At the same time as Facebook announced their Open Stream API technology, the company also released a desktop application built with Adobe AIR as a way to demonstrate the sorts of things that the new technology makes possible. With the app, you're able to interact with your stream just as you would on Facebook, but without the browser. You can even comment and "like" your friends' stories. But is the new app actually worth installing?
Do you remember Faves.com? Don't feel bad if you shook your head "no." This older social bookmarking site formerly called Blue Dot was built way back in 2005, a couple of years after Delicious came on the scene and at a time when social bookmarking was still a hot new trend. After having raised multiple rounds of funding throughout the years, Faves management finally realized they weren't earning enough money to sustain their team of seven developers. In the fall of 2008, they had to lay off all the full time employees. Only months ago, it seemed as if Faves was on its deathbed - no revenue, no employees - it was sure to fold. But now, just at the last minute, the company received a $75,000 angel investment from Geoff Entress and existing backers, not as much as they had received in the past, but enough for them to get off life support and start planning for the future.
Backboard, a sophisticated online solution for gathering feedback about various types of documents, came out of public beta this morning. Backboard allows users to upload and comment on standard Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, but it also supports most standard graphics formats, including PhotoShop, and gives users the ability to mark up and comment on web pages. Backboard is geared towards a wide range of users, including freelancers as well as enterprise customers, and it is one of the easiest to use feedback and approval systems we have seen in a long time.
You can keep your fusty old venture capital. For our money, you can't beat the Tamagochi-eqsue cuteness of Miro's Code Adoption Program.
Miro is the free, open source, cross-platform online video player that manages queued downloads much like TiVo for the Internet. And although the number of users has tripled to about 1.1 million uniques over the past three months with the release of Miro 2.0, the amount of funds available for nonprofits such as Miro has dramatically dropped. Insert yet another generalization about the crumbling economy here.
It is no secret that Facebook has Twitter envy. The number one social networking site is not content to win over rival MySpace. It is not satisfied being far ahead of Google on the social web. Facebook now has Twitter firmly in its crosshairs.
True, Twitter traffic has gone through the roof. True, Twitter is the new killer app, the new cool kid on the block. And yes, even Oprah now loves Twitter. But does this mean Facebook should be worried? Well, maybe yes, but likely no, because Twitter and Facebook are two very different services.
DataDyne's EpiSurveyor program, funded by the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation, has been implementing mobile technology to track and contain disease in developing nations since 2007.
In a recent and potentially devastating polio outbreak in Kenya, EpiSurveyor's new mobile platform was used to track virus carriers and immunize affected children. The campaign targeted around 2 million Kenyan children. Mobile tech will be used exclusively for new nationwide initiatives in children's healthcare, and the World Health Organization has made EpiSurveyor the standard for data collection in sub-Saharan Africa. Screenshots and video included below.
Google just announced its first foray into making public data searchable and viewable in graph form. The company is starting with population and unemployment data from around the US but promises to make far more data sets searchable in the future. The potential significance of making aggregate data about our world easy to visualize, cross reference and compare can't be overstated.
Most of us understand the world based on stories we've put together from our own lived experience. Another way to understand things is by finding patterns drawn from everyone's experience in aggregate. Journalists often find big patterns and then zoom in to particular life stories that exemplify those general trends but make them easier for us to relate to as individuals. Those stories then help move public opinion in favor of policies that aim to change the general trends. That's just one way that easily searchable public data can be very, very important.
Social networks are becoming a default way for many employees to stay in touch with friends, colleagues, and business associates, but according to a new poll by the anti-virus firm Sophos, 63% of system administrators worry that employees who share too much personal information on social networking sites will put their company's IT infrastructure at risk. A quarter of these businesses also report that they have been the victim of spam, phishing, and malware attacks via sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.
Opera the Browser may not be a household name in the United States, but around the world it's wildly popular and on the company's 15th birthday things are moving in directions the founders may never have expected.
The company marked its big day with an awesome throw-back version of its home page and a press release reminding everyone just how far it's come.
Mozilla today released the latest beta version of Firefox 3.5, which was formerly known as Firefox 3.1. Beta 4 is now available in over 70 different languages, and, compared to the stable version, features improved privacy controls, and support for HTML5 and elements. Since the release of the last beta version, Mozilla has also tweaked its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which now runs a bit faster, and the Firefox team has added geolocation features that allow web apps to customize your browsing experience or search results depending on your location.
