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Archive for October, 2005

Google Features, But Not For Me

08 Oct 2005

I’ve been following Google’s releases one after another and I’m quit impressed by their choise and logical move of becoming a full web 2.0 company. However, it seems a lot of people dislike the idea (like Dave Winer, to name just one) of Google getting themselves into other things than search. The diversification is indeed a big step beyond search, although one way or the other they’re all search related, I think. I disagree on what Winer says, and tend to follow the view Philipp has on this situation. The fact that Google is diversifying isn’t a bad thing. What I do wonder about is when I get to use all of these new features myself, because a lot of them are US -oriented only.

Although Google has made it a point to have a search page up in every language, by far not all features are translated or made available to users of any country. I have to agree what Philipp says : “that they’re not focusing enough on every new product in terms of quality standards they have with web search.”

“But I want Google Maps with the same level of detail in Europe as the US can see it. I want Google Local here as well. [...] free WiFi in San Francisco, Gmail SMS invitations for just the US” – I’m pretty bored of blogging about new features that don’t ’serve’ my country. I want Google WiFi in Belgium too, I want to zoom into my house and see what Nathan sees over in NY, instead of an overview that’s way to ‘general’ to even point out in which street I live.

I’m not dissapointed, I just think they should ‘equalize’ their service and make it available to all Google users.

Other thing is : I have to go the google.com in English to find relevant information. I do get other results if I rely on the .be, but most of the time those results don’t display what I was looking for, whereas the .com in English does.

[Read Philipp's Entry]

 
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Posted in General, Search, Thoughts

 

Welcome To Ning Playground Beta

04 Oct 2005

On Ning, social apps are created by you and by us. They run in a free Playground designed to make easy things easier and hard things possible.

From the FAQ :

“Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for people to build and run social applications. Social “apps” are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.

Our goal with Ning is to see what happens when you open things up and make it easy to create, share, and discover new social apps. These might include for any city, your own take on Craigslist…for any passion, your own take on Match.com…for any interest, your own take on Zagat…for any event, your own take on Flickr…for any school, your own take on the Facebook…for any topic, your own take on del.icio.us…for any mammal, your own take on Hot or Not or Kitten War.

You choose the app, decide for whom it’s most relevant, create the categories, define the features, choose the language – or just clone an app that’s already up and running on Ning – and be on your way.”

How does the Ning Playground work?
As a developer, Ning offers you Playground services that make it easy for you to create and run social apps for free:

  • App creation tools – including the ability to view the source code or clone any app on the Ning Playground
  • App management, hosting, and security
  • Example Apps you can clone and run in minutes
  • User registration, user profile and role management
  • Tag creation, display, and management as a built-in service for every app
  • Navigation and search

On Ning, you can either develop an app from scratch by viewing the source code of other running apps to get ideas, or by cloning any running app and modifying it in any way you’d like. You can do this easily by clicking through any View Source or Clone This App link on the Ning Sidebar found on the right 225 pixels of any app.

When you clone an app, you clone the source code of the app from which you came. Your new app works the same as the original, only now you own it and can modify it in any way that you want – run it “as is” or apply it to a new location, interest, topic, or language.

In return for all this, you open any code you contribute to the Playground to serve as an inspiration for other developers and refrain from running third party ads. That’s pretty much the trade.

For those of you who know what the heck is meant by these, we also offer:

  • A secure PHP sandbox and developer file system (we’ll also add support for other scripting languages like Ruby and Python shortly).
  • A scalable and flexible semi-structured content store
  • Internal and external XML-based APIs and output
  • JSP/JSTL-compatible markup
  • A URL command line API for auto-generation of user pages and RSS and Atom feeds
  • Open cross-app content sharing

Check out [Ning] & read some thoughts about it on [TechDirt]

 
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Posted in 2.0 +, Social Networks, Tools

 

Elumens Vision Station

04 Oct 2005
elumens

1. What is it?
The VisionStation by Elumens is a low-cost 3D immersive viewing system with a wide range of applications.

2. Which applications?
The VisionStation can be used with applications from many different areas of endeavor. Simulation and training, oil and gas exploration, product presentation and entertainment applications will all benefit from the use of an Elumens VisionStation visualization system.

3. How do the applications benefit?
Standard flat-screen applications can display a field of view (FOV) of no more than 60°. The Elumens VisionStation allows for a fully immersive display of 160°. The VisionStation’s ultra-wide FOV creates an amazing sense of space and depth, without need for goggles or glasses. The large size of the VisionStation screen (1.5 meters) also helps promote an excellent sense of immersive 3D.

4. How does the VisionStation accomplish these things?
Elumens’ patented TruTheta software enables software applications for use with Elumens Vision series products. TruTheta software comprises a set of software libraries available at no charge from the Elumens website. Elumens’ spherical screens promote an excellent sense of 3D and “presence”.
Elumens’ unique custom optics enables full-screen projection at 180° with perfect spherical projection. Onscreen images have extremely high fidelity to signal.

5. How do I set it up and use it?
The VisionStation is very simple to set up and operate. Once the system is assembled–a fifteen-minute job requiring only ordinary tools–the VGA output from the users’ computer is plugged into the VGA input of the VisionStation and the system is ready to run.

[Check out elumens] – Seeing is believing : QuickTime, 13.1 MB [Watch]

 
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Posted in Design, Gadgets & Digital Toys, Technology

 

Nokia Concept Lounge : Theft Of An Invention

04 Oct 2005

There’s something smelly about the winning entry of this competition. It has a very high degree of deja-vu. Not that I disagree with the jury, for the idea is remarkable. I’m just saying it’s been done before, and not that I don’t want Tamer Nakisci to enjoy his € 5000 and 15 minutes of fame, but I’m pretty damn sure he stole the idea from NEC and just slightly upgraded it with some new fancy gadgets that weren’t around at the time the concept was born. I’ll let you be the judge of that. Here’s a comparison :

The Prize Winning Entry by mister Nakisci :
888
The NEC ‘Tag’ Soft Shell Mobile Phone
888

* Edited.* I’ll put it in another way : if it’s a concept contest, I think you need to think of a new concept, and be original. If the jury says for other concepts that they remind them of an existing design, then what is this? – I think other entries are more original.

Check it out on [the NEC site] and notice this was the 2003-2004 edition.

Nokia 888 via [Engadget] – [Concept Lounge on Coolz0r] – [Nokia Concept Lounge]

 
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Posted in Design, Gadgets & Digital Toys, Mobile & VoIP, Technology

 

Open Source With Yahoo

03 Oct 2005

“For over ten years, Yahoo! has been building some of the Internet’s most popular content and services on an Open Source platform. Yahoo! uses a lot of Open Source Software (OSS) internally including Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL. Jeremy Zawodny says that OSS helps them to “remix” and configure the software to their needs.

OSS has good support from mailing lists and online forums. Commercial support is available from distribution vendors and recently commercial support is available from independent service vendors such as spikesource. OSS software has good documentation as well as well commented code which is a great help when reconfiguring and modifying the software to fit Yahoo!’s needs. Also many open source applications are available on a variety of platforms like FreeBSD and Linux.

Yahoo! is trying to become a Web 2.0 company. It recently acquired Konfabulator and Flickr as a part of this plan and OSS helps Yahoo! to move in that direction.”

“Jeremy Zawodny is Yahoo’s resident MySQL Geek. He is also the lead author of High Performance MySQL. He has been using MySQL in various capacities at Yahoo! for over four years and has written numerous articles for Linux Magazine and has been speaking about MySQL at conferences since 2000.”

Resources:

[Tune in at ITConversations] – [Donate & Help Keep ITC Alive]

 
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Posted in Corporate News, Search

 

Rojo, The Mojo in RSS

03 Oct 2005

These last couple of days Rojo seems to send me a lot of visitors, so I figured the least I could do was make a little post about their funky service. :) What exactly is Rojo? Well… Rojo is a free web-based service that lets you efficiently read RSS feeds from publishers big and small, ranging from millions of blogs to the New York Times.

There is NO SOFTWARE to download and only Rojo (rhymes with mojo) offers these features: You can reed feeds (sounds logical), search millions of RSS feeds for the latest news and information, you can connect with your friends and colleagues to help discover what you should be reading (pretty cool feature), tag and comment on stories for yourself and for others. You can also use others’ tags to find stories that matter to you and find recommended links – based on the feeds you subscribe to with Rojo’s proprietary link analysis.

“In enabling users to draw on the insights of friends, family, colleagues, and others in their social networks, Rojo departs from most of the competition.”
–Technology Review, February 2005 –

How is Rojo different from other RSS aggregators or newsreaders?
“First, Rojo is a web-based service, while most other RSS aggregators are client-side software programs that you would download and run on your PC. Because it is web-based, Rojo is constantly updating and aggregating information that you can access from any computer and a standard browser.

Second, Rojo lets you use tags to organize your feeds, stories, and contacts.

Third, Rojo incorporates an address book and other social networking and collaboration features that let users share information, find new information sources recommended by friends and colleagues, and discover links between topic areas and articles.

Finally, Rojo pays attention to your reading: Rojo makes it easy for you to view the feeds that you read most often, and Rojo tracks which web pages your feeds are linking to, so that you can see what’s being most linked to in blogs and newsfeeds.”

[Sign Up for a Free Account] or [Take The Tour Overthere]

 
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Posted in 2.0 +, Blogging, Tools

 

Update From The Land Of Search

03 Oct 2005

Google is testing Advertise on this site links on certain pages using Google AdSense. Clicking on the link (which is always positioned next to the actual AdSense ads) will take you to a special Google AdWords page reading Advertise on example.com (example.com being the domain the AdSense ad appeared on). – Read more on [GoogleBlogoscoped] & [SearchEngineWatch]

According to a Media Daily News article: Feedster to Release New RSS Ad Product, placing advertising in Feedster RSS feeds will become even easier in the next few weeks when the RSS search tool launches a new, “self-service” program (aka AdSense like) as compared to the RSS ad program Feedster currently provides. – [SearchEngineWatch]

Welcome to the Google Hacking Database (GHDB)! We call them ‘googledorks’: An inept or foolish person as revealed by Google. Whatever you call these fools, you’ve found the center of the Google Hacking Universe!

Here are some search syntax basics and advanced tricks for Google.com for 2005.

Google will soon be offering enhanced access to its AdWords API, along with membership in a newly formed AdWords Developer Council, to commercial developers who have pushed up against the limits of the existing program.

Google has provided free access to its AdWords API since January. It’s most often used by AdWords customers who handle multiple accounts, such as agencies and search marketing firms. API access allows developers to extend AdWords functionality to do things such as automatically generating keywords, ad text or custom reports, or integrate with other databases, such as inventory control systems. – Read more on [SearchEngineWatch]

MSN Shopping adds Search Refinements for hundreds of product categories.

Yahoo Site Explorer is a place to see which pages Yahoo has indexed. After clicking “Explore URL” you’ll find the number of pages found in the Yahoo Index and also the number of inlinks. You can sort pages by “depth,” submit URLs, and quickly export the results to CSV format. Site Explorer is also supported via an API. – via [SearchEngineRoundtable]

 
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Posted in Corporate News, Search

 
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