Category: Web 2.0
Facebook now double the size of MySpace worldwide
“The times, they are a-changin'”, as Bob Dylan once said. We’ve had plenty of ‘X overtakes Y’ news lately, and the latest is that Facebook is now double the size of MySpace worldwide. It represents a powerful victory for usability and good design over the infamous “MySpace page”, which became synonymous with the web’s – how shall I put this – more ‘homely’ side.
I just logged in to MySpace for the first time in about six months, and had to enter *three* different captchas before I could even log in. I guess that means they’re taking the spammer threat seriously, but my god, what a barrier to logging in…
Tweetminster lets you follow your MP on Twitter
It’s nice to see Twitter going from strength-to-strength, and I genuinely believe that it’s got the potential to do for status updates and IM what Facebook did for social networking. The latest application to sit on top of the service is a TheyWorkForYou-style service called Tweetminster that lets you search for your MP and see whether or not they’re on Twitter.
Unfortunately my MP, Jeremy Corbyn, isn’t Twittering yet, but he’s the kind of guy who might, so I’m hoping he picks up on it soon. In the meantime, I now know that Jude Robinson [Lab] “is steaming over the Lib Dems’ Airport Inquiry” and Jo Swinson [LD] is “so heading home to change and go into Parliament”. Exciting stuff.
Tweetminster (via @jordanstone)
Related posts: Micro-blogging citizen journalism toy Twitter beats granddad Digg in traffic war | First photo of Hudson air crash surfaces on Twitter
eBay Nutcase of the Week: eBay itself, for removing kids WWII board game that "incited racial hatred"
Poor old Paul Ramsier found himself accused of inciting racial hatred – by trying to sell an old World War II-themed board game on everyone’s favourite online junk shop.
Paul’s descent into the world of inadvertent racial hatred started when he realised his old Escape from Colditz board game was worth quite a bit nowadays, so he listed it up on eBay. The auction hit the lofty heights of £20, before eBay yanked the sale…
Encyclopaedia Britannica admits defeat – allows users to add content
Encyclopaedia Britannica has for years resisted pressure to join Wikipedia in allowing just anyone to submit content – relying instead on 100 full-time editors and 4,000 ‘expert contributors’. As a result, it’s slow to react to events and studies have shown that it’s comparably error-ridden .
In the next 24 hours, however, the Encyclopaedia’s website will begin accepting user-generated content. However, it still won’t be as free as Wikipedia – any changes or additions will have to be vetted by the site’s “experts”, and any would-be editors will have to register their real name and address(!) before being allowed to contribute.
Still, any changes made will eventually appear in the printed version of the Encylopaedia, which only gets reprinted every two years. I’ll stick with editing Wikipedia, thanks, and take my chances with the spammer police, endless bureaucracy and edit wars.
Fool your grandchildren into thinking you were at Obama's inauguration
Unfortunately, the children of the future will be born with a filter in their brain that detects Photoshop tomfoolery, so it might only be your kids that you’re able to fool with this one. FotoFlexer has built a site that’ll let you moosh your face into Obama’s inauguration event.
Okay, you aren’t really going to be fooling anyone seriously with this, but it’s fun for five minutes, and a good marketing stunt by FotoFlexer. Go shop yourself into the inauguration here.
My Inaugural Photo (via TechCrunch)
Related posts: Inauguration 2.0 – Presidents’ speeches broken down into tag clouds
| Spammers take advantage of Obama’s inauguration
DIGG THIS: Micro-blogging citizen journalism toy Twitter beats granddad Digg in traffic war
Internet traffic tracker Hitwise has reported a readership boom kicking off for mini-blog portal Twitter, with the number of visits to the “citizen journalism” gonzo reportage site topping that of Digg for the first time.
The graph generated by Hitwise – stolen by us and shown to the left there – tells the story of Twitter’s unstoppable rise, with recent high-profile Twitter events pushing user numbers to new highs…
Rumours of Google planning an incredible unlimited cloud storage service
Whispers around the intertubes would have you believe that Google has something very special planned for this year – unlimited cloud storage. It would mean that if you’ve got a fast enough broadband connection, then you’d no longer need more than a tiny hard drive – everything else could be stored online.
For the record, I don’t think Google’s quite there yet. Even their email product is officially limited, when its competitors’ products aren’t. There’s every chance that we’ll see some sort of limited storage product released by the Goog in 2009 but, well, the ‘unlimited’ label – I just don’t think it can happen yet.
(via ShinyShiny)
Related posts: Google adds tube map to Google Maps | Google pilots artwork in minute detail in Google Earth
Helphound.com – local business review site, plus dispute resolution
I know what you’re thinking, yet another business review site. On the face of it, that’s true – at first glance there’s nothing separating Helphound from Yell, WeLoveLocal or TouchLocal. Look closer, however, and you’ll find plenty to like.
Much like the aforementioned sites, Helphound provides a community centered around reviewing organizations and businesses. Helphound’s differentiating factor, though, is a dispute resolution mechanic, where businesses can dispute a bad review, allowing them to remove it temporarily from the site and try to engage the customer instead. If they fail, the review goes straight back up.
Track Obama's inauguration day LIVE, thanks to everyone in America live-blogging like mad
We saw last month exactly how modern internet technology is kicking the hell out of traditional news media when it comes to on-the-spot reporting – and today’s the perfect day so see America EXPLODE in a sea of sickeningly patriotic citizen journalism.
Numerous dedicated Flickr groups have popped up to catalogue Obama’s special day, as people hanging around in Washington right at this very moment use up all their data allowance for January by uploading evocative photos of children waving flags live from the scene…
Microsoft to announce MobileMe competitor
Next month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft will be announcing three new web services, which will rival Apple’s MobileMe ‘cloud’ services. First in the list is “SkyMarket”, which we’ve posted about before.
Then there’s “SkyBox”, which will allow syncing of data into the cloud. There’ll be automatic backup and restore services, remote access and management of phone data and easy communication and sharing with others. There’ll be syncing of contacts, email/SMS, calendar items and pictures into the cloud. Most interestingly, Microsoft could be planning to offer this to non-Windows-Mobile phones.
Lastly, there’s “SkyLine”, which will be the enterprise version of SkyBox, targeted at small businesses. They’ll be able to setup their phones with Microsoft’s Exchange hosting with their own domain names. I should note that all these are codenames, so it’s highly likely that they’ll be called Windows Live Somethingorother when they finally get announced.
(via Neowin)
Related posts: Microsoft to launch “Skymarket” for Windows Mobile 7 | Ballmer: Zune to show up on Windows Mobile, Android/Apple bashing
