Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Yes, Madonna, who recently took some guitar lessons and strapped on a Les Paul, is going down the road of Radiohead and Oasis, as reported earlier in the week. Apparently the leading female pop vocalist over the last twenty or so years is dropping her record label about as hard as she dropped her Motown pride when she hit the bigtime with 'Like a Virgin'.
Apparently, she's going to distribute upcoming records through the auspices of one of the largest concert promoters, Live Nation. Whether or not this means downloadable music will be available for free, for tips, or at all remains to be seen. We're also not sure if this is a case of a bunch of rich has-been musicians taking up a fad cause, or if this really is a turning point in the digital distribution revolution (though Live Nation has no Net-based music distribution apparatus that we're aware of). Either way, it's nice to see people with Grammies finally using their pull to fight the power. How far is Madonna willing to go? Internet-only? DRM-free?
Interestingly, the Eagles also dumped Hollywood in favor of selling their most recent studio effort directly to Wal-Mart of all places, so we're seeing this backlash touch all genres. Like Madonna, the Eagles have not pledged DRM-free tracks. So one wonders if these noteworthy (but certainly non-earth-shattering) shifts in distribution stem from the artists' personal beliefs about media art, or if they're just ticked at folks who run the Old School.
This begs the question--if it was Hollywood that got these mega-musicians to where they are today, is it even possible to get that big as an unapologetic, unassisted indy? That is, can MySpace pave your road to stardom with its online-only SNOCAP distribution scheme? Thus far, it hasn't been the case. In order to ditch the record industry and call your own shots, it seems you already need to be a star.
While the rest of the world is still scratching their heads trying to figure out why Apple doesn't officially support third party applications on the iPhone, Steve Jobs and company wants to highlight just how many applications you can run -- by visiting web sites optimized for the iPhone.
We're not saying a Web apps directory is a bad idea. In fact, it's nice to have a single place to go for a list of online services that look good on a small touch-sensitive screen. But we'd be more impressed if you could calculate tips, convert measurements, or play Soduku without firing up Safari.
And honestly, we'd have thought Apple would have put together this list as soon as the iPhone was launched and kept it up to date. As it is, dozens of 3rd party websites and blogs have started keeping track of all the applications out there.
Canonical is set to release Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on October 18th. The following week, the Ubuntu Community is hosting an Ubuntu Open Week, which is essentially a series of online workshops for anyone who's ever had a question about the popular Linux distribution and how its community works.
You can talk to some of the project's key developers, engage in a Q&A with founder Mark Shuttleworth, and learn more about the Ubuntu community. If you want to learn more about a particular Ubuntu project or if you'd like to find out about becoming a developer or tester, this is a great way to get started.
The sessions will all take place on IRC. You'll need to visit the #ubuntu-classroom channel on irc.freenode.net. If you need a refresher on how to use a Windows or Linux IRC client, the organizers have even put together a handy page explaining how to join the chats.
Ubuntu Open Week runs from Monday, Oct 22nd through Saturday, Oct 27th.
Mac OS X is pretty. Windows is functional. Windows Vista was supposed to help bridge that gap. Microsoft threw an awful lot of eye candy into Windows Vista. Some of it is really useful. For example, you can hover your mouse over open programs in the taskbar and pull up live previews of those applications, even if there's video playing in one.
But Flip 3D, while attractive, is really just a complicated, resource-intensive version of Alt-tab. If anything, it makes it harder to find the application you're looking for, not easier. OS X, on the other hand, includes a task switching utility called Exposé that is both eye-catching and useful. It allows you to view all the running programs on your computer at once and easily shift between applications with a single click. No "flipping" required.
While there have been many attempts to replicate Exposé on Windows Machines, we have to say, we're particularly impressed with Switcher. The application is being developed by Microsoft employee Bao Nguyen in his free time. It's not an official Microsoft product, but it is a polished Exposé clone.
The video above was captured at 16 frames per second, making it difficult to truly show the beautiful transitions. But we tried to demonstrate some of the major features. You can choose from tile, grid, or dock views. You can dock windows to the top, bottom, left, or right of your screen. And you can switch programs using your mouse or keyboard. With the keyboard you can either hit the number of the program you want to bring to the foreground or use your arrow keys to select an application and then hit enter.
You can also adjust the transition times and choose whether or not to display the desktop.
The latest version of Switcher available from Nguyen's homepage is 1.2.1.1764, but there's also a direct download link for Switcher 2.0 beta. Switcher requires Windows Vista and the Aero interface. That means Windows Vista Home Basic users are out of luck.
You wouldn't normally think to take notes using a social application as Twitter, but it is possible.
Twitternotes is an online application that uses the Twitter API to basically, take notes. This tool is a little more complicated than scratching something down in a notebook, using Outlook Notes, or one of the many other online note tools but if you have Twitter open throughout the day, this might come in handy.
Users log into the system using their Twitter account information, and add TwitterNotes as a follower. Notes can be added to your account privately or open for all users to see using special characters and combinations in your Twitter entry. Notes can then be picked up when logged into your TwitterNotes account, which is a bit frustrating because it would be nice to be able to simply check these notes out in Twitter itself under Direct Messages. Nonetheless, it's just another way to try and stay organized and on top of your to-dos.
Google is starting to add user-generated information to Google Maps search results. For example, if you search for "bike paths in New York," several of the top results will include a note showing where the East River Bike Path narrows as well as listings for bike shops. The user-generated results show up with blue icons, and for this particular query are a lot more accurate than the standard results.
Google Maps users have been able to create personalized maps for a while now by adding notes to various locations and saving the maps to "my maps." In case you had any illusions that this was private data, this is the pool of information Google is using to beef up its search results.
If you'd rather not share your favorite coffee shop with the whole world, just make sure not to set your personalized map to public.
Now that a handful of lucky folks have gotten their hands on Windows XP Service Pack 3, we're starting to think you might not want to upgrade to Windows Vista anytime soon. Okay, we already kind of thought that, but it turns out SP3 includes a ton of security updates, some Vista code, and a couple of brand spanking new features for Windows XP:
There's a new Windows Product Activation model that does not require you to enter a product key during setup.
Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought over from Windows Vista.
There's a new module in the kernel that provides access to cryptographic algorithms.
Windows XP can now detect routers that are discarding data.
Overall the update includes over a thousand patches to improve security, performance, and reliability.
Google may have started out as a search engine, but the company now has all sorts of divisions: e-mail, maps, online video, social networking, online document creation/storage, photo sharing. Some of these services already talk to one another. You can send a Google Document via e-mail, for instance. Others remain separate. There's no way to save a photo from Gmail to Picasa Web.
But if you've noticed that many of Google's services are marching slowly toward convergence, you're not alone. Today Google announced support for discovering geotagged YouTube videos from within Google Earth. Because you know, that's exactly what you've been waiting for. Wait, what?
Here's how it works. Anyone can tag a YouTube video with the location where it was recorded. Then when you're searching Google Earth you can look for videos from across the globe. The new geotagged video layer is in the 'featured content" folder of Google Earth. Click on the YouTube button and you'll see video icons pop up. When you zoom in you'll find even more videos. You can play them from within Google Earth or you can click through to YouTube and watch them in your web browser.
It's kind of cool, but seriously, we would have been happier if Google had announced we could save Gmail attachments to Picasa Web.
Moreover is sort of like a subscription version of Google News. If you visit the company's main page you get a lot of information about the service, but no free content. Users can sign up for RSS feeds on a variety of topics or you can pay a subscription fee for more in-depth content.
Moreover isn't producing news. It's collecting news from various sources and sending it along to subscribers. Each story you get from Moreover is really just a link and a brief description. If you're using the ad-supported version of Moreover's services you'll have to click through to the original website to find the full content. Paying subscribers can access full length stories from the AP and other news sources.
So here's the question: is Moreover ripping the AP off, or is it actually helping the wire service by directing more readers to AP news content online? While Google claims that the Google News service constitutes "fair use," the company has reached a deal with the AP and several other major news providers to distribute content. But Google also doesn't offer a premium service with full-length content scraped from other news publishers.
If you've got a little time to waste, Knibble is the place to be. This database of thousands of online games has a tremendous library that will suit anyone's tastes from action, puzzles, arcade style and sporting. Knibble currently says they are serving over 10,500 games in a huge list of categories. All games are played in the browser for anywhere access, as long as you are connected to the internet.
The neat thing about Knibble is that when users are logged in as members, they can instantly chat with people playing the same game. So if you get stuck or find something interesting, someone is around to discuss. Games in Knibble's database can be rated, submitted and are tagged for appropriate searches in order to find the game that is best suited to you.
For on the go and party fun, Knibble also has special platforms built for the iPhone and Wii.
Tired of poorly designed MySpace pages? Spread the word about SnapLayout.
This handy MySpace layout editor allows users -- even MC Hammer -- who have no idea what HTML is the chance to create something special with their MySpace accounts. This is just the beginning of a long and arduous journey to rid the web of bad layouts, but SnapLayout is definitely on the right track.
With the online tool, users can easily change colors and layouts using a drag and drop style interface. Color palette's can be chosen so that proper color theory is adhered to, text styles can be implemented and page layouts with backgrounds can be set. Widgets like YouTube, Google Video, Pictures and other embedded codes can easily be inserted by dragging and dropping into their desired areas on the page. Sections in user's layouts can also be dragged and dropped to new areas within the design as well.
When your design is complete, click publish and voila, one less bad MySpace layout. Sweet!
There are easy ways to create webpage layouts, and there are hard ways. Spiffy Box is one of the easy ways to add a little spice to your website using CSS.
Spiffy Box was originally created as Spiffy Corners, a web based way to easily create and grab custom CSS and HTML code for rounded corner web content boxes without using images or JavaScript. It eventually moved on to its current user friendly four step process over at Spiffy Box, which uses an image for corners. Users generate the code by simply choosing an image width, height, corner radius, foreground, border and background colors. Steps two and three give you a preview of your new spiffy corner, and the CSS snippet to copy and paste. Step four provides the xhtml to add into our document and, poof; You have a soft, round CSS cornered box.
Google offers AdSense customers a chance to provide exclusive content by placing ads over the top of online videos. But these flash ads can be distracting if you're watching a video. Blinkx takes a different approach by putting ads at the top of the video window so that there's never an ad covering the video display.
Blinkx is a video search engine with over 14 million hours of video online. Their technology uses both speech recognition and video analysis software to accurately find videos online from all major sources and now they are integrating this into targeted ad placement.
The Blinkx text ads will get placed together with embedded videos from such popular video sharing sites as YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Veoh, CollegeHumor and Daily Motion. This will work with any video, be it copyrighted or not. It works by simply dropping the embed code from a video site into a form that will spit out the new Blinkx embed code complete with additional ad codes. This will then allow users to place the videos on social networks, websites and blogs to earn revenue per click. Users must have an account on Blinkx Adhoc as well as a PayPal account which they will get paid through when the ads are clicked on.
Blinkx pays you for embedding videos from YouTube, Daily Motion and other sites on your website. It doesn't matter if you created the original video or not. And it doesn't look like there's anything to prevent you from making money on copyrighted content like clips from movies and TV shows.
We assume that copyright holders might get a little uptight about that. But since Blinkx inserts an ad above the video window and not inside of it, you could argue that this is kind of the same as adding a Google AdSense unit to a webpage above content.
So you want your Linux and your proprietary software too? Not a problem. Linspire 6.0 was released today. The software formerly known as Lindows is built on the open-source Linux kernel. But it includes support for proprietary components including MP#, Real, Java, Flash, ATI, and nVidia software, codecs and drivers.
Linspire is based on Ubuntu 7.04, but unlike Ubuntu you'll have to pay $50 for a full version of Linspire. Your money buys you support for the aforementioned proprietary components.
Earlier this year, Linspire and Microsoft announced a technology-sharing partnership. And sure enough, the latest version of Linspire supports Windows Media audio and video formats, True Type Fonts, and the ability to open .docx formatted documents using OpenOffce.org.
If you'd rather not cough up the $50, you can always try Freespire 2.0, which includes many, but not all Linspire 6.0's features.
What is white and red and stupid all over? YouTube! Or at least that is that is the premise that the StupidFilter project is using to seed their self-training database. And really is there any form of stupidity with a more enduring appeal than a video discussion? Of course not!
The goal simple: build a stupid filter that works like a spam filter. Take a huge collection of stupid comments (225,000 to start), rate and organize them according to stupidness, and then teach the filter to recognize stupidity in the wild. Once the research is done a core engine will be released suitable for implementation in blogs, wikis, social networks, content management systems, and video sharing websites.
The current target release date for an alpha release is December 2007. After that the race begins: can the StupidFilter keep up with the diabolical adaptiveness of internet stupidity? Or will "stupiders" change their tactics and find ways around the filtering technology (by using complete words, for example)? Only time, and the efforts of a few brave programmers, will tell.
