Google has been crawling the web for years and helping a lot of businesses to grow to a level they can never imagine.Since, a vast amount of business organisations started relying on web based identity...Some of them prefer a single portfolio page..that was enough for a better identity those days..but this starts changing when the business levels and style of business process changed...and as days passed...many are now relying on highly dynamic sites and started concentrating on flash based site..where user interactivity was the main intention.
But, soon the sad news for these people came up which was really horrible that google cant index flash files…as google mainly focuses on crawling through highly raw content on the site…where static and partially dynamic sites got more priority than flash based site, even google crawler was able to scan through the images and its captions and through “alt” attribute of ““.
But still, the truth was google cant crawl through flash files..but now it has become real relief for a lot of people who thought this would never happen….Now google and Adobe shaked hands and started indexing flash files..it can crawl through flash files and capture some content contained in it…still we need to make sure that..google can index our flash files well.
So before leaving everything to google, why cant we take some precautions to avoid this kind of issues..google really loves us..its fond of the content..so google really deserves some assistance from our side too..
First of all, apart form the announcement from Adobe of this wonderful facility..lets concentrate on certain points..to make the flash based site more success among other sites…
• Make sure you embed your Flash using SWFobject so that you can display alternate HTML content. Make sure that the text content in the alternate HTML is as identical as possible to the Flash content. Graphic elements can be described, just as you would describe a photo with a caption or an image ALT tag.
• Some flash content can be build with XML as well, so ff you generate your Flash content from an external XML file, use the same XML file to generate the alternate HTML content.
• Google can see text and links inside the Flash file; but it will not split up a Flash file into multiple pages and index them separately. That means that your Flash file will be the equivalent of one, massive HTML page, unless you break it up into multiple HTML landing pages as recommended above.
But unfortunately, its not time for us to start creating great flash files that can be indexed by google…firmly based on the announcement from Adobe…
Some of the main reasons could be….
• We know that, now google can now crawl through text and links inside the flash file..but have you ever noticed that…a complete flash based site can always contain a single page and from there, the user can dynamically jump to the other navigation sections. But there ‘s something that we need to think…If a site has five html page google crawls through all these pages and finds the relevant content , but is it possible in the case of flash files…Impossible..else google has to cut these flash files into small chunks and crawl through and index them….
• Another point, it can only crawl through static content and not possibly through dynamic content..dynamic in the sense, content that are taken dynamically from an external XML file, its not sure that google indexes these dynamic contents.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Some must know truths about Google indexing of Flash files
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sun opens Java tools in mobile fight back
Sun Microsystems has open sourced its Java toolkit for building mobile applications just as the role Java plays on handsets comes into question.
The company has released the Light-Weight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) under a GPLv2 license with a classpath exception - for binary linking with an application - as an incubator project to Java.net. Fixes to LWUIT from Sun will be posted to the repository.
Announced in April and based on Java Mobile Edition, LWUIT includes a range of graphical components, themes, fonts, animation and transition effects, touch-screen support, and Scalable Vector Graphic image support using Java Specification Request (JSR) 226.
Mobile has long been one of Java's strongest markets running on billions of devices. That's been down to two facts: its cross-platform capabilities that allow for a degree of application portability, and the fact that - unlike Windows - no single vendor dominates the technology, something that pleases the powerful handset and service provider industry.
Its biggest weakness, though, has been the confusing proliferation of related sub specs, such as MIDP, CDLC and CDC spanning cell phones, PDAs and set-top boxes
Java's place in the sun looks to be challenged by Linux and open source. Both the Linux Mobile Foundation and Google with Android have turned to Linux as an answer to their prayers on software portability across handsets and freedom from the roadmap and marketing dictates of a single vendor. LiMo has promised more than half of its smart-phone platform will be open source by release four.
The Symbian Foundation, meanwhile, has promised to open source its platform's code for broader adoption.
And in its march towards iPhone market share, Apple has rejected Java so it can retain control of the handset's architecture and future roadmap.
When Sun first began talking up LWUIT in April, it wasn't clear how the Java stack would be released or licensed. GPLv2, though, seems an attempt to get it out there as broadly as possible and running on LiMo and Android devices. The iPhone is another matter.
Sun LWUIT developer Shai Almog appealed to developers to help evangelize LWUIT. "The best product in the world is worthless without its users, they make or break the product," he blogged. "One of the ways in which you can help us is by advocating and informing other developers about LWUIT, this is something we can't do on our own."
Harness XML with PHP 5 extensions
Hands on PHP is one of the most commonly used languages for developing web sites while XML has become an industry standard for exchanging data. Increasingly, web sites use XML to transfer data through web feeds such as RSS and Atom, or through web services.
PHP 5 XML extensions provide support for parsing, transformation, XPath navigation, and schema validation of XML documents. The SimpleXML extension in PHP 5 simplifies node selection by converting an XML document to a PHP object that may be accessed with property selectors and array iterators. The XSL extension in PHP 5 is used to transform an XML document.
In this article, I'll show you how to process an example XML document, catalog.xml using the PHP 5 XML extensions.
First things first, though. Before you go anywhere, you'll need to install PHP 5 in Apache HTTP Server, and activate the XSL extension in the php.ini configuration file.
extension=php_xsl.dll
Restart Apache Server after modifying php.ini.
Create your XML
To create an XML document with the PHP 5 DOM extension create a PHP file, createXML.php , in the C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs directory, the document root directory of the Apache server. An XML document in PHP 5 is represented with DOMDocument class. Therefore, create a DOMDocument object. Specify the XML version and encoding in the DOMDocument constructor.
$domDocument = new DOMDocument('1.0','utf-8');
An element is represented with the DOMElement class. Create root element catalog with createElement(). Add the root element to the DOMDocument object with appendChild().
$catalog= $domDocument->createElement("catalog");
$domDocument->appendChild ($catalog);
An attribute in a DOMElement object is represented with the DOMAttr class. Create attribute title with createAttribute(). Set the value of the title attribute using the value property. Add the title attribute to catalog element using setAttributeNode().
$titleAttribute= $domDocument->createAttribute("title");
$titleAttribute->value="XML Zone";
$catalog->setAttributeNode ($titleAttribute);
Create a journal element, including the date attribute, within the catalog element. Add an article element, including sub elements title and author, within the journal element. A text node in an element is represented with the DOMText class. Create a text node using the createTextNode() to set the text of title element.
$titleText= $domDocument->createTextNode("The Java XPath API");
$title->appendChild ($titleText);
Output the XML document created to the browser using saveXML().
$domDocument->saveXML();
Run the PHP script with URL http://localhost/createXML.php. The XML document, catalog.xml, gets generated.
JavaScript standards wrangle swings Microsoft's way
Adobe Systems appears to have been wrong footed and Microsoft left crowing on JavaScript’s evolution, following a decision by theECMA.
After several months of wrangling, ECMA technical committee (TC) 39 - responsible for JavaScript standardization - has agreed to abandon plans for an ambitious new standard dubbed ECMAScript (ES) 4 and concentrate on evolving the current standard ES 3.1 under the new name ES Harmony. The move is seen by some as a blow to Adobe, which had based ActionScript - the language that underpins its Flash platform - on ES4.
The conflict within TC 39 spilled into the public domain in October 2007 when Microsoft's Internet Explorer platform architect Chris Wilson criticized ES 4 for trying to introduce too many changes.
Wilson's criticism was strongly countered by Mozilla chief architect Brendan Eich, a senior member of TC 39. Eich accused Wilson of "spreading falsehoods" about ES 4 and playing political games because Microsoft saw ES 4 as "a competitive threat". He also noted that Microsoft has neglected to upgrade its JavaScript compliance in Internet Explorer until it had to.
While Microsoft congratulates itself over its apparent victory, Adobe is putting on a brave face. In response to questions over the future of ActionScript, Adobe community expert Dan Smith indicated (see comments) that it would track the new ES Harmony specifications. But he also said that key features from ES4 that have now been abandoned will remain. These include namespaces, packages and classes.
Adobe does not appear to be against cutting back on ES 4 features in principle. Lars Hansen, Adobe's representative on TC 39, proposed cutting back on ES 4 features back in February 2008
Google murders second Anonymous AdSense account
Exclusive: Google has shutdown the AdSense account of another anti-Scientology site.
Three months after cutting off all ads served to Enturbulation, a site dedicated to promoting activism against the Church of Scientology and all its related organizations, Google has done the same with a similar site known as Epic
Anonymous.
Earlier this week, administrators at Epic Anonymous received the same email that turned up at Enturbulation back in May. "While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers," the email said. "Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account."
Google has not responded to our requests for comment. But it would appear that the company has shutdown the account because it suspects click fraud - i.e. its automated system caught too many people repeatedly clicking on the site's ads.
Alexander Vanino, who owns Epic Anonymous, insists that he and others running the site have not attempted to rig the AdSense system. But he says that much like Enturbulation, Epic Anonymous was littered with ads paid for by the Church of Scientology. That's right, Google was serving countless pro-Scientology ads to an anti-Scientology site.
"I've been doing my best to filter these out through Google's [AdSense] interface," Vanino tells us. "But there were so many of them, from so many different domains, it was really hard to keep up with blocking them. It felt like I was going in every other day and blocking more and more sites."
Though it made no attempt to block them, Enturbulation was also served a regular stream of pro-Scientology ads and a site administrator has admitted its users were repeatedly clicking on the ads. "Google said that it wasn't a complaint from Scientology (or any other organization) that got Enturbulation.org's AdSense account shut down," the admin told us. "It was an unfortunate case of click fraud.
"Some members of the forum wrongly believed that by clicking the ads repeatedly that Scientology would be forced to fund the Enturbulation website when all it did was alert the automated system of possible fraud."
This may be what happened with Epic Anonymous. Or it may have been someone else clicking on the ads. But it begs the question: Why are so many Scientology ads turning up on these sites run by the now famous Anonymous movement, which launched an epic online Scientology protest back in January. Either Google's ad serving algorithms are dreadful or Scientologists are intentionally buying keywords that put their ads onto Anonymous sites. Or both.
In any event, pro-Scientology ads have repeatedly turned up on two anti-Scientology sites. And in both cases, Google has shutdown the sites' AdSense accounts, claiming they "may financially damage" advertisers.
Vanino and Matthew Danziger, another Epic Anonymous admin, believe that Scientology is somehow manipulating Google's system. "Google isn't doing a good job of looking out for its [AdSense] customers. They aren't saying 'We shouldn't be showing these sorts of ads on these sorts of sites," Vanino told us. "And then, from where I'm sitting, Scientology is taking advantage of this, telling Google that by serving ads onto our site, it's causing financial damage.
"So Google goes and shuts us down. In my opinion, they're putting a Band-Aid on a much bigger problem."
It's worth noting that Google's new AdSense policies say that partner sites may not include "advocacy against any individual, group, or organization." But it's unclear how often Google actually enforces this.
It's also worth noting that Google's official rules do not permit advertising "for the promotion of religious content."
ISO rejects Office Open XML appeal (redux)
The International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) has rejected appeals by four countries to reject Microsoft's Office Open XML formats as an international standard. No further appeals can be made against the decision by two technical boards, so ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology - Office Open XML formats can wend its way to publication in coming weeks.
In a press release yesterday, the ISO said appeals by Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela had failed to muster the support of two thirds of the members of its technical boards.
Acknowledging the debate over the ratification of Office Open XML, the standards body noted: "Experiences from the ISO/IEC 29500 process will also provide important input to ISO and IEC and their respective national bodies and national committees in their efforts to continually improve standards development policies and procedures." This will be a great consolation for the losing side.
The ISO's decision comes as no surprise. A month ago, a leaked document, recommending that the appeals from national standard bodies from South Africa, Brazil, India and Venezuela "should not be processed further", tipped up on Groklaw (PDF)
Microsoft is delighted that OOXML is a standard at last - it's been through a lot of debates in a lot of countries over the last year. But it is not crowing in public. So let's turn to Jerry Fishenden, Microsoft UK's lead technology advisor, who has the party line down pat on his personal blog. "Users now have what they have long asked for: independent ownership and maintenance of these important document" formats," he writes.
Critics of OOXML have two main objections against the standard. First, Microsoft does not support Open Document Files (ODF), a rival ISO file format standard used in OpenOffice, among others. MS-Office 2007, for instance, uses OOXML formats lacks native ODF support. (In the toing and froing over the OOXML standard, Microsoft said in May that it will build ODF support into SP2 of Office 2007, due out sometime next year.) Second, many in the anti-camp are against OOXML - because they are against Microsoft.
Groklaw's Pamela Jones last month denounced ISO's OOXML deliberations as a farce. We find it hard to work up a sweat, for file format squabbling be one of the worst spectator sports known to Man. But considering the efforts made by both sides, it must be very a important game, mustn't it?
More details on Google Maps' Web Technology'
It's been fascinating to watch the reaction of the geospatial community (and the non-geospatial community) to Google Maps.My sense is that because it's Google, there's more of a buzz, than say when Yahoo! Maps launched.That, I believe, has meant far more interest in the background technology and the general usability.It's also led to some interesting speculation about the technology behind the tool.
Google Maps is a combination of proprietary commercial technology (like that from Telcontar, which I wrote about earlier this week) and commercial data (from NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas) and some good old-fashioned, clever programming.Below is a quick look at that "clever programming piece" from a non-programmer and some clarification on speculation regarding technology that I ran into this week.
Technical Background
First off, the application is built on DHTML.That's dynamic HTML and basically it means that a webpage is different each time it's viewed depending on different parameters.There are many ways to create DHTML, but Google Maps uses JavaScript.
Second, the map is tiled; it's a 128 x 128 grid.That explains why grid squares are painted.It's also what allows the unique scrolling that not available on other mapping portal offerings.
Third, the pushpins (the upside down teardrops that locate addresses) are transparent GIFs, but their shadows are PNGs.The shadows really have no place on the map, that is, there "geography" is not really relevant, but they to make the maps pretty and provide a pleasing 3D quality.They remind me of the line of scrimmage and first down lines available on TV during football games.They are not really "there," but help the viewer make sense of the geography of the field.
Finally, the map is separate from the search queries, meaning the entire page need not be redrawn each time a new query is made.
There's quite a bit more detail in Joel's overview.My point is that this is not some super fancy new thing.It's clever use of existing commercial tools and "Web stuff."
Some Apparent Misconceptions
Several articles I saw suggested the technology is built on Google's acquired Keyhole technology.In eWeek Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products said "its technology was not directly used in Google Maps." That said, there's much speculation about how the two will be linked in the future.
Another comment suggested ESRI's ArcIMS was behind the solution.Thers is to date no evidence of that.Besides, if ESRI were behind it, I suspect we'd have seen a press release by now.That's not to say there is no relationship between the companies: ESRI count Google among its partners for the new version of geodata.gov.
One user in Canada "poo-poo-ed" Google since a small town of interest was not available via Google.The user noted that MapQuest failed to find it, too.But, Maporama did have it.That might be because the latter uses data from DMTI Spatial and I do not believe the others do. Another poster wanted to know how the data was updated.Google does not say, but data vendors do offer monthly and sometimes weekly updates for data.Few if any of the map portal vendors disclose how quickly they load those updates.Recall, too, that a change may take many months from its identification to its addition to a new dataset.
Add-ons Abound
One fellow has figured out how to transfer the area of interest from Google Maps over to Keyhole (trial or real version).It's a FireFox extension.Another has figured out how to add GPS data to Google Maps.Glen Murphy's website that illustrates how to hook a GPS up to Google Maps (Windows only, so far).From the Mac side, it's possible to integrate Google Maps into a Mac OS X Address Book.Some AppleScript Code adds a context menu accessible in the Address Book app.Right clicking on an entry will open a map of US address in the Address Book in FireFox.(Recall Google Maps runs happily on FireFox, which is supported on Macs.) Also for FireFox is a Google Maps searchbar. The amount of energy here is quite impressive.
Advertising on Google's Shoulders
Also of note, nearly every discussion (blog comments, newsgroups, etc.) of Google Maps I found included a reference to an online map service, Maps24 and how they are hiring.Nearly every one also had plugs for various online mapping services, worldwide hoping to get in on the excitement of the new Google offering.I suppose everyone wants to jump on Google's coat tails.
Read More......
Mystery web attack hijacks your clipboard
A new web-based attack is making the rounds that tries to spread poisonous links by hijacking end users' clipboards.
Forum discussions here and elsewhere all report the same thing: the commenter surfs to a seemingly legitimate site (MSNBC.com comes up more than once) and suddenly a malicious link is copied to the clipboard. The rogue link remains even after the user copies a new batch of text. The only way to remove it is to reboot the computer.
The attack has been reported by Firefox users running both OS X and Windows, but we wouldn't be surprised to hear that other browsers and operating systems are also vulnerable. It's unclear exactly how the attack spreads. The Spyware Sucks blog posits here that banner ads transmitting bad Adobe Flash code is responsible, and that makes sense to us.
If you've encountered this attack, please leave a comment below detailing exactly where you encountered it.
Those behind the attack appear intent on propagating a link (for the record, it's xp-vista-update.net, but we recommend staying away) that claims users' PCs are petri dishes hopelessly infected with malware unless they are immediately cleaned by a fraudulent anti-malware program. By permanently attaching the link to the clipboard, attackers are betting the user will paste it in emails, blog posts or directly into a browser's address bar.
Attacks like these are another reason why running the NoScript extension on Firefox makes a lot of sense. It's not perfect, but it can insulate you from a huge amount of the attack code floating around on the web
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Microsoft Talks Up Windows 7 - But Only a Little
Microsoft is talking about Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista -- but it isn't saying too much. Having learned from promising and not delivering when it launched Vista, Microsoft this time will be more measured in the details it releases.
Although it is not officially scheduled to be released until 2010, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft is starting to talk up Windows 7, its next OS.
To that end, it has started a blog hosted by the two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, and is promising to release in-depth technical specs in October, first at the Professional Developers Conference and then at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.
DeVaan and Sinofsky demonstrate that Microsoft has learned from the Vista experience.
"We, as a team, definitely learned some lessons about 'disclosure' and how we can all too easily get ahead of ourselves in talking about features before our understanding of them is solid. Related to disclosure is the idea of how we make sure not to set expectations around the release that end up disappointing you -- features that don't make it, claims that don't stick, or support we don't provide," they wrote.
Ghost of Vista
Overpromising on features, which were later discarded or abandoned, was a major complaint about Vista -- though it was hardly the only one. When that much-awaited OS was released, it had a number of problems with it, to say the least.
Vista required significant investments in additional hardware to run smoothly and took up more system resources than many corporate IT shops had anticipated.
Windows 7 should address the remaining tech issues with Vista, Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, an independent consulting firm, told TechNewsWorld.
"The worst problems with Vista had to do with hardware performance Rackspace now offers green hosting solutions at the same cost without sacrificing performance. Make the eco-friendly choice. and capability," he said. Those are being resolved or will be resolved over the next two to three years, he added. "By the time Windows gets out of the door, the hardware universe will have caught up with the demands that Vista places on it," he said.
Incremental Improvements
Windows 7 is also not the ambitious undertaking that Vista was, which bodes well for a smoother roll-out. "It is pretty clear it is supposed to be an incremental improvement to Windows Vista," Helm said.
Areas that Microsoft has said it will improve in Windows 7 include graphics performance, power management and APIs (application programming interfaces) for developers.
The biggest change, which has been demoed, will be the introduction of touch computing -- a feature that ironically may pass many users by unless they have upgraded their PCs. Nonetheless, Helm said, Microsoft clearly hopes Windows 7 will be able to deliver what people had originally expected from Vista.
What is live webcasting and how does it work?
Live webcasting is what many people first think of when streaming media is mentioned— because they have heard about live rock concerts being broadcast on the internet, or phone in shows where some celebrity or politician takes a few live calls while broadcasting an interview over the web.
Live webcasting is what many people first think of when streaming media is mentioned— because they have heard about live rock concerts being broadcast on the internet, or phone in shows where some celebrity or politician takes a few live calls while broadcasting an interview over the web.
Webcasting has a certain amount of appeal, because it promises to give almost anyone the ability to broadcast their concert, annual meeting, conference keynote speaker, or golf tournament award ceremony to virtually the entire world.
From a technical point of view setting up a webcast is more complicated and somewhat more risky than creating a library of archived files. Because it is a live event, it involves all the usual risks associated with live events. Things usually don't go quite as planned; equipment breaks down; cables are forgotten back at the studio; lights burn out, people say stupid things or start drooling, and so on.
The second complication has more to do with the specific technology used in webcasting. Since you have to "encode" a media stream before sending it out over the net, the encoder has to work more or less in real time. The cameras and audio equipment feed the signal into the encoding device. Then the encoding device compresses and formats the data so it can be sent along to the media server — presumably at a different location — where it is then streamed at the correct bitrate and ultimately played by the correct sort of media players at the other end.
At first blush, this process may seem too fraught with variables to actually be counted on. But in practice, if the production company — the guys running the cameras and creating the final mix — if they can keep the signal running, then in fact it is quite a reliable method of broadcasting.
The weakest link in the production chain is the connection between the encoder onsite at the live location — and the server — presumably somewhere out there in cyberland. But in many cases a simple DSL or Cable connection is perfectly satisfactory, since the encoded signal you are transferring is usually no more than 300-400 kbps.
Complications certainly arise when deciding what format and what bitrate to use for your live webcast. Archived streaming media is often encoded in different formats and at different bitrates, but this is often not possible with live webcasts. In many cases the webcaster just has to pick the format he considers the most likely to be used by the largest number of viewers, and go with it.
In real life situations restricting available formats like this is not as difficult as it may sound. Many webcasts are done for corporate clients and broadcast over restricted corporate networks. The specified format is just part of company policy, based on what the network administrators know is running on corporate desktops.
Other webcasts are subscription-based — things like online training or "learning-at-a-distance" services, or even online rock concerts or movies. Using a specified format and bitrate just becomes part of the requirements to take advantage of the service.
Who can take advantage of live webcasting?
The users of webcasting tend to fall into two or three groups based on content and audience. At the "low" end of the scale are experimental services that have essentially no audience. These are individuals and companies experimenting with the technology hoping to find an idea that will have some audience appeal. At the "high" end of the scale are large broadcast organizations, rebroadcasting their traditional radio or TV signal to potentially very large audiences. Big name concert promoters and movie streamers tend to fall into this second category.
Between these two extremes are events with a narrowly defined audience. Most of them are corporate in nature — conference keynote addresses, the CEO's annual message to the troops, live reporting of quarterly corporate results, etc. Some of these events are akin to videoconferencing where, for instance, a live training session is webcast to a select group of customers or employees, or a lecture is webcast to a specific group of students.1
As time goes by new applications for streaming will be developed. A few months ago I heard of a company setting up cameras in daycare centres and webcasting video of the children so their parents at work could watch their children on their computers.
This idea may or may not ultimately fly; but it suggests a range of possibilities from video surveillance to in-house newscasting, to narrowly focused corporate event coverage, where we are not talking about one-off events like concerts, but rather regular coverage of recurring events in a controlled setting — like in a studio, newsroom, or briefing room. In such a situation the broadcast source would be controlled and predictable, the transmission system properly constructed and tested, and the viewing audience motivated to watch and equipped with the appropriate tools to do so.
The other area that sounds plausible, but as yet has not proven to be economically viable is entertainment-based, or even information-based live programming produced specifically for webcasting. The challenge is to define a potential audience, create streaming programming specifically for that audience, let them know the service exists, and keep them coming back. And of course, find enough advertisers to support the service.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
Is it too early to talk about Web 4.0? Of course not.
According to Danish editor Jens Roland, who's been tracking the increasingly common practice of assigning version numbers to the World Wide Web, at least one Internet pundit is already discussing Web 38.0. Roland hastens to point out that this discussion is most likely tongue-in-cheek. But even as Web 2.0 continues to mature and an assortment of ideas called Web 3.0 hits our collective consciousness, some people are actually giving serious thought to version 4.0. Go ahead. Google it.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
Is it too early to talk about Web 4.0? Of course not.
According to Danish editor Jens Roland, who's been tracking the increasingly common practice of assigning version numbers to the World Wide Web, at least one Internet pundit is already discussing Web 38.0. Roland hastens to point out that this discussion is most likely tongue-in-cheek. But even as Web 2.0 continues to mature and an assortment of ideas called Web 3.0 hits our collective consciousness, some people are actually giving serious thought to version 4.0. Go ahead. Google it.
One of the first and most visible Web 4.0 pundits is Seth Godin, a technology-minded marketing guru with seven books to his name, including Unleashing the Ideavirus, billed as the most popular e-book ever. What does a marketing guru have to do with the future of Net? Everything. After all, these Web-wide version numbers have so much to do with spin.
Godin envisions Web 4.0, or Web4, as a place where you have even tighter online connections to your friends, family, and colleagues. "There are so many things the Web can do for me if it knows who my friends are, where they are, what they're doing, what they're interested in, how they can help me—and vice versa," he says.
On his future Web, if you start typing an e-mail proposing a particular business deal with Apple, a window pops up, telling you that one of your colleagues is already in talks with Apple. If you miss an airplane flight and book a new one with your cell phone, it automatically sends messages to the friends you're meeting for dinner, letting them know you'll be late. It sounds a lot like the Semantic Web—with less privacy. Will this actually happen? Will people relinquish that much information about their private lives? Who knows? It's just an idea. Of course, people like Seth Godin know a thing or two about spreading ideas.
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Three new Web services reinvent the way we look for music and images.
You won't search for media with keywords in the future-—you'll search for media with media. To find an image, you'll supply another image. To find a song, you'll supply another song. Don't believe it? Three new services—image-crunchers Like.com and Polar Rose, and music-matchmaker Pandora—have already taken the first steps toward this new breed of media search.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
Three new Web services reinvent the way we look for music and images.
You won't search for media with keywords in the future-—you'll search for media with media. To find an image, you'll supply another image. To find a song, you'll supply another song. Don't believe it? Three new services—image-crunchers Like.com and Polar Rose, and music-matchmaker Pandora—have already taken the first steps toward this new breed of media search.
Today, when you search the Web for music and images, you're merely searching for the words that surround them. When you visit Google Image Search and type in "Steve Jobs," you aren't really looking for photos of Apple's CEO. You're looking for filenames and captions that carry those keywords—"Steve" and "Jobs"—hoping the right photos are somewhere nearby.
There's a sizable difference between the two. On any given image search, Google turns up countless photos completely unrelated to your query, even as it misses out on countless others that may be a perfect match. In the end, you're relying on Web publishers to annotate their images accurately, and that's a hit-or-miss proposition.
The situation is much the same with MP3s, podcasts, and other sound files. When trolling Web-based music services, you can run a search on "Elvis" or "Jailhouse Rock." But what if you're looking for music that sounds like Elvis? Wouldn't it be nice if you could use one song to find other similar songs?
Ojos and Polar Rose are tackling the image side of the problem. Last spring, Ojos unveiled a Web-based photo--sharing tool called Riya, which automatically tags your pictures using face recognition. Rather than manually adding "Mom" tags to all your photos of Mom, you can show Riya what she looks like, and it adds the tags for you. The service is surprisingly accurate, gaining a huge following from the moment it hit the Web, but Ojos quickly realized that the Riya face-rec engine—which also identifies objects and words—could be used for Web-wide image search.
That's a mammoth undertaking, but, with an alpha service called Like.com, the company is already offering a simple prototype. Today, Like.com is little more than a shopping engine. You select a photo of a product that best represents what you're looking for, and the service shows all sorts of similar products. But it's an excellent proof-of-concept.
Meanwhile, Polar Rose (www.polarrose.com) recently introduced a browser plug-in that does face recognition with any photo posted to any Web site. For the moment, it's just a means of tagging images automatically—much like Riya. But unlike Riya, it already works across the length and breadth of the Net.
The closest equivalent when it comes to audio is Pandora, from a group of "musicians and music-loving technologists" called the Music Genome Project. Since its inception in 2000, the group has analyzed songs from over 10,000 artists, carefully notating the music makeup of each track. Using this data and a list of your favorite artists, Pandora can instantly construct a new collection of songs that suit your tastes. Again, this is hardly a Web-wide search engine, and unlike the image services from Ojos and Polar Rose, it relies heavily on up-front human input. But it's a step in the right direction. True media search is closer than you think.
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Tim Berners-Lee isn't the only man behind the Semantic Web. His 2001 Scientific American article, which introduced the concept to the world, was actually written in collaboration with two other eminent -researchers, Ora Lassila and Jim Hendler. Six years on, we tracked down Professor Hendler, now director of the Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery at the University of Maryland and still one of the driving -forces behind this next-generation Internet.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
Tim Berners-Lee isn't the only man behind the Semantic Web. His 2001 Scientific American article, which introduced the concept to the world, was actually written in collaboration with two other eminent -researchers, Ora Lassila and Jim Hendler. Six years on, we tracked down Professor Hendler, now director of the Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery at the University of Maryland and still one of the driving -forces behind this next-generation Internet.
Q: Does the Semantic Web idea predate your now-famous Scientific American article—or was that the first mention?
A: That's the first time the term was coined and printed in a fairly accessible place. Recently, we've been looking for the absolute earliest use of the term Semantic Web, and it seems to go a bit further back, to a few small things Tim had written. He and some colleagues were using it locally within MIT and the surrounding community in the late nineties.
Q: The Semantic Web can be a difficult concept to grasp. How do you define it?
A: What the traditional Web does for the text documents in our lives, the Semantic Web does for all our data and information. Today, on my Web page, I can build a pointer to another Web page. But I can't link data together in the way I can link pages together. I can't point from a value in one database to some other value in some other database. To use a simple example, if your driver's license number is in one place and your vehicle identification number is in another, there should be a way of linking those two things together. There should be a way for machines to understand that those two things are related.
Q: Why is this so necessary?
A: Right now, it's very difficult to browse data on the Web. I can use a search engine that gives me the results of a query and draws them as a list, but I can't click on one of those values and see what it really means and what it's really related to. Today's social networking is trying to improve this, with things like tagging. But if you typed "polish" and I typed "polish," how do we know we're talking about the same thing? You might be talking about a language and I might be talking about something that goes on furniture. On the other hand, if those two names are precisely identified, they don't accidentally overlap and it's easier to understand the data we've published. So the technology of the Semantic Web is, in a sense, the technology of precise vocabularies.
Q: And this, in turn, would allow a machine to go out across the Web and find the things we're looking for?
A: Yes. It's very hard for this to happen with just language descriptions. Our idea is to have machine-readable information shadowing the human-readable stuff. So if I have a page that says, "My name is Jim Hendler. Here's a picture of my daughter," the machine realizes that I'm a person, that I have a first name and a last name, that I'm the father of another person, and that she's a female person. The level of information a machine needs would vary from application to application, but just a little of this could go a long way—as long as it can all be linked together. And the linking is the Web part of the Semantic Web. This is all about adding meaning to the stuff we put on the Web—and then linking that meaning together.
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
What will Web 3.0 look like? Who knows? But here are a few possibilities.
The Semantic Web
A Web where machines can read sites as easily as humans read them (almost). You ask your machine to check your schedule against the schedules of all the dentists and doctors within a 10-mile radius—and it obeys.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
What will Web 3.0 look like? Who knows? But here are a few possibilities.
The Semantic Web
A Web where machines can read sites as easily as humans read them (almost). You ask your machine to check your schedule against the schedules of all the dentists and doctors within a 10-mile radius—and it obeys.
The 3D Web
A Web you can walk through. Without leaving your desk, you can go house hunting across town or take a tour of Europe. Or you can walk through a Second Life–style virtual world, surfing for data and interacting with others in 3D.
The Media-Centric Web
A Web where you can find media using other media—not just keywords. You supply, say, a photo of your favorite painting and your search engines turn up hundreds of similar paintings.
The Pervasive Web
A Web that's everywhere. On your PC. On your cell phone. On your clothes and jewelry. Spread throughout your home and office. Even your bedroom windows are online, checking the weather, so they know when to open and close.
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
In some respects, Web 3.0 is nothing more than a parlor game. Ideas tossed out here and there. But at the very least, these ideas have roots in current trends. Many companies, from HP and Yahoo! to Radar Networks, are adopting official Semantic Web standards. Polar Rose and Ojos are improving image search. Google and Microsoft are moving toward 3D. No one can predict what Web 3.0 will look like. But one thing's for sure: It'll happen
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
In some respects, Web 3.0 is nothing more than a parlor game. Ideas tossed out here and there. But at the very least, these ideas have roots in current trends. Many companies, from HP and Yahoo! to Radar Networks, are adopting official Semantic Web standards. Polar Rose and Ojos are improving image search. Google and Microsoft are moving toward 3D. No one can predict what Web 3.0 will look like. But one thing's for sure: It'll happen
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Though Web 3.0 is most often associated with the Semantic Web, the two are far from synonymous. Countless other concepts are poised to play a role in our online future, and many go beyond semantics, using space, images, and sound.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
Though Web 3.0 is most often associated with the Semantic Web, the two are far from synonymous. Countless other concepts are poised to play a role in our online future, and many go beyond semantics, using space, images, and sound.
One possibility is the so-called 3D Web, a Web you can walk through. Many see this as an extension of the "virtual worlds" popping up on today's Internet. In the future, they say, the Web will be one big alternate universe reminiscent of Second Life and There.com. But others scoff at this notion, claiming it's just a less-efficient version of today's Internet. They see the 3D Web not as an alternate universe but as a re-creation of our existing world. On the 3D Web, you could take a virtual stroll through an unfamiliar neighborhood shopping for houses or visit famous sites you've never seen. Google Earth already offers an experience not far removed from this. "Today, with a service like Google Earth, you can zoom in on Seattle and see how tall the buildings are," says Syracuse University's Lankes. "It really isn't that much of a leap to actually put you, or your avatar, in Seattle and let you walk around."
The trouble is, 3D only goes so far. It doesn't enhance the very 2D world of words, pictures, and video. For many, the more interesting idea is a mediacentric Web, offering not just language-based search but pure media search. Today we depend on keywords even when searching for images, videos, and songs—a woefully inadequate system. Companies like Ojos and Polar Rose are working to reinvent media search, hinting at a world where we search for media with other media—not just keywords (see "Look Ma, No Keywords!" opposite).
Then there's the Pervasive Web, a Web that's everywhere. Today's Web already extends beyond the desktop, to cell phones and handhelds, but it might extend even further—into our everyday surroundings. At the MIT Media Lab, Maes is toying with the idea of Web-connected bathroom mirrors. As you brush your teeth in the morning, there's the latest news. Meanwhile, with his blog, the End of Cyberspace, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang of the Institute for the Future envisions the Web automating much of what goes on in the home. Your windows, for instance, could automatically open when the weather changes. With help from mesh networks—wireless networks consisting of tiny nodes that can route data to and from almost anywhere—the possibilities are nearly endless.
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
The Semantic Web, like Web 2.0, is a nebulous concept. "Considering that the very word semantic is all about meaning, it's ironic that the term Semantic Web is so ill defined," says Radar Networks' Spivack. Some, like Spivack, fall into the Berners-Lee camp. Others, like AdaptiveBlue's Iskold, believe in the artificial-intelligence method. And then there are the others: the semantic searchers.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
The Semantic Web, like Web 2.0, is a nebulous concept. "Considering that the very word semantic is all about meaning, it's ironic that the term Semantic Web is so ill defined," says Radar Networks' Spivack. Some, like Spivack, fall into the Berners-Lee camp. Others, like AdaptiveBlue's Iskold, believe in the artificial-intelligence method. And then there are the others: the semantic searchers.
Rather than providing automatic information retrieval, semantic search engines seek to improve on the Google-like search model we've grown so accustomed to. The idea is to move beyond mere keyword searches to a better understanding of natural-language queries. "Right now, search engines can't tell the difference between Paris Hilton and the Hilton in Paris," says Jeff Bates, cofounder of Slashdot, one of the driving forces behind Web 2.0. "There's millions of dollars being spent trying to better optimize search, and that's a big part of what the Semantic Web will be."
This kind of natural-language processing has been in development for years, but it, too, has found its way onto the public Web. Several start-ups, including Powerset and TextDigger, are hard at work on semantic search engines based on the open-source academic project WordNet. It should be noted, however, that natural-language search could very well play a role in the Berners-Lee Semantic Web. His is merely a framework to enable all sorts of apps, and semantic search might be one of them.
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
As a consequence, many researchers take a very different approach to the Semantic Web. Rather than calling for an overhaul of Web formats, which would involve hundreds of thousands of independent sites, they're building agents that can better understand Web pages as they exist today. They're not making the pages easier to read, they're making the software agents smarter.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
As a consequence, many researchers take a very different approach to the Semantic Web. Rather than calling for an overhaul of Web formats, which would involve hundreds of thousands of independent sites, they're building agents that can better understand Web pages as they exist today. They're not making the pages easier to read, they're making the software agents smarter.
One early example is the BlueOrganizer from AdaptiveBlue (www.adaptiveblue.com). In certain situations, when you visit a Web page, this browser plug-in can understand what the page is about, automatically retrieving related information from other sites and services. If you visit a movie blog, for instance, and read about a particular film, it immediately links to sites where you can buy or rent that film. "It's what you might call a top-down approach," says Alex Iskold, the company's CEO. "Web pages already contain semantic data. We can understand them, so why shouldn't computers? Why not build a technology that can parse and process existing services and databases?"
Of course, that's easier said than done. Countless companies offer tools similar to BlueOrganizer—including Claria's PersonalWeb—but these aren't that different from the old Amazon.com "recommendation engine," which suggests new products based on your surfing and buying habits. We're a long way from agents that can think on their own. In the near term, the Semantic Web may require the sort of metadata Berners-Lee proposes. "Automated agents are worth striving for," says Pattie Maes, an MIT Media Lab veteran who founded the Lab's Software Agents Group. "But it's hard to say what's better—tags built into Web pages or tags that are, in a sense, inferred by machines."
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
The Semantic Web isn't a new idea. This notion of a Web where machines can better read, understand, and process all that data floating through cyberspace—a concept many refer to as Web 3.0—first entered the public consciousness in 2001, when a story appeared in Scientific American. Coauthored by Berners-Lee, the article describes a world in which software "agents" perform Web-based tasks we often struggle to complete on our own.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
The Semantic Web isn't a new idea. This notion of a Web where machines can better read, understand, and process all that data floating through cyberspace—a concept many refer to as Web 3.0—first entered the public consciousness in 2001, when a story appeared in Scientific American. Coauthored by Berners-Lee, the article describes a world in which software "agents" perform Web-based tasks we often struggle to complete on our own.
The article begins with an imaginary girl named Lucy, whose mother has just been told by her doctor that she needs to see a specialist. "At the doctor's office, Lucy instructed her Semantic Web agent through her handheld Web browser," we read. "The agent promptly retrieved information about Mom's prescribed treatment from the doctor's agent, looked up several lists of providers, and checked for the ones in-plan for Mom's insurance within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent on trusted rating services."
That's quite a mouthful, but it only begins to describe Berners-Lee's vision of a future Web. Lucy's Semantic Web agent can also check potential appointment times against her mother's busy schedule, reschedule other appointments if need be, and more—all on its own, without help from Lucy. And Lucy is just one example. A Semantic Web agent could be programmed to do almost anything, from automatically booking your next vacation to researching a term paper.
How will this actually work? In Berners-Lee's view, it involves a reannotation of the Web, adding all sorts of machine-readable metadata to the human-readable Web pages we use today (see "Questions of Semantics," opposite). Six years after the Scientific American article, official standards describing this metadata are in place—including the Recourse Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL)—and they're already trickling into real-world sites, services, and other tools. -Semantic Web metadata underpins Yahoo!'s new food site. Spivack's Radar Networks is building a kind of Semantic Web portal. A development platform, Jena, is in the works at HP. And you'll find Semantic Web structures in Oracle's Spatial database tool.
The problem is that a complete reannotation of the Web is a massive undertaking. "The Semantic Web is a good-news, bad-news thing," says R. David Lankes, an associate professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies. "You get the ability to do all these very complex queries, but it takes a tremendous amount of time and metadata to make that happen."
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Just in case you missed it, the web now has version numbers. Nearly three years ago, amid continued hand-wringing over the dot-com crash, a man named Dale Dougherty dreamed up something called Web 2.0, and the idea soon took on a life of its own. In the beginning, it was little more than a rallying cry, a belief that the Internet would rise again. But as Dougherty's Silicon Valley start-ups—and blogs are already abuzz with talk of the Web's next generation.
Web 3.0 : An Introduction
Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web
Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search
Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words
Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today
Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0
Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics
Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!
Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...
Just in case you missed it, the web now has version numbers. Nearly three years ago, amid continued hand-wringing over the dot-com crash, a man named Dale Dougherty dreamed up something called Web 2.0, and the idea soon took on a life of its own. In the beginning, it was little more than a rallying cry, a belief that the Internet would rise again. But as Dougherty's Silicon Valley start-ups—and blogs are already abuzz with talk of the Web's next generation.
To many, Web 3.0 is something called the Semantic Web, a term coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web. In essence, the Semantic Web is a place where machines can read Web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the Net and find what we're looking for. "It's a set of standards that turns the Web into one big database," says Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, one of the leading voices of this new-age Internet.
But some are skeptical about whether the Semantic Web—or at least, Berners-Lee's view of it—will actually take hold. They point to other technologies capable of reinventing the online world as we know it, from 3D virtual worlds to Web-connected bathroom mirrors. Web 3.0 could mean many things, and for Netheads, every single one is a breathtaking proposition.
5 Basic Steps to Stream online Audio content
Websites today are no longer strictly limited to pure text. Everything is multimedia nowadays, so adding more to the textual content of your site gives it the edge it needs to stand out. You can add graphics, flash movies, pictures, animation, video clips, and audio stream to your website in order to give it that extra edge above other sites in your target market. These add-ons are not just mere decorations; they can be your website's main attraction when done right.
Websites today are no longer strictly limited to pure text. Everything is multimedia nowadays, so adding more to the textual content of your site gives it the edge it needs to stand out. You can add graphics, flash movies, pictures, animation, video clips, and audio stream to your website in order to give it that extra edge above other sites in your target market. These add-ons are not just mere decorations; they can be your website's main attraction when done right.
Audio streaming is one form of incorporating sound in a website without having users download the file into their hard drive. Many people are wary of saving files from an unknown website for fear of getting viruses on their computer, so online audio streaming is a good alternative.
This article focuses on how you can use online audio streaming to give your website its much needed boost:
1.) Make sure your audio file is of high quality. A garbled or static-filled audio sound file will not improve the browser’s experience on your website; rather, it will only leave a bad impression on your visitors.
2.) Make sure the audio file isn't too large, or else you'll risk working up the anger of users with slower internet connection. Not everyone has DSL or cable internet, and even those kinds of internet come in various speeds.
3.) Make sure that the audio file you upload to your site actually complements the web content. For example, don't add funky music if your subject matter is of a serious nature such as a legal matter.
4.) Make sure the audio file plays good in most of the major internet browsers. In this way, virtually all users will enjoy the experience of visiting your website with music.
5.) Lastly, make sure that the audio file you use is not copyrighted. If you're playing a song on your website, don't play the whole of it; otherwise, you're violating copyright laws. A sampler about half a minute long will do.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Public Institution Restricts Access to Atheist Websites
Employees of the Birmingham Council reported that their access to websites that promote atheism or some exotic religions is prohibited by their employers. Apparently, the council is not very fond of websites "that promote information on religions such as Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources
to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events."Employees of the Birmingham Council reported that their access to websites that promote atheism or some exotic religions is prohibited by their employers. Apparently, the council is not very fond of websites "that promote information on religions such as Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources
to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events."
Access to Christian, Hebrew or Muslim religion websites is free, as the National Secular Society, a pressure group that defends the rights of non-believers, states. The association says it had enough of seeing how religion gets mixed in public affairs and how it is a source of discrimination.
Although NSS claims that legal action against the Birmingham Council is the last measure they are considering, they don't completely reject that option. "We suspect that the Council have not set out to contravene or reverse their own equal employment policies and that this problem results from someone in the Council acting in a thoughtless way. We just hope that common sense prevails and the Council resolves the matter itself without submitting themselves needlessly to legal action which would bring more unwelcome publicity." reads an official statement released by the association.
So far, NSS limited its actions to sending a letter supported by lawyers, in which the representatives of the pressure group asked the Birmingham officials to change their minds, otherwise a lawsuit will be filed against them. On the horns of a dilemma – which is worse, blasphemy or a negative judgment – the Birmingham Council has to take measures to make sure that no one feels discriminated against at work.
Yahoo!'s Board of Directors Is Safe and Sound
All of the 8 executives who signed up for a new commission in Yahoo!'s board of directors were reelected yesterday. Although this year's elections were regarded with great uncertainty, as stockholders could have chosen to dismiss the team that rejected a promising offer from Microsoft, everything turned out fine for the board. All of the 8 executives who signed up for a new commission in Yahoo!'s board of directors were reelected yesterday. Although this year's elections were regarded with great uncertainty, as stockholders could have chosen to dismiss the team that rejected a promising offer from Microsoft, everything turned out fine for the board.
Roy Bostock, Yahoo! chairman, and Arthur Kern, Yahoo! executive since 1996, were most likely to consider the elections nail-biting, because they were the only ones who did not receive a full 80% of the stockholders' votes. Brostock only got 79.5% pros of the total votes for him, while Kern received only 77.9% votes in his favor.
Jerry Young, Yahoo! CEO, who was considered the main actor of the business with Microsoft, had almost no reason to worry, with 85.4% positive votes. "We are at a unique point in our history, where we have the eyes of the world focused on our Company and tracking our performance. We are redoubling our commitment to driving sustained, profitable growth for our stockholders." he said, aware of the fact that he and his renewed team have to make an all-out effort to banish all thoughts about how it would have been if the company accepted Microsoft's offer.
Carl Icahn, the investor who brought a storm cloud upon the company when he decided to remove all the current board of directors and bring his men in, was not even present at the annual stockholders' meeting, although after a cease fire with Yang and his affiliates, he was assured that he would have a chair in the executive board. As the stockholders voted for the expansion of the board with two more men, Icahn can now bring in other two persons to be responsible for Yahoo!'s fate. The investor will occupy the place left vacant by Robert Kotick, who bowed out of the company.
Some of the investors complained that the time allocated to questions and answers was too short, as the board took too long to explain all the insides of the Microsoft story.
“A Series of Tubes” Plug-In Brings YouTube to Apple TV
Apple TV modders are preparing a plug-in that will allow Apple TV owners to watch YouTube videos directly from the Apple TV menu system. While the plug-in is not available to the general public yet, videos have been posted on YouTube, showing it in action.Apple TV modders are preparing a plug-in that will allow Apple TV owners to watch YouTube videos directly from the Apple TV menu system. While the plug-in is not available to the general public yet, videos have been posted on YouTube, showing it in action.The plug-in is called "A Series of Tubes" and is being developed by ‘Xdog’ of the AwkwardTV Apple TV plug-ins directory.
The video shows the "A Series of Tubes" plug-in entry in the Apple TV’s FrontRow interface, alongside with music and movies. Once selected, the plug-in lets the user choose between collections of YouTube Videos, such as: Recently Featured Videos, Week’s Most Discussed, Week’s Most Viewed, Month’s Most Discussed, and Month’s Most Viewed. Once a category has been selected, a list of all available videos becomes available, with the currently selected video showing a still preview and a description. Playback is very smooth in the video but this could be because the plug-in has caching options that would help iron out any bumps caused by network traffic.
So far, Apple has made no changes to the Apple TV in order to allow for easier modding or to officially support any of the most popular mods. However, with services such as YouTube and Joost being as popular as they are, it is probably only a matter of time before they have to do something. It is obvious that Apple intended the Apple TV to be the iPod equivalent of movie and TV shows; however, that strategy has not been working out that great for them so far. Video sales are simply not as big as music sales, and many have put forward that they simply will not be because users prefer renting video content.
Regardless of what Apple does do with the Apple TV, those who are willing to tinker around with the Apple TV box and want to be able to watch YouTube videos, will be able to find the "A Series of Tubes" plug-in on the AwkwardTV plug-in directory soon.
A Better 'Second Life' - Windlight Atmospheric Rendering
Linden Lab's Second Life is getting the atmospheric rendering tech Windlight and the 3D cloud simulator Nimble from Windward Mark Interactive. Realism is the first thing the developer has to think about when a life sim such as Second Life is their main title. Here's why, as NextGeneration reports.Linden Lab's Second Life is getting the atmospheric rendering tech Windlight and the 3D cloud simulator Nimble from Windward Mark Interactive. Realism is the first thing the developer has to think about when a life sim such as Second Life is their main title. Here's why, as NextGeneration reports.
Although Linden has also acquired "all associated intellectual IP and interests" of Windward Mark, as the same site says, Alliance: The Silent War, Windward Mark's title in development, will not be part of the deal and will continue to be developed separately by Windward Mark.
So what will The Windlight technology do for Linden's Second Life? Mainly, it will add realism to environments, while Nimble's job will be "simply" rendering more convincing clouds. And it sure needs it as Second Life is a 100% life simulator – some countries even use it as a voting platform. Just think how some nice clouds could influence your judgment when electing your president... Kidding of course.
Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka also proposed the open source model: "Our core development team is tightly focused on improving the Second Life experience in terms of stability and scalability, but open sourcing has enabled external developers to integrate additional enhancements that are also hugely valuable; WindLight is one of these."
Man, Epic must be quite upset for Linden not to choose their Unreal Engine 3, huh? Not really actually, you see, although UE3 can do so much more than just make shooters look good, it's mainly used for action, not just strolling in the park or on the streets like in Second Life. Linden Lab hasn't acquired more powerful technology than that, but the most appropriate for what Second Life is all about.
All the developer had to worry about until now, was rendering the big city, and now it's not even the developer's worry, but Windward Mark Interactive's.
Apple about to Kill 17-Inch iMac in Next Update?
Rumors about the next generation of iMacs have resurfaced, and after several months still sing the same song. It looks like the smallest member of the iMac family will be left behind for good.
Rumors that the next generation of iMacs will have a new redesigned look, but will drop the 17-inch model started surfacing in March. After almost three years since the current design debuted, a change of looks would not go amiss. However, the decision to exclude
the smallest iMac from the update, and even potentially kill it off altogether came as a surprise. While it is quite possible for Apple to refresh the iMac line and come out with a 20i-inch model around the same price as the previous 17-inch model, many prefer the smaller sized desktop.Rumors about the next generation of iMacs have resurfaced, and after several months still sing the same song. It looks like the smallest member of the iMac family will be left behind for good.
Rumors that the next generation of iMacs will have a new redesigned look, but will drop the 17-inch model started surfacing in March. After almost three years since the current design debuted, a change of looks would not go amiss. However, the decision to exclude
the smallest iMac from the update, and even potentially kill it off altogether came as a surprise. While it is quite possible for Apple to refresh the iMac line and come out with a 20i-inch model around the same price as the previous 17-inch model, many prefer the smaller sized desktop.
Dropping the 17-inch iMac altogether would leave rather a large hole in Apple’s lineup. For one thing, there is the educational market, where the mini is often not enough, but a 20-inch iMac would be too much. Apple needs a cheaper, entry-level model, and the mini – while great at what it does – is considered by many as a bad choice due to the fact that it is both dated and lacking a display and peripherals.
Dropping the 17-inch iMac and offering the 20-inch model for around the same price could be done, but that would mean having to upgrade the mini because the gap between the two would simply be far too large. Conversely, Apple could do something totally unexpected and drop a bomb by introducing a new model that would be somewhere between the mini and the Mac Pros, without a display, and priced around what the former 17-inch iMac used to cost. This fabled ‘Mac’ has long been awaited by loyal Apple customers and potential switchers alike, and would go a long way to improving Apple’s computer line-up.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Delicious Finally Launches Version 2.0: Easier, Prettier, Faster
The popular social bookmarking service Del.icio.us launched a complete redesign of its service today. Ever since it was bought by Yahoo in 2005, the company added very few new features and the redesign had been rumored to be in the works for almost a year now. The new design and features are mostly focused on enhancing the speed of the service and improving its search capabilities. Del.icio.us can also now be reached at delicious.com and will start using this as its standard URL.
The popular social bookmarking service Del.icio.us launched a complete redesign of its service today. Ever since it was bought by Yahoo in 2005, the company added very few new features and the redesign had been rumored to be in the works for almost a year now. The new design and features are mostly focused on enhancing the speed of the service and improving its search capabilities. Del.icio.us can also now be reached at delicious.com and will start using this as its standard URL.
New Features
The new features include selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks. Delicious also says that it has made strides in improving its speed and making the site more responsive. Based on our short tests here, we would definitely have to agree with that.
Delicious has also worked an enhancing its search. Users can now search within their own tags, another user's bookmarks, and, maybe most interestingly, within their own social network on Delicious.
In our short tests of the new design so far, we have come away quite impressed. The new interface, which highlights the tags a lot more, feels a lot cleaner and snappier. It's also now a lot easier to edit items you have already bookmarked.
More Social
Delicious now also puts a lot more emphasis on the social aspects of its service - a trend we already noted back in 2006. We especially noticed that it now prompts its users to fill out their profile information more persistently. Before, few users ever bothered to do so. While before, the focus was on subscriptions and 'your network,' the new interface emphasizes more of 'friending' paradigm.
No Recommendations Yet
One area where Delicious can still improve is in giving its users recommendation based on their bookmarking behavior. Currently, Delicious neither recommends potentially interesting links, nor does it highlight users who bookmark similar items.
Easier, Prettier, Faster
Overall, while some of its competitors soared past Delicious in the last few months in terms of features, this update puts Delicious at the top of the pack again. We have come away highly impressed with the new interface and while all the new and enhanced features are definitely a boon to the service, the real advantage of this new design is that it makes using a lot of the old features a lot easier, especially for novice users.
Feedly Now Integrates With Google Search
If you're a Firefox and Google Reader user and you haven't yet installed the Feedly plugin, you're going to want to install it today after you hear this: Feedly has now integrated its own results - that is, links to the relevant posts from your Google Reader - right into your Google search results. This integration essentially adds a layer of social search directly into Google, and all with no extra work on your part besides simply having installed the plugin.
If you're a Firefox and Google Reader user and you haven't yet installed the Feedly plugin, you're going to want to install it today after you hear this: Feedly has now integrated its own results - that is, links to the relevant posts from your Google Reader - right into your Google search results. This integration essentially adds a layer of social search directly into Google, and all with no extra work on your part besides simply having installed the plugin.
All About Feedly
To get you up to speed, Feedly is a service and a Firefox plugin that provides an alternative way to read your feeds. Its magazine-style interface presents the news to you in a more visually appealing way while still keeping it categorized by your own tagging system. As your read news items in Feedly, they're marked as read in Google Reader; as you "Recommend" items in Feedly, they're "Shared" in Google Reader; as you "Annotate," they're shared with a note, etc.
However, for voracious RSS readers like myself, Feedly is a much slower way to read the news, which is perhaps why it hasn't really taken off to a great extent among the early adopter set. That's a shame, though, because Feedly can do so much more than many people may realize.
For one, it's integrated with both Twitter and FriendFeed letting you tweet or share an item on either of those services (even FriendFeed rooms)with just one click. It also pulls in the blog comments, comments from Digg, and the FriendFeed conversations surrounding an article and lets you add your own thoughts to FriendFeed stream - without you having to view the page on FriendFeed itself. 
Although it does show full feeds (just like Google Reader), it also allows blog owners to showcase their sponsors via a designated ad spot. On an area called "The Wall," you have the option to configure the page to show a mix of recommended items from Google Reader plus other sources. Those other sources can include your Firefox Bookmarks, your MyYahoo items, items from NetVibes, and items from Bloglines, as well as social connections like your Twitter stream, your FriendFeed stream, items from Yahoo Mail or Gmail. You can also select "best of" content to be mixed in from any number of categories from fashion to celebrities to tech or you can even upload your own OPML file.
Feedly Secrets
There are still a few secrets to discover about Feedly though. Despite all that it does, you may be surprised to know what more it's capable of. One of the biggest undiscovered gems is that as you "follow" friends on Feedly, you are immediately tapped into their Google Reader Shared Items - even if you're not "Google Friends." Their shared items will show up in Google Reader in a folder called "z.feedly.people." This is great for those who don't use Gmail or GTalk but still want access to people's Google Reader Shares. Friending people right now is somewhat of a difficult process because you have to find users on your own - there's no search feature for finding people. However, this friends feature is said to be getting an overhaul soon and we're looking forward to checking out.
Spring cleaning is a feature available from the "more" option that helps you eliminate the feeds you don't read. The interface color codes feeds to let you know how much you like them. The colors are as follows:
* Red: A candidate for deletion because you are not reading articles from the feed and/or the feed does not seem to produce articles.
* Orange: Produces a lot more than you are reading
* Green: You seem to like those feeds a lot.
* White: Everything else
Feedly + Google Search Integration
But today's big news is the Feedly+Google Search integration. As you search for a subject in Google, Feedly search results will appear at the top of the page. At present, the search results will only appear if you have related RSS items 7 days old or less
This integration adds an immediate social filtering aspect to searching the web by promoting your favorite sources to the top of your search results. It even takes into account your reading patterns and the favorite metadata to sort the results.
With this feature, it doesn't even matter if you want to use Feedly to read feeds - this behind-the-scenes social filtering makes it a killer add-on for anyone who uses Firefox and Google Reader. You can download Feedly from here.
Watch the top 10 You Tube Videos of all time
YouTube has come to define the new era of online video, so let's take a look at their most popular videos of all time.I was expecting something like lonelygirl15 or the original menthos coke video to be number 1.
YouTube has come to define the new era of online video, so let's take a look at their most popular videos of all time.I was expecting something like lonelygirl15 or the original menthos coke video to be number 1. But no, the most popular video of all time on YouTube, so far, has been Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply. It was added to YouTube on April 06, 2006 and has since gone on to attract 55.8 Million views. It's had 60,476 comments, the first of which was: "That was freaking AWESOME! Thanks for sharing!!". The comments for this video are still going strong today - the latest 10 comments have all come in the last 30 minutes, as of writing. Plus it's been favorited 252,082 times (making it the number 1 Top Favorited video of All Time).
According to a SMH article at the end of 2006, Laipply is a comedian and motivational speaker from Cleveland, Ohio. The video shows him dancing a six-minute routine encompassing 32 songs spanning more than 50 years of music and dance. In many ways this is your typical YouTube video - a funny, goofy, short and clever video, in this case uploaded by and starring a professional comedian. But there are tens of thousands of similar videos on YouTube, uploaded by enthusiastic amateurs (mostly teens).
Incidentally, on Laipply's website there is an accompanying cat video - proving once and for all that this success story was by and for the Web.
The next 3 most viewed YouTube videos are all music. Two of them professional, one amatuer.
2. Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend video, uploaded by RCARecords 5 months ago, has amassed 50 Million views.
3. My Chemical Romance's Famous Last Words is third, with 35M views.
4. Guitar, is fourth with 26M views. It's 5 minutes of Queen-like guitar licks, by some very talented dude.
Rounding out the Top 10:
5. SNL - Digital Short - A Special Christmas Box (comedy)
6. Tuğba Özay ve 250.000ci GarantiArkadas. com Üyesi (I have no idea what this is)
7. My Chemical Romance - Teenagers (music)
8. xxx (the title and promo image give the impression it is porn, but in fact it's a sappy Hong Kong pop video)
9. Beyonce ft. Shakira - Beautiful Liar (mv) (music)
10. Akon - "Don't Matter" (music)
Conclusion: Music Reigns Supreme
So in all, 7 of the top 10 are music - with 5 of those being professional videos. And OK Go is number 11 with their famously clever treadmill dancing video for Here It Goes Again. Indeed if you look at the Most Viewed Channels of all time, a lot of them are music companies. Universal Music is number 1 and My Chemical Romance number 3 (CBS is number 2).
If you're wondering where are all the 'America's Funniest Home Videos'-like ones, there is a laughing baby video at number 12.
So music and comedy make up the most popular videos on YouTube. And we can also see from this list that professional musicians and entertainers remain more popular than the so-called 'user generated' videos - at least at the toppermost of the poppermost.
