the (social network) online radio November 30, 2006

business 2.0 magazine calls it “social media” and i think it comes very close to a term that we could use by describing web 2.0 and its online community websites.

not only did i get surprisingly informed about pandora.com (which unfortunately only works for US residents due to some legal issues), but also figured that there are more social radio stations like that: last.fm. business 2.0 magazine writes: “Last.fm, for instance, monitors all the tunes you listen to on your computer and adds a social-networking twist by sharing your playlist with other Last.fm users with similar tastes and vice versa”.

read the “social media” article and find out who and what the “next net 25” are.

the power of blogging November 28, 2006

yesterday’s article in the well-known german newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) talks about the power bloggers nowadays have to judge about products and brands and thus can influence a market with their opinions. Not only YouTube has been used lately to inform people about bad products, bad customer service, also blogs can make a company’s profile look horrible. YouTube videos show frustrated customers talking about products that just don’t work …within a few hours, a product can be (verbally) distroyed. the social computing is a powerful tool to inform about products, and blogs more and more help people to choose the right and not the wrong product/service.

faz article here

do the math with google, huh? November 23, 2006

so, google is one of THE most powerful search engines in the world, google also just started offline advertising, it has a good stock market position, and now google can even slowly be used as a multi-functional information tool. while browsing the technology section of the new york times, i came across an interesting article about google shortcuts.

• did you know that you can use google as a calculator? well, try it out: type into the searchbox: 12+12, as a result, it will suggest the mathematical solution as a sum of 12 and 12.

• did you know that you can search for a fedex package by typing in the fedex number: it will give you as the first result, it will give you a shortcut to the tracking information for your package.

• do you need a correct and fast definition of a word: well, then type it: define: [word] and it will give you all the definitions it finds on the web.

• and the the one that most of us have seen already before: when typing in an address, it normally shows as a first result the map of a city the address is related to.

more google shortcuts are here

and this google cheat sheet is worth to be printed out and put next to your computer desk, it has the most useful search terms included.

google can recognize certain codes typed in or numbers into the search box and eases your way to your result.
try it out…it’s fun.

1…and…2…and…3…and…web November 15, 2006

i seem to not be able to stop reading about the “new” web. while i am still trying to get news and information about web2.0 and being excited about this “WebOS” and the web becoming the main application platform for users these days, i have found another terminology today (maybe for a lot nothing new, for me something new to research): semantic web or …1…2…yeah web3.0

Tim Berners-Lee describes the idea in his semantic web road map article and says clearly that the problem is still that “the web is designed for human cunsumption” but “the structure of the data is not evident to a robot browsing the web“. So the idea of the semantic web clearly tries to “solve this problem by developing languages for expressing information in a machine processable form“.

if you need examples and maybe a bit “easier” article to read, the bbc article “Smart sites to power semantic web” might belp you.

create your social network website November 14, 2006

while i was trying to help answering a friend’s question “how to create your own website without any kind of programming knowledge”, i found an interesting article on news.com: this article introduces ning: i guess ning is supposed to take a different approach to customize social networking sites using web2.0 technologies.

check out their website if you are sick of using a myspace profile if you want your “own myspace”

my (weekly) visit November 10, 2006

one of the things i do at least once a week is checking out the labs part of google. i don’t know if any of you readers have ever tried out the “more” button on googles’ startpage. that’s excactly how you get there. click on “more” and then click on “labs”: you will find a lot of nice “goodies” or should i say “googies” that google offers here.

my favourite ones are still the: google code search, google mars or google answers

always fun and interesting for me to browse through

another web 2.0 report November 9, 2006

i am just fascinated by all the good articles i have lately found on german websites about web2.0. It is interesting reading this german o’reilly article about web 2.0 which was taken from  a master thesis. it once again talks about all the big web 2.0 services, explaining how and what ajax is, and so forth.

just right before the web 2.0 conference in san francisco, also o’reilly radar released another web 2.0 report. it takes a critical look at how release cycles for web services can change based on their hypes. and shows advantages and disadvantages of releasing earlier.

podcasting for fun? November 8, 2006

i have been developing a podcast tool (backend) for the company i work for.
it was fun digging once again into apple’s podcast technology and also the hype about rss and xml. this time i was more challenged b/c i had to use asp.net to implement the backend with.

i could not use this toolkit b/c we are not using asp.net 2.0 yet, thus, i needed a little bit more time to finish it.

overall, it was fun developing it and now i am thinking of starting my own podcast about ivy’s and my life or something. it’s easy to do, i guess i need just an audience for it.

technical specification from apples podcast page

online socializing November 7, 2006

once again i feel that i can relate to my german roots and also agree with germans regarding the linked article about myspace aiming for a global audience in the new york times. in america myspace is the online “in-place”, whereas germany, as i expected, does not like the design and thus feels more annoyed than fascinate by this online sozializing tool and continue using their cellphones to communicate quickly with theirs friends.

“People here think the design is bad,” [...] “and that is important for Germans.”

nice

It is true though, I really don’t think myspace is a place where professional musicians or artists show their best and their quality by putting up a weird page with funny backgrounds with endless loading time. to me, this is more a turn off than a turn on.

My favourite still, if socializing tool, then: friendster.com

california is the place to be November 6, 2006

this funny and interesting google map is showing the top 10 paid women, it’s good to be in the internet business, i can see