Category: Technology

FOX bought…

Popist Hotlist

NewRoo? Well that’s one down.

Did they also buy or consider buying… Popist? While we have a solid answer to that burning question… is it possible that their shopping didn’t include a second company? According to one discussion I had today, this was at least a very real possibility at one point. As I understand it, Preston even hit the nail on the head as to why they’d be interested at all.

So as Ruport Murdoch proclaims that “A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it”, it’s clear that FOX will be moving rapidly into social media and the subpop press ever more fervently.

Quickgooglesilver?

Google Quicksearch

As Google takes its privacy-exploding eponymous Desktop Search app out of beta, it seems to have picked up an idea or two from Nicholas Jitkoff’s classic world-bending launcher, Quicksilver:

Three months ago, I came up with an idea that makes it easier for users to find what they’re looking for: a search box in the middle of the desktop. It’s very accessible — all you have to do is press your Ctrl key twice. After some experimentation, people are telling us they like it and use it.

Tomas Gunnarsson, Google Desktop Software Engineer, Official Google Blog

The jaywalking podcast (GlitchNYC)

Jaywalking podcast - photo by Miss RogueBarcamps NYC and Austin veteran Eric Skiff captured a pretty decent interview with me touching on Flock and microformats while we made our our way back to SXSW from the Spaghetti warehouse yesterday. Give it a listen and then subscribe to GlitchCast. Good stuff — and really good audio quality given the circumstances!

Flock 0.5.13 released with 100% more Photobucket

Flock 0.5.13.2 released

Though we’re still struggling with speed issues on the Mac, we were able to squeeze in our second photo service for uploading and browsing photos: Photobucket! Download the latest release and check it out.

To give this new functionality a go, do this:

Open up Flock’s Preferences dialog, click the Web Services tab, choose Photo Sharing and then select Photobucket from the dropdown menu.

Switching photo services requires Flock to be restarted, and you’ll be prompted to do this after making your selection. After switching services, the Photo Browser and Uploader interfaces will change to reflect the feature set of the new service.

Oh, and we also took care of a nasty bug that would mangle title, description, and tag fields when using multibyte UTF-8 characters in the Photo Uploader.

EFF this, I’m moving to France

EFF the RIAA (clean)

PARIS (Reuters) – France is pushing through a law that would force Apple Computer Inc to open its iTunes online music store and enable consumers to download songs onto devices other than the computer maker’s popular iPod player.

Under a draft law expected to be voted in parliament on Thursday, consumers would be able to legally use software that converts digital content into any format.

It would no longer be illegal to crack digital rights management — the codes that protect music, films and other content — if it is to enable to the conversion from one format to another, said Christian Vanneste, Rapporteur, a senior parliamentarian who helps guide law in France.

French plan would open iTunes to other devices — by Astrid Wendlandt

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion related to DRM and Creative Commons (especially this morning’s Commons-based Business Models panel). If France moves forward with this kind of law, I think it’s only going to make this situation better, more open, more transparent and actually… better for Apple.

While perhaps not hugely impactful over the long term (in a globalized world, one country’s laws really don’t make a massive difference in WTO-scheme of things), setting the example (especially given the path to darkness France was previously on) will be tremendously didactic for the various and soon-to-be-obsolete DRM industries (ok, "soon" as in 5 to 12 years).

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Flock ETech presentation available

Flock eTech 2006 slides available

I exported a Quicktime movie of my slides from ETECH (click to advance each slide). I’ll be doing a vidcast of the presentation in a week or two so you can get the full effect (and hopefully I’ll be able to share it in multiple formats).

For the two Demo Time slides, here’re the scripts I would have used if the network would have been less flaky:

Demo One

  1. on a friend’s page, hit the star
  2. rss reading
  3. topic aggregation (om and techcrunch)
  4. now click through to a one of the pages
  5. open the technorati topbar to see what’s going on

Demo Two

  1. open photo browser — look for etech
  2. photo uploading — ok i want to upload my own photos
  3. history search (to find something to blog — like the techcrunch page we saw before)
  4. blogging workflow (of page found through history and then drag in uploaded photo)

Leave me comments if you have any questions.

Update: By request from the management, I decided to remove 3 slides at the end of the presentation about “getting laid” since without context from the in-person presentation, it may seem a bit more lewd than intended.

FontShop on Web 2.0 type trends

Web 2.0 Typography

Type aficionados will appreciate this. FontShop has put together a summary of trends in Web 2.0 company typography derived from Ludwig Gatzke‘s compilation of nearly 400 Web 2.0 logos:

There is no official standard for what makes something “Web 2.0”, but there certainly are a few tell-tale signs. These new sites usually feature modern web technologies like Ajax and often have something to do with building online communities. But even more characteristic among these brands is their appearance. Web 2.0 sites nearly always feel open and friendly and often use small chunks of large type. The colors are bright and cheery — lots of blue, orange, and what we jokingly call the official color of Web 2.0: lime green.