Emotions are everywhere you look on the Web. They're bursting from blogs, coursing through comments, and flooding forums the world over. An with the rise of microblogging apps like Twitter and Tumblr, more people are wearing their hearts on their homepages, so to speak, than ever before. But on the whole is the Internet happy or sad, thoughtful or apathetic, aggravated or relaxed?
There are, of course, ways to tell. So with that in mind, we thought it was high time we brought you a list of the best places you can go to see how the world is feeling (the headline text for each app is a link to it). We're just touchy-feely like that...
last100 has the scoop on the rebirth of the open source Internet TV application as Miro:
Miro (formerly known as Democracy Player) is an open-source Internet TV application that combines a media player and library, content guide, video search engine, as well as podcast and BitTorrent clients. Developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, Miro aims to make online video “as easy as watching TV”, while at the same time ensuring that the new medium remains accessible to everyone, through its support for open standards. Described by some as the “Firefox of media apps”, the resulting effort is a slick looking and easy-to-use application — not a mean feat when dealing in open-source methodology — that gives Apple’s iTunes (the default media player and video podcast client for many) a genuine run for its money.
This list is a group of companies we wish would just
go away. Their basis is controversial to say the least. Recently, Wired published
an article Exploring The Dark Side of Crowdsourcing, which shined light on
some shady startups. The article discussed the potential downfalls of social
media and web 2.0, or at least the seedier activities - e.g. black markets for
social news votes, or fake commercial comments on blogs. Usually the intentions of these
companies are not in the best interest of ordinary Internet users. Let's check them
out... and btw we are using the 'nofollow' link attribute so these companies don't get
any further search engine juice!
In
our introductory post on Citizen Journalism (CJ), we reviewed Newsvine - an
innovative and well-designed citizen journalism web site. In this post we'll review two
examples of 'localized' CJ: Buffalo Rising (Buffalo, New York) and PerthNorg (Perth, West
Australia). A note for our Canadian readers: NowPublic is coming in a future post :-)
Buffalo Rising is a colorful CJ site run by a company called Hyperlocal Media. Their motto is "Local matters", which tells you a lot about their focus. Buffalo Rising is described as using "hyperlocal content produced by a team of contributors to market the city to itself--to remind people why they live there." They cover Buffalo, the second largest city in New York - which has a population of 250,000. Buffalo Rising has 7,000 registered users, they get a little over 24,000 visits every weekday and serve 250,000+ pages/weekday. Since their redesign in February, Buffalo Rising has had around 10% month over month growth.
The good news for Google keeps coming from comScore. Yesterday, comScore revealed that despite a slight dip in search marketshare in June, Google's lead over second place Yahoo! in the search engine wars remained virtually unchanged (Microsoft was the only search gainer for the month among the top 5). Today, the metrics firm released numbers showing just how thoroughly Google is dominating the online video space.
In May 2007, Google sites (primarily YouTube) streamed nearly 1.8 billion videos, good for 21.5% of the US market. Their next closes competitor, Fox Interactive (primarily MySpace Video) streamed just 680 million -- or 8.1% of the US market.
Today I'll be taking a look at the top 10 Facebook applications that are all about play. These apps are all about fun, and will probably waste time when you should be working. But, hey, we all need to to have a little fun. This is a completely subjective list, so not everyone will agree with our picks and I encourage you to debate them in the comments.
This post is the second part of a 5-part series that will identify the top 50 Facebook apps (10 each in 5 categories). If you missed Part 1, which deals with applications that have to do with work, check it out.
When Facebook announced their "open
platform" in May 2007, it suddenly became all the rage. Third party web app
developers rushed to integrate their apps into this increasingly popular social network
platform - and who could blame them? It makes sense for startups to have a presence on a
platform that has tens of millions of users. Plus, Facebook promised a more open
experience than its arch-rival, the Rupert Murdoch-owned MySpace. As Facebook Founder and
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the F8
launch in May, "at Facebook, we're pushing to make the world a more open place".
But how open is Facebook, really? Turns out, not that much.
I noticed a small, but perhaps significant, change in Facebook tonight. Usually when you add more friends to your Facebook account, you need to land on 3 separate pages for each friend: 1) the Requests page; 2) a Request Confirmation/Skip This Step page (I always click 'Skip This Step'), and finally 3) back to the confirmation page. Three page views for each friend added.
But tonight I noticed that the 2nd step has been Ajaxified - meaning you no longer need to land on a Request Confirmation/Skip This Step page. Instead it is an Ajax pop-up. Now, math has never been my strong point -- but doesn't this mean that the normal 3-page process has been whittled down to 1 page? Won't that play havoc with Facebook's precious page views? Weeell, maybe Facebook has realised that the Tyranny of the Page View is over.
Look Ma, no page view!
Pownce is the hot new kid on the social networking block. Digg's Kevin Rose is involved and that has been enough to generate considerable buzz, but is it deserved?
Pownce is self-described as 'a way to send stuff to your friends.' You can send links, files, events and messages, each as a distinct type. The messages functionality has prompted comparisons to Twitter, but this is no presence/status application. It may be a micro-blogging app in a sense, and some people are using it as such for now, but the lack of automatic line break formatting discourages lengthy posts - they simply become unreadable. As usage evolves, messages are more likely to be used for questions to groups of friends since replies are threaded.
According to
Apple Insider, just a year ago Apple's share of the computer market was close to 2%. Now MacWorld
and CNet are reporting that
- according to NDP research - Apple's Desktops have crossed 10% and the MacBooks now
closing on 15% of the laptop market. This puts MacBooks in 4th place behind HP, Toshiba
and Gateway. The figures are likely to increase in the 3rd quarter, which is
traditionally strong for Apple, because of the back-to-school sales.
The above stats are backed up by my own experiences. When I walked into the BestBuy store recently, something was very different. It took me a second to realize that among the usual scenery, I was also looking at a big section featuring Macs. So Apple is back with a vengeance and has re-ignited the PC war. Despite dropping the word computer from its name, Apple still desperately wants to win the PC market.
