Google’s goal: to organise your daily life

Google’s goal: to organise your daily life: "Google’s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off."

Ah, Total Information Awareness is so benevolent ...

Make your own gadget

Make your own gadget

Haven't seen many of these out in the wild. Seems like a fine idea, though.

George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house

George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house: "The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell's 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author's former London home.

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move."

The New Upcoming

The New Upcoming: "The new release of Upcoming is finally out the door. ... Another big change is our switch to Yahoo! IDs. Following closely on the heels of Flickr and Bix, we've finally abandoned our legacy sign-in system for Yahoo's own login system."

Eeep! Not sure that the redesigned front page is an improvement. Really short pages of your or friends events. Lots of just headlines is much easier to scan. Guess I'll have to live with the rss feeds instead of the interface. The category pages are much better by being short and showing number of friends going.

Google’s Personalized Search Features

Google’s Personalized Search Features: "Google’s new recommendations features will allow you to add a new tab to your start page, name it “recommendations” and you’ll get some nifty search results based on your search history."

You have to let the GooglePlex Id your search history ...

Al Jazeera English Launches on YouTube

Al Jazeera English Launches on YouTube: "Unable to land deals with any American networks, Al Jazeera English is launching a YouTube channel."

Finally! Silly to launch the channel without being able to get it to a primary audience.

Dodgeball Left for Dead: Twitter Victorious

Dodgeball Left for Dead: Twitter Victorious: "Dodgeball, the text-message based social networking service, seems to have been left for dead."

Funny, Dodgeball's been on my signup list for so long that everyone's gone web only. Ah, well, guess it's time for the shiney new Twitter account.

ashnod @ twitter

Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’-News-Politics-TimesOnline

Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’-News-Politics-TimesOnline: "Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year."

"From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court."

I love me some Sock Puppet.

Funeral home in Second Life

Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education: Funeral home in Second Life: "Death in Second Life: a funeral home has opened up. Actually a combination funeral home and crematorium, with urns."

Ah, just need a live video feed of the funeral into second life. Guess there are already a couple of funeral homes that webcast ...

A Taxonomy of Social Networks?

GigaOM � A Taxonomy of Social Networks?: "Earlier this week, Om called social networks a feature. It’s a good point, though, one that seems all too obvious to someone like me who’s covered way too many social networks and often ends up bored before making it through yet another registration form."

Heh. Yet Another Profile could be our middle name. Abandon this!

55% Of People Regularly or Always Fake Their Web Identity

55% Of People Regularly or Always Fake Their Web Identity: "After 511 votes so far, an astonishing 55% of respondents say they regularly or always use fake Web identities."

And this surprises them, how?

GetaFirstLife.com

GetaFirstLife.com: "Moreover, Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception."

Hah! That's the spirit! Lawyers weilding humor.

Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking

Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking - New York Times: "I wouldn’t want to join any social networking Web site that would want me as a member. You might say that I am into antisocial networking."

Heh, we clearly need more antisocial networks. I can't do this all by myself, people!

Layout

Mucked with this blogs Layout. Added a block of aggregator links and a few widgets (yea, FindMeOn's is too wide).

Beta--the four-letter word of Web 2.0

Beta--the four-letter word of Web 2.0: "We're well into January, and I'm guessing that by now you've probably ditched your New Year's resolutions or, at least, are 'reconsidering' their feasibility. Don't worry because I have a new one for you.

You're going to get your site out of beta this year."

Bwwwhaaahah!

Poking around the old links, I find services marked beta that I don't even remember ... Awesomr, iscrybe, and Orkut. Sheesh, Orkut invite beggery was one reason to hate betas forever. Although, I might make an exception for Klostu.

Gimmie a Banana! Gimmie a Beta! Gimmie an Invite!

Inside MySpace.com: The Journey Begins

Inside MySpace.com: The Journey Begins: "At each milestone, the Web site would exceed the maximum capacity of some component of the underlying system, often at the database or storage level. Then, features would break, and users would scream. Each time, the technology team would have to revise its strategy for supporting the Web site's workload."

"The Web site architecture went through five major revisions—each coming after MySpace had reached certain user account milestones—and dozens of smaller tweaks."

"And although the systems architecture has been relatively stable since the Web site crossed the 7 million account mark in early 2005, MySpace continues to knock up against limits such as the number of simultaneous connections supported by SQL Server, Benedetto says: 'We've maxed out pretty much everything.'"

Well worth the read for what might be the next pain point in your friendly neighborhood YASN.

The Problem With Profile Aggregators

The Problem With Profile Aggregators: "Profile Aggregators such as ProfileLinker, Spokeo, Profilactic, Iceflake, and FindMeOn are already trying to solve this problem."

"Users usually only have read access to their other networks. Social networks are not like news articles or blogs that you can just stick into an RSS reader, they require engagement and participation to become valuable to the user."

FindMeOn calls itself "A cure for multiple web personality disorder".

I can see not having Yet Another Profile, but, people have to browse to the aggregator page. It can not be found via interests or seen by browsing friends-of-friends. So far they've ended up being Yet Another Social Network to remember to log in to, and, wasn't that the very thing that was supposed to be cured?

YASNA!

Multiply 'Customize Site' mode

The Multiply Blog - Coming Soon: New 'Customize Site' mode: "That's right, you'll be presented with controls for all of the editable elements on the page, from your content boxes to your headshot. Handy links for further customization (themes, layouts, CSS) are available at the top of the page."

Keen! That was the way that I remembered it and wondered where the controls were. Turns out they got lost along the way. Tribe.net has many content boxes (rss and groupings of tribes being the most noteworthy) for both your public profile and private home page. Which is quite useful, even if it does enable the occasional eye-bending page.

Meebo IM mash

MeeboMe API Coming: "Meebo, the web-based IM service that aggregates all your messengers in one place"

Arg! It's the attack of the aggregators! YASNAAttack!

Nice widget, though ...

Vox Groups

Vox Groups got released! Give them a poke.

There has always been tagging on personal posts, now groups can have tags, which certainly made finding interesting groups easier. Looks like you can 'watch' a tag and get matching entries put on your Neighborhood view.

Happily, there are already groups about other services, which delight me to no end ... Vox - YouTube and Vox - MySpace.

And the 'send a private message' link at the end of each post is great.