5 Things: Finding People Online
By now, even your toddler knows where and how to locate just about anything on the Web. But unless your friends are all dialed in to the same social network, a white-pages-style directory for finding actual people is often harder to come by. These five services aim to change that.
Wikia Search Offers User-Edited Results
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is trying out the technique that succeeded in putting together an online encyclopedia—opening it up so that anyone can edit it—to improving search results. Wales' user-edited search engine Wikia Search is now out of alpha and open to the public for edits.
Go to Wikia Search
Gmail Gets 13 Experimental New Features
Google will start rolling out Gmail Labs, an experimental area of new Gmail features that will be familiar and very welcome to users of the Better Gmail Firefox extension. More here.
Feeding the Twitter addiction
Twitter - the exploding social Web phenomenon that lets users post 140-character updates to the simple question "What are you doing?" and follow the posts of friends - is very addicting.
Google Gadgets open-sourced for Linux
Google has announced the official release of Desktop Gadgets for Linux and is distributing the source code under the open-source Apache software license.
The 100 Best Products of 2008
This year's tech gems--as picked by PC World editors and readers--will leave you more productive, connected, and entertained.
The best free private journal on the web
Like.com’s Creepy, But Effective, Facebook Ads
You’ve heard of contextual ads triggered by keywords on a Web page. Now, get ready for contextual ads triggered by images on the page.
7 Habits of Highly Innovative People
Live-blog from your phone with Jott
Live-blog from your phone with Jott Free voicemail-to-text service Jott can help you nail down post material while you're on the go with a phone call, but you can also use the service directly with a number of blogging platforms, including Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal, Tumblr, and WordPress. If you're hosting your own blog, you can still use Jott's voice-to-email service in conjunction with your platform's email-to-post function to indirectly get your thoughts up online, even while you're miles from your keyboard.
Wetpaint might be one to watch
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has alerted us to a dark horse candidate in the race to dominate the land of wikis. Wetpaint, is a Seattle-based service it's positioning itself to be a player in niche social networks, not just mini-Wikipedias.
The easy-to-create wiki service pulled in 3 million page views in March, according to ComScore numbers, compared with 3.8 million for Ning, the well-funded social-network creator helmed by Marc Andreessen. Wetpaint also claims 900,000 wikis have been created, far more than the 263,000 that Ning counts (though who knows how many of those are legitimate and/or active). While Ning's way ahead in traffic, a few months ago Wetpaint released a set of features to ramp up social-networking activity on the site, with friends lists, news feeds, member profiles, and Yelp-style "compliments" now in the mix.
One stop photo captions made simple with SuperLame
Here's a fun tool for play around with over the long weekend. It's called SuperLame, and it's a simple tool for adding speech bubbles over photos. It's missing out on some of the special effects found in other similar tools like Comeeko, but what it lacks in versatility it makes up for in flash and user experience. It's simply a joy to tag up a photo with captions, speech and thought bubbles. Best of all, the end result is total eye candy.
Control BitTorrent downloads from Facebook with Morret
So much for Scrabulous being an end-all diversion on Facebook. Try Morrent instead, a simple tie-in to the popular BitTorrent software uTorrent that runs right in Facebook (read: sans software) and lets you monitor your torrent downloads and uploads from wherever.
Big Blue Embraces Social Media
IBM has been encouraging social networking among its employees with in-house versions of Web 2.0 hits such as Facebook and Twitter.
The (Virtual) Global Office
Moving beyond Second Life marketing, many companies are infiltrating virtual worlds for employee meetings, mixers, and recruiting.
Setting Sun
In light of a surprising third-quarter loss, analysts sound cautionary notes and CEO Schwartz announces plans to lay off up to 2,500 employees.
Where does Google go next?
Yes, it's making gobs of money. Yes, it's full of smart people. Yes, it's a wonderful place to work. So why are so many people leaving?
Meraki is offering free Wi-Fi to San Francisco. Why?
There is no business model behind it, but mesh Wi-Fi company Meraki is offering free Wi-Fi access to San Francisco, one neighborhood at a time, as I discovered when I passed by the company's folksy demo table at my local farmers' market last month (see report from local newspaper). But Meraki is not in the business of just blasting money out the door, which it appears to be doing in San Francisco, and there is a method to this program.
Read the article here at CNET.Places for iPhone
iPlazer, the upcoming iPhone client for the geo-tagging social networking site. The app will be available when Apple’s official App Store launches in mid June.
Google Maps Integrates Panoramio Geo-tagged Phots and Wikipedia
It’s great to see them adding more open content to Google maps.
Inside Microsoft's War Against Google
With Yahoo off the table, Microsoft plans to challenge Google's online-ad juggernaut alone. A behind-the-scenes look at its provocative strategy.
All About Microsoft by Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 20 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.
Web 2.0 and consumers
Consumers are rapidly adopting new behaviors powered by Web 2.0 technologies including social networks, blogs, tags, ratings, user-generated content, news feeds, shared bookmarks, online photos, and videos.
Why Microsoft isn't buying Facebook
The popular social networking service is tempting to Microsoft in the wake of its failed Yahoo assault, but there's no urgency to do a deal now.
GSP is the premier conference for developers and marketers building and distributing apps for MySpace, Facebook, OpenSocial and other social networking platforms.
Brightkite: A bright future for mobile social networking?
"Do you have a Brightkite invite yet?"
Brightkite, a Denver-based start-up that uses both a Web interface and SMS text-messaging to log your location and broadcast it to your friends. It's a lot like a more feature-intensive version of Dodgeball, a mobile networking site that debuted in 2004 and was eventually acquired by Google.
Go to Brightkite's blog for more information.
Facebook launches Chat
Facebook has just turned on Chat in a “few networks” this morning and I think it’s a great implementation. While Facebook hasn’t announced an official rollout schedule, Chat will be gradually rolling out over the coming days.
The iPhone Gets It's Own Photo Sharing Site
Natuba
iPhone users with Natuba accounts can add their snapshots to the site by emailing them to a special address. Descriptions can be included in the subject line and all photos are injected into a public activity stream
Sticky now is a Quickie
Post-its are great to jot down quick notes and messages; and important phone numbers; and meeting locations; and the zillions of passwords. Great that is, until they lose their stick and end up buried in piles of work or behind the desk. Now, researchers at MIT have solved that pressing problem with the demoed “Quickies,” a new application to digitize handwritten sticky notes and allow you not only to browse through an archive of notes, but set up to-do lists, send reminders, and even find that sticky note you lost in the middle of a textbook.
The system uses commercially-available digital pens and special writing pads. As users jot on a typical Post-it note, the handwriting recognition software captures the message and stores it on the computer. These notes are then processed by the software and sorted into different types of notes. For instance, a note about the meeting would be added to a calendar; a note left for a friend would be sent as a text message (the computer searches through your address book to find name matches).
An additional feature of the Quickie is an RFID tag on the back of the sticky note. This helps readers track where they posted their sticky note—and help find it. In the video, the Quickie helps find a book with a RFID tagged sticky note—after searching for the note the program tells the user its location “2nd rack in the office.”
Now if only it will find the keys . . .
No word on when it could hit the market, but learn more at pranavmistry.com
Moving oral history online
Miomi is a new frontier on the Internet, taking all the world’s information, including the personal history of as many people as we possibly can, and putting them together in a useful, easy-to-use way.
We've got Google Earth and Google Sky. Next up will be a map of the world below sea level--Google Ocean. The company has assembled an advisory group of oceanography experts, and in December invited researchers from institutions around the world to the Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex.
What I've Learned: Vint Cerf
"I'd like to know what the Internet is going to look like in 2050. Thinking about it makes me wish I were eight years old.
Top 100 Web 2.0
These are the 100 best Web 2.0 applications, chosen by Webware readers and Internet users across the globe. Over 1.9 million votes were cast to select these Webware 100 winners.
A new kind of zoo
Visit Mechanical Zoo
What to Watch for A Web2.0 Expo
10 Cool Gadgets You Can't Get Here--Yet
A high-definition TV you can carry in your pocket. A remote you talk to. A dongle for bringing HDTV broadcasts to your laptop while you're on the go. Sound great? Too bad, because you'll have to cross an ocean to get them.
IBM and the Future of the Mobile Phone
Over the coming years, mobile phones are expected to get "smarter", adjusting to our usage patterns. Innovations such as larger projectable screens and other e-commerce and social networking features will enable the phone to provide much more value to our lives.
Fiction becomes reality
It takes a while for a great idea to go from imagination to actual use in the real world, but it happens a lot! Three fictional gadgets made real were in the news just this past week.
Examples of mashup uses
See more examples of mashups here.
Mashups, what are they?
Mashups are an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services. They are the second generation of Web applications informally known as Web 2.0. This article explores what it means to be a mashup, the different classes of popular mashups constructed today, and the enabling technologies that mashup developers leverage to create their applications.
Are these widgets worth half a billion?
A lot of eyebrows were raised on Wall Street in January when two giant investment firms, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, paid $50 million for a 9.1% stake in Slide, a San Francisco- based company best known as the purveyor of entertainments like SuperPoke, which lets Facebook users "ninja kick" or "bodyslam" or "throw a pillow at" their friends.
Visit Slide's website.
Countdown to iPhone 2.0
Apple is gearing up for a big bump in sales of the next generation iPhone, if new production plans are any guide.
The Hot Zone
A Google-backed startup called Meraki thinks it can succeed where others have failed, building citywide Wi-Fi networks. First up: San Francisco.
The Napkin Sketch
You ought to be in pictures. No, really. Companies are increasingly using simple pictures to distill complicated concepts into easily shared, easily remembered nuggets....
Google Drive killer coming from MIT startup
For Windows and Mac OS X... why wasn't this made 5 years ago?
It is a bit too slick to be true but the demo looks absolutely amazing. Dropbox is a new startup company from a couple of MIT computer science alums and it looks really promising! Basically it’s a really beautiful solution for sharing files online, with a group, between computers or whatever your need is.
The Best Tools for Visualization
Here are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Here are some of the best.
Sun unveils the most powerful super-computer on the planet
Sun and the Texas Advanced Computing Center unveil Ranger", a supercomputer based on Sun's Constellation System. Ranger is one of the very fastest supercomputers in the world, and ushers in the new era of "petascale" computing in which high performance supercomputers approach one petaflop (one quadrillion floating point instructions) per second.
Forget Facebook. The Web's platform is Firefox
The most interesting topic discussed in meeting with CNET, was just how compelling Mozilla's Firefox will increasingly be as the platform for much that happens on the web. Forget Facebook, MySpace, the iPhone, and other so-called platforms. Firefox could well prove to be the most disruptive web platform on the market. Here's why.
Facebook CEO Admits Missteps
At SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg says the social network has yet to achieve its grand ambition. Plus, the lesson of the Beacon controversy.
A new way to watch TV
Watch out YouTube. Two old-media dinosaurs, Fox and NBC Universal, have created one cool venue for their hottest shows. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is obsessed with making Hulu as easy to use as old-fashioned television. You can watch in either partial- or full-screen mode.
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People don't read books - says Steve Jobs
When Mr. Jobs was asked at the Macworld Expo what he thought of Amazon's Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. I presume he won't read this news article then.
New Android SDK Spells Out OS Improvements and UI
Google's evolved the Android UI and it looks a lot better than it did before, with animations and an overall look and feel that seems more iPhone/HipTop than Windows mobile. They keep improving like this, Android could really be great.
Humanized makes using your computer easy
Aza Raskin wants your computer to disappear, but the 24-year-old is no latter-day Luddite. His goal is to make communication with the PC so intuitive you'll forget you're using a device. And Humanized—a software company and think tank he and a trio of fellow idealists founded in 2005—is the means to that end. Read the Businessweek article here.
Get the software [free] here.
How will Real ID affect your life?
What are the privacy implications? What will happen next? CNET News.com tries to clear up some of the confusion surrounding the controversial law.
Why Google will remain king of search
Even with the bid by Microsoft to buy Yahoo, the combined company would be unable to knock Google off its web search and web advertising throne, industry watchers say.
Ooyala Backlot is a video management platform that gives you control over the delivery, organization, analytics, and monetization of your online videos.
Sloog
Sloog is a bookmarking service for Second Life residents. It allows users to save favourite places and avatars and search for them later, both in-world with a simple plug-in (HUD) or via web browser at www.sloog.org
Ideawicket
The name Ideawicket is derived from the words ‘idea’ and ‘wicket’. Webster online defines wicket as “a small gate or door; especially: one forming part of or placed near a larger gate or door”. Their name signifies a gateway for ideas.
The Untold Story: How the iPhone blew up the wireless industry
Read this interesting article regarding how Steve Jobs made AT&T and others look at the cell phone in a whole different manner.
Hot or Not?
You know the feeling. You try on a shirt at the store and think you look pretty, but you need another opinion. With Social Retailing, developed by Icon Nicholson, you can send a video to your friend's cell phones and instantly get their vote. You can also try on outfits virtually using a mirror that shows how fab they might look...or not.
Skyhook Wireless
Skyhook Wireless has developed the first ever metro-area positioning system to determine location using Wi-Fi access points rather than satellites or cell towers. Skyhook's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) is software only, works indoors and outdoors, provides location instantly, and is more accurate than all other positioning technologies indoors and in metropolitan areas.
Yahoo Live
The goal is to unite services like mail, search, etc. under a social framework, with Yahoo Mail serving as the central hub.
LG.Philips to Debut Color E-paper Display at CES
E-Books such as Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle have been a huge success despite their black and gray electronic display, so imagine how much more exciting e-Books will be once they incorporate color electronic paper.
What is the Story of Stuff?
The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuffexposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.
Why Apple hasn't gone Web 2.0
Apple doesn’t have a corporate blog, and hasn’t come forth with a grand, social “Web 2.0″ strategy - say “iFacebook.” Why?
Google-powered mobile phones to make a February debut?
First came the fervent and persistent rumors of a Google mobile phone.
Then, just six short weeks ago, the search supremo (and just-about-everything-else-online supremo) announced there would not be a ‘Google phone' per se, but rather dozens of them from a raft of mobile manufacturers, and all built on an open Linux-based mobile phone platform named Android.
Voyager RSS Reader: More Designers Experimenting with 3D UIs The use of 3D is pretty limited on the web right now but it’s interesting to see people experimenting with it. Voyager, an RSS reader made by Andy Biggs, displays news feeds chronologically with current messages in the foreground and older messages in the background. As you use your mouse scroll wheel you move through the present into the past, with messages floating beyond you. It reminded me of the introductory text at the beginning of the Star Wars movies. Applying depth to screen content to convey time or other concepts opens up a world of possibility. Certainly when trying to communicate some real life experiences, depth can be used to emulate the usual way the item or content is experienced.
One of the newer companies trying to improve on YouTube's offerings is 3rd Eye Solutions which has an app called iDesktop.tv (formerly known as "YouTube Desktop"), that lets you browse, view, and search YouTube videos in a similar style to a desktop application. Read the article here.
The power of Steve Jobs
Apple CEO Steve Jobs tops the “Power 25″ list in the current issue of Fortune, ahead of News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch, Goldman Sachs’ (GS) Lloyd Blankfein, and the Google (GOOG) guys.
You can read the rest of his article here.
Web 3.0 and beyond: the next 20 years of the internet
Silicon Valley has painted a picture of the web in 2030, and it is very powerful – and very smart – indeed.
Flickr getting a little bit of a face lift
The Yahoo photo-sharing service will soon be retooled to make more use of geotagged photos.
How Google maps the world
How does Google bring you the maps of the world? At the click of your mouse, you can home in on your house, the Tower of London, and more. Here's how it's done.
DivShare Upgrades its One-stop shop Free File Hosting Service
DivShare starting to release today a series of innovations that will make the service more unique and attractive.
Wikipedia mapping
The map is generated by first laying out the graph of Wikipedia (nodes are articles, edges are links between articles) and then using then decorating that substrate with colors (for topics: maths, science and technology) and images.
A Search Engine for Music
Don't you get tired searching for radio stations on the Internet?
Enter Iheard.
Fusa Capital launched a new search engine that brings the thousands of Internet radio stations out there to one Web site.
The engine includes both Internet-only stations, as well as simulcasts offered by AM and FM radio stations online.
Unlike Radio-Locator, which started from "MIT's List of Radio Stations on the Internet", you're not taken to the Web site of the station your search results return. Instead, the station is streamed from right within Iheard's Web site. Users are given a choice of supported streaming formats depending on the station that includes RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Winamp and iTunes.
Stations can be browsed or searched by language, country, genre or most popular. The site attempts to include Internet radio across the globe, not just in the U.S. The stations are also rated, which is nice if you're looking for a great bebop station but don't know which of the many choices to try first.
Adobes plots its path on the Web
Much of the future success of Adobe Systems hinges on the work done by its Platform business unit headed by Kevin Lynch, the company's chief software architect.
Online Productivity Toolbox
Thanks to the many free and useful new applications on the web, it’s also getting easier to keep your life in order. Check out the list below:
Word Processing Services
Online word processing provides you with ways to manage and write documents without a download - great for collaboration or those using multiple computers.
Google Docs - A way to create your documents and share them too.
Zoho Writer - Serious competition to Google Docs. There are some options present that Google Docs lacks and of course vice-versa.
ThinkFree - Think Microsoft Office, except this is the online equivalent.
Buzzword - A recently discovered service that is still in private beta. It has many offerings and a slick interface to boot! (Private Beta)
Web Portals
You can have all the information you want and need accessible to you immediately by using one of the following services.
Netvibes - Generally considered to be the first successful, independent startpage.
Pageflakes - Pageflakes could be considered the brother-in-law to Netvibes and both have very similar offerings in customization and content.
iGoogle - If you have a Google account, then the iGoogle comes part of the package deal, and since many of us have Google as our home page anyways, why not give iGoogle a trial?
My Yahoo - The offerings are somewhat more customizable than iGoogle, but essentially the same concept from a different provider.
Google Calendar - I personally use Google Calendar on a daily basis. It is just that freaking awesome!
Yahoo! Calendar - Yahoo provides a pretty good, but basic, calendar application for organizing your life
30 Boxes - Has a lightning fast interface that is really easy to navigate makes this a good contender.
Kiko - A very nice calendar application with a drag & drop interface.
Google Reader - If you would like a straight and simple news reader, then Google Reader might be worth your time to check out.
Bloglines - A competitor to Google Reader, and offers most of the same services, just a matter of personal taste as to your selection.
Netvibes - Netvibes, as well as being a web portal, serves the other critical purpose of being a news reader for any page that provides an RSS/ATOM feed.
Pageflakes - Like Netvibes, provides RSS modules and can be used as a news reader.
Truemors WHAT IT IS: Truemors covers what it calls "true rumors," or reader-submitted items that span a range of topics and include both news and rumors. Essentially, the site is designed to make sure its users are in the know. HOW MUCH: Kawasaki started it with less than $13,000. HOW POPULAR: The site is getting 150,000 page views a month.
Guy Kawasaki decided to start a Web 2.0 site called Truemors, www.truemors.com. He wanted firsthand experience with social media, and wanted to see how cheaply he could start and run the site.
