Web 2.0 SF 2010 Expo

The Web 2.0 Expo is well underway in San Francisco, where for the next couple of days the future of the web will be discussed by industry gurus, in between a scavenger hunt and other fun events. You can watch keynotes live here (hat tip: Nikos), while you wait for videos to be uploaded on their Blip.tv channel. Of course, you can follow everything happening on the expo’s official twitter.

Having access to all this information is almost as good as actually being there. Almost, but not quite. Note to self: travel more.

Earth View at Google Maps

A new option to view maps in Earth View, takes the Satellite option one step further by incorporating 3D views, high resolution images and fly around the world navigation almost identical to that of the popular Google Earth software.

First time you select Earth on the maps page, you will be prompted to download and install a plugin that will allow your web browser to use this feature. Quite like Microsoft’s Bing Maps have been operating for some time.

I really enjoyed test driving the Earth View, and I’m looking forward to what’s next from the Google Earth and Maps team! You can view the video below for a more detailed description of this newest feature.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was developed by Getalime as an entry to the Rails Rumble 2008 contest, which is an annual competition for web applications programmed in Ruby on Rails.

You simply tell it what you want to be reminded of, when, and how. Reminders can be sent as e-mail, mobile text message, or to your jabber or twitter account.

Remindr has earned a place in my list of favorite web applications, and you can try it out and see for yourself by visiting here. No registration required, and it’s free.

Cuil co-founders Anna Patterson, Louis Monier and Russell Power are clearly set out to take on their former employer, Google. Although Cuil’s technology may very well be able to do that – I don’t quite understand all the “look at me, I can do it better than Google” approach. Read this for instance. When you start typing a search term in Cuil, auto-complete sets in suggesting possible search terms. It can even suggest a direct website link. This is described on Cuil as “We let you look before you leap, because not everyone feels lucky.”, an obvious reference to Google’s “I Feel Lucky” search button directing you to the most likely possible match of your search to a website. It’s a little funny, not in a bad way though.

Getting passed the “I want Google’s head on a platter” hype, Cuil does seem promising. They claim to have new search architecture and algorithms in place which will provide for better, more relevant results. Twiceler, the search engine’s spider is set out to crawl every page on the World Wide Web. Already indexing more than 121 billion web pages. Popularity will not be the main factor of assessing a web page’s relevance to a search term. Their deeper content analysis Cuil says will provide for better results.

Another aspect of searching with Cuil which sets it apart from competitors is Privacy. Very simply put in their own words “when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies”. Several competing search engines, store users’ web search history on their servers, claiming it helps them provide more relevant content. Cuil does not.

Venturing from the simple search box at the front page of Cuil to the results display, the user interface is unlike most you’ve grown to expect when you search the web. Instead of the conventional list style results, you get 3 columns by default, which can be switched to 2. For each resulting web page, there is a title, some of the contained text, and a picture. A format you’d most likely expect at News websites displaying their articles.

An “Explore by Category” box on the top-right, allows for quick searches on other subjects belonging in categories your current search is also listed in. Tabs on the top of the page provide quick switches to other relevant results.

Another thing that caught my attention though, is Cuil uses e-mail. I mean there are no forms there, besides the search form. If you want your website included in their index, you have to send them e-mail! If you want to inquire about employment, send feedback, make questions, just send them e-mail! They even use the same e-mail addresses to accept feedback on different issues, which means they actually have to read the messages instead of automating actions and replies. Impressive.

Still Google does continue to claim it indexes more on the web than Cuil, without revealing any numbers. And many users point out Google continues to offer more search results for the same search terms. Considering Cuil launched just yesterday, I think we all ought to wait a while and see. It may just be a bit to early to provide any constructive criticism.

Has anyone been using Cuil lately? I’d like to hear what you think of it!

Imagine in the near future, you can have a website address in the form of www.john.doe, www.mary.lovescats, www.government.office and www.summer.vacation.

Whether this will all lead to confusion or it will aid in the direction of an even more semantic web, it remains to be seen. Trademarks on web addresses will be hard to keep up with though. With the 21 top-level domains currently available, many companies choose to register their name with all in order to avoid consumer confusion and fraud. If there where hundreds of possible web address suffixes, that’d be a nearly impossible task to handle.

Among other decisions reached by the ICANN board in Paris, is the future support of other languages in web address extensions. Presently, you can only use 37 roman characters in a web address. Support for Asian, Arabic, Eastern European and Greek scripts should become available once that decision goes into implementation.

According to the ICANN this is the “biggest expansion to Internet in forty years”, and with a constantly growing demand for more websites and domain names, a much awaited for expansion by many.

WHY!?

First thought when I noticed that, was my browser had been hijacked and that I was at a phishing site or fraudulent Google imitator. I think that might have been preferable.

The new favicon used by Google is… so bad, it could almost be characterized “evil”. Come on! Is that the best a company of Google’s gravity can come up with? Who is responsible? A 5 year old using an online favicon maker?

Right, that’s just my opinion. I don’t like it. I wish it would go away. But why should they listen to me, or the voice of reason for that matter? They can even make an animated favicon featuring a purple tortoise belly dancing and get away with it. I am not saying the previous icon was a work of art or something. But at least everyone was familiar with and used to it.

If you can’t make something better, at least don’t make it worse. Please.

It makes use of Google Maps, and there’s lots of cool stuff you can do there. These include embedding your favorite spots on your blog, writing reviews on spots and events, bookmarking, adding friends, sharing photos and videos on the places you bookmark.

Nomao’s user interface is about as web 2.0 as they get. Without sacrificing usability. In reality, it’s one of the most simple to use and effective user interfaces I’ve seen on a web service in quite some time. Well, at least according to my liking.

I think I’m going to like using this

I’m already back in blogging mood

If Yahoo is bought though – at whatever astronomical price, it will come to prove that EVERYTHING on this world is FOR SALE.

Is that a bad thing? Yes, and no. Ah, I love blog topics when there is no obvious conclusion.

Money where made to circulate. And this is a free economy (more or less), so if you can buy something and want to, you might as well go ahead.

Microsoft obviously wants Yahoo. In plain terms, Microsoft is not in a position to compete with Google on the Internet. So, why go out and build quality services which will attract devoted users, when you can buy a ready made company like Yahoo?

However, there are rules in competition. Microsoft has already been fined for it’s practices by the European Union – so I don’t see how a Microsoft – Yahoo merger would be seen favorably in Europe when it will almost definitely conflict with anti-monopoly regulations.

I practically grew up with Yahoo. I remember it as far back as 1996-7, before even Google came into the picture. So I may be a bit sentimental about seeing it diminished or absorbed into Microsoft. Never mind that, this is a “money talks” society, so the way Yahoo has been cornered, I doubt it will manage to continue as is.

I also doubt that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger would be able to better rival Google. In fact, I think the one who will most benefit will be none other than Google itself. For so many reasons. Primarily because Microsoft would again mess up and fail to drive Yahoo to success.

Stories are out already, about a possible counter-proposal to Yahoo from Google. I cannot imagine how people over at Yahoo feel right now, it seems like one of these situations where you would have to choose over the lesser evil. “Which competitor do I surrender to?”, questions must have already been posed.

Oh well. What do you think about it? Would you rather see Yahoo bought by Microsoft, Google, or continue on its own?

I remember a time when blogging was not even invented as a term. When places like Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal simply did not exist. And that time was a little over 10 years ago, when I designed and uploaded my first homepage. I hadn’t even finished school yet, let alone having gone to university or having had any kind of training on how to build a web page other than self study and endless hours keeping company to the computer.

Even then people felt the need to keep online journals though. However, it wasn’t as easy. You had to type everything in, give shape and form to what you’ve written with HTML tags, manually add a date, and then make sure you have another page which you manually needed to update keeping track of past journal entries.

The only way people could leave comments on your homepage at that time was via a “guestbook” and not on individual posts. So, you usually had an e-mail link somewhere and if someone wanted to discuss something you’ve written about – they e-mailed you.

Then technology progressed and it was made possible to simplify the entire process into type and publish. Easily making categories for posts, adding tags, keeping archives, comments, and publishing news feeds.

So now EVERYONE blogs. Even the least technologically savvy people with a connection to the Internet. Blogging is not now, nor has ever been reserved for an elite of Internet users anyhow. And once again technology came to the rescue making a wonderful way of expression available to the masses.

Blogs exist today on pretty much every subject there is to discuss. Some bloggers go with niche subjects such as blogs on flowers and gardening, other’s like myself just blog about anything that draws their attention. All these blogs together formed the blogosphere. A virtual space within the world wide web were all the blogs reside.

Even Technorati.com recently lost count of how many blogs there are, and started making use of the term “Zillions”.

So, if there are so many blogs out there already, why bother starting your own? Well, because you can. There is no guarantee anyone will ever read what you write, and if you write too much about your workplace it may even cost you your job. But if writing is a passion of yours, and you want to do it – go ahead.

You can get a free blog at any of the following places:

• Blogger
• WordPress
• Vox
• LiveJournal
• MySpace

And because the blogosphere is a vast place where it is very easy to get lost, let me know where your blog is and I may drop by for a visit some time.