Filed under: Technology
Got a web app that relies on a 3rd party service? Well, I hope you selected that service well! A year or so ago I was evaluating Zimki and nearly selected it to provide a platform for some web app development at work. I’m rather glad I didn’t now…
Please note that this is your final notification of the withdrawal of the Zimki service, which will occur on the 24/12/2007.
All user applications and data remaining on the Zimki service will be deleted and the servers decommissioned shortly after this date.
It certainly highlights the importance of building your fancy-pants web 2.0 application on solid and reputable services.
Filed under: Friends, Technology
24 ways to impress your friends is back for the third year running. It’s like a web geeks advent calendar and I’m impressed.
Filed under: Media, Technology
The “social graph” is a global mapping of everybody and how they’re related. I had a play with a visualisation tool for Facebook relationships last night and it was great. Slightly scary but fun nonetheless. However, our weblives are not just about Facebook (although Facebook does provide a platform to bring them all together). Google’s OpenSocial is promising to provide another way to pull them together but, as Brad Fitzpatrick points out, a centralized “owner” of the social graph is a dangerous thing. Social networks need to be made open and portable. And they can be.
Tim Berners-Lee stated in a post yesterday that
…we have the technology — it is Semantic Web technology…
In other words, the connections and relationships made possible by the semantic web (or social graph - use interchangeably from hereon). He goes on:
Now, people are making another mental move. There is realization now, “It’s not the documents, it is the things they are about which are important”. Obvious, really.
and on opening up this data:
It is about getting excited about connections, rather than nervous.
So, yes - I am excited but how are we going to do this? Think data feeds, microformats and openID - things that would tend to be met with blank stares if I were to suggest them to clients. But show a client how you could remove barriers (such as log-in/ sign-up) to that all important “conversion” (with openID or microformats - here’s an excellent microformat implementation doing just that) and show how this person would be able to instantly tell all their friends about it (via their social graph) and then they’ll be interested.
Filed under: Technology
With all the feeds available from the various apps that make up my weblife these days, there’s a wealth of data that can be brought together into a single data stream - or “lifestream“, if you will. Using Yahoo! Pipes to mash up these feeds, I’ve hacked together something that displays all this fantastic data on one page - with the idea of this eventually being displayed on a timeline. I don’t expect the hordes will be rushing to view my aggregated weblife in a single life stream but there are some rather nice applications for this in a wider micro-blogging context.
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Filed under: Technology
Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are gaining credibility as a buzzword in the interweb playground right now and there’s a new kid in class.
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Filed under: Media, Technology
Some of you will have already heard about Joost (formerly known as The Venice Project) - an IPTV thingy from the folks who brought us Kazaa and Skype. There has been much speculation about its implications for the media, advertising and marketing industries - bringing together the wonders of the internet and TV in one glorious multimedia dream (well - that’s what the hype will have us believe anyway). Find out more over at Wired and MIT.
Anyway - I’ve have been having a bit of a play and it looks rather nice indeed. Not that I’ll be watching TV all day - it’s all purely in the name of research, of course!
I’ve also got a bunch of beta invites for anyone who wants to check it out for themselves - just let me know your email that you want to use for your Joost account…
Filed under: Technology
MS Photosynth is an app or a Firefox plugin (and yes - this is a Microsoft product!) that connects to geo-coded photo sites like Flickr and enables you to browse through similar pictures in 3D. The tech preview is visually very impressive but I’ve not yet seen a real-life demo so the verdict is still open. The video of the demo does look good though.
In my mind, this represents an interesting step forward in the cross-overs between web 2.0 apps and 3d browsing. It also raises interesting questions about where Microsoft might be headed in the 3d browsing space (aka “3pointD”). Particularly considering the rumours around Google’s developments in this field - where Google Earth and SketchUp could be brought together to create a “Google Planet” - a virtual-real-world Second Life, if you will. As has been suggested - maybe, in the not-to-distant future, “every Google Account [will] include a plot of land on Google Planet?”
Filed under: London, Technology
Do I really need to blog my notes from the last two days at this year’s London FOWA event? No, I thought not.
Filed under: Media, Technology
I stumbled across this rather slick video this morning, introducing how internet technology is evolving. I quite like it…
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Filed under: Media, Technology
Amongst all this Second Life hype, I’d like to add a little prediction - on the back of trends in buzzwords in the media - that 2007 will see the rise of “web3.d” applications. Where the 3d web (i.e. apps like second life) and web2.0 (i.e. social apps like myspace and del.icio.us) collide in a mash-uptastic frenzy. Oh yes.
If anyone has any “web3.d” ideas, you can catch me down the Red Lion this afternoon to discuss further. That’s the Red Lion in Second Life, of course.
Filed under: Media, Technology
I’ve just spotted Adobe as a “user” on del.icio.us. It’s interesting to see that organisations like this are using del.icio.us as an online marketing channel to increase brand awareness, page rank and general online visibility.
I’m sure we’ll see many other organisations doing the same thing in the near future as people turn to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us as their first port of call for search - where “page rank” is effectively determined by the users themselves and you can be guaranteed better results. I can even see a niche emerging for optimisation services for these sites, just like SEO became a niche industry around Google page ranks.
Filed under: Media, Technology
I feel the need to air some thoughts after recent goings on in the “convergence” realm. It’s a term that has been bashed about for years now - with every new development being heralded as the harbinger of a new dawn of convergence in digital media and the like. And this last year has been no different. We have the other weekend’s Homechoice (aka Video Networks) and Tiscali merger. There’s that BSkyB and Easynet deal last October. There’s a peer to peer IPTV service about to surface. And finally, there’s something a sales guy said to me this afternoon. In fact, something that got me thinking about all this in the first place. Something about “convergence”, “entertainment hubs” and how we’ll all “obviously be browsing the internet on our TVs in the next couple of years”. Well, sorry, but I beg to differ. Will digital media delivery really converge on a single device as many people seem to think? Surely, as more electronic media devices become IP enabled, media delivery will start to diverge not converge? Okay - so I’m getting bogged down with semantics - I guess that the term “convergence” really refers to overlapping realms of different media with new technologies. But I’m not sure that this single device view is the right direction for IPTV. Particularly whe you consider the most successful interactive TV programmes I have worked on have been those that encourage interaction using a completely different device and media - such as mobile and SMS - rather than relying on a remote control or a keyboard.
The advent of broadband has made delivery of video and other digital media possible via the internet but viewing via your desktop or laptop computer screen is not always practical. Equally, browsing and searching the web from your sofa via the TV is not exactly an easy or sociable thing to do. Surely the best solution is one where you would search on your PC then sit back and view on your TV? I know this is exactly what many people are already doing but it often means situating the PC near the TV so that you can run a cable from the PC’s AV output into the TV. What I want to do, and I’m sure a solution must exist (please tell me if it does - otherwise I hereby patent this idea!), is utilise my Wi-Fi network to stream content to the TV. Maybe via a SCART device that doubles as a Wi-Fi antennae, receiving data streams via the local network? Surely such a simple single device must exist? It’s all I need - not some “media hub” or “home entertainment centre”. It seems to completely bridge that gap between the different tasks of searching/ interacting (i.e. “lean forward” tasks) and watching (i.e. “sit back” tasks). Please - somebody help!
Filed under: Technology
When coding websites, there are some problems I come across time and time again - where I generally tend to crtl-c ctrl-v a previous solution into my work. The same goes for user interface tricks - like pagination, breadcrumbs, validation, event handling and DOM manipulation. Now the optimal solutions for all these woes have been bundled together into tested, robust and cross-browser UI libraries and design patterns by the clever people at Yahoo! I’ve spent some time playing with them and I’m impressed. A very shrewd move indeed - get the support of the people building the web and the rest will follow. Or something like that. Yahoo! have been making some rather interesting moves lately, with all their buy outs and what-not. I’d watch them closely, if I were you.
Filed under: Technology
brrreeeporting on searching blogs can be interesting. honest.
Filed under: Media, Technology
As BT prepares to step up onto the IPTV stage - to take on the likes of Homechoice, NTL and sky - it is starting to gather together content providers like Warner Music, Paramount, the Beeb and National Geographic. All the sort of content providers that are likely to produce decent TV that people will sign up to “BT TV” to watch but please tell me that there’ll be more than Big Brother re-runs coming from Endemol.
On a similar note, I wonder what BT will use to deliver their video streams? It would be quite fitting if they used BitTorrent (BT - geddit?) really. Although, it looks like NTL are one step ahead on that one.
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