impl.emented» social networks http://impl.emented.com — tracking the Web Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:12:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Google in the Limelight with Chrome and Android [Best of August '08 #3-4] http://impl.emented.com/2008/09/02/google-in-the-limelight-with-chrome-and-android/ http://impl.emented.com/2008/09/02/google-in-the-limelight-with-chrome-and-android/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:30:53 +0000 Jonas Bolinder http://impl.emented.com/?p=49 This week's compilation of interesting posts actually covers the past two weeks, due to lack of blogging time for me last week. Unfortunately, this might happen more times this fall, which seems to be busy for me, with near full-time of consulting. However, you may always check out my Google Reader Shared Items, which contain a few more items not making it to my weekly list. The shared items also appear on my FriendFeed account.

  • The greatest news this week (and perhaps this year) is of course Google's launch of the browser Chrome. The news broke while I was finishing the list below, and it puts some of the items in a different perspective, particularly the one about the launch of IE8 beta 2 below.
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  • Last month, I wrote about some troubles for Google's Android mobile platform. These problems seem now to be history, with the release of a new 0.9 version of the SDK, which is expected to be quite similar to the 1.0 version running on the first phones. Google is now also improving on the communication side, with the release of a developer roadmap, which promises a 1.0 SDK release and retail phones by Q4 this year. Actually, there are already rumors floating about an Android phone by HTC, the "Dream", slated for November 10th.
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  • Marshall Kirkpatrick writes about feed.informer, formerly known as Feed Digest, a web service for mashing, filtering and publishing RSS feeds. As mentioned by Marshall, the site has some faults. For example, I found that the link to the Docs & FAQs page is broken. Another provider of similar services is Yahoo Pipes. For self hosting, the PHP RSS library SimplePie provides detailed functionality for parsing feeds, though there seems to be no built-in functionality for keyword filtering. SimplePie on this page compare themselves to a few competing libraries.
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  • From the JavaScript/Firefox department there were reports on progress in improving the JavaScript execution speed in Firefox, leveraging a technique known as tracing optimization, hence the project code name Tracemonkey. Ars explains the basic idea behind tracing:

    The tracing mechanism records the path of execution at runtime and generates compiled code that can be used next time that a particular path is reached. This makes it possible to flatten out loops and nested method calls into a linear stream of instructions that is more conducive to conventional optimization techniques.

    The goal is to achieve execution speed comparable to native code, taking JavaScript performance into "the next tier", and "redefining the boundaries of client-side performance." Wonder how this improvement compares to Google Chrome's new V8 JavaScript Engine?
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  • Internet Explorer 8 is getting closer to official, with a Beta 2 release just being announced. It's a massive makeover according to Ed Bott, with improvements in usability, privacy, standards compliance and new features like Accelerators, which are kind of smart shortcuts that perform a task, e.g. search, on selected text, and Web Slices, which provide a kind of subscription to a part of a web page that updates frequently. It's up to the developer to slice-enable particular web pages, by adding appropriate markup. The standards compliance is of course exciting, and it will eventually make the life easier for developers. Though it will take several years, with about one third of web surfers still using IE6.
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  • BackType is a new comment aggregation service, liked a lot by Michael Arrington. Comments are automatically collected around the web, and can be searched for based on people or subject. You claim your comments by creating a profile and indicating which url you use when commenting. This is my profile. I think it's a nice idea, with an open approach. Blogs can keep their comment system of choice, and still being included. No need for JavaScript solutions à la Disqus (my profile), for example.
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  • Fred Wilson suggests that social sites start using the concept of neighbors, which are automatically discovered people with similar interests like you, instead of relying on so-called friends or followers and the habit of befriending or follow people. Seems like a practical idea to me, not having to manually look for friends, but have them automatically suggested.
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  • Marshall Kirkpatrick explains the concept of embargoes in blogging and why it generally is a better idea than exclusives. An embargo works as an agreement between bloggers and a company not to write about a new product or service until a specific time. This has several advantages, such as a broader and deeper coverage from multiple perspectives.
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]]> http://impl.emented.com/2008/09/02/google-in-the-limelight-with-chrome-and-android/feed/ 0 News and Noise [Best of May '08 #3] http://impl.emented.com/2008/05/19/news-and-noise/ http://impl.emented.com/2008/05/19/news-and-noise/#comments Mon, 19 May 2008 21:15:23 +0000 Jonas Bolinder http://impl.emented.com/?p=32 This week turned out interestingly too (May 12-18 2008):

  • Robert Scoble has been blogging actively recently, and has an interesting post about news and noise. As he says: "The news is in the noise," which makes places like Twitter and FriendFeed interesting for the makers of news. The news items appearing on Google News and Techmeme are filtered out of the noise, which makes these news sites essentially noise free, and in some sense less interesting. Google News only tracks large well-known sites with multiple editors, which further reduces the noise, and also blocks individual bloggers from being covered. Getting on Techmeme is still feasible for an unestablished individual blogger, but it requires several "votes" by elite bloggers, as Scoble explains. On Techmeme's item selection process, Robert writes:

    TechMeme: watches signaling from key members on Twitter and Google Reader. If enough people who are on the TechMeme Leaderboard Twitter and share an item on Google Reader you’ll see the item pulled onto the page.

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  • Calais, the semantic markup service, is out with an improved version that recognizes terms from areas other than business, like media, music, entertainment, sports, medicine and healthcare. Calais also announced the release of WordPress and Drupal plugins.
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  • Robert Scoble also has a recent post stating 9 reasons why FriendFeed won't go mainstream, a few of them being: "Normal people don’t like noise", "FriendFeed doesn’t work well on mobile phones", and "Comments get fragmented, even inside FriendFeed." Honestly, Robert in a companion post states 9 reasons why FriendFeed will go main stream.
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  • The OStatic blog, one of my recent subscribes, tips about the Google Doctype project, an "open encyclopedia and reference library for developers of web applications", with resources on Web security, DOM manipulation, CSS and more.
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  • Yahoo! Search's open platform SearchMonkey is released to developers and site owners. Developers are allowed to create small applications that enhance the info about the URLs returned from a Yahoo search (but are not allowed to reorder the search results). The applications trigger on the returned search URL, e.g. I could build an application that enhance the search results from this domain (http://impl.emented.com). The structured data available to developers for enhancing the results come from core and semantic data gathered by the Yahoo crawler (called Slurp), special data feeds submitted by site owners to Yahoo and custom data services that you could create yourself.

    Once developed, the applications are to be used by people searching the web with Yahoo Search. Obviously, an application that only triggers for a site which seldom show up the search results, will have difficulties to attract users.

    Site owners are allowed to contribute with structured data about their site in a few different ways: By submitting Atom feeds to Yahoo, by using semantic markup or by creating custom web services.

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  • Google Friend Connect was released this week, and caused some controversy about what the service really is. For example, Marc Andreessen thinks it is not a competitor to Ning, but "a mechanism that provides the embedding capability for Open Social gadgets to be used all throughout the web -- with the added benefit that with a Friend Connect-enabled Open Social gadget, the user gets her social context anywhere she goes." Robert Scoble on the other hand thought that Friend Connect could be a competitor of Ning. The Friend Connect site says that the service provides "a core set of social gadgets such as member management, message board, reviews, and picture-sharing." The member gadget is said to provide core social features for the site, like sign-in, invite and activity showing to other social networks, member browsing across social networks, and on-site friend connect. A site owner can also easily add OpenSocial applications to the site.

    Thus, an existing site can easily be socially enabled, and as such potentially compete with a Ning social network aimed at the same audience. Also, someone considering to start a new social network now has the choice of building an own site and using Friend Connect, instead of using Ning. Building an own site is of course somewhat more complicated, but it gives a much greater degree of control. So, in conclusion I think that Friend Connect could compete with some of Ning's audience, and also provide an alternative for some social network builders. Note that for really serious social network builders interesting in implementing OpenSocial, there is still the option of using Shindig.

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  • Jeff Atwood criticizes the frequent use of XML, due to its verbosity and poor human readability. Alternatives could be YAML or JSON.
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  • RSSmeme, an aggregator for Google Reader shared items, has released an API, which makes it possible to get all kinds of specialized feeds out of the service.
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]]> http://impl.emented.com/2008/05/19/news-and-noise/feed/ 0 Authentication, Social Network Trends and IE8 [Best of March '08 #1] http://impl.emented.com/2008/03/09/authentication-social-network-trends-and-ie8/ http://impl.emented.com/2008/03/09/authentication-social-network-trends-and-ie8/#comments Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:44:20 +0000 Jonas Bolinder http://impl.emented.com/2008/03/09/authentication-social-network-trends-and-ie8/ Interesting posts this week (March 1-9th 2008):

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