Bottletalk

I talked about the progressive specialization of social networks and things are going fast forward in this trend. Now the users of Bottletalk can share impressions about the wines that they have tasted and about the best harvests.

Bottletalk is a directed social net about the world of wine, where users can add the wines that they have tasted or would like to taste, and post their own experiences about the wines through comments and tags.

Tags are useful for searching a type of wine of among the tag-cloud and know the opinion and the appraisal of other users.

Just make sure you don't post to many labels this holiday season. There should be a parallel site named hangovertalk.com.

tag: bottletalk, social networks

Koolanoo

Guess what service is this cool James Bond Video promoting:



Koolanoo is a new specialized social networking site that caters to Jewish users. It offers the required features in this sort of product; messages, events, forums, photo albums and even a dating section all for a free sign up. Progressive specialization of networking sites was bound to happen, as generalist sites such as Friendster are to clobbered by users to be of any practical use. We will see more and more sites articulated around some particular axis (be it religion, beliefs, profession), and this will form tightly united and productive communities.

Data for the masses

If you like data you we will find Swivel, a quite curious service. It allows registered users to upload their own data sets in CSV format, obtained from a web page, from excel sheets or even from pdf files, and the site will generate all sorts of graphs for this data.

You can make the data public that the rest of users are now who can embed the graphs in their web pages thanks to the facilitated code, to leave comments, to value them, to edit some options, and the most interesting feature, to make comparisons with other graphs and run correlation analysis between different variables.

Some really weird correlations are being established in the site (global warming fits almost everything that goes up).

Online Discounts

Online savy people can save a ton of money this holiday season by buying their presents in the Internet and getting discounts and coupons for major retailers. ncnatural.com is one of the places that host a directory of this sort of Online Coupons. The page is updated frequently with dozens of online merchants. The site is easy to navigate and some coupons do not need to fuzz with offer codes, just follow the link to the Merchant and voilá, save some dollars on this year compulsive Christmas goodwill. You can get some books from Amazon or some Refurbished iPods at incredible prices. Just remember no to buy Ipods as presents, because everybody has already one. Other merchants include Overstocks, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Expedia, Disney and Dell. Happy buying and just forget that January is around the corner.

4 things that make me feel in the 21st century

With all the hype built by legions of science-fiction writers, let's admit that the 21st century has been a complete letdown. Where are the personal flying devices and virtual reality gadgets?

Personally, I have to rely in some few and scattered things that make me feel in the 21st century with their instantaneous futuristic aura, it's the 21stesque touch:

- Calatrava's architecture: His buildings and bridges blow my mind.


- The Sony Reader: e-ink has fulfilled Borges' sand book vision.


- The Nintendo Wii: one step closer to Star Trek virtual playground.


- Second Life: ultracapitalistic society with commandments encoded in the genes (thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal). Perfect society? Hell no, but you can cruise some chicks there.




tags: second life, calatrava, wii, sony reader

Paid Content Discussion

The payperpost forums are thriving with discussions about this innovative formula for publishers to monetize their content. Some of the hot issues discussed over at PayPerPost are the convenience of disclosing your affiliation with the service (my take is that disclosure is positive and necessary for this business model), wordpress blocking, review criteria and opportunities discussion (bloggers can flag an advertisement as questionable to prevent taking part in scams).

The forums also caters more general bloggers' concerns such as how do you turn your blog into a book or technical questions about embedded content.

The presence of some actual reviewers in the forum helps to deal with some of the most grain-of-salt issues, as some advertisers are not very clear in defining what they want.

Link Count Widget

Technorati has unveiled the Link Count Widget, a widget through which every entry of the blogs that insert it, will display in real time the quantity of links that this specific entry has received.

To put it in another way, now if you have a blog, you will be able to show to your visitors the number of links that refer to your entries in real time so that they can access some of the posts that link to you to and follow the ongoing discussion from other blogs or see the repercussion you had.

The Myspace of Poker

Now that Internet gambling is coming under heavy legislative fire with the new puritan laws, a new free service: PokerDIY - Connecting Poker Player for Live Games, eases the task of finding local, brick-and-mortar and charitable poker events in your vicinity.

You can announce the poker games you host or start and join a poker league and keep track of results. You can invite users by email and keep the members of your league informed of the results.

I forsee Prohibition will have no real effect and poker will continue to be a prominent American entertainment. I even saw an event hosted by the The Fraternal Order of Police of South Oakland County in the calendar. Maybe poker will go back to the living-room for a while with the aid of well-structured services like this.

PokerDIY has additional services like a forum, poker blog, TV poker schedule and poker articles.

Rrove

Thanks to the Google Maps API many useful service can be created .Rrove is a social net|network where the users add their favorite places and can share them with the rest of users.

The operation is simple; we will have to look for the area, introduce its location, then we can cover it with a rectangle and enter tags, description, evaluation and even a description if we want. We can add our photos, or import them from flickr.

Sharing places is a great idea, but may I suggest a possible connection to travel offers? That would monetize the idea and I'm sure it has crossed the creator's mind.

Pay per Click goes Pay per Lead

This is a identifiable trend in Internet advertisement as companies want to quantify the real impact of their campaigns. Recently Apogee Search, a Search Engine Marketing firm in the Southwest, announced that it has decided to endorse and support the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). SEMPO's mission is foster awareness of SEM and its role in marketing.

Apogee Search's motto "Customers, not clicks" exemplifies this tendency. They provide their clients with data about specific number of completed lead forms, conversion rates and actual cost per lead.

Wii are Waiting

Only 3 day for the US release of Nintendo's new playtoy: the Wii. But this is not "yet another console" release. The Wii offers technological innovation that might change they way we approach gaming.

Nintendo wants to make gaming as accessible to people of all ages and all abilities. The key to this strategy is the controller: the Wii Remote controller. It features motion-sensing technology that turn it into a multifunctional device:In a tennis game, it serves as your racket;in a driving game, it serves as your steering wheel.

The potentiality of this device is overwhelming. It could end with the topic of the obese kid closed in his room. Nintendo want to turn the family's living room into a playground for all, even the most techno-adverse. I think they will succeed.

tags: Nintendo, Wii

Disclosure Policy

Valid from 14 November 2006

This blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. However, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. We refuse to publish, under our pen name, blattant advertisment or compulsory positive appraisals. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely those of the author. Any product claim about a product or service should be verified with the provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.

Youtube in your Ipod

Itube is a free windows app that will put your favorite youtube videos straight into your Ipod. You just need to input the YouTube page URL and iTube will download the file, convert it to MP4 format from the original FlashVideo (.flv), and then import it directly into iTunes.

When you plug in your iPod video it will transfer automatically . If you don't have an iPod video, you can watch the movie in any MP4 player or even in Itunes.

If you want the original .flv video use the the Video Downloader plugin for Firefox. It suports a plethora of video sites like Google Video, Metacafe, Ifilm, Dailymotion and also embedded video.

Itube
tags: itube, youtube, ipod, video downloader

FeedCycle

RSS has always been useful because of its time stamp. Unlike static web content, RSS can be pulled in a time basis easing the task of identifying new content. Now FeedCycle.com takes a natural step forward and allows user to control the timing parameters of their feeds., i.e, it enables the publisher to create, publish and manage cyclic, or serialised web feeds. To give a graphical example, it allows users to replay a given feed (say a podcast) and deliver its content in a day to day basis. Subscriber can get all the content regardless of the exact moment in which they subscribed, that is to say they can be in a different cycle from others subscribers.

It is a great idea that may have applications in educational content like taped classes, manuals...The service is free for 30 feeds, with a maximum of 500 items each and unlimited subscribers which suffices for most content.

Others plans cost 10 GBP or 20 GBP per month and offer additional bandwidth, feeds and items. Users can check existing feeds in a directory structured by a tag cloud. It allows redirection of feeds to Feedburner for extra statistics and control.

They host a curious Christmas competition to familiarize users with the site: they award $500 to the best «Twelve Days of Christmas» carol, a kind of cumulative song, with 12 stanzas ideal for testing timed delivery of feeds.


tags: Feedcycle, RSS, feeds

Sony Reader

I am eagerly awaiting the European release of the Sony Reader. This e-ink device was lunched to mixed reviews in the US some months ago and if successful, Sony might test other markets. Heavy on-screen reading can be devastating for your eyes. This new generation of ebooks, including the ILIAD, solves this problem by providing a paper-like experience.

Sony Reading took some beating in the reviews mainly for the lack of titles in its online store, not for the device itself. This issue can be bypassed as the user can upload their own content in the universal formats TXT or RTF. IREX's ILIAD, on the other hand, is getting attacked for its long page-turning time and the beta nature of their software.

Publisher confidence (yea, that means DRM for them) and early adopting is the key to the success of this devices. For my eyes' sake let this thing come to Europe and I can kiss goodbye to my straining LCD.

tags: Sony Reader, ebooks, e-books, Iliad

Call mining

When I was young, I worked in a call-center for a summer and I did experience in my skin how prickly the clients can get. Our calls got monitored at random by the supervisor, but that didn't prevent some of the operators from being rude with clients that threatened to switch company and did churn or some of the most critical consumer demands to go unnoticed. One of my colleagues even transferred «uneasy» calls to his own mobile and dispatched them in the most uncouth manner in the bathroom.

That wouldn't have happened if our company had conversation analysis technology like CallMiner. This technology analyzes all the content collected from Contact Center calls and applies sophisticated algorithms to extract important information such as trends in consumer satisfaction. Next time you threat to switch company or reclaim better rates, just think that someone might be taking note, even if that someone is not human.


tags: call mining, mining, churn

Multiply goes 3.0

The social networking site with privicy controls has unveiled its 3.0 version. Here is the changelog:

* Brand-new, super-charged "My Multiply" message board
* All-in-one Ajaxified photo uploader/album editor
* Simplified layout, featuring new navigation links at the top of every page
* Hide messages from your message board
* Streamlined settings page
* "My Network" page, showing you precisely who's whom
* Dragable (and dropable) video page featuring for quick re-ordering
* Even more customizable homepage (hide unwanted boxes!)

Some quick reactions:

- My multyply is much more intuitive than the old explore page.
- Ajax uploader still lack the ability to posts multiple images.
- Home pages are more and more customizable.
- Still lacks embedded videos with just the html code from some vide site.

F1 or Nascar?

Technological advancement is often tested in the battleground of motor races and, eventually, it finds its way into mass consumer market. Being an European I'm a fan of F-1, but I must admit that for sheer entertainment few things beat the appeal of US motor racing competitions. Nascar is a classic, but others innovative formats don' t fall short. Like PINKS, the television show on Speed Channel where two competitors compete several times in a Drag race with their car at stake. F1 or Nascar? The debate goes on. I concede that sometimes F1 can seem too tactical and computer driven. Technological gap between the cars is bigger than in Nascar and some races are unemotionally, complete sweeps from the front-liner. But, I'm still reeling from the Fernando Alonso Vs Schumacher close duel we had this season.

All day marathon of PINKS followed by premiere of PINKS All Out on Speedtv on Nov 23rd:


This post sponsored by Speedtv.com. Drag Racing Clips

Brightcove

Video monetization is the next big thing. With all these youtube videos appering on mainstream TV, there is a lot of money being left behind. Brightcove network has taken the lead and it offers the possibility of adding commercials in the videos in several fashions: pre-roll, post roll, overlays and synced banners appearing next to the video player.

Now we need an ad network that automatically embeds the ads for the users with out-of-the-box ease. The creator should be able to posts these videos, along with the ads, to their prefered video network. Sites need to remove strict TOS that prevent video monetization. After all, most of the youtube videos already include some sort of covert advertisement.

We need professional ad insertion for Internet video to skyrocket and be a real threat to TV traditional dominance.

tags: brightcove, youtube, ads, intenet video

Multiply

Picking up the social networking thread, I have been testing the Multiply environment. It is quite impressing. Content integration is great; forums, blogs audio and video all craftily blended in a single, accessible page.

The ability to create private groups, with content restricted to members, is great. But why call it "groups"? Call it "networks". Other services such as peopleaggregator also incur in this confusion.

The flash video player is great (restrictions are the same as youtube: 100Mb or 10 mins), but it needs an audio player integrated in the page.

The handling of personal messages and answers relies too much on email. Why are all email alerts turn on by default? I thought email was old, and networking was new. Relaying in email for alerts is, definitely, old-fashioned.

tags: social networks, networking, multiply, youtube, communities

New is better?

The dark side of tech-cult is novelty-cult. There is a bunch of old sites that still do the job and just because they don't feature flashy ajax stuff they don't reserve to be swept away in the whirlwind of innovation. Here is a list of old sites that I keep using:

1. BLOGLINES: With all the flashy start-pages out there, for pure RSS reading you can't beat Bloglines' sheer simplicity.

2. IMDB: All the info, all the minute details so you don't have to wait until the end of the credits in the cinema to find out who made that music. They could give it a social networking touch to be in tune with the times. After all, cinema is one of the most talked-about and individual-defining subjects.

3. TECHNORATI: Still the best way to know what's the hype. Other sites are catching up, though. Technorati needs a complete redesign. Why no RSS feed for the MOST POPULAR section?

tags: bloglines, technorati, IMDB

Network of Networks

That's the next logical step in social networks: let users define their own networks, who they invite and who sees its content. It's not utopical that in some years most of the Internet content is locked in private, closely-knot networks of affinities. The snobbish advancement of these future content elites is the uber-closed Asmallworld .

I have been testing some of these meta-networks and there is still room for improvement (most are in beta stage):

1. GOINGON: The ads are too obtrusive, paid service for +5 members. It lacks a decent media player and general integration of its manyfold and customizable service. I like the extra tabs feature that allows user-defined code or URL to be integrate in the page.

2. PEOPLEAGGREGATOR: Confusion between networks and groups, lack of nice media players (this is the key), lack of batch upload of content. Nice interface but still in the works. Charsets other than English get messed up.

More on this on the next post.

tags: social networks, peopleaggregator, goingon, asmallworld

Firefox 2.0 is here

Firefox 2.0 is here. A first look review:

Pros:

- Integrated multi-language spell check.
- Search suggestions.
- Faster browsing.


Cons:

- No major features that weren't available trough extensions.
- Memory-leaks still in place.
- No fully featured RSS reader built-in

tags: Firefox 2.0, browsers

Box.net hits 1/2M users

I use and appreciate this online storage software, especially for backup purposes. I am glad their are succeeding. The Web 2.0 roadmap is clear: First create a faithful user base, then find creative ways to capitalize somehow on it or sell to a Big Whale.

With netvibes, users get 1Gb for free and 5Gb for 4.99$/Mo.

With box.net you can access important files from any computer, share photos, and files too big for email and, here is the strenght, synchronize and backup folders of your computer.

The widget to access box.net inside netvibes is godsend.

tags: box.net, online storage, backup

Zoho Virtual Office

Let us all repeat the new mantra: Integration.

Zoho Virtual Office integrates all the scattered Zoho services into one free service for individuals: Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Planner, Zoho Creator and Zoho Chat.

Google Office lurks in the background, but Zoho has hit first. Albeit in a beta stage, the demo promises a good fight for giants Google and Microsoft. It really looks and feel like a desktop.

Pageflakes 2.0

The battle of the start pages enters a new stage with the announcement of Pageflakes 2.0. It seems that the site will undergo a complete redesign and pages might be shared and edited among certain users. It was the next logical step. The possibilities of this concept are endless, but pages can get quite messy and confusing after a while.

Widgets for start-pages are an innovative way to promote sites. See the useful Bittybrowser, for instance and the myriad of integration option it offers.

Jajah

Jajah is VOIP service that has pretty much nailed it. It has got ridden of the only thing that prevented VOIP to turning massive in previous services like Skype: talking trough a headset.

With Jajah you just activate the call through the web and use your ordinary phone or mobile to inititate the conversation.

It has cheap rates and even free calls between active European and US users. How cool can it be? Enough typing SMS in the tiny keyboard, with Jajah you just type in the computer and send it at a competitive rate.

My abroad friends, here I come. You will have to bear my conversation from now on.

Itunes hits the Movies

It seems that Itunes hit the right spot with its switch to movies. Disney alone made 1 million $ out of movie sales in the first week alone.

"Clearly customers are saying to us they want content in multiple ways," said Disney chief executive Robert Iger.

How could anyone watch a movie in such tiny screen is beyond my wits. Cool-factor? Better say, Eye-strain factor.

Zune

Microsoft dash at the Ipod is taking shape. They have an appetizer web up and now they promise "music sharing". Of course it will be sharing a la Microsoft, which means DRM and perishable songs.

It will have 30GB storage and wireless functionality for Zune-to-Zune sharing of music, pictures and home recordings; and a built-in FM tuner (The one thing apple didn't get right).

I'm not sure it will succeed. Microsoft is not associated with cool rhythms, but rather the beeps of Windows alerts and help windows.

Facebook open

It was only for U.S. college students, but now it's opening up to other milieus. High School students and employees of certain corporations are allowed to join. Facebook also allows users to complement their their high school, college or corporate network with a geographic network.

What will succeed in social networking? Geographic networks or social-class networks? It's an old debate: extraction Vs education, local allegiances Vs global identities.

Google Books in PDF

Wow this will blow some minds, especially over at the British Library. Google offers pdf download of out-of-copyright books.

Some concerns, though. The pdf format chosen is far from standard and it consists of a bunch of scanned images. This disallows format conversion or text extraction without advanced OCR.

One more effort, google.

Wink

More content integration. Wink indexes tagged content from Digg, Yahoo MyWeb, Furl, Slashdot, other social bookmarking sites.

Think of it as a google for tags.

It has it's own tagging service.

The quest for the ultimate integration site is open. Who will integrate the web? Well... besides Google.

Bullshitr mocks web 2.0

Ok, perhaps too much hype around 2.0.

No problem, Bullshitr will give you random indea for your next start-up.

It even links to a logo generator. What else do you need? Well... Investors!

Zoho Project

If you are one of those that has problems getting organized, perpetual procrastinator, check ZohoProjects.

"Zoho Projects help teams organize their work & track progress. Most of the project management software takes longer time to setup & it becomes a overhead in a project."

It's free for a single project . Time-tracking is its more valuable feature as others are already out there, like file-sharing or wiki documents.

Rollyo

A meta-search engine is so 2.0. Rollyo allows users to "roll their own search engines" by customising the the sites you want to include in the search engine. Up to 25 sites can be included..

Rollyo also allows users to search pre-defined topical search engines. Tailor-made search in a word.

MeeboME

Meebo is a web chat company that allows users to access popular instant messaging services on a web page instead of downloading clients..

MeeboMe is a Flash-based chat widget that web administrators can place on a website.

MeeboMe allows a one-on-one communication between a website admin and his visitors.

Firefox attack

OneStat reports a dramatic increase in Firefox marketshare. In Germany Firefox already has a 39% market share.

"It seems that the global usage share of Mozilla Firefox starts to grow rapidly again after a period of no growth" said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com

Kickapps

The last cry is content integration and social networking.

Kickapps is a social networking site for admins where they can share all sorts of media.

They offer ten widgets for posting media off-site and detailed data reports on traffic and use.

KickApps platform aims at serving many thousands of websites, big and small, with a hosted, turnkey approach to implementing sophisticated community functionality.

Zoho Show Beta

New announcement for power-point addicts:

Now you can load your existing presentations from Microsoft PowerPoint(.ppt, .pps) or OpenOffice Presentation(.sxi) and embed your presentations in your blog or website.

You can insert flowchart shapes and other basic shapes in your presentation. Flash 6.0 or higher version required.