Social Networking and Web 2.0

Filed under: Features, Macintosh, Social Software, Lists

I absolutely love the popular Mac multi-chat app Adium. Not only does it support a large number of messaging protocols — including Facebook Chat in the latest version — it’s insanely customizable. In Adium, you can change the look of everything from your contact list to your message style to your dock icon. There’s an extensive library of user-created styles at AdiumXtras.com, but they’re not all good.

Recently, I went on a bit of a downloading tear, rummaging through the Adium Xtra trash to discover the Adium Xtra treasure. Here, I present my findings: 8 of the slickest, most beautiful add-ons ever to grace a chat client. To check out the full range of Adium Xtras for yourself, go to adiumxtras.com.

Message Style: Cinematic

Cinematic is a smooth, dark style that fits in really well with OS X. It sports Apple’s signature “reflection” effect, and uses buddy icons to show who’s talking — no text necessary. I like an uncluttered feeling when I’m chatting, and Cinematic delivers. Match it up with a darker buddy list style and wallpaper for a really put-together desktop.

Continue reading 8 can’t-miss Adium Xtras

8 can’t-miss Adium Xtras originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has reached a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in a lawsuit that dates back to 2005, according to paidContent.org.

Google will pay $125 million into a fund for authors. The Money “will be used to set up a Book Rights Registry that will let U.S. copyright holders register their works so that they can get a cut of any resulting online retail and ad sales.” Google scans books and makes them available through its book search, http://books.google.com/.

Many observers expect that Google and the book industry will now start to work cooperatively to place copyrighted works online and charge for them.

“We're trying to create a new structure where there will be more access to out-of-print books, with benefits both to readers and researchers and to the rights holders of those books - authors and publishers,” Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the publishers association, said Tuesday in an interview with the Associated Press.

According to the Associated Press, Google will now to contribute $125 million to the fund, including about $34.5 million for “a nonprofit Book Rights Registry that will store copyright information and coordinate payments.” Google will also pay $60 per completed work for the millions of copyrighted books already scanned. It will also pay legal fees for the Authors Guild and publishing association. Finally, income from the scanned books will be divided up, with 63 percent going to the copyright holders and 37 percent going to Google.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Roel Smart

See full article.

Related Entries:

Google开始测试图书搜索中文版 - 31 八月 2006

Google Takes World’s Books Online - 20 January 2007

Google Malware Warning Could Hit Your Web Search - 27 February 2007

Book Publisher Steals Google Laptops - 09 June 2007

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Filed under: Audio, Podcasting, Blogging, Social Software

Making a podcast can be a pain in the butt. Most of them are distributed via RSS or Atom, to make it as easy as possible for listeners to get new episodes. What if you want to save a bunch of audio as a podcast, but lack the technical expertise or the patience to make an RSS feed for it? Or what if you know how, but you just don’t want to bother? Well, that’s why there’s Huffduffer.

Huffduffer will stitch audio files into a podcast for you, and put them into an RSS feed automatically. You can add your own styff, or throw together some of the great “inspiration” that’s already on Huffduffer. They’ve linked some of the best free content on the web, like TED talks and This American Life. To make things even easier, there’s a browser bookmarklet you can save, to easily Huffduff any interesting audio you run across. I’m already thinking of Huffduffer as the Tumblr of podcasting: good concept, great ease of use, definitely worth checking out.

HuffDuffer: like the Tumblr of podcasting originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The words that are used to link to your website improve your Search Engine rankings for these words on Google. But how long should the link text be? Which words will be considered? Is there an optimal length for text Links?

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Social Software, web 2.0

Blog comment company Disqus was built around one pretty simple idea: the comment systems on most blogs stink. Disqus offers advanced comment features for Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, WordPress and other platforms. Features like avatar support, threaded comments, and the ability to rank other users comments. The biggest difference between Disqus and the default comment systems on most blogs is that once you register with Disqus you can leave comments on any blog that uses the system without registering over again. And you can track your comment history across all of those blogs, or see comment history for other users.

But Disqus has faced a few challenges. When the service first launched, comments were not indexed by search engines. Or rather they were, but the Search Engine would find them on the Disqus web site, not yours. So while Disqus was adding value to your readers, you it could actually be taking some value away from your site in terms of search engine traffic. That issue was fixed in August and Disqus comments are now properly indexed by search engines.

Second, Disqus couldn’t handle trackbacks properly at launch. Eventually the the developers did roll out a trackback feature. But in order for trackbacks to show up on your site, anyone linking to a post had to use a special Disqus URL, not the URL of your post. Last night, Disqus rolled out a fix for WordPress, allowing Disqus to display all the trackbacks or pingbacks to your blog.

With this latest update, I can’t think of many down sides to using Disqus at this point. At least for WordPress users. But there’s the rub: WordPress 2.7 will likely have many of these same features built into the platform. No third party plugin necessary. Last month Automattic, the company that develops WordPress purchased Intense Debate, a company that competes with Disqus. And if you can give readers threaded comments, commentor rankings, the ability to register once and post on many blogs without installing a third party plugin like Disqus, why would you? It’ll be interesting to see how Disqus works to differentiate itself from Intense Debate once WordPress 2.7 is released.
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Filed under: Social Software, iPhone, web 2.0

BrightKite was already the Cadillac of location-based social networking, but it just got even better with the release of an iPhone app. Checking in is a breeze using the iPhone’s GPS, and the app is pumped up with new features that make it a dramatic improvement over the old web version. There’s been a buzz around Brightkite for iPhone for some time now, and it totally lives up to the hype.

The ability to message nearby users in an iChat-like interface is definitely a plus, and helps to make the service more social. “Place snapping” quickly attaches a name to your location, giving you a street or intersection that you can use with Brightkite’s placemark feature. You can also turn on notifications, making sure you don’t miss any messages or comments. Even better, all of this happens within a slick, intuitive user interface that takes no time at all to learn.
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This month, the Google Webmaster blog published an article in which Google’s Maile Ohye officially explained what it takes to get high rankings in Google’s search result pages.

Filed under: Utilities, Features, Web services, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

I had a chance to talk to Nova Spivack, the CEO and founder of Radar Networks– the company behind Twine — last week and he walked me through the service. I have to say, as someone who was intrigued by the idea of Twine before, but frustrated by its interface, the new Twine kicks ass.

Twine describes itself as an “interest network,” you could also call it a semantic web portal. I like to think of it like Delicious on crack. Like Delicious, and Stumble Upon and to a lesser extent, Digg, Twine is a way to manage and share Links of interest. Unlike those services, Twine will also work to scour the web for information related to your interests and can help organize information into more useful snippets.

Continue reading Twine reaches 1.0, opens to public

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By adding the options for its advertisers to target users within cities and zip codes, Yahoo has provided more detailed advertising options to users of its Panama Platform

An excerpt from clickz

Yahoo's new Zip code targeting comes with an interactive mapping interface marketers can use to choose cities and Zip codes. The city menu includes about 3,500 municipalities in the U.S and Canada.

Both Google and Yahoo use IP targeting to identify audiences by region, and both offer disclaimers that mention the approach's imperfect accuracy. Yahoo's campaign targeting notes, “Geo-targeting accuracy is not guaranteed and may vary depending on the level of targeting selected, as well as other factors.”

See full article.

Related Entries:

Yahoo, Print Media Boast Alliance - 14 June 2007

5 Surefire Techniques To Optimize For Local Search - 22 July 2007

Yahoo’s Beginning… - 10 November 2007

Geo Targeting In Google - 20 May 2008

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Google is making the Profiles of the users of its various services searchable and also a standard across many of its services. So far there were different profiles being created for Orkut, Maps etc. With a centralized profile, Google may be gearing up to provide a set of services based around easing the usage of their various services.

An excerpt from Google Operating System

The new Google profiles are already available in Shared Stuff, Google Maps, Google Reader and will be added to other web applications. For example, in Google Maps you'll find the link to your profile at the top of the page.

Profiles are public and contain basic information about yourself: a nickname (the real name is displayed only to your contacts), your occupation, your location, a list of Links, a photo and a short description. They are embedded as iframes in pages that showcase user-generated content (personalized maps, shared bookmarks).

Yahoo had announced earlier that part of its new strategy was to provide a social network encompassing all its services. It seems that in many ways Google is also looking to do a similar thing with its services.

See full article.

Related Entries:

Google Malware Warning Could Hit Your Web Search - 27 February 2007

Google patent profiles gamers, can build psychological profile - 21 May 2007

Copying Other Profiles - 22 February 2008

Five Steps to Create a Great Online Dating Profile - 21 May 2008

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The Semantic Web is a grand initiative to make the whole of the Internet machine readable. At the Web 3.0 conference & Expo the discussions were more in tune with how Semantic web would be profitable

Advertising is the main source of income for services on the web and one aim of Semantic Web enthusiasts would be to make advertising more relevant and context based. Its no surprise that most users of the web find advertisements annoying and would love to have their services ad-free. The aim of the Semantic Web could be to bridge that gap between acceptance to annoyance.

Making content more understandable to machines makes it better to crunch more information that could ultimately help in pushing more relevant ads.

An Excerpt from InternetNews

Google is best known as the world's biggest Search Engine, but it wouldn't have achieved anywhere near it's level of success without its keyword advertising system that delivers relevant, contextual text ads next to search results, while providing a steady revenue stream. Amiad Solomon, CEO of Peer39, a developer of Semantic advertising services, said advertising will also be key to driving Web 3.0's growth.

See full article.

Related Entries:

True.com Targeted Advertising; Signs Oxygen Media as Advertiser - 19 March 2005

Getting Cheap Advertising for your Business - 07 September 2006

Ask.com to introduce Contextual Advertising Product - 25 April 2007

Gorgeous Girl Teaches Advertising - 18 June 2007

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Sometimes you’re just better off not knowing. Maybe one of those times is when someone unfollows you on the microblogging service Twitter, but now there’s a service for the morbidly curious. It’s called Qwitter, and it’ll send you an email notification whenever your account loses a follower.

Qwitter doesn’t need a password or a confirmation. Just put in your twitter name and your email address, and you’re all set. You’ll start getting messages when people unfollow you, including the latest tweet you’d posted before they pulled the plug. It doesn’t work retroactively, so if you were hoping to figure out who’s already unfollowed you, you’ll still have to do that by hand. In case you have second thoughts about signing up for bad news, there’s an unsubscribe link in each Qwitter email.
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Many people will do anything do get on Google’s first result page. That’s why some webmasters regularly come up with new spam methods to get on Google’s first result page. Here are two new methods that people use to get high rankings on Google.

Filed under: Utilities, Social Software

If you’re an obsessive Twitter user, you probably notice when someone stops following you. How do you figure out who it is, though? It can be tough, especially if you have a lot of followers. Well, now there’s FriendOrFollow, a site that tells you who’s not following you back, and who you’re not following.

FriendOrFollow is handy for discovering new folks to follow, adding people you might have forgotten, and dropping people (if you’re the type to ditch those who don’t reciprocate.) FriendOrFollow is a lot like another service that’s been around for a whie, Twitter Karma, but it’s faster and more reliable. Since there’s been more than one attempt to implement this functionality, there must be some kind of demand for it. Perhaps one day you’ll see it built into Twitter.
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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

There are a lot of advantages to using the name username for all your online services. It’s easier to remember, and friends can find you more easily. If you’re someone who’s in this habit, you might want to take a look at Usernamecheck, a site that tells you which sites your favorite username is registered at.

Usernamecheck scans 60+ different networks, from 12seconds to Zooomr, and tells you if your name is taken. The sites on the list are some of the best, most useful places to have an account, so it might remind you of something you’ve been meaning to sign up for. Or, if you’re an Internet addict like me, it might remind you of sites you signed up for and forgot about. Either way, it’s worth a look.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Glue is a browser add-on for people who consume movies, books and music online. It keeps track of what you’re browsing on sites like Amazon and IMDB, and lets you enter your comments about each item you’re browsing, and see what your friends thought about it. The name “Glue” makes a lot of sense, because it sticks together info from multiple sites for each product. If a friend reviewed a movie on Amazon, and you’re looking at it on Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll still be able to see their comments.

Glue also integrates with other social networking sites in interesting ways. You can link your Twitter page to Glue, and your profile will show up in the Glue Topbar when other users visit it. The Glue Topbar would be sort of annoying if it were always on, so it’s fortunate that you can click to hide or show it when you’re not on a Glue-enabled site. Even if a site doesn’t have special Glue features, though, you can still mark it as a favorite or leave a review of it.

So far, I think Glue is on the right track. The number of sites we use to keep track of the stuff we like is getting to be unmanageable, and a browser plugin is a smart way to aggregate all that information. As long as Glue doesn’t go overboard with the potential to inject advertising into the system — there’s none right now — it could catch on quickly.

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Filed under: Audio, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

There are plenty of ways to share music, but most of them are slow or have clunky interfaces. SoundCloud aims to be the first player in the market to catch on in a big way, by making things easy for its users. Soundcloud works like an inbox, so new songs come in from your friends (or from artists and record labels) and you can handle them all in one convenient place. You can also put a dropbox on any site (including MySpace, Facebook, and your blog) where people can click to send you a track.

I love the idea of being able to play incoming tracks selectively before downloading them, and also the idea of letting them stream as one big playlist. Sending music looks to be just as easy. You can send to an email address or another SoundCloud account, and the result looks a heck of a lot better than MySpace Music. Also, there are no file size limits!

If you’re a musician, SoundCloud looks like a good place to post your new tracks. Each song gets its own URL and its own privacy settings, so you can decide who’s allowed to listen to or download it. Create Digital Music says SoundCloud could be the Flickr of music, and after testing it out, I’m inclined to agree.

[via Create Digital Music]
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Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Social Software, Browsers

If you’ve been waiting for a browser than natively supports location-based services, here’s your first taste. Firefox 3.1 is all set to include geolocation based on a new WC3 standard, but you can test it out now with a Firefox add-on called Geode, from Mozilla Labs. Geode lets websites request your location the same way they request to install add-ons or open blocked popups. The possibilities for this technology are immense — mobile devices are already taking advantage of it, so why not laptops?

The first services to be compatible with Geode are the social network Pownce, Yahoo!’s location-management product Fire Eagle, and a demo food finder from Mozilla. Geode gets your location via wifi, using Skyhook’s Loki technology, and you can pass it to a website as a city, a neighborhood, or an exact location. I’m looking forward to seeing the other uses developers come up with for this technology before it goes mainstream in the next version of Firefox.
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The concept of Wikipedia when applied to Search does make sense, but add in the fact that you have a whole business domain around search rankings and the results are difficult to guess. In its attempt to make the choice of community shape a Search Engine, Wikia announced the Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions.

An excerpt from BusinessWeek

How would WISEApps work? The Washington Post WISEApp, for instance, lets people who type in “Barack Obama” or “John McCain” get Post news stories directly on the Wikia Search results page. Or if you search “JFK to LAX,” the travel search service Kayak.com will provide a small search box near the top of the results that show a list of fares between New York City and Los Angeles. Other Web publisher partners include AccuWeather.com, the user-driven news aggregation site Digg, and news service Thomson Reuters, among others.

The concept is based on the fact that ultimately its the choice of users that would weigh in the rankings of results and spammers would not have a long term impact. The model has been successful across Wikipedia. But in search, there is little tolerance towards inapt results.

See full article.

Related Entries:

Danny Sullivan, to launch Search Engine Land - 22 November 2006

Search Wikia-Projekt: Mehr Transparenz - 30 Dezember 2006

Wikia Search 确认于周一上线 Alpha 测试版 - 04 一月 2008

Wikia Search Alpha 测试版上线 - 07 一月 2008

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Search Engine Optimization is not about getting as much traffic as possible. It’s about getting the right kind of website traffic. Sometimes, less traffic can be better. This week, we’re showing you that your sales can increase if your website gets less traffic. If you optimize your web pages correctly, you can multiply your revenue without working more.