Demonstration by Blaise Aguera at TED of the impressive work they’ve been doing behind the scenes on Bing Maps. (click through for the video)
Chatroulette (chat roulette). A new website that randomly connects you to other people via webcam doing the same the thing. I just watched a couple having sex on their couch, amongst other things…
ReadWriteWeb, a popular technology website, has a page that ranks highly in Google’s search results for “Facebook login”.
Check out the comments on the page. They’re filled with complaints from confused Facebook users who think that this is the new Facebook login page.
Quite clearly many people do not use bookmarks, or simply type “facebook.com” in the address bar but instead they Google for what they’re after and click on the first result assuming it is correct.
While I’m a big fan of the iPad’s ease of use, this aspect worries me.
John Timmer’s take on Wolfram Alpha: … the biggest issue is that, in the process of creating the data store behind Alpha, all the context behind a number — who produced it, what were their methods, how was the raw data obtained, is the number actually relevant for a given analysis, etc. — is stripped …
Wolfram Alpha is a new search engine you’re likely to hear a lot more about and it went live with a test run today. It’s not a search engine in the same way as Google, which indexes and searches websites, but an answer search engine, which indexes and computes facts. Wolfram Alpha about page: Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in…
Have you ever thought it was a bit creepy that Facebook, a profit-driven organisation, has such an intimate knowledge of you, your friendships and family links? Ever considered leaving Facebook because of such creepiness? Maybe now is a good time.
And now for something completely different, for those of you who like to listen to classical music. I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while:
Passionato.com — this is how digital music distribution on the net should work: decent length previews, DRM-free (meaning no restrictions on which devices you play your music) and available in lossless file format (meaning the files are compressed without sacrificing the integrity of the audio, as happens with lossy formats like MP3).
They could improve their search function, but the show-stopper is price: if I find an album I like what’s to stop me from purchasing the CD for cheaper? I’m not a huge buyer of music but I would be if digital distribution competed with CDs.
Check out more on their about page.
Sending information over the internet can be like using postcards and VoIP (iChat, Skype, Gizmo, Google Talk, etc.) is no exception. To solve this Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP, the most widely used email encryption software in the world, created an application for encrypting video and audio calls over the internet. It’s called Zfone and it’s…
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber explains why he thinks the management of some of the closed aspects of Apple’s iPhone App Store are flawed. And if that interests you, you might also be interested in this interview with Jonathan Zittrain and a review of his new book, The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It.