If you’re a user and fan of the micro-blogging platform Pownce, I have some bad news for you. The company has been purchased by Six Apart Media, and they aren’t planning big things for it – in fact, they’re shutting the doors and leaving Pownce users out in the rain.

There’s [...]]]>

If you’re a user and fan of the micro-blogging platform Pownce, I have some bad news for you. The company has been purchased by Six Apart Media, and they aren’t planning big things for it – in fact, they’re shutting the doors and leaving Pownce users out in the rain.

There’s really not a lot of time left on Pownce’s lifeline, as — per the official Pownce blog — it is set to be shutdown on the fifteenth of this month.

So why did Six Apart bother to buy Pownce in the first place? Likely they never intended to run Pownce, but merely bought it in order to acquire the company’s team of talented web-professionals.

To anybody who has been following the micro-blogging platforms, the demise of Pownce should really come as no surprise, as the similar service Twitter has taken off like a rocket, leaving Pownce and others (Plurk comes to mind) in the dust.

I was having some files issues with my (Vista) PC over the weekend, and came across a pretty good file removal software (clone remover), so thought I’d give it a little props here.

It can be annoying and time-consuming to find duplicate files, (especially when you have as much data [...]]]> Yes, my weekends are exciting.

I was having some files issues with my (Vista) PC over the weekend, and came across a pretty good file removal software (clone remover), so thought I’d give it a little props here.

It can be annoying and time-consuming to find duplicate files, (especially when you have as much data on your PC as we at TechConsumer tend to keep) and Windows isn’t really set-up to locate them easily. It was nice to find a software that provides a little help in this regard.

No, I’m not trying to sell you anything – you can go to the Moleskinsoft duplicate files remover page and download the file finding software for free. It will allow you to search for duplicate files by content, properties, mp3 title, for similar images, or files with a zero size.

For my specific purposes, what I needed to do is use the similar images function (maybe I need to get better at naming and organizing my images in the first place – but the moleskin software sort of came to my rescue), which basically finds similar images in such formats as (.jpg, .bmp, .png, .psd and others) that differ in resolution, or have a difference such as a caption. This proved to be a timesaver, and probably prevented a big headache on this author’s end.

Chrome is coming! Google’s open source browser project, is coming out in Windows beta. It will be available here soon. This comic by Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics, does a nice job of explaining the technical details. Here is a brief summary:

Extreme tab makeover: Instead of traditional tabs [...]]]>

Chrome is coming! Google’s open source browser project, is coming out in Windows beta. It will be available here soon. This comic by Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics, does a nice job of explaining the technical details. Here is a brief summary:

Extreme tab makeover: Instead of traditional tabs below the address bar (like Firefox), Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window.

Multi-process design: This is said to use “a bit more memory up front” but it splits up the processing jobs of individual tabs. It’s similar to the design used in operating systems, with multiple processes happening at the same time. One advantage is that an error that would normally cause your whole browser to crash will now only crash that particular tab. Also, when web pages or plug-ins use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager.

Other streamlining: The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features (I am skeptical here, only because I have never used an implementation of auto-complete that wasn’t annoying). And when you open a new tab, instead of getting a blank page or your homepage, you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. On the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs. There are many other features, including a privacy mode, as well as anti-phishing and anti-malware safeguards that keep updating and warn against malicious sites.

Anyway, I’m excited to check out what I expect will be the next generation of web browsers. It’s nice to see that this is an open source project. It seems Google is betting big on the OSS (open source software) model. I think it will work. And I find it interesting how quietly Google goes about taking over… everything.

Note: This article is cross-posted at Tom’s Two Cents.

Thanks a lot, Mattel. Although, I can’t really blame you – it was an obvious intellectual rights infringement. However, that doesn’t stop me from pining for Scrabulous.

One of the few Facebook (third party, of course) apps worth having, is now blocked in pretty much everyone’s neck of the woods, seemingly permanently. [...]]]>

Thanks a lot, Mattel. Although, I can’t really blame you – it was an obvious intellectual rights infringement. However, that doesn’t stop me from pining for Scrabulous.

One of the few Facebook (third party, of course) apps worth having, is now blocked in pretty much everyone’s neck of the woods, seemingly permanently. Scrabulous, which was already blocked last month for North American users, has now been cruelly banished from most international Facebook sites – due to a warning Facebook received from Mattel.

Scrabulous creators, the Argwalla brothers, have produce a some-what less-addictive clone called Wordscraper. The new app has a few tweaks such as circular tiles and the possibility of earning triple points in some cases. I suppose they feel Wordscraper is different enough to avoid further legal issues, but that’s yet to be determined – so try not to get too addicted, as the rug could be yanked out at anytime.

Hasbro, the American rights holder of Scrabble, have gone ahead and released their own scrabble-themed app, which is receiving mixed reviews. The main drawbacks appear to be an abundance of bugs, and the inability to play along with users outside of North America. We’ll see which of the apps wins out in the end.

A recent post of mine about Firefox and my general view of corporations and organizations caused a bit of a stir. It even caught the attention of Asa Dotzler, a prominent Mozilla employee. In Mr. Dotzler’s rebuff of my post he said something that has really bothered [...]]]>

A recent post of mine about Firefox and my general view of corporations and organizations caused a bit of a stir. It even caught the attention of Asa Dotzler, a prominent Mozilla employee. In Mr. Dotzler’s rebuff of my post he said something that has really bothered me. He said “It’s really hard for me to believe that either [Microsoft or Adobe] have the free and open Web at heart when they’re actively subverting it with closed technologies like Flash and Silverlight.” But are they really subverting it? Where exactly is the line between serving the consumer and subverting the web?

Standards behind the “free and open Web”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this statement, but using a term like “free and open” is such utopian propaganda. After all how could you be against “free and open” right? A brief look at the web standards groups might illustrate the real root of the problem though.

The W3C (World-Wide-Web Consortium) is the main standards body for the web. To say that they have a reputation for being slow is an understatement; their last XHTML/HTML recommendation (XHTML 1.1) was in 2001. That was seven years ago, or almost eternity in Internet or dog years.

Eventually it got so bad that some people from Apple, Mozilla, and Opera forked off into their group called WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) in 2004. They started, and are still working on, the draft of HTML 5 which has finally been adopted as the starting point for the W3C’s new HTML working group. Unfortunately, according to the WHATWG editor for HTML it doesn’t look like HTML 5 will be done until 2012; eight years after the WHATWG was formed, and eleven years after XHTML 1.1. That sounds like a rapid pace of innovation to me.

The real culprit

This may seem like a forgone conclusion to many of you after seeing the W3C’s development timetables, but the real reason Flash and Silverlight exist is because the “open-web” people dropped the ball. HTML simply can handle what Flash and Silverlight can do. It has become increasingly stale for modern web development needs.

Here is some perspective, HTML5 has finally added a tag for handling video. Flash 6 came out in 2002 with video support! Where is the HTML version of Line Rider? It is in Flash and Silverlight now. If you want to see something really interesting check out Hard Rock Cafe’s memorabilia page (Silverlight 2 required) and tell me if you’ve ever seen something like that with HTML.

I actually hate Flash, but I’m not going to blame Adobe for the fact that so many people and companies have decided to use it. It isn’t like Adobe is paying people on MySpace or bloggers to use Flash widgets. Youtube could have really only happened using Flash too.

AJAX to the rescue?

What about AJAX and all of those Web 2.0 sites though? They seem pretty sophisticated. In short AJAX is a kludge of various technologies that were never intended to work together in this manner. It can work, but AJAX development is a pain. It gets even more complicated when you start to mix in other aspects of the “free and open” Web like SVG or CSS. It is anything but a cohesive set of technologies.

The real weak spot is in the development tools for “free and open” technologies. There are no AJAX development environments that can compare to the tools available for Flash and Silverlight, and the latter has only been out for one year. It is so bad that people made a big deal over a framework to make AJAX development a little easier.

Honey and Vinegar

I’m not against the idea of a “free and open” web, but obviously there is an increasing demand for a richer experience than that offered by the W3C’s dated technologies. After all there isn’t just one, but two major competitors to them.

If the web is going to steer clear of these proprietary environments the proponents of the standards are going to have to create the technologies that enable innovative new online experiences instead of just copying implementing features that have already been done before elsewhere. Complaining about the proprietary web won’t do anything, after all you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

The beauty of the internet is that when you write about things you’re interested in, you get to meet other people interested in the same things. A few days ago I wrote a few thoughts about “geocontent,” and a user named “deprimer” commented on my article and pointed me toward Socialight.

Socialight [...]]]>

The beauty of the internet is that when you write about things you’re interested in, you get to meet other people interested in the same things. A few days ago I wrote a few thoughts about “geocontent,” and a user named “deprimer” commented on my article and pointed me toward Socialight.

Socialight is probably the closest thing yet to what I’ve been writing and talking about for years. It’s a site that allows you to easily link content to a specific geographic location. Within 3 minutes of arriving on the site, I had an account and had created my first “sticky.” A sticky is a way to say, “Hey, this content is useful to this location.”

There are several things Socialight is doing right. You can mark information public or private. It’s very simple and intuitive to use. There are “channels,” which allow you to create or find stickys related to a certain topic. And of course there is the social side built into the site, you can follow other people’s stickys or channels, rate stickys, and tag them.

I’ve just played with the web side of Socialight, but they have a JAVA and WAP version that apparently works on almost any phone.

As far as what Socialight might be able to improve upon… Currently you can only add text and images. I’d love to be able to add audio, video, or a link to relevant content already on the web. I know that there will be some issues involved with bandwidth trying to pull down video over a cell phone, but ultimately this is the goal. I also wonder if there might be a way to sync up stickys before you leave on a trip. You could pull down the audio and video on your broadband connection, and then sync them up with your cell phone.

I’d also love to see Socialight automatically sync up all of the Wikipedia articles that have GPS data already built in. This would probably be a time/effort intensive project up front, but once completed, would prove invaluable. Many articles already have GPS coordinates or street addresses, so it would merely be a matter of downloading Wikipedia, stripping out all the articles that don’t have this information, and slapping them all up on the map. Of course, there are some articles that don’t have GPS data that would still be useful to link up. The article on George Washington, for example, could be linked to the place he was born, where he is buried, where he lived, etc.

And while I mentioned the site was very easy to use, and intuitive, I did find there were a few user interface issues that seemed a bit clunky, but they are almost not worth mentioning.

Finally, I think there is one other thing I’d like to see, but I’m not quite sure how best to describe it. I think Socialight is a great step toward seeing geocontent really take off, but it needs something more. As I’ve thought about what that more is, I asked myself why I’m not anxious to go and add a bunch of stickys. Finally, I have a site that does just what I’ve wanted a site to do, so why am I not online creating a bunch of geocontent?

I think the answer lies in ownership. When I create a web site, I own the content. I know that I can take my files from one hosting service to another. I know that if my hosting provider goes down, I’ve got the files and can put it up somewhere else. While I may put my pictures on Flickr, I’ve also got them on my hard drive, and can put them up on Panaramio, or Picassa online. For me personally, when I create these geocontent items, I want to keep them. I want to be able to put them on a disk and give to my kids, or friends. I want to be able to use them in one program or another, just like a .html file can be opened with dreamweaver, a browser, or even notepad.

Maybe that is what I want, is a file with an extension that can be read by Socialight, by an application on my desktop, or on my phone. While I will very likely use programs like Socialight to share my geocontent, for me I also want to have a backup just in case. Because I feel like a lot of the content I will be creating will be something I’ll want to pass down to my kids. And to just put them up on a website doesn’t seem secure enough. If I interview my father about the town where he grew up, I don’t want that information lost.

And if the platform is “open,” meaning people can take and tweak what can be done, then you start to get a whole slew of really cool applications that start to evolve.

I don’t want to end on a negative note. I think Socialight is very slick, and you really should go check it out. Add “firemeboy” to your friends list, and let me know if you set up an account. I’m looking forward to the many cool things that are going to happen as we link up content and location.

Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.

The browser wars have been heating up lately with the recent releases of Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5. As a long-time Phoenix Firebird Firefox user and recent convert to Opera Mini (which is excellent, btw) on my Treo, I thought I’d run these two through their paces to [...]]]>

The browser wars have been heating up lately with the recent releases of Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5. As a long-time Phoenix Firebird Firefox user and recent convert to Opera Mini (which is excellent, btw) on my Treo, I thought I’d run these two through their paces to see what they are made of. The hits and misses after the jump.

Opera 9.5

Opera 9.5 actually came out about a week or so before Firefox 3, so it was the one I tried out first. Opera takes a kind of “kitchen sink” approach and is arguably the most feature packed browser out there. For the most part, this approach works really well. Most browsers couldn’t duplicate the functionality of Opera, and it would take dozens of extensions (which often don’t work when new versions of Firefox come out) to try to pull off the same effect in Firefox.

Here are some of the notable features built-in to Opera:

• Built-in browser sync (even to Opera Mini on my Treo!, try that with Weave)
• An excellent download manager
• Built-in ad content-blocker
• Session management
• Wand (auto-form filler on steroids)
• Web development tool
• A unique trash can approach for recently closed tabs
• A novel speed dial start page

The best, and most notable, “feature” of Opera is its speed however. It really is incredibly fast. It starts almost instantly; actually everything happens pretty much instantly. It is easily the fastest full service (i.e. not K-melon) browser I’ve ever used. Opera also has a pretty good security track record and is even more obscure than Firefox (smaller target for hackers).

While I really appreciate that I don’t have to basically roll my own browser (I’m looking at you and your extensions Firefox), Opera may suffer from a few too many features. Does a modern web browser really need an IRC or email client? Both clients are just average implementations, and the really odd part is how they show up as tabs in the browser right next to web pages. That said, you don’t have to use or enable them if you don’t want to.

The biggest problem I have is with the rendering in Opera 9.5. While most (>95%) of the sites I visited rendered fine, quite a few blogs and Netflix didn’t look right. Even though most of the blogs probably suffer from poor HTML coding and lack of compliance to web standards, it is still something that was a bother. Firefox has always rendered quirky sites well.

Firefox 3

Now onto the reigning “alternative” browser champ, Firefox; here is the quick take on its latest installment. The good: all of the features of Firefox 2. The bad: not really anything new since Firefox 2. The speed has improved a bit and it hasn’t crashed on me yet (should that really be a feature?), but I really have to ask myself what else Mozilla has been doing during the almost two years between Firefox 2 and 3.

Here are the only features I’ve found notable in Firefox 3:

• Scales/zooms images using a higher quality bilinear (or maybe bicubic, see image to the right) method instead of using a low quality “nearest neighbor” approach (finally someone did it!)
• Download manager back-end has really been improved (resume actually works now), it is too bad they ruined the front-end UI for it however

There really aren’t many other new features but most of them fall under the “different, but not necessarily better” category for me. Yeah, yeah, the bookmarks use a database now, but I’m still trying to figure out how that benefits me or why I should care, the “AwesomeBar” is a bit short on awesomeness, and the one-click bookmarking is only easier if you never organize your bookmarks.

The Verdict

The verdict? I’m still using Firefox. The page rendering problems and something about the Opera UI just doesn’t suit me well. Other than that though it is clearly the better browser; I will definitely be following its development. I am probably just too used to Firefox really; especially the keyboard shortcuts for tabs. If I was already an Opera user I could not think of a single reason why I would switch to Firefox though. If you aren’t happy with your current browser you should definitely check Opera out.

…one more thing about Firefox

Back in the day one of my favorite web browsers didn’t really improve much for a long time, remember it? It was Netscape 4 and they weren’t even the underdog. If Mozilla wants to maintain their momentum they need to bring their A-game, there is some stiff competition these days (Opera, IE, Safari) who are all actually innovating.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

The problem with the Internet is that any whacko with a connection gets to throw out his/her opinion, however wrong it may be. The Internet’s saving grace is that other whackoes can point out just how wrong the first whacko is.

Charlie Barratt wrote an article over at GamesRadar in which he points [...]]]>

The problem with the Internet is that any whacko with a connection gets to throw out his/her opinion, however wrong it may be. The Internet’s saving grace is that other whackoes can point out just how wrong the first whacko is.

Charlie Barratt wrote an article over at GamesRadar in which he points out that Wikipedia is nothing more than a haven for nerds. Sure, there may be millions of articles, but they are all about nerdy things. Wikipedia lacks real meat.

Well, Mr. Barratt is either completley oblivious or just likes to poke fun. In the very first “example,” he points out that the Call of Duty video game has more words than the entry for World War II. Ha ha, very funny, but does he have any idea that Wikipedia has length guidelines? There are hundreds, if not thousands of articles related to World War II, Barratt just didn’t bother to find that out. He combines the articles for all of the Call of Duty video games but doesn’t bother adding up the hundreds of articles for World War II.

Wikipedia seems to be everybody’s favorite whipping boy, but rarely do folks stop to take a good look at just how remarkable a resource and phenomenon it is.

Think Wikipedia is a second rate web site? Go ahead, try to write an article and get it to featured status. It’s probably easier to write a dissertation (thought I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never done either).

Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.

It’s been almost one year to the day since I posted my article on TechConsumer about why “Web 2.0″ wasn’t enough, and how “geocontent” might just well be the next big thing.

I’ve yet to change my opinion.

During the past year I have seen many strides [...]]]>

It’s been almost one year to the day since I posted my article on TechConsumer about why “Web 2.0″ wasn’t enough, and how “geocontent” might just well be the next big thing.

I’ve yet to change my opinion.

During the past year I have seen many strides taken by many companies in the effort to link content to location. Google is interested; Yahoo is interested. We all know the latest iPhone will have GPS. It is no longer a question of if it will happen, but rather, the question is when will it happen. And who will be the big winner?

I’ve noticed that there are several companies trying to get their foot in the geocontent arena by hopping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Take Loopt, for example, or ByNotes. Loopt says they are connecting people and places. ByNotes looks to be a Twitter/blog/GPS mashup. But these companies are working on “Geo 2.0″ before “Geo 1.0″ has been built.

Look at how the Internet came to be. First there was nothing. Then there was a little bit of content. Then there was a boat load of content. Then there was so much content we couldn’t wade through it all. At that point, Web 2.0 suddenly made sense. We now have social networks, other humans, to help us sift through the billions of blogs to find the really good stuff (think reddit, Digg, etc.).

But the geocontent arena hasn’t hit this critical mass. We don’t have massive amounts of really good content yet. We don’t have a way for people to create interesting content around locations. Or even tie exisiting content to locations. Until this happens, geocontent 2.0 will likely take a back seat as a sparkly bobble. Something fun to look at, but not as important.

It is my prediction that someone, somewhere will come up with a very slick and easy way to tie content to a location. It will need to be easy to do with a phone or a desktop. It will need to be easy to access from a phone or a desktop. Once this happens, prepare to see an explosion of all sorts of wickedly cool apps.

Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.