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

Another Take On Web 2.0

As I was viewing my keyword results in FeedDemon, I happen to come across an article on TheTimes which offered their opinion as to what Web 2.0 actually is. The article is dated June 6, 2007 and goes on to describe Web 1.0 as being static web pages, with the promise of businesses revolutionizing the world using the Internet as a platform. This initial mindset helped to create what we now know as the Dot Com Bubble.

According to TheTimes, the dot com bubble exploded due to the lack of common sense that was applied to many businesses that launched onto the Web.

Startups were selling dog food on the Web without giving a moment’s thoughts to the costs involved in transporting heavy bags of dog food or selling nappies without considering the convenience of, well, convenience store. In short, Web 1.0 was big on promise and lacking when it came to the deliverables.

Fast forward to 2007 and we are now in the middle of what is commonly known as Web 2.0 This new version of the web has provided a new communal mentality with a new level of user friendliness. Using the Internet as a platform is only now, really starting to gain momentum. At this stage of the game, no idea is too stupid to try.

Near the end of the article, TheTimes sums up the general formalities of Web 2.0, all of which I truly agree with. In fact, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Web 2.0 (or the Social Web, as I prefer to think of it) is about three things: listening to the conversations people are having about you and topics you are interested in, participating meaningfully in those conversations and sharing your thoughts, ideas and knowledge with like-minded people. To put it another way, Web 2.0 is about connecting with people around you and on the other side of the globe in a very real, personal way.

What do you think Web 2.0 really is? Let me know by leaving a comment!

Gistr Aims To Help You Get The “Gist”

A new website has emerged that promises to help users get the “Gist” of interesting papers. Gistr allows users to share their own “GIST” to a particular paper. One paper can have as many “GISTS” as the reader thinks is appropriate while also allowing the “GIST” to be tagged.

The design of Gistr is quite frankly, non existent, however, Gistr will be adding features in the future that will enable users to save off gists and perhaps will enable bibliographies to be created based on those groups of gists. By using similar tags, researchers should have an easier time not only sharing gists, but locating each other across the network.

Sounds like a neat idea to me. I suggest the creators of Gistr use a number of those Web 2.0 generators which can be found at the bottom of this site and apply some of those effects onto Gistr or else no one is going to take them seriously!

Gistr Aims To Help You Get The “Gist”

A new website has emerged that promises to help users get the “Gist” of interesting papers. Gistr allows users to share their own “GIST” to a particular paper. One paper can have as many “GISTS” as the reader thinks is appropriate while also allowing the “GIST” to be tagged.

The design of Gistr is quite frankly, non existent, however, Gistr will be adding features in the future that will enable users to save off gists and perhaps will enable bibliographies to be created based on those groups of gists. By using similar tags, researchers should have an easier time not only sharing gists, but locating each other across the network.

Sounds like a neat idea to me. I suggest the creators of Gistr use a number of those Web 2.0 generators which can be found at the bottom of this site and apply some of those effects onto Gistr or else no one is going to take them seriously!