:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Friday, May 29, 2009 ::

Google Wave

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.
"Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved."

Looks fascinating. I wonder if there are any plans to add media (audio/video) editing capability? That would be very handy.

Labels: Google, web 2.0

:: Dan 29.5.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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There is a pattern to my blogging here that shows that every time I buy an actual hard copy of a newspaper I blog about half a dozen stories out of it I may otherwise never have stumbled upon. This is no exception, here are my picks from Thursday's Guardian:

British therapists still offer treatments to 'cure' homosexuality
"Survey suggests a significant minority of mental health professionals continue to provide treatments to gay men and lesbians despite no evidence they can change orientation and concerns they are harmful...One counsellor who is a member of the British Psychological Society said: "Although homosexual feelings are usual in people, their physical expression, and being a person's only way of having sexual relations is problematic. The physical act for male homosexuals is physically damaging and is the main reason in this country for Aids/HIV. It is also perverse.""
This is outrageous. It can be criticised, if not demolished, from so many different angles I don't think I need to point that out. It's like a throw back to the 50s, when our society lost great minds like Turing because of it's backwards treatment of sexuality. From some of the quotes in the article there are, to me, some scary signs of counsellors forcing their personal (probably 2000 year old religious based beliefs) on people. These practitioners should not be allowed to "help" people again.

Are women doing better or worse in IT since Ada Lovelace?

Why not let the security services spy on Twitter? It's not like they'll learn anything from it

Getty Images now licensing hand-picked Flickr photos

Google's would be watchdogs are distracted by its chew toys

Vintage sound chips? They are music to my ears
Chip tunes goes mainstream?

E-government survey urges councils to free data

"Never mind the recession - Lego is now so popular that there are 62 little coloured blocks for every person on the planet. Yet only five years ago this family business was on the brink of ruin. Jon Henley reports from the Danish town where it all began"

Labels: Electronic Music, Feminism, Flickr, gay, Google, IT, Lego, News, Photography, Politics, Retro, Secuirty, web 2.0

:: Dan 28.3.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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FoxyTunes - Yahoo! Media Player

"The latest version of FoxyTunes automatically detects web pages that have music on them, allows playing this music right there on the page with the Yahoo! Media Player, and conveniently control it from FoxyTunes."

Labels: Software, web 2.0

:: Dan 10.3.09 [Arc] [2 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader."

Kevin Kelly: The Next 5,000 Days of the Web
"At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?"

Dan Dennett: Can we know our own minds?
"Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us."

Deborah Gordon: How do ants know what to do?
"With a dusty backhoe, a handful of Japanese paint markers and a few students in tow, Deborah Gordon digs up ant colonies in the Arizona desert in search of keys to understanding complex systems."

Labels: ants, Ecology, philosophy, science, web 2.0, web 3.0

:: Dan 7.12.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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SIT ON MYSPACE
Originally uploaded by acb.


A Forum Conversation about MySpace and possible alternatives gave me leave to consider its benefits and the difficulties in competing with it. My thoughts were as follows:

MySpace is an irritating rash of groin fungus and it's not going away, you just have to live with it.

What it allows you to do, networking wise, is essential in these super connected days. It's unfortunate that it is owned by a cock, is difficult to control and is over run with ads and spam. But despite that there's just no way any alternative is going to get off the ground without the user base.

An alternative networking system, should one ever have a chance of replacing it, would have to overcome all of these problems. To do that it would need the following:

1. Less intrusive advertising in a free version (cf Google AdSense) and no advertising at all in a paid for premium version.

2. Better user control and configuration, ability to embed into an existing site through scripting or use the systems own servers (cf Blogger)

3. Open API (Application Programming Interface) for integration across sites (cf Google, Flickr etc). Basically it needs to embrace Web2.0

4. Huge user base. The only way I can see this happening is if the API is good enough to allow existing myspace / google / blogger / flickr / yahoo / msn etc users to integrate all of their accounts in someway, rather than try to build a new user base from scratch.

If you are capable of providing this, please get coding. (Although I assume someone is doing it somewhere already.)

Labels: myspace, SocialNetworking, web 2.0

:: Dan 28.3.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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