Finally Something Interesting, Google Chrome Frame
Google’s announcement of Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer today may not seem all that momentous. John sums it up what a lot of folks are probably thinking here:
What is Chrome Frame? According to the announcement, it’s an “open source plug-in that brings HTML5 and other open web technologies to Internet Explorer.”
Sounds like John is right [...]
Strange Things are Afoot at the Circle K
So, we had some downtime overnight, not sure anyone noticed.
Rich and I decided to make a couple tweaks to make the blog load faster. I removed Google Friend Connect, which didn’t seem to do much beyond create a static network with some infrequent discussion. I expect future changes to GFC that might be interesting, so [...]
PubSubHubbub: Cool, but Hard to Say
PubSubHubbub, a 20% time project of two Google engineers, Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin, launched a few weeks ago.
In addition to being a tongue-twister, PubSubHubbub is:
A simple, open, server-to-server web-hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol as an extension to Atom (and RSS).
Parties (servers) speaking the PubSubHubbub protocol can get near-instant notifications (via webhook callbacks) when a topic [...]
Facebook Buys FriendFeed
So, I take a couple days off and Facebook buys FriendFeed. A bit ironic considering there hasn’t been much to discuss lately.
Chet cordially invited me to comment on the acquisition, and even though I planned to anyway, let’s just give him credit for being the tipster.
There certainly hasn’t been a shortage of coverage and analysis [...]
Why Don’t People Update Software?
This question applies to personal software more so than IT-supported software.
I understand the complexities involved with taking updates to software that IT is on the hook to support. What I don’t get is why people aren’t more vigilant with their own software, specifically browsers and O/S.
Over the years, updates have become more in-your-face, with good [...]
Everything is a Journey
The year I started with Oracle (1996) was the year the Network Computer (NC) was announced.
The NC was about a decade ahead of its time due to a number of factors, and it’s funny to me that netbooks are the latest rage. The promise of netbooks is essentially the promise of the NC, i.e. an [...]
Measuring Influence and Reputation
The debate about whether FeedBurner’s inclusion of FriendFeed subscribers is a good or bad thing has me thinking how to determine a person’s reputation and influence.
As I keep saying, trust is the key component to New Web. Without trust, it’s difficult to build a community around anything.
Reputation and influence are the next big things in [...]
Browsers Wars on Like Donkey Kong
I saw this post about how to provoke an argument with a geek from Wired on Digg, just as I was formulating this post about the escalating browser wars.
Good timing, since debating which browser is best will undoubtedly start an argument.
Anyway, the release of a developer version of Chrome for the Mac has definitely got [...]
OpenSocial in the Enterprise Session from Google I/O
As promised, Rich’s session from Google I/O has been posted, and I’ve embedded here for your viewing pleasure.
It’s a panel so, if you don’t want to invest the full 60 minutes, you can skip to Rich’s demo, which happens between 13:24 and 20:59.
He gives a quick demo of Connect and shares some OpenSocial gadgets that [...]
Google I/O Sessions Live
Some of the sessions from Google I/O have been posted, including the Wave breakout sessions.
I know one of these conflicted with Rich’s panel session, “OpenSocial in the Enterprise”. Rich was both bummed he had to miss it and worried that after the morning’s rousing keynote, no one would show up for his session.
Although he didn’t [...]
My Thoughts on Wave
Rich dumped his impressions and thoughts on Google Wave yesterday. Now it’s my turn.
In a weird coincidence, I heard Soundgarden’s “My Wave” earlier today and immediately thought of Friend of the ‘Lab Floyd’s penchant for beginning his posts with song lyrics. Not sure why he’s stopped doing that, it’s a great little calling card for [...]
See Rich at Google I/O
A quick note, Rich will be presenting at Google I/O this Thursday on a panel called “OpenSocial in the Enterprise“.
He’ll be sharing our experiences with OpenSocial and Connect. Although we haven’t yet released our OpenSocial container, Rich and Anthony have been tinkering with it for over a year and have a sandbox environment we’ve been [...]
Ask Google?
Remember when Ask Jeeves launched?
The premise was simple. Instead of munging your search into keywords and hoping for the right result set, all you had to do was ask Jeeves a real question. If you remember that, you’ll also remember that it didn’t work very well.
Google just announced they have indexed public data sets on [...]
Google Does Geolocation
I like geolocation.
At first, it seemed pretty creepy, but now, there’s a lot of potential for geo-based features that are both and good for you.
I write about geo-services quite a bit, and I’m a fan of services like Fire Eagle and Shizzow and BrightKite and all the others. They all have one problem for me [...]
Feeling Lucky?
I always find it noteworthy when a handful of stories about a single company or service pop up within a day or so.
Usually, none of them alone is all that interesting, but as a collection, they sometimes form a story that I find blogworthy.
This time it’s Google’s Web Search.
Totally weird to see that in print. [...]
Freely Available Utilities
The title comes from a phrase that stood out for me in this post from RWW.
That post highlights some really sweet data pr0n (TwitterThoughts and World Twitter Map) built by Yvo Schaap that uses the Twitter API for data, Yahoo Pipes for parsing and the Google Visualization API for producing the eye candy. All these [...]
Bummer 2.0
I have a few friends that were avid users of Ma.gnolia, which was a social bookmarking tool, similar to Delicious.
I had an account there, but never really used the service much. I say similar to Delicious and use the past tense because Ma.gnolia’s database crashed on January 30. They recently announced that all user data [...]
More on Social Search
So, yesterday I started making the case for social search as an excellent way to find information locked away within an enterprise, and the ability to get good information from social search pays for investments in social networks.
I didn’t cover much detail though. So, that’s the focus of today’s post.
Social search in my mind doesn’t [...]
Social Search Wins
When you start talking to an enterprise crowd about social networking, inevitably someone asks for real business benefits, a.k.a. ROI. I know, hard to believe.
When we first started the ‘Lab, Paul used to ask how many people have a Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn account. Usually less than half the room would raise hands, and that number went way [...]
Like the Social Bar?
Back in December, we added the Google Friend Connect widgets.
Since then, our little blog social network has grown to over 100 members. It’s still not entirely clear to me what you’d want to do with Google Friend Connect, other than affiliate yourself with a blog or website. I guess it’s also a way to discover [...]
