Google Friend Connect is a way for web site owners to bring social features like comments or media sharing to any site on the Internet. Today, Google announced that it is also adding support for Twitter to Friend Connect. Now, when you join a 'Friend Connected' site, you get the option to connect your Twitter and Google accounts. This allows you to discover all your Twitter friends who are also members of this site.
When you visit a web site how do you know you're getting the best experience for you? That's the question the new Firefox add-on App Discover aims to solve. Once installed, the app could alert you if there were any enhancements (Greasemonkey, Firefox add-ons) or applications (Adobe AIR, Appcelerator Titanium, Fluid, Mozilla Prism) that work with the web site you're visiting.
OpenX, an open source ad server for web publishers, released statistics today to show its strong recent growth - especially in the last 6 months. We interviewed the CEO of OpenX, Tim Cadogan, about the data. We also wanted to know how OpenX compares with Google's competitor Ad Manager, and we discovered how exactly OpenX will make money.
According to OpenX, as of December 2008 more than 300 billion ad impressions now run through its software every month. Its core product is still the open source OpenX Ad Server - version 2.6 was launched August 2008 and included a new API. This product has had more than 10,000 active downloads and is getting a 25 billion monthly ad impression run rate.
If you're a big SMS user, you've no doubt encountered this situation: you're sitting at your desk in front of your computer, you get an SMS message, you pick up your phone and respond. The conversation continues as you hack away on your handset keyboard, making typos and resorting to l33t speak to convey your message. All the while, a full-size keyboard - and possibly far fewer typos - sits inches away.
Now, you may have the option to rectify that situation with a new Gmail Labs feature that adds SMS messaging to Gmail chat.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal today, Google has approached major broadband providers in an attempt to get a "fast lane" for its content over the Internet.
If true, the Father of the Internet, Vint Cerf may be reconsidering his views on net neutrality given his statement of three years ago that "a lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive."
Users of Microsoft Office on the Mac may be a little dubious of trying any other applications that Microsoft releases for Apple platforms. But the first Microsoft app released for the iPhone may be a different story. Meet Seadragon, an app that allows users to quickly zoom into extremely high resolution - "giga-pixel" - images.
Get your "pinch" technique ready. With Seadragon, you're going to have the opportunity to zoom into art, historical images, maps, NASA images, and more.
Two years ago, HopeLab released Re-Mission, a shoot 'em up game with a difference in an attempt to help cancer afflicted teenagers stick to their medication. This past August, clinical evidence was published in the medical journal Pediatrics showing the game is a success.
HopeLab, a nonprofit organization founded by Pam Omidyar, was named one of Fast Company magazine's 2009 Social Enterprises of the Year this month for its efforts in improving the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness.
Earlier this month we noted that Barack Obama's Presidential transition site Change.gov had added OpenID login for commenters and that the site had traded the traditional copyright for the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Last week, the iPhone app for Change.gov was added to Apple's Web apps page, thanks to the Creative Commons license.
A report on Reuters claims that 2008 was a breakthrough year for radio on the Web, with a proliferation of new web and mobile apps for radio. The report states that Clear Channel has "long led the way" with innovative Web programing such as its "Stripped" concert series and "New" artist spotlight program, but also big companies such as CBS and AOL have contributed to the growth in online radio.
We think it's CBS Radio and not Clear Channel which has made the biggest strides. CBS' partnerships with AOL and Yahoo!, along with its ownership of trendy online radio app last.fm, have effectively made CBS Radio the most powerful force in Internet radio in 2008.
It is quite a remarkable feeling to watch as the pieces fall into place and the picture, anticipated for so long, is finally revealed in all its splendour. As with any jigsaw that lacked a guiding picture on the box, the final result is that inevitable mix of vindication and surprise. Some areas of the picture are wholly unexpected, some look as one predicted, while across most of the image there are new facets to explore in familiar places, anticipated scenes to compare with long-held expectations, and assumptions to challenge or validate.
