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digsby (which now starts with windows on my notebook) is available to all. Hurrah.
There’s a new information gathering resource called Twine that makes use of something called the semantic web. The semantic web is “about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources” and “language for recording how the data relates to real world objects.” In other words, as far as I understand it which is very little right now, the semantic web seems to be a way of threading together information, places, objects and people via the ideas (not just the data) they share in common. If that sounds nebulous to you it’s probably because it’s nebulous to me.
Twine is part database, part bookmark and link aggregator, part social network, part news discovery, and part forum… and probably a few other things as well.
A while back, TechCrunch wrote about it. They said that once you give Twine whatever information you want, it then
applies a semantic analysis to it that creates tags for each document or video or photo. The tags match up to concepts that Twine’s algorithms associate with each piece of content, regardless of whether that concept is specifically mentioned in the Web page or other content being tagged. For example, you might bookmark this post and Twine would create tags for all the people mentioned in it (Nova Spivack, Paul Allen, Peter Rip, and Ron Conway). It would also create tags for the organizations related to the post, such as Radar Networks and DARPA, but also Paul Allen’s venture firm Vulcan Capital—even if Vulcan was never mentioned in the post.
Or, in other words,
Twine is putting structure onto all of this unstructured data that is out there by analyzing it and adding tags to it that are connected together.
Well, that sounded neat to me so I immediately sent an email to Twine asking to be invited to the beta group. I waited, and waited, and then…
I waited some more.
Finally, yesterday, I gave up, unpinned the TechCrunch article from my bloglines viewer and sighed. An hour or so later the beta invite arrived. So now I’ve been playing with this thing and it’s cool. It’s also very unfinished. Probably the most popular thread, or twine as they’re called, is the titled Feedback, Suggestions, Questions, Comments. What’s nifty about this is that the users seem genuinely interested in making twine a completely rock your world kind of place.
I was not surprised at all to find that Clive Thompson is a twiner, and I see that he’s preparing an article on the service which I’ll be very interested to read.
I haven’t linked to Twine.com directly because you wouldn’t see anything but a page that tells you it’s in private beta. But I will give a link to the about page from which you can ask for an invite if you’re so inclined.
This is interesting. I’ll have to remember to check myself next time I head for my inbox.
Stone noticed recently that whenever she sat down to check email, she began, quite unconciously, to hold her breath. Then she noticed that other people were doing it, too:
“I observed others on computers and BlackBerries: in their offices, their homes, at cafes. The vast majority of people held their breath, or breathed very shallowly…”
:-0
Digsby appeared on my radar screen yesterday via a Venture Beat article. It’s a desktop app that tracks email, chat, and social networking sites in an AIM style window. After reading the article I immediately downloaded the software and sent Digsby an email asking to please, please, please let me be a part of the private beta. A response came back within minutes from Melanie with an access code. She asked that I give it a mention if I liked it. I do so I am.
Digsby is cool but only if you have multiple accounts for it to keep track of, for example, a gmail account, a comcast email account, a gTalk account, and a Facebook account. I also have an Orkut account that I don’t really use and an Utterz account. It doesn’t appear that Digsby tracks either of these things… yet. Give ’em time, it’s still in beta.
An Ars Technica article, which I somehow failed to notice when it was first published, gives an in depth review of Digsby. Check it out if you want the full scoop. I’ll just point out the interface and one other cool feature using a couple of screenshots.
Below is a shot of the digsby window (upper right) riding overtop my facebook profile in a firefox tab. You can’t see the cursor in the screenshot, but it was placed over the facebook icon at the bottom of the digsby window. Placing your cursor on one of your accounts produces a pop out with the list of current items for that utility. As you can see, my facebook status and feed appear to the left of the digsby buddy list. This is almost identical to what you would have with AIM, but with email and social networking added on.
Beneath the browser window, the taskbar also sports a couple of digsby related items.
Here’s a larger image: 
The facebook and gmail icons are produced by digsby, and the little green guy with the cap is the digsby mascot. I’m not sure of his name. Digsby, I guess. Anyway, the gmail icon shows the number of unread items. The facebook icon would be showing the number of alerts but I had none at the time.
Right now digsby tracks any email you specify (but read the ARS article for caveats), gTalk, AIM and a few other chat IM utilities, plus facebook and myspace. Hopefully utterz will be added at some point. For now Digsby is Windows only.
Digsby is well thought out and I look forward to seeing how Melanie and her peepz develop it.
Lately, as this year’s changes draw ever nigher, I’ve been thinking that I’d better get on the networking stick. So I’ve beefed up my online resume and added a few connections to my LinkedIn profile. And I did something else. Something that was simply unthinkable for me until about five days ago. I created a facebook acccount.
shock, horror, and all like that.
So far, I have to tell you, I’m underwhelmed. Maybe that’s because I really don’t know how to use it or what it’s all about. I have a few friends over there, though they’re mostly people who have been actual friends for years. And I can’t really provide you with a link to my facebook profile because, unless you’re one of my facebook friends, you can’t even see it. It’s kind of odd. So if you’re already on facebook you can search for me and invite me to be your friend and I can respond and then we can see each other’s profile [does this sound surreal to anyone besides me?].
Perhaps it should instead be called faceclique.
:-]
I’m a Starbucks fanboy and I don’t care who knows it. One of the reasons, besides their coffee, is that they are, in my experience, consistently one of the most customer friendly companies. I find this to be true across all industries (at least industries that I personally have contact with as a customer).
But I’ve been perplexed for a couple of years now at their distinctly unfriendly insistence on having fee-fi in their stores. And almost everyone with any kind of internet addiction need has been wondering the same thing.
All that changed today, as you probably already know.
S$ has finally (finally!) announced free-fi in its stores. But it’s not free-fi for everyone, and I think even this is a good thing.
According to the only posts I’ve read on the subject, you can only get wifi for free at starbucks if…
- You have a S$ card (just a regular, free one that you pick up in the store)
- You need to buy something with it
- You limit your time to 2 hours/day*.
I see a lot of wisdom in this policy. First, it rewards S$ cardholders. Will it prompt people to get a free Starbucks card and load it up? Probably, and that’s also fine by me. It just means that everybody and their brother won’t be taking up bandwidth. I’m also down with the purchase requirement. I never go into a free-fi coffeehouse and use their signal without buying something. It’s just the right thing to do. I don’t mind if those places offer free wifi with no stated purchase requirement, but it’s probably smarter to make people buy something. Finally, the two hour thing. I have to read up a bit more on the details so I don’t know if another purchase on your card gets you an additional 2 hours, but it doesn’t matter. I think enough people are now going to find their way back to Starbucks from places like Panera that the 2 hour/day limitation might be a good thing.
This won’t make me a less loyal customer at either of my two local haunts: Churchill or Java’s Brewin’, but it will make me much more likely to forego Panera when I’m out of town. Their coffee sucks!
Yay Big Green!
Long ago, I instigated a conversation about tipping servers in restaurants. This is also about tips, but of a different sort.
Tonight, TechCrunch is showing love for tipjoy, which styles itself a better way to do online tipping for your website.
I’m not considering adding a tip jar to my site, mostly because I just don’t feel like it but also because it would then obligate me to write stuff that’s actually, you know, worth reading.
Anyway, I know some of you have tipping mechanisms at your online cribs. How well do they work?
Google comes out with guns blazing on the web hype du moment, Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Yahoo.
My take on that possible deal is pretty much the same as Eric’s: yawn. But another web player that’s nearly as important as the Fire Ant Gazette, namely Google, apparently isn’t taking the news lying down, as Ars Technica reports.
It isn’t an understatement to say that Google apparently opposes this deal. Going for the jugular, Google’s Drummond instantly suggests that the Redmond giant could (would?) use unsavory tactics for unfair advantage, ultimately harming the Internet and the very open and innovative environment that’s driving it.
What exactly did Google say? The first official statement about the proposed deal comes from David Drummond, who writes,
Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
His then lists the things he thinks we should be concerned about. Things like, Microsoft wielding inappropriate power over the web, establishment of proprietary monopolies online (not just in the PC/software/peripherals market), Microsoft being able to limit access to information sharing and gathering through email, etc…
Drummond closes by saying that Google
take[s] Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first — and should come first — as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.*
Woah, boy! Easy now, e-z! When this deal falls through because it’s rejected by the FTC, or because Microsoft finds some other way to foul it up, Drummond’s going to look like he could use some Gatorade.
Meanwhile we might note that his missive is delivered to us via blogger, which is one arm of Google that has amply demonstrated how seriously it takes the interests of its users (and that is why this blog is now on WordPress).
*Incidentally, when did internet become a proper noun?
By way of Avi‘s latest cuppa link latte comes the I-wish-there-were-twice-as-many-pictures post of the day: web 2.0 workspaces. Notice how they’re all relatively open, in fact most of them are wall-less. The interesting exception is linkedin. I mean, I dig the primary colored kiddie furniture but where are the actual people?
Inspired by this, and in spite of willfully forgetting that we journeyed down this road some time ago, and also since my own web workspace has shifted to a 2.0 version, I thought I’d post a picture of the new one. So…
And yes, the pajamas are a necessary part of the whole 2.0 schtick.
Post yours whydontcha!
Thank you WordPress.
Here’s news from the credit where credit is due desk, my gracious hosts announced today that they are upping their free space allocation from 50MB to 3G. That’s right, a factor of 60.
Even TechCrunch thinks this is news.
I switched to WP more than a year ago because it’s free and it works whereas blogger is just free. I’ve not complained to the WP people about their steadfast refusal to allow javascript on their hosted blogs, nor about their super-crappy post editor which almost begs you to use something like Windows Live Writer (which I’ve been using for a year now). And I haven’t complained about their skimpy 50MB space allocation. Why not? Because WP is free and that’s pretty much my only criteria for a blog host. The day I have to pay is the day I start being a former blogger.
I figured they’d give us a bit more space at some point, but I wasn’t counting on a 60 fold increase all at once. So WordPress, you get a star for the day. Seriously, thank you.
Now, about that javascript*…
*just kidding, just kidding!
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