Archive for the ‘web’ category

Scoble gets in on the FriendFeed action

March 31st, 2008

If you don’t know who Robert Scoble is then you really aren’t listening are you?  Robert Scoble, or the Scobleizer, gets involved in all that’s new and cool on the Web.  Today he’s been over to see the folks at FriendFeed and has announced on his blog that he’ll be redesigning it to revolve around his feed.

FriendFeed, if you don’t know, is a social aggregator…what’s that?  Well these days we use loads of “social” channels share our information.  I for example use this blog, Facebook, twitter, del.icio.us and Google Reader to share with people, you can see my friendfeed here.  So if you want to know what I’m interested in and doing you need to look at all of those to get the picture…if you care.

Scoble has started to use twitter a whole lot more, and he’s doing the same thing as me, short things get a tweet (that’s a twitter message), long things – like this get a post, other items become a shared reader item, and websites get a del.icio.us tag.

I’m going to take the lead from the Scoble and syndicate my FriendFeed through my blog.  Why not.

via Scobleizer (and twitter and friend feed)

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Hellotxt codes no longer required

March 30th, 2008

Just read on the hellotxt blog that they don’t require coupon codes now for the mobile version, m.hellotxt.com.  Great news, great tool.

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Hellotxt codes

March 25th, 2008

I have 5 hellotxt codes to give away.  If you want one comment on this post.

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Social networking integration

March 25th, 2008

I’ve been getting into quite a bit of social networking integration recently, be it FriendFeed or Hellotxt.  I’m especially interested in the aspects of digital identity and presence notification.  I’ll post a “how I use” soon for social networking, but what’s prompted this post is this bit of news from Eileen Brown’s WebLog : Exchanging contact data between social networking sites.  It’s great that MS is pushing this kind of stuff.  This is one of the reasons that I think that MS and Yahoo! would have made good partners, they’d have had the power to join up so much.

In other news, this post seems to suggest that Google are playing with Yahoo!

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Killer Web Services

March 20th, 2008

I’ve posted in the past about what’s on my phone, what’s on my Media Center, and what my Media Center hardware is.  In the same theme this post is about the killer web services that I use. 

First up I should explain how I use these services, firstly I’m very mobile, typically I don’t do two days running in the same office and I’m all over the country and I travel by train…you might see frustration in my twitter or my FB status.  Every day I use a personal laptop, a work laptop, my personal Hermes phone and my work BlackBerry Pearl.  I need my stuff to stay in sync.image

Google Reader (Greader) – this is a great online reader, I use it to aggregate all my RSS.  I can access it from every device it’s totally web based and always in sync.  Why don’t I use something like News Gator?  Simple I can’t install it on my work laptop or BlackBerry.  The items I share in Google Reader appear in my FriendFeed and my Shared items.

FaceBook – rather obviously it’s a brilliant social site.  I update my status regularly and automatically with FBMCE and with FindMe and using the mobile version of the site.  When I finally get a code for HelloTxt that will be brill, I’ll be able to update my twitter status too, making HelloTxt a killer app…especially with an API!

National Rail Enquiries Wap Site – Lame I know, but the wap site is the most useful thing that National Rail do.

del.icio.us – Great social bookmarking, took me a while to get into it but now I use it exclusively and can see friends and colleagues bookmarks too.  Tagging makes it semantic and yes it’s part of my FriendFeed and you can find my shared bookmarks.

Google Browser Sync and Foxmarks- I use Firefox 2 for all my browsing and wherever I am, my Firefox stays in sync.  I use Firefox as a portable app too.  Foxmarks also keeps things in sync, but normally I use del.icio.us for bookmarks.

Wordpress – That’s where you’re reading this.  I moved here from Live Spaces because it’s more flexible.  I get quite a few hits from the Wordpress community, and Wordpress tags.  I use the mobile version to view my stats and occasionally to post from my phones.  I have two blogs, this one and one for my house renovation.

Sharp Cast – I currently use Sharp Cast to hold all my photo’s, I moved there from Picasa, it’s great ‘cos it just keeps things in sync.  I think I’m going to move away though because I like idea of the Windows Live Gallery and Flikr hookups and because Flikr is much more customisable and semantic than Sharp Cast.

iGoogle – My homepage is iGoogle, I tried Live but I just prefer iGoogle.  I have a number of gadgets, including my stock portfolio (not as grand as it sounds) my scheduled recordings on Media Center,  my Gmail,  and Google Reader.  I’ve just added the FriendFeed gadget too.  What I really love, and what really suits my mobility is the PDA version, here I have BBC news, stock quotes and Google Reader items all in one place.

Hotmail – Obvious to all, but using Windows Live Mobile it sync’s with my Hermes.

I think that’s about it for now, but speaking of mobility, I’m currently on a train, writing this on Windows Live Writer packaged as a portable app, writing off line, and I’ll have to setup the vast array of links later.

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FaceBook is adding chat

March 19th, 2008

A number of announcements came out of FaceBook yesterday, one of the most interesting is FaceBook chat.  They will be placing a chat window at the bottom of your browser and you’ll be able to chat with anyone online, and I guess we’ll be able to send messages to those who aren’t through it too.

Given the FaceBook platform I’m tipping this to be one of the most developed apps on FB in the coming months.  I can really see this functionality coming to Fring or Palringo very quickly and that’s really cool!  Not many of my friends sign on to Live Messenger that often, but about half of my friends on FB are active, so I’ll be able to contact them more…and them me.  We’re obviously going to see lots of desktop clients too.  FB have 67 Million active users, that’s huge, this is going to be huge.

Also announced, better privacy based on social proximity (i.e. friends, friends of friends, randoms etc.).  Chat is coming in two weeks.  [via inside facebook]

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HelloTxt and FriendFeed

March 18th, 2008

I made two rather nice little discoveries this weekend. image The first is the excellent HelloTxt which I found out about via this pretty cool blog, Stuff em up the hill backwards.  It’s a neat little tool that, once you’ve registered lets you up date your presence information from one place.  If anyone has a coupon code for the mobile version it would be really appreciated.  This app is really in need of an API, I can just imagine so may uses for this!  And it’s going to make me start twittering.

I’ve also setup FriendFeed, this is a great way to centralise all your feeds so your friends can see all your information in one place.  Just like twitter you can follow your friends and see their status, but here’s the killer feature it aggregates all your del.icio.us, your blog, your flikr, in fact 28 other services into a single place.  Cool!  [Via LifeHacker]

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FolderShare – Wow! That was easy!

March 12th, 2008

Ian Dixon and the Live Team blogged yesterday about FolderShare.  It’s a little tool that’s in Live Beta that lets you synchronise your files between computers.  Ian brought up the BRILLIANT idea of synchronising your media using it.  I’ve decided to do something slightly different and synchronise my downloads, since almost all my surfing is done on the laptop it makes much more sense.

So here’s how I’ve set it up.

Setting up the laptop

The first thing I did was download the tool from here.

Second I simply ran the install and entered some details, note that they don’t HAVE to be your LiveID (how odd???).  Then using the web page I selected the files I wanted to sync.

Setting up the Media Center

The next thing I did was copied the install .msi file over to the Media Center, and installed it.  At the end of the install it asks you what libraries you want to sync, and where too, again through a web page.  Then it start to sync things. 

Using it

In the system try on both boxes is a little folder share icon.  Click on it and it gives me some options, including activity which oddly enough tells you what’s going on.  So now when I download something on the laptop, it just appears on the Media Center.

Conclusions

Great Tool.  I’ll probably smarten this up when I get more used to it, but it’s one of the nicest little sync programs out there.  I’ve also been using Sugar Sync which also stores everything in the cloud – which I’m not sure about, the p2p technology in FolderShare is far more efficient for what I want. 

Question to Microsoft is why not integrate FolderShare with SkyDrive?

Extra Bonus: you can access all the files on your boxes from anywhere now over the web, I need to play with that a bit, I’ll probably pop along to the local Costa Coffee later for their free WiFi and check it out.


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Wefi

February 13th, 2008

Wow, this looks rather cool.  I was just bouncing around www.mashable.com and found this new tool.  WeFi it looks quite similar to Navizion but it’s got a social aspect to it too and they’re going to be doing a Facebook app.  It seems to be that you pickup the spot with your laptop or mobile device then select the location using a Google Maps interface. 

I’ve just downloaded the CAB so we’ll have to see what it does…

Wefi

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