Category: Web 2.0

Yesterday I received a voice message via Yahoo! Messenger from Ian, one of the mentors over at BigBlueBall. In his message, he pointed out that Skype provides voice mail, but at an extra cost, where Yahoo! Messenger (and Gizmo Project, and others) provide it for free. Literally minutes later I got an email announcing V4S, a free service that provides voice mail for Skype.

My curiosity appropriately piqued, I clicked install, and discovered that V4S is actually just a plug-in for Orb; a free tool that lets your access live TV, photos, music and videos from any web-enabled device. With the V4S plug-in, not only can you add voice mail to Skype for free, but you can retrieve it from anywhere with web connection, including your web-enabled PDA or mobile phone. This sounded really interesting.

Of course, I’m already placeshifting my satellite signal using Slingbox. But Orb lets you do some of this (if you have a PC equipped with a TV tuner card) but it adds the ability to access MP3s, photos, videos and other media on your PC.

I gave it a try, and it works fairly well. I was able to access all my photos, music and videos on my home PC from my laptop and a remote Internet connection. Performance was excellent, although I had trouble streaming MP3s. I switched to my iPAQ hw6515 PDA and it worked like a charm.

Once you’ve authenticated, Orb does a network speed test to determine the optimal stream rate for media. You can retest or hardcode a bitrate, but if you set it too high you’ll get more buffering. You could also use Orbit to allow someone you trust to access your media, although there are some obvious risks. Orb helps mediate some of those risks; only one remote user can connect to your PC at a time.

The V2S plug-in that provides Skype voice mail was the feature that drove me to originally try Orb, and there are a few other plug-ins that come with it. One lets you view your favorites or bookmarks, another lets you access your contacts (from Outlook, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Opera, Gmail or Outlook Express). Neither of these plug-ins are especially useful to me since I already store most of my favorites on del.icio.us now, and my PDA phone syncs my contacts automatically. Even so, it’s a nice touch, and it could be useful.

Because of the TV tuner requirement, Orb won’t replace my Slingbox. But Orb is cool, and if you’ve ever wanted to remotely access your media, it’s worth checking out.

technorati tags: orb, skype, placeshifting, mp3

Yahoo has recently redesigned their homepage. Although I think the new design is an improvement, I’m not going to argue the merits of the redesign. What really impressed me, and what I’d like to hear your opinion on, is how they created a walkthrough of the changes.

I’ve put together a brief walkthrough with commentary. It’s a 4.6 MB Flash file (mainly due to the audio), so if you’re interested, read on.
Continue reading How Yahoo introduces their new homepage

Andrew Littlefield has a vision for a place where teens can hang out with their friends without leaving home. No, it’s not called MySpace — it’s Doppelganger — experiencing it’s first incarnation as the PCD Music Lounge; a virtual nightclub.

Part MySpace, part Secondlife, the PCD Music Lounge is a 3D environment with cell-shaded avatars reminiscent of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto. The effect is actually very cool looking.

I had a chance to meet with Littlefield when Doppelganger when development was just beginning, and it looks like the vision has become a reality, though today there’s tough competition. The edge? Doppelganger integrates with AIM, allowing you to message your friends from within the environment, and vice versa. AIM being the most popular IM among North American teens, this makes a great fit. They get can stay in touch with all their friends, and they have a new “place” to hang out.

Although Secondlife has already grabbed a lot of attention, Doppelganger’s AIM link could be enough to tap into a whole new group of teens.

I serendipitously ran across Liveplasma today while reading a news story on CNET|News.com. The news story had a “big picture” section with a network diagram showing the relationships between stories, topics and companies. Clicking on any node refocused the diagram to reveal additional relationships. The concept was interesting, although the content appeared to be woefully incomplete and out-of-date. But I was intrigued enough to click the “powered by liveplasma” link, where I discovered a much more appropriate application — the liveplasma discovery engine.

The engine concept is sound, and on the liveplasma website more appropriately applied to information that isn’t subject to change as frequently as news. In this case, music and movies. You begin by typing the name of an artist, band, movie, director or actor, and network nodes (designated by colored bubbles) begin to glide around the screen, arranging themselves by affinity to your search. Click on any node to change the focus of the network.

I was impressed with the accuracy of the links, although it’s not flawless. Looking at Jethro Tull, for example, produced several duplicate networked relationships to two Ian Andersons, two ELPs and two Martin Barres. But the relationship it generated I generally agreed with. As a method for discovering related information, Liveplasma offers an interesting paradigm that could find application in other areas. Try it and let me know if you agree.

When I was a kid, I remember those super glue commercials on TV — the one’s where they glue a guy’s hardhat to the bottom of a steel beam, and he’s hanging onto the hat, feet dangling in the air. There was something inherently cool about super glue that made kids especially want it. It opened up all sorts of possibility for fun. “Pssst… watch me glue this penny to the ground and we’ll see who tries to pick it up.”

Suprglu isn’t quite the same, but it does aim for stickyness. Suprglu is an personal aggregator. You’re connected. You’ve got your Flickr account. You’ve got a blog. You use del.ico.us and digg, 43places. You track your playlists on Last.fm. What’s left? Suprglu!

Basically, Suprglu is a meta-site. You continue to use all your other social media sites to post photos, save bookmarks, blog, etc., but you configure Suprglu to pull them all together in one place. You give it a style and Suprglu does the rest. It’s an interesting concept, but it struck me as something that can already be done with most blogs (and a little elbow grease). The advantage, of course, is that Suprglu makes it really, really easy.

I like the fact that it creates a single page with all the various feeds aggregated from their various sources. But I’m still not sure I need or want this. I’d much rather do this right here on my blog (and in fact, I have done bits of this in the past). Why send people to yet another place?

On the darker side, this will make the stalkers job MUCH easier. Remember kids, what you post online hangs around for a long, long time.

Check out my SuprGlu site.

technorati tags: Suprglu, last.fm, 43places, flickr, del.ico.us, digg, social media

Cerado has created a short quiz titled “Web 2.0 or Star Wars?” in which it tests your knowledge of both. You get a list of 43 names — some of them from Web 2.0 companies, the others are Star Wars characters. Stowe Boyd reports that TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington scored a 35. Boyd himself scored 36. I edged them both out with a score of 37, earning me the following sage advice:

31-40: As your doctor, I recommend moving out of your parents’ basement.

Is that a good thing?

How well do you score? Take the test and then leave a comment.

technorati tags: Web 2.0, Star Wars