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Archive for the 'web 2.0' Category

Site Preview with Snap.com

Published
by
Ken
on 3 December, 2006
in idea sites, online and web 2.0
. 2 Comments

You may have notice that as you hover over a link on this site, a dialogue bubble pops up showing a snapshot of the link (Try it).

Snap.com provides that a little javascript that does the magic that you saw. You don’t even have to sign up.

Site preview with Snap.com

Thumbshots has thumbnail preview of sites for a long time (and I’m sure there are many more). These (Web 1.0?) sites should have made it as easy to include thumbnails for user to include into their site. But I guess they stopped innovating and Snap came in. A case of doing something simple, better.

It would be interesting to see Snap.com’s revenue model.

Web2.0 meeting the real world

Published
by
Ken
on 27 September, 2006
in online and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Over the past 2 days I had an interesting exchange of email ( 11 13 at last count) with a guy that appear from nowhere. The content of the exchange can best be described as frustrating and a case of not seeing eye to eye.

Upon pondering a litter deeper however, I realise that it is not just an isolated incident but really a generic case of Web2.0 meeting the real world.

Many people, like me, live on the net, feeding on a diet of opensouce, mashup and all the fuzziness and overlaps that had became known as Web2.0.

Most of the time we are not too concern about other people using our work. This is not to say that we are condone those that blatantly steal work but rather, we prefer to embrace the idea of sharing, of community and a virtual closeness.

As much as we want to think that the whole world know what web2.0 is about, it is may very well be just 53,651 people.

So back to my story.

Continue reading ‘Web2.0 meeting the real world’

Blocking Right Click in Browser

Published
by
Ken
on 25 July, 2006
in online, quick note and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Ever been to a website and you right click on a link to open the page in a new tab (for you Firefox users) and out pops a message

Thou shall not steal.

Ridiculous!

May I say using javascript to block righ click is, well, … so un-2.0.

Tools > Options > Content > Enable Javascript unchecked.

Stumble and Annotate Along

Published
by
Ken
on 25 March, 2006
in idea sites, ideas, startup, thoughts and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Wikalong

The idea behind Wikalong, as they put it, “a wiki-margin for the internet“.

Wikalong is a Firefox extension. When installed, it links to a wiki page on the sidebar of Firefox corresponding to the site that you are looking at.

Wikalong screenshot - click to enlargeFor example, this is how this blog look like with the Wikalong on the sidebar.

Anotation can be added, in wiki style, corresponding to the page. In this way discussion or commentary on the page can be added.

One thing to note though, Wikalong cannot distinguish between http://59ideas.com/blog and http://59ideas.com/blog/index.php. Although the same page, it will lead to different Wikalong page.

An interesting aspect of Wikalong is that the wiki page store can be customised. This means that the annotations can be saved to a different server other than the default.

Can you see any applications for this?
It can certainly use it to comment on web projects among a group of developers.
StumbleUponAnnotation and surfing with a Firefox extension is not a new idea. Another similar idea, StumbleUpon, had been around for a while and is also more advanced.

StumbleUpon also creates conversation around a website although not in a wiki manner.

After installing the StumbleUpon extension, users can annotate or leave comment corresponding the the page they are looking at.

StumbleUpon screenshotIf you have StumbleUpon installed, you can share 59ideas.com by clicking on thumbsup.

This will lead you to this page (screenshot right) where you can leave comment.

But that is not all. StumbleUpon build upon the social aspect of surfing. By linking sites and people together, you can meet people that go to the same site or explore sites visted by people of similar interest.

Now I am thinking,  del.icio.us and StumbleUpon, each has features that I like. Wouldn’t it be cool if there is a tool to integrate them.

Riya - face recognition photo search

Published
by
Ken
on 22 March, 2006
in beta, idea sites, ideas, startup and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Riya

This is a good week to release beta. Last night I receive the invite to Riya. I downloaded the Riya Uploader but I do not have that many people photo to upload.

I take mainly scenery photos. The few people photo I have I do not want to upload for privacy reason.

The idea behind Riya is really cool, Check out the Tour. This is one of those Web 2.0 ideas that actually has serious technology content.

What I mean by technology content is that there is some technology not within easy reach of scripting wizards.

This is not to say idea that social bookmarking, photo sharing, online calendar are inferior. It does mean that however that there will not be many Riya look alike as compared to, say, Digg look alike.

Another RAM saving application snapped up

Published
by
Ken
on 12 March, 2006
in beta, ideas, startup, thoughts and web 2.0
. 5 Comments

2 days ago I mentioned about how web applications like GMail, 30Boxes, Meebo can save some RAM on the computer and are replacing desktop applications.

Of course saving RAM is not the only motivation for web application. No install required and up-to-date software are very attractive factors.

WritelyWritely is a web word processor like Word. And guess what?

It is the latest in the line of web applications acquired by Google.

What is Google thinking? Many people have their guesses. Predictions of Google dominating the desktop had been floating around for a long time.
No, not by creating an operating system. But by domainting the web. Web applications that is.

Now let see who Google acquire for the web-based spreadsheet and presentation application.

Oh, have you heard? They are already rumoured to be creating a calendar application.

links for 2006-02-27

Published
by
Ken
on 28 February, 2006
in links, quick note and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Looking at online calendars and contact list. I found Plaxo to be a very good fit. Going to try it more thoroughly when I have more time.

On s separate note, I’d heard of Plaxo way before Web 2.0 became the vogue. Nice to see a Web 1.0 service still around.

Found a number of opensource projects and web services in the calendar/groupware space. None of them is near mature. None integrate contact and calendar (like birthday). I still like Yahoo Addressbook but they should give it a big usability upgrade.

Continue reading ‘links for 2006-02-27′

Idea in a weekend

Published
by
Ken
on 25 February, 2006
in ideas, thoughts and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Over at Whitespace Paul Scrivens talk about setting up an idea in a weekend.

A while back I muse about rapid idea prototyping and also learnt, that the egoSurf idea was create in a day.

This is a start of instant applications?

Already Ning offers anyone with a little time, programming skill and imagination the tools to create social applications. But this is still using a web app. How about creating own web app?
There are alot of opensource tools that one could use to put together a quick prototype of an idea. What are some good tools you are using?
Why isn’t there alot of weekend apps we heard about?

One thing that has to change is the perfection mindset. Yes this is linked up with the idea of extreme programming maxim of releasing fast and often.

Perfection aside, there is merit in asking for quality before releasing.
Of course getting the idea out is one thing. Getting it to market and tuning the idea is a continuous as many sites out there can attest.