Month: June 2007

Web Script Labs – Ideas Into Scripts

Turning Ideas Into ScriptsWeb Script Labs takes an Ajax loader generator, Favicon generator and a Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator and places them into one, nice location for you to generate some Web 2.0 goodness.

 

The Ajax loading GIF generator provides users with a wealth of different indicators to use as their animation. Aside from the indicator, users can select the background color, whether or not the background will be transparent, the foreground color and finally the speed of the animation. Using the 3D rotation indicator, this is what I came up with.

3D Rotation Indicator

The Favicon generator does exactly that, generates favicons. This particular favicon generator will take any image you upload and turn it into a 16X16 or 32X32 favicon. If you want to create a transparent favicon, make sure you use a .PNG file or a .GIF file. While Photoshop requires you to install a .ICO plugin in order to save images as .ICO files, this generator automatically saves the images in .ICO format. Here is what I created using the 16X16 and 32X32 settings respectively.

16X16 Favicon 32X32 Icon File

Last but not least is the Web 2.0 Domain Generator. This one is fairly simple. Click the Generate button and after watching the flashy ajax loader animation you’ll receive what could be the name of your next startup. On the first try, I ended up with the result of Blognation. However, it appears as though Blognation.com and Blognation.net is taken. My second attempt landed me the name Skita. Skita.com is taken but Skita.net is available. Not sure I like that name anyways.

TAKEN!

There are quite a few generators out on the web if you look hard enough but what I would love to see is Web Script Lab take all of those other Web 2.0 specific generators and lump them into a single page/product. That would be pretty cool. Although most of the generators were created as a joke, some of them are actually quite useful such as the striped background generator and the Web 2.0 color palette generator. Head on over to http://www.webscriptlab.com and start generating stuff!

FaceBook Having Trouble Staying Up

Facebook.comThird party applications may be hammering away at the Facebook API. According to Mashable, Facebook has reportedly gone down for extended periods of time today. Looks to me as if the applications combined with the enormous amount of popularity is causing Facebook to stumble a bit.

As far as I can tell, Facebook is back to normal as I recently created my own Facebook account which can be viewed here Be sure to add me as a friend if you get the chance.

Job Titles 2.0

In the latest issue of PC Magazine there is a list of job titles that were spawned due to Web 2.0 These job titles include:

Chief Evangelist
Head of a company’s sales and marketing team

Virtual World Bureau Chief
Head of a news bureau in Second Life

Brand Champion
A PR person for a particular company’s brand

Senior Interface Hacker
Writer of code to build applications and create user interfaces for podcasts

Web Product Demigod
Creator of open-source content management systems

Online Audience Development Manager
Head of effort to get a company’s site to the top of a Google or Yahoo! search results

I decided to do a little more research to see if I could come up with any more and as it turns out, I did. Here they are.

  • VP of Emerging Media
  • Chief Risk Officer
  • New Media Specialist
  • Chief Diversity Officer
  • Chief Interruptor Officer (Jaffe: This means you.)
  • Instigator
  • Content Analyst

Can you think of anything else to add to this list?

Spock-People Search Gets Personal

http://www.spock.com

Keywords enable users to search for websites, products, and services. The biggest name in keyword search is Google, but what if you could use a search engine to find and discover actual people? Welcome to Spock.

 

Introduction:

Spock is a search engine that promises to help users to discover and find new people. Spock currently has over one hundred million people already indexed with millions added each day. Spock is funded by Clearstone Venture Partners, a leading early-stage venture capital firm in the consumer Internet space (Overture, PayPal, NetZero, MP3.com, Internet Brands), and Opus Capital Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm with more than $1 billion in committed capital under management. Spock is still in an Invitation only phase, however, I have three invitations to give out. If anyone wants one please respond in the comments section of this article requesting an invite. Continue reading →

MASHup Of Problems

http://devcentral.f5.com
DevCentral has published their first in a four part series of articles related to Web 2.0 security. DevCentral has come up with a mnemonic, MASH, that describes which each article will be about. MASH stands for:

  • More of everything.
  • Asymmetric data formats
  • Scripting based
  • Hidden URLs and code

The first article highlights the letter ‘M’ more of everything.

So what’s that mean, “more of everything”? Well, Web 2.0, whether we’re talking about applications (blogs, wikis, forums, video) or the technologies that enable the applications (AJAX, XML, RSS, RDF, etc…), simply contains more of everything than its legacy predecessors.

I encourage you to read the following article HERE as it begins to describe just how difficult it is to secure Web 2.0 applications. Securing one particular script is no big deal. Securing a plethora of scripts combined into one application is apparently another problem.

Internet Radio Day Of Silence

Day Of Silence For Internet RadioReadWriteWeb is reporting that beginning tomorrow June 26, 2007, thousands of webmasters who operate online radio stations will observe a day of silence to protest the rate increase of 0.012 cents per song, per listener, from the current 0.007 cents rate.

Sites such as Live365, Pandora, SHOUTcast, Rhapsody and many more will be participating in the day of silence. It looks like Last.FM won’t be participating, and I think it’s recent acquisition by CBS may be the reason why.

Personally, I think this is the equivalent of Americans refusing to purchase gasoline for a day. It looks like it could work on paper, but in reality, it is a lost cause. I do think however, that giving users a taste of what it might be like without net radio may actually tip some users over the fence and actually get them off their butts to call their local representative, however, in most cases, I don’t see this blackout as having any major effect to what may be coming down the pike.

I will truly miss Pandora if it goes under. I’ve only started using it recently and I love it. Now, the big bad record companies are going to take it away from us. What do you think about this situation? Will you take some time out of your day tomorrow to call your representative to try and save internet radio?

E-Learning 2.0 What You Need To Know

Read/WriteWeb has put together quite an interesting article detailing E-Learning 2.0 using Web 2.0 technologies. The article provides an overview of e-learning 2.0, including the leading web apps and sites in the niche, and predictions for its future. It’s awesome to see how all of this Web 2.0 technology stuff is being implemented in such unique, informative ways.

As this article shows, there is a lot of web 2.0 activity in the e-learning space – including from the big Internet companies like Google and Apple. The current era of the Web is all about two-way communication, collaboration and ‘read/write’; and the classroom is an ideal place to utilize these technologies.

E-Learning 2.0 What You Need To Know

Let Your Greenvoice Be Heard

http://www.greenvoice.comAs reported by Mashable Greenvoice has launched a new activism community for those who love to live green. The first thing you’ll notice is the page layout and design, which I personally feel is excellent. Greenvoice is yet another platform for people to share, collaborate, communicate and voice opinions on issues related to living green.

Those who participate in the community are known as Greenvoicers, who can take as active or inactive role in the site as they wish.

Greenvoice allows users to create Campaigns. Users of Greenvoice are able to donate towards these campaigns as they wish. One thing worth noting is that the campaigns are in POUNDS and not dollars. Some of the campaigns that have already started include, Excess Packaging For Software, Free Papers, Bottled Water, Intensive Pig Farming and more.

There are also sections to write appeals or actions to oppose or support a particular campaign, a section to display videos, and each campaign has a slew of bookmarking options. These act as wikis of sorts, and Greenvoice users can contribute some information to a certain degree, whether you’re a member of the campaign or not.

Check out Greenvoice if you feel your up to the challenge of making a positive impact on the world.

Feed Your Blog To Twits

http://www.twitterfeed.com

 

 

If you are familiar with Jaiku, Twitters competing micro blogging service, then you’ll know that you can add content into your Jaiku account from RSS feeds across the web. For now, you can’t accomplish this with Twitter but Twitterfeed at least allows you to feed your blog and other RSS feeds to Twitter.

Twitterfeeds site design leaves a lot to be desired, but the concept behind the service is clear. Before you begin using Twitterfeed, make sure you have a registered Twitter account. This Twitter account, or one of your choosing, will be the one that posts your feed entries onto Twitter. Once you create your account, make sure you click on the CREATE NEW TWITTER FEED link. One of the cool things about Twitterfeed is that it has support for OpenID logins. There are too many sites and services on the net that require users to create a username and password. We need more of these sites to support OpenID so that we can use one unified login for multiple sites.

Type in your Twitter username and password, your blogs RSS feed, choose your update frequency which is usually 30 minutes, maximum amount of updates to post each time and if you desire you can type in a description which will be attached as the prefix to each Twitter post. If this option is disabled, only the posts title and link will be posted. The last option you have available to use is whether or not the feed is active.

Once configured, Twitterfeed will check your feeds based on the update frequency you choose during the setup process. If Twitterfeed detects new content, it will automatically post the new content to Twitter via your account.

This service is fairly straightforward to use but I have to question it’s meaningfulness. For instance, if you maintain a blog and you publish a piece of content, you can immediately come up with your own prefix with the associated post link and post it to Twitter and it will show up instantly as compared to waiting 30 minutes from the time it was published. The manual method described above actually offers more flexibility but it is also a little more time consuming. Twitterfeed does allow you to have more than one feed attached to an account, so if you don’t want to be bothered with creating Tweets featuring your new content, then this service should do the trick.

DiggLabs Wins MashupAward

http://mashupawards.com

MashupAwards is a hand-picked showcase of the best web mashups with awards served on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis.

The criteria involved with judging each Mashup capable of winning an award consists of: Uniqueness, Creativity, User Experience, Utility, and Content. Users also have the ability to nominate a mashup of their choice which will be reviewed by the staff of MashupAwards. MashupAwards also contains a page of information describing how to create a mashup, which contains suggestions, tips, as well as a list of the ten most popular APIs.

The winner for June 23, 2007 goes to DiggLabs.

The labs provide a broader (and deeper) view of Digg. A lot of stuff gets submitted to Digg every day, so good things can sometimes fly right past you. Labs projects look beneath the surface of the Digg community’s activities and display them in fresh and unique interfaces.

To view more information about mashups or to view all of the winners that have won an award, visit http://mashupawards.com