Social network Reunion.com has made a new friend: people search service Wink. The two have merged in a new deal that promises to make it dramatically easier to find people on the Web.Early next year, the merger will produce "an entirely new brand," the companies said. The two have not said what its name will be, nor have financial details been disclosed. With the dual technologies of Reunion and Wink, the companies say that they will be able to search more than 700 million social-networking profiles. They'll be able to search profiles on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, AOL's Bebo, Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo, Xanga, and Twitter--among others.
Numbers from Nielsen last month indicated that Reunion.com, which says it receives 12 million unique visitors each month, is one of the fastest-growing social networks in the U.S. despite the fact that it's hardly on the radar of Twittering blog pundits. Its biggest demographic, according to Nielsen, is those between 55 and 64 who are looking to re-connect with friends and classmates.
"Through this merger, we're redefining the people search space by bridging existing social networks and providing consumers with the tools they need to find, be found, and stay connected," Wink CEO Michael Tanne said in a release. "We're aiming to create an entirely new online experience that simplifies people's lives by making it easy to find and keep up with everyone they know. There will be exciting developments in the coming months as we integrate our strengths and push our business forward."
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Monday, November 3, 2008
People-search sites Reunion.com, Wink to merge
RockYou looks to Asia with new $17 million investment
Investments to the tune of $17 million are a rarity these days, but app-factory RockYou has done just that: the San Francisco-based company has announced that Japanese mobile giant SoftBank and Korean telecom investment company SK Telecom Ventures have invested $17 million to create a new joint venture to build apps for the Asia-Pacific market.
RockYou's Series C venture round, which pulled in $35 million, was in June--with the fresh $17 million, the company has raised $67 million so far.
This marks the entry of RockYou, which is best known for its Facebook and MySpace widgets, into the mobile space. "In Asia, over half the social networking occurs on mobile," CEO Lance Tokuda told CNET News. "It's both Web and mobile, and we think we'll get good penetration. The results on (Chinese social network) Xiaonei so far have been very good." RockYou says it is the first non-Chinese company to build apps on Xiaonei.
There will be a separate team handling RockYou's new Asia-Pacific operations, with operations coming from the new joint-venture investors as well. "In a lot of cases it's more cultural, where they'll take our assets and they'll port them and localize them," Tokuda said.
But there will be synergy as well, with mobile apps likely coming to the U.S. market after they're released in Asia. SoftBank is the Japanese carrier for Apple's iPhone, and iPhone apps created for it may eventually be converted to U.S. versions.
"We have no U.S. iPhone apps, and yes, we will port them back (from Asia)," Tokuda said.
So is the company giving up on Facebook's platform? No, Tokuda said, adding that they plan to keep building for it. Nor is the round specifically designed as recession padding, he added.
"There's still opportunity out there," he explained. "That said, it's good to raise a lot of money and have money in the bank, and this latest strategic round helps."
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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?
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.
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.
