round of funding in September and in October they made a deal with Sun Microsystems, to enable OpenLaszlo applications to run on the Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME).
When I spoke to David, my ears pricked up when he mentioned that Laszlo is building a WebOS. While he wasn't able to give me many details, he did say the WebOS will be a framework as well as a set of apps. Hmmm, the WebOS space is getting crowded! More on this as it develops.
Pandora, one of my fave online radios, uses OpenLaszlo
OpenLaszlo is often talked about as an open source competitor to Adobe's Flex, because both are rich client application development platforms. And from the user's perspective, a website built with Laszlo is almost identical to a website built with Flash (indeed OpenLaszlo has a Flash run-time option). From a company and developer perspective, the competition is pretty fierce between the two - illustrated by this post by Raju Bitter, an open source evangelist who uses Laszlo.
I asked David what the difference is between OpenLaszlo and Flex - he told me that OpenLaszlo is more consumer focused than Flex, which he says is mainly for enterprise.
In our briefing, David showed me some nifty apps. Laszlo Mail is a commercial rich client email app that is used by ISPs and other "communication service providers". Building on this is Laszlo's suite of personal productivity apps, currently in development, which they call Digital Life. Again, they plan to license this to ISPs and the like. It features email, IM, photo-sharing, calendar and works on mobile devices.
Laszlo Digital Life
All in all, OpenLaszlo is a compelling platform for building rich Ajax applications - or even Flash apps. They have a hard road to hoe competing against Adobe, a comparatively huge company with many more resources at their disposal (internal developers, marketing, brand name, money, etc). But being open source gives OpenLaszlo a lot of credibility in the developer community. It would be even better if they got a couple more 'glamor' projects like the Pandora one, to raise their profile in the consumer world.
What are your thoughts on Laszlo? Has anyone here used it?
Grading Newspapers' Website Progress: B — Just about everyone — finally — is on board and working to address the big problem: How to transition a significant part of the newspaper business to online and new media while keeping enough money flowing in during the transition period …
Source: Editor and Publisher
Author: Steve Outing
Link: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns…
Ultrastar is a music fan site management company, started by David Bowie in the late 90's. They create and manage sites for a range of pop music acts - such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Sting, INXS and about 9 other acts. They emailed me today to tell me about out a new product for all their bands, a media player called the Virtual Ticket. Basically it's a rich media player that enables members of the fan sites to spread video clips to non-members. It's also kind of like a lite social network system, in that it features chat and commenting throughout.
Virtual Ticket is being marketed as an "on-line tour companion" for bands/artists, because it gives extra media content and regular updates (e.g. band member video diaries or behind the scenes action) to people who buy their concert tickets. The aim is to create more of a relationship between the artist and their fans.
A good example of Virtual Ticket in action is at The Who's latest tour website, where it has been labeled Squeezebox. It features videos of The Who playing, behind the scenes videos, setlists for each show, photosets, documentary videos, news stories, interviews... and much more. There is also a chatroom and the whole site is basically a social network system for Who fans. While all of this kind of content has been available before on music band websites, the system behind it (Virtual Ticket) is a turnkey solution for bands to provide all these features to fans.
I did have some difficulty loading the site and logging in. I also sent it to a friend of mine in Auckland, who is one of The Who's biggest fans, and he too had trouble loading the site. My friend, Dave, is exactly the kind of person The Who wants using this site - so it's crucial Ultrastar ensures accessibility is sorted out. [Incidentally Dave wanted me to note that a it was lifetime dream of his to see The Who play in Sydney 2 years ago - similar to me seeing Lou Reed play live recently... but I digress].
Also I found there were some usability issues - e.g. when a video clip I watched finished, there didn't seem to be any way to get back to the home screen. I ended up closing the window and re-opening. Also some icons were not obvious, so I found myself clicking them just to find out what they did. I'm sure these issues are being addressed.
According to the developers, the Virtual Ticket Media Player client was authored in ActionScript 2 and Adobe Flash 8. Here are their goals for the site:
"Among the main goals for the Virtual Ticket Media Player to achieve was the ability to store and display highly relational content and data, of varying media types, in a straight-forward, user-friendly manner. Most importantly, the varying content types had to be viewable simultaneously. That is, a user could be simultaneously watching a video, reading a news story, looking at photos, and conversing with other users in the chat room.
The navigation concept allows for this to happen, as it can display content in a linear fashion (User goes to the News section, chooses a news story, and is presented with the full story) as well as non-linear fashion (User views a tour date entry and is presented with videos, photo sets, reviews found elsewhere within the Virtual Ticket Media Player, but are grouped with the specific tour date entry because of a relational qualification). This requires that deep linking and runtime display is possible from any given view to any other piece of content within the application."
The video is streaming Flash and the reason given for this is "because of UltraStar's obligations to protect their client/artists' rights". By which they mean there is no caching and "therefore no footprint of any kind left on the user's computer." For the video techies out there, the video files are encoded with the high-quality On2 VP6 codec and are hosted on a distributed network (CDN) by NineSystems.
The chatroom software is designed to be relatively open:
"The Virtual Ticket Media Player Chat Room is written and operated under Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) standards. This means that other users will be able to use their existing messaging software (Trillian, GTalk, etc...) to connect, authenticate, and log in to the Artist's chatroom. Currently, the built-in Virtual Ticket Media Player chat interface is the only public way to enter the Artist's chatroom though support for other clients is planned."
Perhaps the defining feature in Virtual Ticket is that "every piece of content" in UltraStar’s Virtual Ticket Media Player has a viral marketing component. An example given was the “Send-To-Friend” capability, which allows users to send a personalized message and a link to any content entry (video, photos, etc) to a friend.
Also the Media Player aims to encourage dialogue and user-participation, with commenting and integrated chat built in. Users can leave comments on "any and all content found in the Media Player."
Currently The Who Squeezebox is the only live example of Virtual Ticket, but coming soon is a Rolling Stones Virtual Ticket. Both these examples use the same Virtual Ticket Media Player file, but have a different color scheme and content database.
As a big music fan, I love seeing this kind of web technology applied to music websites. I think once Ultrastar has addressed the technical and usability issues (and remember this is still a young product), they will find a ready and willing audience for their Virtual Tickets!
Google: 'iPod will hold all the world's TV in 12 years' — The future of music inspires the future of mobile — The idea of fitting your entire music collection into a single device the size of a packet of cigarettes might have seemed outlandish 15 years ago. But that was before the iPod.
Source: silicon.com
Author: Jo Best
Link: http://hardware.silicon.com/storage/0,39024649…
Lloyd Sakazaki has written a good overview of recent trends in global websites. It is based on Alexa data, a stats source which comes under regular fire for its faults (most recently ex-Netscape boss Jason Calacanis took aim). Nevertheless, there are some interesting underlying trends in the Seeking Alpha article. Not new trends, but well stated.
Over a two year period (Nov 2004 - Nov 2006), there have been 5 new websites enter the top 15 of Alexa in reach - myspace.com, live.com, youtube.com, orkut.com, wikipedia.org. Two of those are now owned by Google, which of course has shown significant growth of its own accord over the past two years.
The overall trend is that user-generated content is the defining feature of all of the new top 15 sites - except maybe live.com, which is basically just a replacement (sometimes a duplicate) of other microsoft properties in Alexa. So whether you call this current era of the Web the Read/Write Web, or Web 2.0, or whatever - the proof of how it is different is right there in those alexa stats. Also as Sakazaki nicely points out, the success of search in this era is derived from the growth in user-generated content - since there is so much content nowadays.
Incidentally, behind the tired and tabloid-level communism references in this Register piece - lies a good point. Is Ajax a strong enough technology to take us to the next era of the Web? Perhaps not. But I agree with Ryan Stewart's assessment that, for all its faults, "Ajax has done a lot to raise the expectations of end users and gotten developers to think differently". Also I'd add, as the Google Docs & Spreadsheets developers suggested recently, that Ajax is still the most 'web native' way to develop interactive web apps. Although having said that, I don't believe myspace, youtube, wikipedia or orkut rely to any great extent on Ajax? So it's not like this era of the Web is dependent on Ajax. It's an enabling technology, but not the essence of the Web circa 2006.
Anyway, back to the high level trends. Seeking Alpha also notes that many of the fastest-growing websites are localized Google properties - showing two clear trends, the importance of Google and the internationalization of the Web. The former gets plenty of press and blog coverage, the latter less so. But both are of equal importance in my view.
Pic: Orli Yakuel (who got it from scifi.com)
YouTube Coming Soon to Cellphones — YouTube is coming to mobile phones — or, to be more precise, a small slice of YouTube is coming to some Verizon Wireless phones. — While its explosively popular Web site is free, YouTube's phone-based version will require a $15-a-month subscription to a Verizon Wireless service called VCast.
Source: New York Times
Author: Matt Richtel
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/technology/28tube…
10 OS X Apps You Might Not Know About But Should — Over the past couple of years of running The Apple Blog, I've tried out literally thousands of applications. A lot have been great apps that I still use today, but infinitely more have just been plain bad. I know I'm not the only one who's experienced this.
Source: The Apple Blog
Author: Josh Pigford
Link: http://theappleblog.com/2006/11/26/10-osx-apps-you…
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Microsoft's efforts to loosen up access to closely held music owned by record labels has an unintended consequence: It punishes artists who want to share. Commentary by Eliot Van Buskirk.
A censored array of clips will be deigned suitable for mobile consumption beginning next month. In Gear Factor.
YouTube and Verizon have partnered up to bring video clips to the mobile phone. The feature will launch in December as part of the Vcast $15 per month service. Verizon customers will be able to view “select” video content, as well as post videos from their mobile phones. Given that most mobile-generated content, videos or [...]
When Daniel Varo, who lived his life on the web, is killed by a shot to the back of the head, his death plays out online, too. By Noah Shachtman from Wired magazine. Plus: Epilogue: A Reporter's Notebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about changes at Facebook, his super-popular social-networking site. By Aria Pearson from Wired magazine.
If you need some help choosing the perfect iPod for your needs, you might want to head on over to iPod Radar, a nice mashup of various shopping API's.
Not only can you find the latest iPod deals and accessories here, you can also browse various iPod news, blogs, updates, etc. In addition, if you've got a very narrow iPod focus in mind (running, audiophile, in the car), you can check out the latest and greatest models for that as well - a pretty handy gift-giving guide, overall.
Interesting podcast interview by Gizbuzz, with Jen Mazzon and Sam Schillace of the Google Docs and Spreadsheets team (both ex-Writely). They start off by saying that D&S is aimed at "people who need to collaborate and share their stuff online". To the question of whether people are using it instead of desktop apps (such as Excel), Jen said that "it's designed to enable people to work together online really seamlessly and easily - and if you're just creating something in a vacuum, then you might as well use a desktop and an offline application. But the minute that you need to start getting contributions and input from other people, then it's [D&S] a great solution."
I've written before about how collaboration and sharing are two compelling reasons for Web-based office software, but it's great to hear it from the horse's mouth (Google I mean).
Another interesting tidbit from the interview was Jen's statement that "enterprise really hasn't been our key focus" - what they've been focusing on is everyday people, consumers, small workgroups and so forth. She doesn't rule out focusing on enterprise in the near future, but "it has not been top of mind".
The question of integration came up. Sam said they will be integrating D&S with other Google apps - and that the Web makes this easy, with XML and similar open standards. He said "you're going to see more and more integration going forward. All of Google's apps will work better and better together, going forward."
Next was a question about browser compatibility issues and how that affects D&S - and indeed the future of rich web applications. Sam responded that "it is definitely an issue [...] these apps are all cutting edge - it kind of reminds me of the early days of the graphical web, when you couldn't count on the browsers to render tables correctly [...]".
But he thinks it's "just growing pains" and it'll take about a year to sort those issues out.
Also on the question of whether Ajax is better than Flash and Laszlo etc, Sam thinks that Ajax is currently more web native.
Later in the interview, Jen stresses that they're "not trying to clone desktop apps". They want to be familiar to people, "but we're trying to do something that's actually more native to the Internet, more usable on the Internet."
Sam says they've had a lot of feedback that people like the fact they're not trying to copy desktop apps. He said "copying the existing stuff just feels irrelevant to us - we're not trying to copy, we're trying to re-invent."
Both Jen and Sam re-affirmed that collaboration and sharing is their main focus with D&S, as well as being web native - rather than trying to compete on features with desktop apps.
Note: there are sound problems with the podcast, which makes it an uncomfortable recording to listen to at times. But the interview itself was great and very informative, so well done Gizbuzz.
Google Settles Dispute With Two Belgian Media Groups (Update3) — Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., the world's most-used Internet search engine, reached a settlement with Belgian photographers and journalists in a copyright dispute over how the company's news service links to newspaper content.
Source: Bloomberg
Author: Stephanie Bodoni
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid…
Web 2.0 and Tim O'Reilly as Marshal Tito — Forward to the (distributed) revolution — Comment As the Web 2.0 bandwagon continues its rapidly accelerating path downhill towards the inevitable crash we find ourselves at another turning point in the development of the networked world.
Source: Reg Developer
Author: Bill Thompson
Link: http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/11/25…
Avoid the loony Zune — Y es, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face. — "Avoid," is my general message.
Source: Chicago Sun Times
Author: Andy Ihnatko
Link: http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/147048,CST…
Popular photo sharing site Flickr has published lists and graphs of the most popular cameras used on the site.
The results are an incredible camera guide. Not only can you see the most popular cameras overall, as well as most popular point and shoot cameras and cameraphones, but you can check out pictures taken with each camera for an idea of what kind of shots the camera is capable of taking. On the individual camera page, Flickr displays a graph of that cameras usage, which should give you a good view of whether or not it's going out of style. Naturally, you can also compare prices at Yahoo! Shopping if you find a camera you're interested in.
A couple of months back, Yahoo! Shopping posted the top 10 Flickr cameras - which was great, except that they're mostly high-end cameras. The new Flickr camera guide runs the gamut, and should be a great resource if you're planning to buy a new digital camera this holiday season.
Google Book Search has been upgraded with a slick AJAX interface for faster, easier book browsing.
Borrowing a few pages (sorry) from Adobe Reader, the new Google Book Search lets you flip pages by pressing arrow keys or clicking a scrollbar, and change text size by zooming in or out. You can quickly jump to other chapters or sections by clicking links in the new table of contents. Google also amped up search speed and added a full-screen mode.
Alas, the actual book selection remains kinda weak (though we always appreciate free book downloads), but hopefully that will change over time. At least Google Book Search itself shows significant improvement.
Add an icon to the Google Reader bookmarklet, learn to use shortcut keys, share items with friends, and more with blogger Johnny's seven tips and tricks for the popular feed reader. For example, to tag an item for later blogging:
Let's say you're reading a post and realize that it would make a great blog topic, but you don't have the time right then to mess with it. Hit the 't' key, and pop "toblog" into the textbox to save the item for later. When it's time to start blogging, simply hit the 'gt' key combination, and up pops a great little Ajax'y goodness dialog that lets you easily select the desired tag.
That tip alone makes this list worth a look. If you've adopted Google Reader as your feed friend, you're sure to find these tips useful.
Google sued by film producer — French movie studio alleges that world's top search engine distributed its film online for free. — PARIS (Reuters) — The producer of "The World According to Bush" has taken legal action against Google for distributing the film for free …
Source: Reuters
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/23/news/international…
One of the most ridiculous missing features from Microsoft's new iPod competitor, the Zune, is that out-of-the-box it doesn't allow you to use the player as an external hard drive (a "feature" available on almost every other MP3 player). Luckily the Phaleux weblog has figured out a simple registry hack that will fix Microsoft's irritating mistake. Check out how after the jump.
- Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn't running
- open up regedit by going to the start menu and selecting "run". Type regedt32 and hit "OK"
- Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\
- Search for "PortableDeviceNameSpace". This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above ...\USB\ The ##'s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune
- Change the following values:
- EnableLegacySupport to 1
- PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
- ShowInShell to 1
- Plug in your Zune, and make sure the Zune Software starts up.
- Hopefully at this point you can open up "My Computer" and browse your device, though it does NOT show up as a drive letter.
Now that you've got your Zune working like it should, you can use that portable hard drive to carry all your favorite apps with you wherever you go. As with any registry hack, you should probably back up your registry before you give this a try.
Just two years after Google launched its SMS search service, Microsoft has launched a beta version of its own SMS service that lets you perform Windows Live searches from a cell phone. The service is available to Cingular, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and Alltel customers in the uS.
Here's how it works.
Automattic, the company behind open source blogging platform WordPress and free blog service WordPress.com, has struck a deal with enterprise RSS company KnowNow, who will begin selling KnowNow Wordpress Enterprise Edition (KWEE), a special version of WordPress MU (i.e. Multi-User, the same multi-blog software WordPress.com is built on) that will include special enterprise features like LDAP authentication and analytics.
WordPress CEO Toni Schneider has a post on his blog that describes the deal in greater detail. According to Read/WriteWeb, KWEE will be available both as a KnowNow-hosted package or as a distribution enterprise companies can install on their own servers.
[Update Nov 24, 6:00 AM - It was asked in the comments whether this review of ReviewMewas a paid review; the answer is no, ReviewMe did not pay for this review. I had the opportunity to do a paid review of ReviewMe on my personal blog, but didn't feel comfortable doing so until I'd had the opportunity to do a real review, and by the time that happened the offer for the paid review had expired.]
I recently had the chance to try out ReviewMe, a new service for bloggers from the folks behind TextLinkAds that allows them to register to receive offers of products to review, and be paid for their services based on citations (links in), feed subscribers, and traff ic. Bloggers' sites are ranked based on those factors, and assigned a value for the amount they will be paid per post reviewing a product in the category they've chosen.
Advertisers can browse amongst the various blogs that have signed up, based on the category they've put themselves in, as well as a list of 6 tags that can additionally be used to further clarify a blog's focus, and a brief description. The advertiser pays double the rate that the blogger will earn for their post, so if the blogger is rated at $100, the advertiser pays $200 for the post.
It's important to note that while it might look like it, this is not another PayPerPost fiasco. ReviewMe's terms specifically require bloggers to clearly disclose that the post their reader is reading was paid for, and include suggested wordings such as "Sponsored Post" or "This is a paid adver tisement". Blog posts must be at least 200 words in length to qualify, and are reviewed by ReviewMe before payment is issued. Interestingly, ReviewMe does not require positive reviews, though they imply in the FAQ that most reviews will be positive. Personally, the approach I took when deciding whether to try ReviewMe was to decide that I would look at all offers, but probably only choose to write about the ones that I actually find interesting and worthwhile. That being said, if I see a hole or problem in a product, I'll say so. Of course, I expect readers to take the entire post with a grain of salt, and put a very obvious wording at the top of the post to ensure readers understand that it's effectively simply an ad.
In terms of long term viability, I'm very interested to see where this leads. I think that as a reader, I would quickly tire of a blog that became 50% or more paid content. However, I think this model provides a viable way to monetize a blog if the reader's trust is not abused by the blog publisher through over-saturation of ads or simply "selling out" and writing untrustworthy reviews.
The concept seems solid; writers get paid more directly for their reviews (as compared to the magazine industry), and publishers get to target their ad dollars with laser-like accuracy. Unfortunately, I expect there to be far more viable blogs looking to make a few bucks than there will be advertisers looking to test the waters on blogs, so I doubt any blogger is going to make a significant monthly income. On the other hand, if the business model proves successful, we could be looking at a whole new model for online advertising.
By the way, although I've not yet been paid by ReviewMe for my test post (they pay monthly), the entire experience was extremely smooth and enjoyable. I have not received any negative feedback from my post, so I intend to monitor the situation to try to determine whether blog subscribers are receptive to this possible new blogging business model. I personally see nothing wrong with it, but given the backlash against the more nefarious online advertisers like PayPerPost, I'll be cautious about continuing down this path just yet.
It's a workhorse, it's there when I need it and, although others have tried to imitate, it still stands as webmail that doesn't feel like webmail. So, this Thanksgiving, I'd like to say thanks for Gmail.
I'm totally obsessive about my email. It is communication avenue number one for me and, frankly, it used to be a giant pain my my tuckus. Back then, in order to get the functionality I needed as well as the functionality I desired, I was stuck running my own mail server, webmail gateway (for when I was away from my normal PC), maintaining Spamasassin and using Microsoft Outlook as a client with a smattering of filters to keep some level of clarity.
Thanks to Gmail I dumped my webmail gateway (though I still run my own mail server, it exists largely as a pass-through) and with it a ton of administration headaches. Even as my email volume has risen dramatically, I spend almost zero time dealing with spam, and I spend no time maintaining spam filtering rules and software. Now I am a mail user rather than a mailsystem maintainer and, as a result, I'm able to dedicate more time to my actual work, rather than to the tools that support my work.
So, thanks this holiday to Google for Gmail. The webmail app that doesn't feel like webmail, and the first in a long string of Web 2.0 apps that allowed us all to look at and interact with the Internet in a host of new ways.
Although the overhaul of Google Reader received almost entirely good reviews, after using it for some time I noticed some frustrations with respect to the very Google style it employs. While I'm no big fan of Google's choice in colors, it's the layout of Google Reader that could use some help.
It's very simple, really. When reading feeds, the more vertical space you can give to the feeds themselves, the more efficient you can be with your reading. All too often I would come across feeds that would almost but not quite fit into a single page, forcing me to either take my hand off the keyboard to scroll that last bit into view, or use the overkill method of paging down an entire page, when all I needed to see was the next few lines.
< br />Google Reader Optimized is a possible solution if you suffer the same frustrations with Google Reader. It's basically a skin that can be applied using either the Stylish user styles Firefox Add-On, or the venerable Greasemonkey Add-On. Personally I prefer Greasemonkey, but to each their own.
Once applied, you'll find that Google Reader's right-side post viewing pane has been extended to reach from the top of your browser window to the bottom, and the default typeface has been changed to one that looks better at a smaller point size. Although seemingly minor changes, the overall effect on Google Reader is to supercharge the reading experience.
Kudos to the official Google Reader blog for linki ng to some interesting way to enhance your reading experience, such as this one.
Of course, I can't commend the Google Reader team without also pointing out that they're certainly without fault. Look for that story in an upcoming post...
What do you do if you find a bug in an extremely popular web service run by arguably the most important online company on the planet? You try to report it, right? Well if the problem is with Google Reader, like mine is, good freakin' luck.
I currently have a feed stuck in my Google Reader account that refuses to unsubscribe when I try to do so. Here's the kicker - the feed is one that is generated by Google Reader's own "link blog" feature, whereby you can publish a shared feed of posts you find interesting. As a good little boy, I attempted to email the Google Reader team using the link they provide in Google Reader. Almost immediately I received a form letter reply from the Google Reader team that told me where to go and how to get there. Here's what t he email said:
Thank you for your interest in Google Reader. We are currently focusing all of our energy on developing this feature and other Google Labs prototypes. Due to this fact, we are unable to provide personal responses to the email we receive. However, we are monitoring all of your feedback and suggestions and will keep them in mind as we work to improve Google Reader.
To further assist our users, we have created a discussion forum on Google Groups where you can exchange information with other Google Reader users. You can acce ss the news group at:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Reader
We encourage you to post your email to this forum and join other Google Reader users in sharing your thoughts and expertise.
Thanks again for your feedback and for using Google Reader.
Regards,
The Google Team
Now, that's all fine and dandy, but a quick search of th e Google Reader discussion forum revealed that I'm not the only one suffering this problem. It is, in fact, a bug. Worse, there has yet to be a response from the Reader team on this issue. And I'm not the only one to notice that Google's track record with dealing with bug reports stinks - check out this post by Garett Rogers over at ZDNet's Googling Google blog, entitled "Find a bug? Don't bother reporting it."
Update: Just before publishing this post, I did another search of the Google Reader Forum, and found a post in this thread claiming that a fix to this problem was pushed out today. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have worked for me, or for many other users. At least it's nice to see that they're paying attention. Let's hope it gets resolved soon...
Lifehacker brings us a nugget from Davo, one of their avid readers, called What To Do Next. The idea behind the little application is extremely simple; it's written in javascript, and therefore will run on any platform. All it does is act as a front-end to a list of tasks that you would like to accomplish. Clicking on the button for one of the tasks starts a ten minute countdown timer (the time is configurable), after which an alarm sounds. The idea here is that ten minutes is short enough to feel approachable, so you may find tha t you can get started on a task that otherwise felt too large to tackle. Once the alarm goes off, if you're feeling like you're making good progress, just continue. But if you feel stuck or like you're spinning your wheels, the alarm is your escape - just choose a different task from your list and get to work.
I really enjoy the idea behind this application, but don't need yet another task manager to maintain. But that's okay, since really all I need is a 10 minute countdown timer and the resolve to actually tackle some of the items on my ever-growing task list in Outlook. But downloading and installing What To Do Next takes mere seconds, and if you don't have a to-do list, or aren't particularly fond of the one you're using, this might be a nice alternative.
Note that the source file containing the actual list of tasks is well laid-out and easy to follow, but if you're averse to editing text configuration files, you might want to give this one a pass .
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Written by Dejan Bizinger, a web manager at Serbian media company B92.net, and edited by Richard MacManus
Serbia is a country located in Southeast Europe with around 9 million people. Around 1.5 million Serbians use the Internet and the majority of them are still dial-up users. The main reasons for the small broadband penetration are the economic situation in Serbia and problems with the infrastructure - many people still have doublers, so they can’t have ADSL (despite broadband connection like ADSL being available since 2005).
The web market in Serbia is developing, but currently there are not more than 20 quality web sites and services. The online advertising market in Serbia in 2005 was 500,000 Euros - and around 50% of that went to the B92.net web site (see below, in the blogging section). This year it is projected that the online advertising market will be 1 Million Euros. However a boom is expected on the Serbian Web scene, because more and more people are becoming broadband users. Also soon a domestic credit card payment provider will be introduced, which will enable webmasters to monetize their content/services.
In Serbia there is a news start page called Naslovi.net, which means 'Titles'. It aggregates the daily top news from Serbia. While it doesn’t have the functionality of a web 2.0 start page like Netvibes or Pageflakes, it is still a useful and popular destination for people who want to find all the top news on one page.
The most popular Web 2.0 service from Serbia that has gained world popularity is called activeCollab, from a developer named Ilija Studen. It is a free project management Basecamp alternative - it has gotten many diggs and coverage in some of the world’s most famous tech blogs.
Another popular, recently launched, Web 2.0 service is called Donesi.com - which means 'Bring'. Donesi.com has plans for internationalization, as indicated by the language options available. The purpose of this service is to publish offers from as many restaurants as possible, so that people can order food online.
There is also a price comparison service on MyShop.co.yu, similar to services like BizRate and Shopping. Recently, it launched an auction web site called Limundo.com, which hasn't yet achieved popularity.
Serbia has two good Web 2.0 services for language usage. The first is called Metak and it is an Ajax-driven Serbian-English and English-Serbian dictionary. The owners decided to call this service Metak, which means Bullet - because they claim it is very fast! Another language service is called Vokabular and its purpose is to give the meaning of different Serbian words. It is a Serbian language dictionary.
There are several popular online dating websites in Serbia. One of the oldest is Poljubac, which means 'Kiss'. This service was acquired several years ago by Romanian company Neogen.
Another dating service is Romance Café, which was acquired by a German company. The majority of the service is free - and for a modest fee that is paid through SMS, members get more advanced features.
Although not a web 2.0 application, I want to mention an IT web forum called Elitesecurity - which has more than 100,000 members. It is the biggest IT forum in Southeast Europe and one of the biggest in Europe.
Big companies - except B92 and Telekom Srbija (which launched two portals in 2006) - still don’t focus on creating big and profitable web sites. Also big companies mostly have not invested in or bought popular Serbian web destinations. However that is expected to change in 2007!
In Serbia, real blogging services are still in their infancy. There are many less bloggers in Serbia than in nearby countries like Croatia and Hungary.
One Serbian blog service is called MojBlog (part of the regional MyBlog.gs network). Another open blog service can be found on the Nadlanu web site, which is owned by Telekom Srbija. Also, recently a long-awaited blog service was launched on the Blog.co.yu domain.
The most visited web site in Serbia and one of the most popular in Southeast Europe is B92.net [disclaimer: Dejan works for B92.net as a web manager]. It gets over 100,000 daily unique visitors and has an Alexa ranking of around 2000. B92.net is owned by media house B92, which also has TV and radio stations. They also launched the B92 Blog - it is not an open blog service, but a so-called V.I.P. blog and invitation only. Many of the bloggers there are high profile people from the public life of Serbia, such as writers, actors and politicians. There are around 10,000 daily unique visitors and more than 5,000 registered members on B92 Blog.
When we talk about blogging in Serbia, it is also worth mentioning a blog service called Planeta Srbija - which aggregates dozens of blogs in the Serbian blogosphere.
Many thanks to Dejan Bizinger for contributing this post about Serbia! As usual, if there are further Serbian web apps you know of that we may've missed - please add to the comments. Also if you're from Serbia and have some interesting information to tell, feel free to leave a comment. R/WW readers are enjoying this international web apps series (based on all the positive feedback I get about it!), so any further information you contribute will be much appreciated.
This post is part of Read/WriteWeb's continuing coverage of international Web markets. Other countries profiled so far have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, China, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, France, Japan, India, Austria, Sweden, Australia and Hungary.
I know, a predictable (almost tabloid-y) blog headline. But in this case, there really is some interesting back and forth going on between Microsoft and Google currently - especially with regards to office software.
Firstly Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote an article for The Economist, in which he takes aim at Microsoft with this:
"In 2007 we’ll witness the increasing dominance of open internet standards. As web access via mobile phones grows, these standards will sweep aside the proprietary protocols promoted by individual companies striving for technical monopoly. Today’s desktop software will be overtaken by internet-based services that enable users to choose the document formats, search tools and editing capability that best suit their needs."
OK he doesn't specifically name Microsoft, but it's obvious who is at the top of the list of "individual companies" Schmidt is referring to. Also not specifically mentioned is office software, but in this case Google's actions speak louder than their words. In recent months we've seen a flurry of product releases and acquisitions in the office space by Google - Google Apps For Your Domain (a kind of lightweight office suite which includes a start page), the transformation of Writely and their online spreadsheet product into Google Docs & Spreadsheets, the acquisition of JotSpot... it all points to an increasing emphasis on office software from Google.
Add to that the Google Desktop and speculation over a GoogleOS, and it's very clear that Google is increasingly stamping all over Microsoft's turf.
And now Microsoft is talking tough in return. In a Reuters article today, Microsoft Office group co-leader Antoine Leblond says:
"The simple argument that 'this is good enough for 90 percent of what we do' has fallen on its face over and over and over again [...] When it comes to mission critical things and key pieces of how people run their businesses, the threshold is higher."
Like Schmidt, taking a none too subtle swipe at its competition.
As the Reuters article notes, Microsoft's approach is that Web services will work in tandem with PC-installed software. Whereas Google is mostly an adherent of cloud-based office software, although things like Google Desktop will probably blur that line. As Schmidt noted in the Economist:
"Today we live in the clouds. We’re moving into the era of “cloud” computing, with information and applications hosted in the diffuse atmosphere of cyberspace rather than on specific processors and silicon racks. The network will truly be the computer."
Nick Carr wonders though if Schmidt has his timing right - will 2007 be the 'tipping point'? I suspect it will be, because as we noted in our previous post about GoogleOS - when Microsoft's Vista OS gains significant adoption (which is a given, even if it won't be like the old days of people lining up outside stores for the latest Windows release), that will put pressure on Google's product line. After all, Vista will have IE7 as its default browser, Live Search as default search and live.com as the default homepage (probably). All of this puts the squeeze on Google, which is why we're predicting 2007 will be the year that Google attacks on a lot of fronts. And whether or not you believe a GoogleOS is on the way, it's almost certain that Google will put the pressure on with office software delivered over the Web.
As Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft notes, "it's refreshing to see Google stop playing coy and be straightforward about their ambitions." I heartily agree, but I suspect Google's actions in 2007 will be much louder than their words. Microsoft needs to step up too, as Dare says, so this is going to be a fascinating battle to watch!
Our post this week about GoogleOS led to some vigorous and fascinating discussion in Read/WriteWeb. 87 mostly thoughtful comments were left here, plus many more on Slashdot and Digg.
To get a final, more succinct, picture of whether R/WW readers expect to see a GoogleOS - here is a poll for you. I hope there are sufficient options in it, but you'll notice that option 6 is open-ended and invites you to leave a comment to explain more (at the risk of duplicating the comments in the original post). Also re #4, that's a reference to Robert Scoble's comment that Emre and I must've been "smoking good crack" ;-) There were some even more brutal comments that came our way, but in the end that only showed it was a thought provoking post that many people had opinions on :-)
A new technique allows Zune owners to share files of any type wirelessly with other users. But Microsoft could soon close this loophole with a mandatory firmware upgrade. In Listening Post.
Kirkland, Washington based company Document Command Inc. has launched its consumer facing web interface for postal mail called Remote Control Mail. The service provides an alternative to PO Boxes, mail forwarding or waiting until you get home from the road to deal with your mail. The company receives your postal mail, scans the [...]
Once-a-month blogger, occasional web designer and UK based family guy Andy Boyd has posted a screen capture of blog search results appearing on the front page of a regular Google web search. A number of other bloggers have picked this up but no one else has been able to reproduce Boyd’s experience. It’s [...]
Gmail user Tyler Hall started forwarding all his work email to his personal Gmail account and wanted an easy way to view his work inbox and sent mail. So he whipped up a useful Greasemonkey user script called Work Buttons to do just that.
Basically the script adds a link to your second addresses' "inbox" and sent mail in the upper bar of the Gmail interface. When clicked, you can see a search of all messages to and from the specified alternate address. To get this working yourself you have to download the script, and add your second address and label. I set it up for Lifehacker's tips email and my personal address and it worked like a charm. The Work Buttons user script is a free download which requires Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension to run. Thanks, Jon!
Google's Shares Climb Above $500 — After Google's shares nearly doubled in the first few months after its initial public offering, Mark Mahaney figured it was time for his clients to take advantage of the frenzy that had built up around the company. He advised them to sell Google shares and put the money into Yahoo.
Source: New York Times
Author: Saul Hansell
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/technology…
Blogger Wars: How Jason Calacanis Gets Even — Nick Denton (pictured left) likes to use his blog Valleywag to take shots at competitors - his most recent attack was on Jason Calacanis (on right), who founded and then cashed out of the blog network Weblogs, Inc. Denton has always played second fiddle …
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Michael Arrington
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/21/blogger-wars-how…
The Spam Farms of the Social Web — Blogs and other social media tools have changed the publishing landscape over the past few years, making it easier than ever to share information with the world. The ease of use and focused attention of the medium has also helped create new opportunities …
Source: Niall Kennedy's Weblog
Author: Niall Kennedy
Link: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/11…
Google has tuned up the way you will search for books from now on with a slick new Ajax interface. Google has developed what it believes to be a better way to browse Google's digitized books on your computer screen. The new interface allows users who are reading books to use the scroll bar or arrow keys to navigate around the book. Users can also now zoom in and out and jump to a full screen view of a book. Navigating through the book is easier with a right side framed table of contents that does not refresh when pages are clicked on, thus creating faster viewing without any reloads and a two page spread view . Google did a great job with the new Book Search site. Fine tuning it like they did will surely attract a lot more users.
Google is planning on making holiday shopping easier and faster this year with Checkout. Google has said that they will be offering special promotions for shoppers starting on November 27th and running until December 26th. Users will receive $10 off purchases of $30 or more and $20 off purchases of $50 or more, depending on the merchant involved. To get the benefits of these special offers, there are no special registrations and no delays--users will immediately have credits applied to their purchases. What better way t o save a some additional coin during the holiday season. With stores like eBags, Starbucks, Petco, Buy.com, and Bluefly you will surely find something for everyone.
On my ZDNet blog last night I took a look at the evolving world of Web Office widgets. I noted that the personalized start page Pageflakes has just introduced a couple of new office "flakes" - a Calendar Flake and a Notepad Flake. They also have an existing Mail Flake, as well as flakes for Writely and iRows. Netvibes, Webwag and others also have similar offerings. Is this a sign that we'll soon see a widget office suite!? That may sound odd at first, but when you think about it - componentized web apps are potentially very useful on a company Intranet. From my ZDNet post:
So the question is: what can you use a Web Office Start Page for? I must admit I don't use email within my start page - I use Gmail and it occupies the first tab in my browser 100% of the time. But with word processing and spreadsheets, there are certain files that I use frequently during the day (e.g. my timesheet) - and so having them available in my start page would be useful. Likewise with my calendar or a notepad.
Also it helps to think of a start page as like an Intranet dashboard, where you have the documents and files you use regularly either open - or a click away - in your dashboard.
I wrote about this back in September, when I noted the arrival of Google's Personalized Start Page for Enterprise - which I nicknamed its 'instant intranet'. It is one of the options available in Google's Apps For Your Domain service. Also included in the package is email, IM, calendar and website creator - with Docs & Spreadsheets rumored to be in the mix in the future.
Charlie Wood from Spanning Partners picked up on this theme and warns about the potential security issues:
"Let's say I have an enterprise application out of which I want to pull some data for display in a widget. Obviously, that data is going to be secured, so two things need to happen: first, my widget canvas needs to support secure data access, and second, I need to trust my widget engine to access my enterprise applications on my behalf.
Desktop-based widget engines like KlipFolio and Skinkers are already used for delivering sensitive data. They support encrypted, password-protected data retrieval, and they store encrypted credentials on the user's machine. But web-based widgets are a different story.
Today, few if any web-based widget canvases support secure data in any meaningful way."
Charlie goes on to describe how an enterprise developer might go about creating a business widget. He also says that web-based Intranet dashboards probably won't come from consumer-focused start pages like Netvibes or Pageflakes, but "companies that have already made the massive investment needed to form the foundation for what some are calling the Business Web." I'd agree with him there, but I also think Google will have a go at creating a full-fledged Intranet dashboard. They've already started, with the Apps For Your Domain start page described above. And if Google goes there, you can bet Microsoft is sure to follow.
As for the likes of Pageflakes and Netvibes, Charlie is right that they will focus on consumers and individuals - but I've always thought there are a lot of white-labeling opportunities for those start pages, which is where office apps may become an important part of their service.
Along with the increasing internationalization of the Web, comes the language challenge. China is obviously a key Web and business market going forward, so there is currently a lot of interest in learning Mandarin. As one solution to this, Ken Carroll recently contacted me to tell me about ChinesePod - the site he co-founded a year ago to teach Mandarin over the Web. He told me that ChinesePod uses podcasting, RSS, blogging - and other Web 2 technologies - to teach Mandarin Chinese, which he described as "an emerging lingua franca".
Ken told me that ChinesePod has exploded in popularity over the past year - it's had approximately 10 million lesson downloads and currently occupies a prominent position in places like Yahoo Podcasts.
Visiting the ChinesePod site is a pleasure, as it is very well designed and a visual treat. And the business model is surprisingly simple - subscriptions to language-learning materials. This complements the free offerings - basically, the Mandarin podcasts - very nicely. For example, if you want to dive into learning Mandarin straight away: select one of the episodes, plus you can participate in the discussions. The first level subscription is called 'Basic' and gets you a PDF transcript of the podcast. If you want get really serious about learning Mandarin, sign up to the premium subscription service and receive learning resources such as Review Materials and Lesson Plans.
I think ChinesePod beautifully illustrates how you can run a small, niche - but successful and moneymaking - business on the Web. ChinesePod offers enough free material to make it worthwhile for the casual visitor, but offers real value too if you're willing to pay a subscription fee for tools and resources that help you learn Mandarin.
The community aspect of ChinesePod also shows what can be done with read/write Web technologies. Check out the Community page - which has a forum, wiki, blogs, photos, rss feeds. All the usual pieces, but what I like about it is that each has a practical purpose. The wiki has extra links and information, the forum is well-used by users, the photos are lovely (of China), and there are a lot of great rss feeds to choose from.
Unfortunately I don't have time to learn Mandarin right now, but if I did ChinesePod would be my first port of call.
Written by Emre Sokullu and edited by Richard MacManus.
There's no such thing as the GoogleOS in reality - but despite that, it is one of the most talked about Web products. People can't stop discussing it - and even imagining screenshots for it! Seems like everyone expects Google to get into direct competition with Microsoft, by releasing an operating system. However Google refuses such claims and even makes fun of this kind of buzz. Nevertheless we decided to analyze where Google may be heading with their product strategy - and from that determine what are the chances of a GoogleOS.
We see 3 scenarios for a GoogleOS:
We'll try to explain each of these in detail - then in the conclusion, make our prediction. What's more, we think this could be less than 6 months away from happening.
If you asked "what will a GoogleOS look like?" - most people would answer that it'll be an AJAX-powered copy of the Windows desktop. In other words, a WebOS (aka webtop). To remind you of what a WebOS is, it is basically a virtual desktop on the web and has various built-in applications. Google already has a history of producing web-based products that mimic desktop apps - Gmail was the first desktop client like email reader, and now they have Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar and other desktop-like products. Also note that Google's internal open sourced widget toolset, GWT, allows them to replicate any desktop capability.
On the other hand, a bunch of startups like YouOS , Goowy, DesktopTwo, Xin and open source eyeOS are already tackling this exact problem - and have been for a while now. So if Google engineers are not already working on their own webOS project, they may want to snap up one of these! AJAX powered YouOS, which is a yet another Paul Graham investment, seems like the most obvious choice at this time.
Screenshot from YouOS
Besides the startups we've already mentioned, there may be other surprises that Google looks at for WebOS purposes. Meebo, for instance, has created a very large user base with their web-based meta instant messaging product (it enables you to use multiple IM services on the same webpage). IM is a crucial application, because many people spend a lot of time on the computer IM'ing. So Meebo could use IM as a base - and utilize the empty spaces on their page for new applications.
Meebo OS with fictional Calculator application (taken from YouOS)
30 Boxes also has a webtop offering, but it looks less promising than their calendar. Start pages like NetVibes, PageFlakes and WebWag could also potentially enter the webos business.
Another possibility for Google is to create their own Linux-based operating system. The free license of Linux allows anyone to create their own version of Linux. Although Linux is the most popular operating system in the server market and it's free, it is still far behind Windows and MacOS in the desktop market. Some believe this may change with the latest enhancements to the Linux user interface.
This scenario is a more traditional model to replace Windows - with a direct competitor, instead of creating a web-based replacement. Indeed this has already been widely speculated - Ubuntu, a semi-free Linux derivative, was rumored to be acquired by Google.
If this scenario happened, Google may open up their operating system as a free download and promote it on their homepage - as they once did with Firefox. They could also make a networked file system the default, instead of the complex UNIX file hierarchy of Linux - which is another reason why Linux struggles in the mainstream desktop market.
A lightweight Linux distro is a possibility. For example an OS that simply booted up the computer, connected to the internet, and then opened Firefox. Then leave the rest to Google's web sites and apps. This is possibly the most logical strategy, because Google could then create a homepage that connects all their services and applications - and people will have the freedom to use other web sites and services as well.
Similar concepts already exist. For instance, Puppy and Damn Small are 2 credit card sized Linux distros. The good thing about these is that you can carry them everywhere you go - putting the credit card sized CD or the USB drive into your pocket and using your own operating system anywhere you go. Why? Because these distributions don't need to be installed and can work directly from the CD or the USB drive.
ByzantineOS, a dead project now, was doing exactly this. Its sole purpose was to boot up and open a Mozilla based window manager - but then you could not get out of your browser window!
A screenshot of ByzantineOS, showing the user stuck inside the browser
However, Google may be considering an even more radical solution and planning to replace BIOS with their own version. BIOS means 'basic input/output system' and it is the built-in software that determines what a computer can do - for example it controls the keyboard and display screen. Google's latest sponsorship of LinuxBIOS may be a step towards researching this. In that case, Google could agree with hardware vendors to pre-install Google's BIOS-based operating system.
We believe that everything will become much clearer in the following 6 months. Microsoft will put pressure on Google with its Vista OS, which will receive relatively high adoption just like any other new Windows release (although probably not as high as historically Microsoft has enjoyed!). As Vista's adoption increases, so will the adoption of its default search engine Live Search. From Microsoft's perspective, this will have a positive effect on all Live and MSN sites. What end users are looking for is ease-of-use and satisfactory experiences - which in a lot of cases starts from the Vista OS.
In that scenario, Google's usage rates may be negatively affected. So we predict at that point, Google will start a more punchy strategy - pushing Firefox and some form of Google OS. Yahoo! has already responded to the Microsoft threat in a friendly fashion, by offering a customized IE7 for its users. But we think Google will be more aggressive and competitive and will push their own OS. The GoogleOS may be a reality within 6 months!
Nick Denton (pictured left) likes to use his blog Valleywag to take shots at competitors - his most recent attack was on Jason Calacanis (on right), who founded and then cashed out of the blog network Weblogs, Inc. Denton has always played second fiddle to Jason, never quite achieving the same level of success. Many [...]
Just a little over a month after a partnership was announced that puts CBS content on YouTube legally, CBS Interactive President Quincy Smith is beside himself with praise for their new partner. In a press release today, YouTube says that CBS content has been viewed 29.2 million times since October 18, which is an average [...]
The most used camera among Flickr users is the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, according to new statistics tracking camera usage released by the company. Flickr determines the most popular cameras based on data automatically included with most digital cameras today. The most popular “point and shoot” camera is the Canon Powershot SD400, and camera phone [...]
Want to stay in touch with your Google Talk friends and contacts while on the go? Check out Talkonaut. It's a Java-based client that can be added onto your mobile phone, giving you access to your contacts on Google Talk or any Jabber network. You can choose to have Talkonaut send you an SMS with a download address, or go directly to get.talkonaut.com to download it. The download took about 1 minute for me. The application will work on pretty much all popular J2ME handsets, and there is a list of compatible units on their website. You will need a data plan to use the Talkonaut service since it does establish a TCP/SSL connection.
Even though Google Talk supports VoIP, this free Java client only supports instant messages, so no free voice calls yet.
Google Checkout Makes Holiday Shopping Even Faster and Easier This Year — New Survey Says Forty Percent of Americans Expected to Shop Online From Work This Holiday Season — The Monday after Thanksgiving - Cyber Monday - is expected to draw another record crowd of online shoppers this year …
Source: Google
Link: http://www.google.com/press/annc/checkout_holiday.html
Yahoo! is following Google's lead, and entering into traditional media, specifically newspapers. Yahoo! is teaming up with seven US newspaper publishers that own 170 daily newspapers to deliver local advertising and search services to online readers. The deal allows any newspaper advertiser that lists jobs in print to also have the ability to post on Yahoo!'s HotJobs. The newspapers' sites will also be co-branded with the HotJobs logo. This partnership is aimed at creating a strong local job network to allow recruiters to reach a much larger audience. The effort is not only helping the stagnant newspaper market achieve success online, but it also might prove that Google is not the only company that can shift focus into the offline world. Succeeding at it, however, is another story.
Flickr loves rejoice: you can now issue guest passes for friends and family who aren't Flickr members to view your private sets. What's more, Flickr has finally updated their "long-dormant and seemingly left-for-dead mobile site" to a wonderful and usable new state.
If you've ever wanted to share private Flickr photos with friends or family members who aren't Flickr members, you probably know that it just didn't work. Which meant that if Mom didn't feel like going through the hassle of signing up for a Flickr account, she just didn't get to see the new pictures of the kids (or, more likely, you had to go through the hassle of emailing them separately). Now you can simply enter up to 50 email addys you want to share your private sets with and you're ready to go.
Second, the Flickr Mobile site has undergone a long-overdue upgrade at http://m.flickr.com/. The only catch: To really take advantage of the new mobile site, you have to be using a Yahoo! login ID, which, luckily shouldn't be a problem for most users. The mobile site lets you check out recent activity, comments, and is frankly just a lot nicer looking and easier to use than the old version. This should be good news for any major Fli ckraholic (you know - somewhat addicted to Flickrahol).
Google Mapping an Offline Course — Major Internet sites are showing a strong and growing interest in the advertising business, and traditional ad firms are starting to get worried. — Google has been leading the way, building on its online ad strength by striking deals to sell advertising …
Source: New York Times
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/business/media…
In Web World, Rich Now Envy the Superrich — James Hong, a co-founder of the dating site Hotornot.com, said that for him, the site's success meant "freedom money." He is making a symbolic switch in cars, from a Porsche Boxster, right, to a Toyota Prius. — Almost anywhere else, Reid Hoffman would be considered a major success.
Source: New York Times
Author: Katie Hafner
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/technology/21envy…
Activate SpellingCow before you fill out a web form or post a note on a message board and you can enjoy real-time spell-checking.
Though intended for site owners who want to add spell-checking capabilities, individual users can leverage SpellingCow as well. Just add the "favelet" to your links/bookmark toolbar, then click it when you want to enable spell-check. Misspelled words will appear highlighted and underlined; right-click them to see possible correct spellings (just like in Word).
SpellingCow worked like a charm in Firefox (it's also compatible with IE and Safari). The favelet is free for individual users and well worth having for the spelling-impaired.
Allen over at CenterNetworks has a 2.0ey idea for this holiday season. It's aimed at all Web 2.0 people, and is inspired by Secret Santa gift exchanges. Getting involved in it is pretty simple: Email Allen your name, website/blog, gender, likes and dislikes, and your address. He will pair people based on their locations, likes, and dislikes. The sender gets sent the information on the person they will be buying for, and blam! Your Web 2.0 gift exchange is on. It's a really neat idea, and I really hope it works as planned. So if you're feeling into the Holiday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivas season, think abou t giving this a shot!
In a double issue that's twice the fun, the G-Lab crew reviews the Microsoft Zune, the T-Mobile Dash, an Olympus digital SLR and more.
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
The BBC wonders if British mobile operator 3 has "discovered the holy grail of the mobile phone industry", simply by bundling some mobile web services together and making it flat rate pricing. Mobile Web expert Ajit Jaokar is very bullish on this news.
3's new package is called X-Series and here's what's in it:
It's a useful set of apps, but the BBC thinks "the underlying technologies are not particularly new or cutting edge". It notes:
"The special thing about 3's offering is that it provides all these applications bundled, user-friendly and ready to go - even Sling's access to your home TV set and Orb's connection to your own PC."
What's being touted as the best feature though is that customers will pay a flat rate for all their data transfers - subject to "fair usage limits". Ever since I've had a mobile phone, the cost of accessing the Mobile Web has been the single biggest reason I don't surf the Web on my phone. A lot of people feel the same way, so this is indeed a welcome (if long overdue) initiative by 3.
It's not all rosy news. The service is launching in the UK on 1 December, then 3's other markets (Italy, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland and Sweden) during 2007. So it's a limited release geographically - no New Zealand :-( Also currently it's available on only two handsets - Nokia's N73 and Sony Ericsson's W950. Along with those limitations, there are the usual usability issues with the mobile Web: connectivity, awkwardly small screens, etc. But it's still early days and any progress the industry makes on making the Mobile Web more accessible and easier to use, is good news.
In a rant vilifying iPods and machines in general, the pundit implies America is at risk because the country's kids play video games instead of learning to kill real people. So why does O'Reilly have a premium subscription available as a podcast? In Cult of Mac.
Automattic, the business end of blogging software WordPress, and enterprise RSS vendor KnowNow have announced a partnership that’s all the talk of the blogosphere. The two companies will offer a joint product that blogs and reads feeds both public facing and behind the fire wall. This is a good move that could make [...]
Just five days after adding a new click-to-call function to local map search, Google appears to have removed the feature and replaced it with a much less convenient SMS service. The change was probably due to widespread use of the system for prank calls. Click-to-call let you click a link next to any [...]
Answers.com, the pretty comprehensive reference site that holds information on close to four million topics, has teamed up with Yahoo! Answers to launch question and answers content. This new service will add human insight into the mix. How will it work? Yahoo! and Answers.com will be sharing its user base and connecting people to the information they are looking for, with the people that can provide it. Users of Answers.com will be able to view relevant questions and answers from Yahoo, and will also be able to click through to Yahoo! Answers to ask any questions they might have. Sounds like a nice partnership, which will surely add benefit to the users of both websites.
TV advertising is broken, putting $67 billion up for grabs. Which explains why Google spent a billion and change on an online video startup. By Bob Garfield from Wired magazine.
CNet's popular web photo-sharing site Webshots has taken the obvious next step of launching its own video sharing feature. Aficionados of YouTube and other video sharing sites won't find much here they haven't seen before. The features are pretty standard. Upload your videos, embed them in your blog or web site, leave comments. You get the idea. The site boasts larger and higher-quality videos than most sites, but also has limits other sites don't. If you're a non-paying member you're limited to five-minute videos and up to 100 videos uploaded, plus 10 more for every month you're a member. If you're a paying premium member that goes up to 10 minutes, 250 videos, plus 25 for each month of membership.
While Webshots' new video features aren't bad by any means, if it's their aim to differentiate their service from the ever-growing crowd, they need to drop the arbitrary limitations. Existing Webshots users and people who want their videos and photos in one place (and who aren't already using Photobucket) will probably take advantage of the new video features, it's going to be a hard sell to people who are already happy with YouTube or its dozens of cousins.
You can check out Webshots' embedded player after the jump (ooh, elephants!), or see a few promo videos on Webshots.
[Via TechCrunch via Techmeme]
Today Silicon Valley company Fabrik launched its myfabrik online storage and file-sharing service, after a 4 month beta period. It's also releasing a new service called myfabrik lite, that lets users share large multimedia files (up to 1GB at a time). The aim with the Lite product is twofold: as a solution to sending huge attachments by email and also to enable users to auto-generate HTML code on the fly, to embed streaming media players within blog posts and web pages.
The difference between myfabrik and myfabrik lite is that the former is being marketed as a full-fledged storage solution, whereas the lite version is to "host and deliver content". So the Lite version is really about sharing multimedia content with others, via a blog or social network.
Screenshot of myfabrik
Myfabrik is certainly a good looking service and I like the way they are positioning it - not as a boring old storage solution, but as a way to make it easy for people to use digital media on the Web. The tool itself is not much different to the other online storage solutions around, but there are little things that seem to personalize the app more. For example at the bottom of the myfabrik app is a little ajaxy box called 'Experiences'. Click on that and you can label your media files according to life experiences - such as Love, Friends, Event, etc.
Myfabrik is being positioned for use by bloggers and social networkers, as well as creative types. In the pitch I received, it was described as "like having a combination of YouTube, Flickr, .Mac and G Drive all wrapped up into one." This seems like a good ploy to capture that elusive YouTube-using younger generation, at the same time as appealing to Mac-wielding Flickr-loving bloggers.
The basic service is free with 1GB of space - with additional space selling for 49 cents per month per gigabyte. Although when I signed up today I could still get the 2GB free beta offer.
The search giant will index and tag local stories for 176 publications, while the papers will use Yahoo to power their classified listings, ad sales and local search. In Monkey Bites.
CNet’s photosharing service Webshots is adding video sharing capabilities today, something that has been expected since at least August when the service underwent a drastic redesign. There’s not a lot of information on the site yet about the new feature, but there is one company blog post with links to tutorial videos. You [...]
We don’t always slam a company just for taking a new spin on an idea that didn’t fly in the bubble. But if the founders of the new company were part of the old company, and the business model looks a lot like a pyramid scheme, and they are saying publicly that the only reason [...]
Yahoo! announced this morning a partnership with a number of large newspaper chains, controlling a total of 176 publications, to share content and functionality. Both Yahoo! and local papers around the US are in a state of crisis, which is amazing if you consider the market and mind shares both still control. Will [...]
I'm not a Mac user (yet), but I've got to say that there are some pretty nice blogging tools out there that work especially well in Appleland. MacGuide writer Glenn Wolsey has written up a nice summary of the top five Mac blogging tools; it includes:
- Newsfire: streamline your RSS reading process
- Ecto: without this application blogging would take much longer, and be much harder
- Pukka: in my opinion the best tool to post to your del.icio.us account from OSX
This list almost (almost) makes me want to buy a Mac. Any other blogging tools out there that you Mac users especially enjoy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Universal Music Sues MySpace for Copyright Infringement — The Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit yesterday against MySpace, the popular social networking Web site, for allowing users to upload and download songs and music videos.
Source: New York Times
Author: Jeff Leeds
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/technology…
Yahoo's Brad Garlinghouse Makes His Power Move — Brad Garlinghouse, the Yahoo SVP who owns massive pieces of the overall organization (front page, mail, IM, etc.) wrote an email memo to senior staff about his views on the state of Yahoo. The entire email, including typos …
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Michael Arrington
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/18/yahoos-brad…
Going pro — More people are quitting their day jobs to blog for a living — ON HER blog, called Dooce, Heather Armstrong chronicles her life as a disenchanted Mormon in Salt Lake City, her former career as a high-flying web designer in Los Angeles, her pregnancy and postpartum depression, and so on.
Source: Economist
Link: http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory…
Yahoo! Peanut Butter? — Everyone is chattering about the Yahoo! Peanut Butter Manifesto. Every BigCo has problems of overlap, lack of accountability, and people who think those problems are worse or better than they really are. — In this case, though, I'm a bit confused by the memo.
Source: Better Living through Software
Author: Allenjs
Link: http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/2006/11/18/yahoo…
Brad Garlinghouse, the Yahoo SVP who owns massive pieces of the overall organization (front page, mail, IM, etc.) wrote an email memo to senior staff about his views on the state of Yahoo. The entire email, including typos, was reprinted by the Wall Street Journal today and is copied below. The memo calls for a [...]
Universal Music sues MySpace over music copyrights — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, said on Friday it filed a lawsuit against popular social networking site MySpace for infringing copyrights of thousands of its artists' works.
Source: Reuters
Author: Yinka Adegoke
Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061117/tc_nm…
Windows only: Google Desktop 4.5 adds tweaks and cosmetic changes to the popular desktop tool, including a sexier Sidebar and compatibility with the latest software. Says Google:
The new Sidebar is transparent, so it fits seamlessly with your desktop environment. Gadgets that fought for attention now look right at home, and content-heavy gadgets get new frames and icons that make it easier to tell them apart. And this version is compatible with all of the latest software, including Microsoft Vista, Office 2007, and Mozilla Firefox 2.0.
Mmmm...that's good sidebar! I definitely like the new look, as I always thought Google Desktop seemed a little clunky. However, installer beware: A few commenters on the Google Operating System blog reported losing their Google Talk contacts after installing the new version.
As always, Google Desktop is free. Alas, it remains a Windows-only product.
UMG Sues MySpace Claiming Copyright Infringement: News Corp. Unit Says In Compliance — Universal Music Group continues to play hard ball in the digital realm ... With negotiations at a standstill today the Vivendi subsidiary filed suit in federal court claiming News Corp.'s MySpace is allowing …
Source: PaidContent
Author: Staci D. Kramer
Link: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/umg-sues-myspace…
by Stewart Rutledge
You'd think almost 3 gigabytes would be more than enough space to store your email, but for the last two weeks my Gmail account has hovered ominously above 95% of the allowed storage quota. When it finally peaked at 98% (2725 MB of 2780 MB), I had to do something.
However, forwarding all those messages by hand or downloading 2.7 gigabytes of mail were out of the question. I simply had to start hitting that delete button. Using a few effective filters that helped determine what I could safely delete, I took my Gmail account from 98% of quota down to 67% of quota without losing one important message. Here's how I did it.
The trick that worked best was to first delete stuff that I absolutely knew I would never miss and then narrow down my deletions to stuff more on the borderline. It's both safer and faster.
I've got about ten people whose emails I know that I want to keep about 99% of the time. It's mostly family and business contacts, but you know your "in group."
Create a filter that only shows messages that are from that certain group of people. You can use Gmail's advanced search operators to do so using the "or" (|) operator. For example, From: john | paul | ringo | george returns all emails from either John, Paul, Ringo or George. Set your filter to label those messages with a good, safe name. I used "nodelete."
Now you can exclude all messages in this label from your upcoming search and destroy missions.
Although the has:attachment search operator yields a good list of space-hogging messages, it does not give you the option to sort by file size. So, with 2.7GB of email to sort through, it's pretty worthless.
But, you can search by file type and narrow down file sizes a bit that way. I used the following search phrases:
filename:wmv -label:nodeletefilename:mov -label:nodeletefilename:mp3 -label:nodelete (this one was pretty weak since MP3 is common in text)filename:doc -label:nodeletefilename:pdf -label:nodeleteFor each of those phrases, I just had to go through and actually use my brain to decide what to delete. This is the most time-consuming step, but it's not that hard. And, it's cathartic. Remember that if you press shift while selecting two messages, Gmail will select all messages in between. That's useful for big chunks of messages to go.
I lowered my Gmail usage by about 20% by using these first three steps, and that might be good enough for you. But, after this, if you want more, you can fine tune your deletions using the next few steps.
I already have a filter to label all Fw:, Fwd:, Forward:, etc. emails with a Forwards label, and, in most cases, I have it set to automatically archive them. But, if you don't have one, create such a filter by simply specifying the common forward subject lines listed above. Then, use this search string:
label:forward -label:nodelete
...and start deleting manually.
If you've already looked for filename:_____ offenders, you probably won't achieve much with this step, but it's good to get rid of some crap anyway.
There is this one guy that literally sends every forward he gets to everyone in his address book. It's an amazing thing to watch day in and day out, and I have a Gmail filter set to automatically archive anything that ever comes from his email address with a forward subject line and label it with his cursed name.
In my cleanup, I just deleted all of his forwards without thinking twice. If you have such a friend(s), do the same to him or her or them. This applies to commercial emails as well.
You might even want to skip this step if you're satisfied, but, if you're really a clean freak, repeat steps 1-4 and leave out the -label:nodelete protection. Usually, people in your nodelete label won't send you a lot of junk (that's why you're friends), so this step can be really fast to clean up.
Gmail does not do this automatically, so don't forget to throw out the trash when you're done and go ahead and empty your spam while you're at it (even though spam doesn't affect your quota). This also gives you one last chance to give your deletions a glance to see if you deleted anything you didn't mean to delete.
A lot of you might say that I'm a promiscuous emailer/storer, and that's a fair charge. But, using these methods, we can all continue in our promiscuity without offending the god of Gmail (quotas).
In the future I might set up some storage Gmail accounts as readers previously suggested, but I'm hoping that following these steps about once a year will keep me behind Gmail's consistent storage increases.
Got any great search strings or filters for cleaning out your email archive? Let's hear 'em in the comments.
Stewart Rutledge is in his final year of law school at the University of Mississippi.
Yahoo's Tentacles Spread Into Blogosphere — MyBlogLog Gobbled Up! — With Yahoo360! being widely panned as the KFC of blogging tools (oily, gives you heartburn, make you feel gross), one wonders whether or not the acquisition of MyBlogLogs by Yahoo (for 10M clams — nice!) …
Source: Deep Jive Interests
Author: Tony
Link: http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/11/17/yahoos…
Google Calendar has just added a splendiferous new feature: the ability to search public events.
Now you can use Google Calendar to find all sorts of nifty events going on in your local area, and add what looks like a good time to your own calendar. And it works both ways: if you have an interesting public event (even if it's just that wild tea party you're throwing for your cats), you can add it to Google Calendar shared events.
The next time you use Google Maps to look up a business, click the new "call" link beside the phone number and Google will make the call for you--free of charge.
Specifically, when you click the link, Google calls your phone and automatically connects you to the business. Doesn't matter if the call is local or long distance--Google foots the bill. Your only out-of-pocket expense is if the call gets routed to your cell phone (in which case normal airtime charges apply). Says Google blogger Min Zeng:
There are two things that I really like about this. The business's phone number is automatically stored in your caller ID so you can easily call back in the future. And by checking the box to remember your phone number, you can make future calls from Google Maps with just two mouse clicks (and picking up your phone, of course).
Microsoft beat Google to the punch on this one--Windows Live Search started offering this capability months ago--but it's very welcome nonetheless.
To the majority of my readers who aren't publishers, please excuse the interruption.
Selectivity is important for the four sites I run, namely Techmeme, memeorandum, WeSmirch, and Ballbug. Thousands of items are published to the web each day so the trick is to pick and arrange a slice of them in a manner that's compelling to readers.
Often writers and editors ask me how best to wind up on my sites. For most bloggers this is probably the wrong question, because there are good and even great blogs that don't function well in a news aggregation context. But for some, it's a good question.
My recommendations? First, focus on the content. Break news or write original analysis, and do so clearly and concisely, always careful to provide real value to new and existing readers. And use descriptive titles. Second, enable discovery of your post. If necessary, though emails, links, trackbacks, IMs, etc.
What else? Early on I noticed my system occasionally missed good posts from blogs that link back to my sites. So recently I extended my system to take referrals into account. Now if your blog or news article sends a moderate level of traffic to one of my sites, it will be evaluated for inclusion. Linking certainly doesn't guarantee you'll appear, since all posts are run though the usual tests for newsworthiness. In fact, extra steps to avoid spam are now in effect since faked referrals and splogs are already commonplace. So in summary, sending memeorandum (or Techmeme or...) visitors is another way to "enable discovery of your post".
About Featured Posts: This leads to something new at memeorandum, the political news aggregator. A box in the right column labeled "Featured Posts" will sometimes (not always) appear, showing recent posts and articles from sites that send referrals to memeorandum. It's a way of saying thanks for the link while highlighting recent topical posts. Here's how it appears:
Speaking of gratitude, I ought to say it here: thanks to everybody who links to or mentions these sites. I'm aware of a large number of dedicated readers who never find the opportunity to mention that, particularly in the political blogosphere. So to the many notable exceptions (the superlative exception being Robert Scoble), thanks again.
Update: An emailer rightly recommends pointing to earlier posts on memeorandum blog widgets and permalinks here.
Watch Google, YouTube, and other web videos on your mobile phone with Orb MyCasting.
Former Download of the Day Orb lets you stream music, videos, photos, and other media from your Windows PC to any Web-enabled device. The new OrbThis plug-in (available for IE and Firefox) adds the capability to add web videos from DailyMotion, Google Video, Guba, and YouTube to your MyCasting library.
I did a quick test with my Verizon Wireless Motorola Q--and my sample YouTube video failed to play properly. There was audio but no video. Other videos played fine, however, so this may have been a simple glitch. I'll update the post later as I'm able to conduct more tests. In the meantime, Orb remains one of the web's killer freebies. It's available for Windows only.
MySpace to Launch Enhanced Copyright Protection Tool — World's Leading Lifestyle Portal To Give Copyright Holders Easier, Faster Capacity to Protect Content — Tool Being Tested with FOX and MLB Advanced Media — LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)—MySpace.com, the world's leading lifestyle portal …
Source: Business Wire
Link: http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index…
While there are several methods for syncing Google Calendar with Outlook or a Windows Mobile device, they tend to involve adding new software to the mix. Download Squad reader Dan sent us a nice tip for anyone who's not looking to synchronize calendars, but simply wants to use Google Calendar within Outlook.
All you have to do is right-click on the calendar tab in Outlook, click on Properties, and then go to the Home Page Tab. Check the button that says "Show home page by default for this folder," and then enter http://www.google.com/calendar. That's it. Now when you click the calendar tab in Outlook you'll see Google Calendar, and you can update it through Outlook or through any web browser when you're on the go. However, this method won't let you synchronize your calendar with a PDA--all it really does it replace Outlook's Calendar with a web page. If you uncheck this option, Outlook will revert back to its grayscale calendar and all your old appointments will show up again.
SendTo is a nifty bit of freeware that lets you copy and paste text from the web directly to a note or text file on your Pocket PC.
Unfortunately it only works with Internet Explorer for now, but all you need to do is select text in your browser, right click and choose whether to send it to a text file or a notes file. If your Windows Mobile device is connected to your PC, a file will be copied to your device. And if your PDA isn't connected, the file will be sent over next time you synchronize.
This is beta software. In fact, version 0.05 has just been released, so I take no responsibility if it crashes your device (although I do recommend doing a backup before ins talling any new programs on your PDA).
Yesterday Google announced the introduction of a new click-to-call feature when searching in Google Maps. This convenient addition lets users enter their phone number in the mapped location results, to have Google instantly connect them via telephone to the business they were looking for. Say you want to give the Apple Store in Boca Raton, Florida a shout to see if they have any more red iPods in. Simply search in Google Maps for "Apple Store Boca Raton", enter your phone number, and when Google rings your phone you'll be connected, without dialing the phone and without long distance fees (th ough it will still eat your cell phone minutes). Its almost better than using the yellow pages.
Related posts:
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Hey, big spender. Today Yahoo! shelled out for not one, but two companies: MyBlogLog, a social networking site for bloggers and their readers, and Bix, a social contest service. Neither purchase price has been announced, though rumors say $10 million for MyBlogLog. I'm a big fan of MyBlogLog, which allows people to build communities around their blogs and, through a tracking code snippet, also collects salient statistics like which links your visitors clicked on the most and where they came from. Bix I wasn't familiar with until today, but the concept is interesting: It allows anybody to create an online contest that their friends (or anyone) can enter for, say, cutest cat or best lip-sync video.
TechCrunch has the scoop on the MyBlogLog acquisition, which I think makes perfect sense next to its social services Flickr and del.icio.us, and of course its search business. The New York Times has the details on Bix, which it says is is "trying to capitalize on two trends in popular culture: the fascination with TV shows like 'American Idol' and the explosion in user-generated online content, especially video." I'm not sure how well Bix fits in with Yahoo!'s current lineup, but if executed correctly it could be huge.
There's plenty of ways to transfer YouTube or Google videos to a mobile device. But what if you don't feel like downloading and transcoding videos to save on your phone? Movidity hopes you'll just say YouWho? and use their site instead.
Movidity plans to launch movy.tv in January. The site will let users upload audio or video content which will automatically be converted into a format that is viewable on most smartphones and PCs. You'll be able to browse videos from any phone with a web browser and JAVA/MIDP2 support. If you visit the site on a PCE, you'll be able to watch videos in Shockwave format.
Of course, just because you can doesn't mean you will. And while user-generated video sharing sites are becoming a dime a dozen these days, I'm guessing most folks are just going to wait for industry-leader YouTube to roll out its own mobile service.
Read/WriteWeb's Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo!
It's the end of a hectic week of conference-going for your R/WW correspondent - and so time for a wrap-up of my thoughts on the Web 2.0 Summit. Firstly, my overriding feeling is that this year's conference was a lot different from last year's. It was still a great conference, but in a different way - perhaps reflected in the name change to Summit (a more business-sounding title). Last year there were a lot more developers and designers running around, this year the crowd was overwhelmingly from the media and business worlds. No doubt because of this, I also felt this year's conference lacked in cutting edge new products - and I didn't learn many new insights about Web technology. Having said that, it was still a very enjoyable conference - O'Reilly Media and CMP put on a great show. There was plenty of schmoozing in the hallways and lots of excellent discussions.
As others have pointed out, the Summit had an 'exclusive' feel to it due to the $3k price tag and business focus - and this meant a lot of the development and design innovators in the Web world were not present. The reason why the developer/designer set has been crowded out of this conference reflects the fact that, over the last year, traditional media companies (e.g. EMI, Fox Interactive, the TV networks) have entered the Web 2.0 world in a big way. That is a trend that will only intensify over the coming year, as web innovation becomes mainstream. Also more traditional big tech companies are doing 'web 2.0' things - e.g. Intel released an enterprise suite at the Summit and companies like IBM and Symantic were in attendance. These trends are inevitable - and welcome. Because how else will little web 2.0 startups be ultimately successful, unless they're embraced by the mass market that big companies (or VC money) can bring them?
I do feel sad though that the developers and designers aren't as much a part of the Web 2.0 Summit (nee Conference) any more - but perhaps this is where the Web 2.0 Expo will come in, the new sister conference being held in April 2007. I certainly hope so, because finding out about new web technologies and trends is what I love the best.
To be purely selfish, undoubtedly my personal highlight was seeing Lou Reed play live (courtesy of AOL). I've read some cynical reports about the 20-minute set he played - that he was surly to the crowd and ironic etc. But isn't that what you always get from a Lou Reed show? I thought his set was great and he's a legend to me - 'nuff said! :-)
But onto actual Web stuff... highlights included:
Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the conference. Last year in my wrap-up I probably came across as a little too enthusiastic - even though I called last year's post Cautious Optimism and Cynical Buzz. This year I wasn't as excited, but the conference was just as busy and maybe a little more 'mature' in terms of where the industry is headed. So my feeling coming away from the conference is that it was a great crowd of people there and the web industry is still alive and thriving. Are we in a bubble? Absolutely, so the cautious optimism and cynical buzz remains.
Some folks, like Ben Metcalfe, think the conference has lost its edge. Maybe it has, but the Web 2.0 Summit is a different beast now than it was last year - and that's a sign of the times. Or to put it another way, so Lou Reed does corporate gigs now... hey, it's still great music! ;-)
Pics: Dave Forrest, RJ, Dave McClure
Tell us what you think in terms of what you learned from the Summit - either if you were lucky enough to be there, or from the reports filed by me and other blogs/sites. Let us know in the following poll. Plus comments (as always) are welcome.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
John Markoff's recent article in NY Times has generated an interesting discussion about Web 3.0 being the long-promised Semantic Web. For instance, a short post on Fred Wilson's blog had a lot of lengthy comments attempting to define Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Some people think that the Semantic Web is about AI, some claim that it is more about semantics, while others say that it is about data annotation. All agree however, that we will all be wonderfully more productive and simply happier when it arrives. Lets take a look at the ingredients, definitions and approaches to the Semantic Web so that we can recognize it when it is finally here.
What is the Semantic Web?
The Wikipedia defines the Semantic Web as a project that intends to create a universal medium for information exchange by putting documents with computer-processable meaning (semantics) on the World Wide Web. The core idea is to create the meta data describing the data, which will enable computers to process the meaning of things. Once computers are equipped with semantics, they will be capable of solving complex semantical optimization problems. For example, as John Markoff describes in his article, a computer will be able to instantly return relevant search results if you tell it to find a vacation on a 3K budget.
In order for computers to be able to solve problems like this one, the information on the web needs to be annotated with descriptions and relationships. Basic examples of semantics consist of categorizing an object and its attributes. For example, books fall into a Books category where each object has attributes such as the author, the number of pages and the publication date. The basic example of a relationship comes from various social networks that we are part of. In one network the relationship might be a friend of, in another a family member and in another works with.
RDF, OWL and the mathematical approach to annotation
There are billions of fairly unstructured HTML pages which contain no annotations and meta data. The fundamental engineering question is how can we go from today's unstructured web to one rich with semantical information? W3C consortium authored specs for RDF (Resource Description Framework) and OWL (Web Ontology Languages) attempt to enable the collective capture and description of information, along with the ontology and the relationships with other pieces of information, in a rigorous, mathematical way.
RDF is an XML-based language which enables description of relationships via predicates. The Wikipedia explains: The subject denotes the resource, and the predicate denotes traits or aspects of the resource and expresses a relationship between the subject and the object. For example, one way to represent the notion "The sky has the color blue" in RDF is as a triple of specially formatted strings: a subject denoting "the sky", a predicate denoting "has the color", and an object denoting "blue".
OWL is another XML-based language used for describing and reasoning ontologies. In a nutshell, OWL facilitates semantic descriptions such as Dog is an animal or Dog has four legs. There are three flavors of OWL: OWL Lite, OWL DL and OWL Full - each flavor capturing a different side of a trade off between expressiveness and computability. This RDF/OWL framework is comprehensive, but is difficult for people without a background in mathematics and computer science to understand. Given that this is a bottom up approach, it is clear that if it is to succeed, there needs to exist an automated mechanism that takes existing HTML content and turns it into RDF and OWL meta data. This, however, is a chicken-egg problem because if we could already do this, the problem would not be there to begin with. Still we can envision tooling which does 80% of the work automatically and then interacts with the person to complete the other 20% of the work.
Microformats
Recognizing the complexity of RDF and OWL, a group of people are trying a different approach called Microformats. The goal of microformats is to embed the basic semantics right into HTML pages. It is not as expressive right now as RDF and OWL, but it is very compact and uses available XHTML facilities to add semantics to the pages. For example, there is a microformat for describing contact information called hCard. Using hCard it is possible to annotate the HTML so that a microformat-aware browser or a search engine can deduce the information about a person such as first and last name, a company or a phone number. Another mature microformat called hCalendar enables page authors to describe events. Many popular event sites, such as Facebook and Yahoo! Local use this format to annotate events in their HTML pages.
Leaving the aesthetics of the representation aside, the microformats approach is clearly simpler than RDF and OWL. And even though it is less powerful, it is becoming very popular. Many site authors are starting to embed microformats into their HTML pages. We are also seeing some early examples of search engines based on microformats, like this one from Technorati. The simple gain in using microformats and doing search is removing ambiguity. In a way, it is similar to the vertical search engine - which knows which vertical you are searching. With microformats inside the pages, the data is also no longer ambiguous, so the search results are more precise.
Still, there are some issues with microformats. The first one is the same as with the previous bottom up approach - people have to do the work to annotate the pages. The good news is that since the format is simpler, more can be done via reverse engineering and automation. The second issue is that the current set of microformats does not cover many things that we encounter online. For example, we are not aware of a format that would help represent a book or a movie. Many more formats need to be created before they can really "cover" the web.
Semantic Web is Personalized Web
The problem of annotating data is very complex and is far from being solved completely. But let's leave it aside for a moment and think of what we can be doing once all the data becomes annotated. The promise is that we will be doing less of what we are doing now - namely sifting through piles of irrelevant information. Given that the amount of information is growing exponentially and our tolerance is shrinking, this is a very intriguing proposition. If the computer can return relevant results instantly, we can potentially save a ton of time.
But having semantics and knowing all relationships between the data is not enough to do that. Take the simple example of a travel agency. When you show up there for the first time, the agent does not know what to offer you, even though she knows the semantics of travel, the relationships between things and the prices of everything. In order to be effective, she needs to know where you've been already and what kind of destinations you like. That's why she asks you questions. All services that we receive work this way and the results are better and more refined over time, because service people have time to learn what you like.
So the second important ingredient of the Semantic Web, the one that will facilitate productivity, is a set of persistent personal preferences. Once the computer knows your preferences and has a semantical representation of it online, it can then run an algorithm to deliver you precise, personalized results. To put it differently, your personal preferences is the filter that needs to be applied to the results that the computer returns in response to: Find a vacation for under 3K. And when this happens, then we can claim that the Semantic Web has arrived.
Conclusion
So will the 'Web 3.0' be the Semantic Web? Probably. But are we there yet? Not quite. It will take some time to annotate the world's information and then to capture personal information in the right way, to enable the kinds of applications that we have discussed. We are certainly getting close and it will be interesting to see how things unfold over the next few years.
Incidentally, if you would like us to write more about the Semantic Web please let us know and we will do follow up posts.
During the Web 2.0 Summit, I got a chance to sit down with the team at Ask.com and find out more about their search engine. This was straight after a Summit session entitled 'Disruption Opportunity: Beating Google at Their Own Game' - in which Ask CEO Jim Lanzone and Senior VP of the Online Services Group at Microsoft (and ex-Ask CEO) Steve Berkowitz discussed with John Battelle how they are competing with Google. R/WW's coverage of that session is here.
Whenever I talk to or meet Ask.com people, I always get the feeling they are a little pissed off at the lack of attention they get from blogs. To compensate, out come the stats to prove how big they are. For example, they often make a point of saying that Ask.com is the 5th biggest search engine in the US - behind Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Also, Jim mentioned during the Summit session that Ask is the 7th biggest web property in the US - ahead of the likes of Amazon, NY Times and Apple.
So there's no doubting that Ask.com is a significant player in the Web business - and I agree they don't get their due for that. But what about the actual product - the Ask.com search engine. How does it stack up? I spoke to the team and took the search engine for a test drive to find out...
I asked this of the Ask.com team, in our hallway meeting at the Summit. They told me that Ask's technology "looks at the Web differently". Whereas Google's PageRank ranks its search results by popularity, Ask has something it calls "ExpertRank". Essentially this is an automated search algorithm (like Google has), but on top of that results are ordered using topic communities and the editorial functions that create 'Smart Answers'. While the ExpertRank formula is a secret sauce that Ask.com won't divulge, they do say that the top results in searches are determined by expertise - and not popularity. As it states on their help pages:
"Identifying topics (also known as "clusters"), the experts on those topics, and the popularity of millions of pages amongst those experts -- at the exact moment your search query is conducted -- requires many additional calculations that other search engines do not perform."
I was curious to know how 'smart answers' are determined. For a start, they don't pop up on every search result - for example a search for "richard macmanus" displays my primary RSS feed at the top of the page, instead of a smart answer. The Ask team told me that smart answers are editorially done - and is a reminder of their natural language past. If you recall, Ask Jeeves (as it used to be known before the butler was fired, er I mean de-commissioned) started out as a search engine where you could ask a natural language question - e.g. "what the heck is web 2.0?" - and get back a good answer. Smart Answers is an extension of that philosophy of providing a natural language answer to a user's search query. It does this by a combination of automated data mining and human editorial. But the human editors don't physically write the answers, I was told - rather they act as aggregators and filters.
I was told that currently over 20% of Ask's entire search terms - and hundreds of categories - have a Smart Answer.
If you compare Ask.com to Google, there are immediately some noticeable differences. An obvious one is that Ask.com puts its advertisements within the main content pane, instead of in a separate right-hand pane like Google does. So when you do a general search in Ask, the right-hand pane is sometimes occupied by advanced search options. Also Ask often has their 'smart answers' (see above) at the top of the main pane. The effect of all this is to give the user more immediately useful information - and drill down options - on the first page of results. This is what Jim Lanzone meant at Web 2.0 Summit when he said that "Ask.com enables users to do more, faster."
Below are a couple of screenshots, showing a search on "new zealand" in Ask, followed by the same query in Google:
Ask.com also says it does social search, but rather than rely on user tagging - which they say is only popular in niche tech circles (e.g. del.icio.us and Flickr) - Ask.com lets its algorithm do the work. It does this by breaking terms down into groups and presenting the results to the user. If you do a search on gardening for example, you'll see how it is broken down into multiple categories.
Ask.com also has the usual search portal (circa 2006) features - mobile, maps, news, blogs, binoculars (page preview), etc. There are subtle differences in all of those features when compared to Google, Yahoo and MSN. But ultimately I have to ask (pardon the pun): is Ask.com 'next generation' enough to challenge the big 3 plus AOL?
I do like the concept of ExpertRank and their willingness to get as much useful info on the first page of search results as possible. It seems like an innovative approach and certainly differentiates Ask from Google.
But when it comes down to it, the results I see aren't sufficiently different to make me want to change. I suspect a lot of Google's 50%+ market share of users feels the same. Ask.com is still a successful business though, even if they don't manage to make great inroads into the market. I'm sure Ask is not crying into its milk about being 5th.
Bambi Francisco from MarketWatch has an interesting interview with Richard Rosenblatt of Demand Media. Rosenblatt was chairman of MySpace at the time it was sold to News Corp and it appears as if he's aiming just as big with Demand Media. According to MarketWatch:
"Rosenblatt has raised more than $200 million in the past few months, giving Demand Media a valuation that about matches the $580 million price Murdoch paid for MySpace. Rosenblatt plans on using those funds to buy up niche Internet companies, a strategy that several old- and new-media companies are pursuing."
In the words of Rosenblatt himself, Demand Media wants to couple "user generated content with professional content and allow them to speak to enthusiasts in a given vertical." Essentially this means they're making professional content the base for discussions, further "user generated" content, and social networking. The first example of such a website is eHow - which at first glance bears a striking resemblance to About.com. Here's how it's described:
"It's a place where people can create profiles while contributing their expertise for the entire community. And because everyone's an expert at something, weHow gives everyone the chance to shine."
There was some slightly negative feedback from the About.com post I wrote, with some people saying the quality of content on About isn't great. So I decided to check out two similar articles from eHow and About, to see how they compared.
I came across an article in eHow entitled How to Choose Kiwis. This is actually about kiwifruits, not New Zealanders. Here is how the eHow article starts:
"The fuzzy kiwi hides a scintillating green interior. Kiwi's sweet, refreshing taste is a treat any time of year.
Instructions
STEP 1: Choose kiwis that smell good and feel plump.
STEP 2: Avoid kiwis with bruised skin or moist areas.
STEP 3: Press gently to make sure kiwi yields under your finger like a ripe pear."
This was written by an anonymous "eHow Expert". I found this to be a concise, reasonably useful, guide to selecting kiwi fruits. A little light on information though.
Now for the About.com guide to kiwifruits:
"Select kiwifruits that are unblemished and firm but not rock hard. The flesh should yield to gentle pressure, similar to that of a ripe peach. Avoid those that are shriveled, moldy or have soft spots. You can easily ripen kiwifruit by leaving it at room temperature for a few days or to speed up the process, put the kiwifruit in a dry paper bag along with an apple or banana."
I found the About.com article, written by About guide Peggy Trowbridge, to be more scientific and instructive. I feel qualified to select kiwifruit after reading it! :-)
I'm not sure what my point is with the kiwifruit test, other than Demand Media is competing on the same turf as About.com - not to mention blogs and wikis. This is all about how-to content and providing useful information - ideally, quality articles. But let's be clear - to make big money, it's all about quantity. The more webpages you have, the better... and this (unfortunately) applies to professional blogging too.
Interesting to note that, according to The Alarm Clock and SiliconBeat from back in May 2006, Demand Media was originally seen as a company that aimed to buy up millions of domain names and stick content on them in order to monetize. Which is a bit more of a cynical way to view Demand Media. But happily for them, now in Nov 06, that strategy has been cleaned up to make Demand Media into a UGC (user-generated content) and social networking play.
Or is it just a wolf in sheep's clothing? I don't mean to be snarky, but this description on the Demand Media homepage is a bit over the top:
"With a proprietary media platform that powers the company's highly-trafficked domains and unique content verticals. Demand Media leverages cutting edge, user-driven publishing, community and monetization tools in its quest to define the next generation of new media companies."
When it comes down to it though, Demand Media will probably get the last laugh... as this strategy looks a certain bet to capitalise on the $4.2 Billion market for online advertising. Next generation of new media it may be, but it all comes down to quantity in the end. Or maybe I'm getting jaded - what do others think?
The world's largest music company files suit against the red-hot social networking site after negotiations between the two companies break down. In Listening Post.
In an investors meeting in Australia yesterday, Rupert Murdoch said that MySpace could now be sold for $6 billion — about a 10x return on the original $580 million that News Corp. paid for it. In other news, one of the many MySpace alternatives, Facebook, is rumored to be in talks with IAC — or at [...]
In an encouraging act of collaboration, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced tonight that they will all begin using the same Sitemaps protocol to index sites around the web. Now based at Sitemaps.org, the system instructs web masters on how to install an XML file on their servers that all three engines can use to [...]
The official Google Blog just announced the availability of a click-to-call feature in Google Local. This has been expected for some time, but it’s now official and it works well. Businesses you find in Google Local now have a call link included in search results. That link opens a javascript form to [...]
Collaborative annotation of web pages is something many people are working on. The newest entrant in the field, Fleck, is launching tonight at the TechCrunch party in New York. The Fleck team hails from Amsterdam. The service is clearly in its infancy but could be just what some people are looking for. The basic [...]
Online karaoke and contest site Bix has signed an agreement to be acquired by Yahoo! Bix CEO Mike Speiser will continue running Bix but will also take on responsibility for product management for Yahoo! Groups, 360, and Photos under the title VP of Community. Speiser was previously the founder of Epinions. Epinions [...]
Update: One of Yahoo’s PR firms, OutkastPR, emailed us to say that this story is innacurate, and that Yahoo has not acquired MyBlogLog. We dug a little deeper with some insiders and it appears that Yahoo and MyBlogLog are in very early acquisistion discussions, and nothing more. Founder Scott Rafer was completely silent when asked [...]
After its CEO said in September that YouTube and MySpace owe Universal Music Group “tens of millions of dollars,” the media giant has followed through with its threat and filed suit against MySpace for copyright infringement, according to the Wall St. Journal (subscription required). The most interesting part of the suit is that Universal [...]
Google... the OS for Advertising — Traditional media companies are in a persistent state of confusion when it comes to Google. The question that keeps these media executives up at night is... is Google a friend or a foe? If recent conversations I've had with such executives are any indication …
Source: GigaOM
Author: Robert Young
Link: http://gigaom.com/2006/11/09/google-the-os-for…
Web site MapLib is a Google Maps mashup tool that lets you upload and create your own maps using the Google Maps interface we've all come to know and love.
That means that if you've got your own custom map - say some local tourist map or something along those lines - you can upload it and view it just like a Google Map. You can even add markers to the map to add your own callouts. What's more, you don't even have to stop at maps. You can also use MapLib to create an interesting interface for viewing pictures with callouts. To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, check out a couple of quick examples after the jump.
So yeah, a map of Middle Earth, Google Maps style. Dorky and cool, right? Now check out a "map" with callouts I made with MapLib using just a plain old image:
The image I uploaded was fairly low resolution, so zooming is a no-go, but picture size is limited to a whopping 6000x6000px (or 4MB file size), so you can get pretty good results. Adding callouts was really simple, and the entire creation process only took me a few minutes. The only problem I ran into was that - although the site claims to be able to handle JPEG, GIF, and PNG images - I got errors attempting to upload PNGs and GIFs.
In all, though, it's the most interesting mashup I've seen in a while.
Software blog Download Squad gives the scoop on BlogMailr, a free tool that lets you add posts to your blog just by sending e-mails.
While many blog platforms offer the ability to post to your blog using an e-mail address, it can be finicky to configure, and sometimes it just refuses to work. Worse, there's often no account verification, so if someone determines the [blog's] e-mail address, they could abuse it. I'm not certain if these are the reasons the folks behind BlogMailr decided a new solution was needed, but I'm glad they did.
BlogMailr works with Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress, and a handful of other popular blogging platforms. Hey, Gina: I'm gonna head to the beach and post from my Treo, 'kay?
The Sounds of Windows Vista — When you try the RTM version of Windows Vista, you will notice that something changed between the last release candidate and the final product — we added new sounds to the 45 places where Windows provides an audio cue to the user, including a new Windows Vista Start …
Source: Windows Vista Team Blog
Author: Jim Allchin
Link: http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista…
Blog Pimpin — Blogs, uhh, good God, what are they good for..... (sung to the tune of the song War)... Has anyone noticed lately that more blogs posts are about other blogs, which are writing about whats being reported in other blogs than about something original from the author ?
Source: Blog Maverick
Author: Mark Cuban
Link: http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/11/09/blog-pimpin/
[Update Nov 9, 9:48 AM PDT] Well, good news! BlogMailr has already been updated to give users the option of suppressing the "Published with BlogMailr" tagline - kudos to them for acting quickly! [/Update]
[Update Nov 9, 9:14 AM PDT] Well I have to say I'm impressed. Rob Howard comments below that BlogMailr will be making the "Published with BlogMailr" text string that is appended to all posts configurable so that users can turn if off if they so choose, and this update could happen as soon as tonight. When that does happen, I'd be happy to both start using this service myself, and recommend it to others. [/Update]
While many b log platforms offer the ability to post to your blog using an email address, it can be finicky to configure, and sometimes it just refuses to work (like on my personal blog). Worse, there's often no account verification, so if someone determines the email address you use to post to your blog, they could abuse it. I'm not certain if any of these are the reason the folks behind BlogMailr decided a new solution was needed, but for whatever reason, I'm glad they did.
BlogMailr takes the pain out of posting to your blog via email. Simply create an account, provide your blog's address, login and password, and you're provided with a unique email address that will accept email only from your email address to post to your blog.I just finished testing it out, and it worked exactly as advertised. The delay between sending the email (I used my Gmail account to send from) and having it show up on my site was about 3 minutes, which is ce rtainly reasonable. My only quibble is that the post had "Published with BlogMailr" appended to the end of it, which I'd rather not have showing up in every single post I make on my blog. I hope that this is an option that can be configured, but as I attempted to log into my account to see, I was greeted with a dark screen that said simply "please wait while we perform an update with cool new stuff".
I'll check back to see whether this is an option we can turn off, and update this post. Of course, I'm sure that by the time I do that, our commenters will already have let you know!
The other concern that you may have with using a service like this is that you're having to hand over your login and password to a third party. As always, keep regular backups; I'm sure the folks at BlogMailr have the best of intentions, but a security breach could theoretically leave their users vulnerable to site defacement. Personally, this doesn't concern me - maybe I've become too complacent about putting my personal data online (but that's another story) - but I thought it needed to be mentioned.
[Update] The site is back up, so I was able to look into BlogMailr's background a bit. My security concerns are significantly abated by the fact that it turns out BlogMailr is run by Telligent, a very well-respected company.
Then I looked into the "Published with BlogMailr" thing, and the news is not good. Short of signing up for a commercial account, there's no way to remove the tag line from being added to your posts - that is, every single post you make using their service will have this spam appended to it. Worse, the commercial account is $5 per month, which is absurdly expensive considering what the service does. It seems even BlogMailr agrees; they only ask people that are earning more than $300 per mo nth on AdSense (or, I assume, other ad networks) to purchase commercial accounts.
In my opinion, it might be fair for BlogMailr to ask users to include a link back to them on their blog on the homepage, but to add an unwanted message to every post just reeks of the dank underbelly of the internet. I would have thought Telligent would be more, well, intelligent about how they would go about this.
So, in case I left you wondering, I won't be using BlogMailr any time soon, until they reconsider the policy of adding unwanted content to their user's posts.
"Generators for what?" you ask? Everything! Today a blog called Smashing Magazine has an enormous list of generators, most of them web-based, for (deep breath) ASCII art, color schemes, CSS, domain names, e-mail links, favicons, Flash, forms, graphics, .htaccess files, META tags, passwords, PDFs, PHP and MySQL code, pop-up windows, robots.txt files, RSS feeds, site maps, and much, much more. Though I would think twice before using someone's PHP or MySQL generator, there's definitely some gems in here. Tedious tasks begone! Now, if only there was a hot cocoa generator in there...
Bloglines has just pushed out an update that adds a tab to its interface called Playlists. Here's how they describe Playlists:
Playlists lets you create short groupings of feeds to access from your main list. Create as many as you like, and use them to personalize your Bloglines experience that much more. Create them, change them, even delete them--all without changing your original "tree" of feeds. What song playlists are to your MP3 library, Bloglines Playlists are to your Bloglines blogs & feeds.
I'm not certain that I understand the need for yet another level of organization to my feed list, particularly when I feel overwhelmed with attempting to keep the main list in order. I suppose for p eople that maintain thousands of feeds, most of which they rarely visit, this could be a useful way to keep an eye on lesser-visited feeds.
In terms of keeping an eye on things, Playlists come with a new feature called Glimpse. Essentially, Glimpse is invoked when clicking on a playlist that contains feeds. Every feed in the playlist is shown, with the first 5 post titles showing, and if you hover over the title, a tooltip shows with the beginning of the content from that post.
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Google today released 5 new features for Gmail, ranging from simple UI improvements to handy "embarrassment-reducing" conversation upgrades (though since they're counting the recently released Gmail app for your phone, it's really 4 new features today). First up is a new Reply button at the top of messages, allowing you to give a shout back without having to scroll endlessly through long messages for the previous Reply button at the bottom. This new Reply button and its drop down menu actually replaces the previously clunky 'more options' button at the top of all messa ges.
Second is a slick new 'Update Conversation' button for when you're in the middle of replying to a conversation, and new messages arrive mid-reply. A notification will pop up now, with the option of updating the conversation in-line to see what others said in case you need to edit your response.
Third is a new button to Forward All messages in a conversation, not just the one you happened to click the Forward button on. This is another great and innovative feature I haven't seen done with other web services or even desktop clients.
Last but not least is an offline chat feature for when someone you're chatting with goes offline for one reason or another. Now, when your friend returns online, they can see whatever you said in their absence. You'll really have to watch what you say when connections get dropped now.
All in all, these are great functional updates to a web based email client that is still trumping a ll the desktop clients I'm trying out. Nice work Google.
Can't get enough IM? If you use a Gmail account frequently, you know the benefits of being able to ping anyone for a quick chat quickly after receiving an email. Well it seems like Yahoo is going to be adding this to their email services as well. Yahoo! Instant Messenger will be built inside of Yahoo!'s free email service so users can chat and see when contacts are online. Yahoo has the largest free email user base which sits at about 250 million users, while Google's Gmail sits at the bottom with 51 million users. Supposedly the integration could be any day now for users that log into the Yahoo! Mail beta. Michael Arrington caught a peek of the new beta and reports that each new IM can be triggered when users are online, popp ing up in a new tab within Yahoo email.
Read/WriteWeb's Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo!
I'm at a session at the Web 2.0 Summit called 'Breaking Free: Working with Real Time Data, Online, Offline, and Outside of the Browser'. The speaker is Christophe Coenraets, a Senior Technical Evangelist from Adobe. He starts off by saying that Adobe is looking for a "high definition user experience". He thinks the following things are still missing from the Web:
He then talks about the Flash Player 9, which includes a virtual machine for ActionScript (like Java). In laymens terms, "virtual machine" refers to the software used to run applications.
Adobe announced this morning that they have donated this virtual machine to Mozilla, to work on as an open source project. Mozilla will use it within Firefox (by the first half of 2008) and Adobe will continue to use it in Flash Player 9. The name of the open source project is Tamarin and it will be governed and managed by developers from Adobe and Mozilla. News.com calls it "the largest code contribution yet to the open source Mozilla Foundation". As Kevin Lynch, chief software architect at Adobe, told news.com: the move furthers the company's plan to allow developers to mix and match programming technologies, including AJAX-style Web development and Flash for media and animation.
While I'm no expert in Adobe products yet, I have learned this year that they're promoting a mix of Ajax and Flash technologies for web-based apps - rather than demanding that Flash is best for all interactivity on the Web. Widgets is one area where there is a lot of promise in Flash, because they are mini apps where interactivity is a primary concern.
John Dowdell has an excellent list of links and quotes if you want to follow up on this news, including this great soundbite from Slashdot: "AJAX in Flash, with a Web 2.0 hype engine. May god have mercy on us all."
Christophe talks about how Apollo will be able to play and render different types of content - e.g. Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax. What this means is that you can take HTML content offline. I'll be finding out more about Apollo during the conference.
This workshop I'm sitting in on currently is a bit developer-focused for my high level brain to process, so I'll follow up with another post later when I've gotten more details of Apollo.