February 10, 2006
Getting access to a book before it's finished
Roughcuts: Read tech books as they're being written. "'Reilly and Associates, my all-time favorite tech-book publisher, has just launched Roughcuts, a service that sells you access to tech books as they are being written; once the book is done, you get a copy of it, too. This is an amazing idea: many of O'Reilly's books cover brand-new technical ideas for which little or no documentation exists; putting even rough editions of their material into readers' hands while it's being finalized is a brilliant way to extend and increase the value of O'Reilly's titles."
Boing Boing
More and more megapixels
The world’s first 39 megapixel digital SLR camera. "Hasselblad is creating a new standard of digital image quality for professional photographers with the announcement of a new camera and three camera backs based on the combination of Hasselblad’s new, true 39 megapixel CCD sensor and its unique Digital APO Correction (DAC) technology."
gizmag
February 09, 2006
VOIP home phones with features
VoIP Videophone from Philips. "As far as features go, the VP-5500 comes with a built-in VGA camera that rotates up to 240 degrees, letting you check yourself out as you chat with a friend. Not only that, but you can hook it up to a TV and have it output a slideshow of all the photos you’ve taken. To make it future-proof, Philips designed the phone to be updatable via Wi-Fi, opening up all sorts of neat, Linux-powered possibilities."
Gizmodo
February 08, 2006
Blogs for lists of stuff
junklog. "Welcome to junklog! It's a site for logging and rating what you've read, watched, listened to and played."Junklog
Outsourcing your homework
Students Using Rent-A-Coder.com to Outsource Programming Homework. "For years people have been using the Internet to buy up pre-written essays and term papers on various topics. Before that, many term papers services advertised in print publications like Rolling Stone. But outsourcing your actual homework to India? Turns out the popular coding-for-hire website, Rent A Coder has a bunch of homework bidding going on if you search on the term “homework.”"Real Tech News
Participatory film making
This Is Not Spinal Tap: A Concert Film by Fans. "as the Beastie Boys set out to commemorate a concert at Madison Square Garden, the hip-hop group had a different idea. Why not smash the model? They decided to lend hand-held video cameras to 50 fans, told them to shoot at will, and then presented the end result in movie theaters in all its primitive, kaleidoscopic glory. The result of this brainstorm is "Awesome ... ,"
New York Times
February 07, 2006
All that matters is the feed
FeedXS - RSS for Everyone. "The idea is to allow anyone to publish an RSS feed. Skip the blog. Go right to a feed, perhaps as a replacement to email to distribute personal news about yourself. The company feed is here, for instance. It’s more of an administrative interface and the content is designed to be read via the actual feed only. The publishing interface has a few formatting helpers but is in need of an overhaul. But there is something really unique here - you can publish directly from MSN messenger. Once you are registered on the site you simply add “msn@feedxs.com” as a contact. You have to authenticate yourself (log in) the first time, and after that publishing is very easy."
TechCrunch
February 06, 2006
Random file swapping
Swap random files for fun. "File-swap.com is meant to be fun. It acts as a big black box. You put in one file and you will receive a different file in exchange which someone swaped earlier. If many users swap cool files many other users recieve cool files."
Lifehacker
Online fitness equipment
Turn your living room into the Tour de France. "FitCentric (fitcentric.com), a California firm, has sold Web racing software for stationary bikes, treadmills, and other machines as well. Their NetAthlon software uses video-game technology to re-create such real-world courses as Olympic venues and Boston's Head of the Charles. Hooked up to a big-screen TV, you can sense everything but the wind in your hair. In the coming weeks, the company plans to release a new system that will retrofit any piece of fitness equipment, bringing the technology to a much wider audience. It will retail for $169.95."
csmonitor.com
Podcast anything
Turn your feed into a podcast. "The podcast uses one of those text-to-speech engines that are popular among the fitter, happier, and more productive crowd. You can listen to the podcast in a streaming flash player, or you can subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed. Feed2Cast is a very cool way to get started in the podcasting world without all that pesky talking."
Lifehacker
February 02, 2006
More online word processing
Zoho Writer online word processor. "Web service Zoho Writer is an online word processor that edits, stores and shares your documents from anywhere. Import your existing Microsoft Word or OpenOffice documents and start editing using an impressive WYSIWYG editor. Zoho Writer saves multiple versions of your document, and generates PDF, HTML and DOC files from it. Tag Zoho documents and share with a link (instead of a pesky document email attachment). "
Lifehacker
Adding charts to your blog
Chart your progress with Bellygraph. "Web site Bellygraph creates line charts that track your progress on a goal or task and lets you publish them to your web site."
Lifehacker
In-context chat rooms
Let's Chatsum. "Chatsum is a Firefox extension that lets you chat and leave messages on any website for other Chatsum users to see and interact with. The Chatsum sidebar houses a fully-fledged chatroom, specific to the page you’re looking at, and all the other users in the room are also viewing the same web page. When you navigate to a different page the Chatsum room changes automagically. If you open a page in a new tab, Chatsum will keep pace with whatever you’re viewing."
we make money not art
Finding photos of yourself
Photo Search In 2006 - Face Recognition Has Arrived!. "Competing with Photobucket and Flickr, is the new start-up Riya. One step ahead of its rivals - Riya has developed face and text recognition technology that it applies to photo search. You can identify people in your photos through the Riya software and also track every photo of yourself on the web! "
PSFK
Sharing and charging for video
Google Video store launches. "Looks like many episodes are priced at $1.99 and can be viewed with the Google Video Player. Now users who submitted videos via Google’s Upload program can charge viewers through the Video Store, and non-copy-protected content can be put on your iPod or PSP using the “to go” option."
Lifehacker
February 01, 2006
Blogs as a shopping resource
Toshiba to Push Blog Reviews to Mobile Shoppers. "There is a report that Toshiba is developing software that will allow people to take a picture of the bar code label of many products, send it to a related service and quickly receive back information related to the product. The data the service returns? From blogs. Yep, Toshiba will send back summary information on how many blogs gave the product positive and negative reviews. Related product information will also be displayed."
TechCrunch
Business blogs
Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. "This is a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs, defined as: active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products. The navigation sidebar to the right lists all the Fortune 500 companies. If a company name has a solid underline, it means that some information has already been entered on it, perhaps discussing web efforts that don't seem to be proper blogs. If it's dashed, it means that it's a blank page awaiting your input!"Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki
Multimedia messaging growing in popularity
Mobile users finally get the picture. "Over the past 12 months MMS usage levels have increased most among the 18-34 age group, and doubled in all age groups above 34 years old. Around 33 per cent of men and 40 per cent of women now use the medium to send and share pictures. Men are bigger users of the mobile internet, however, at 38 per cent compared to 26 per cent of women."
vnunet.com
January 31, 2006
Sharing barcodes visually
Ringtone garments. "Industrial designer Christopher Glaister and fashion designer Michelle Shakallis's barcode textiles are decorated by a pattern that translates a piece of music (When the Saints Go Marching In) into a barcode. The pattern can be turned back into real music or a ring tone by scanning it with a modified camera phone. The tune can then be used as the ringtone for that mobile phone."
we make money not art
Citizen journalism
Citizen Journalism In Africa. "One of the dubiously nice things about living in Africa is that you’re never short of a news story or two. This might explain why home grown journalism is taking off in a huge way. So much so that Johnnic, one of the largest local media groups (they publish the Sunday Times and Sowetan), are launching their own citizen written online newspaper www.reporter.co.za. The site, which launches next week from what I can gather, is edited by a fulltime editorial team and there is the added novelty that those with articles that get selected get paid… Not that anyone will be giving up their day jobs just yet as it is the equivalent of about 3 pound a story."
PSFK
Websites publishing paper versions
Call It Gutenberg's Revenge. "When babycenter.com was born in 1997, the parenting e-zine reveled in the cost savings to be found in cyberspace. No postage rates or paper bills to worry about. Ink? So yesterday. So it comes as quite a surprise that eight years later, at a time when the magazine industry is falling over itself to boost its presence online, that BabyCenter has launched a version of its popular Web site on -- gasp -- paper."Business Week
January 30, 2006
Peer-to-peer file sharing built into the browser
AllPeers Is The FireFox “Killer App”. "AllPeers is a simple, persistent buddy list in the browser. Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files - If you choose to, you can share any file on your network with one or more of your friends. They will be able to see what files you choose to share (even getting an RSS feed of new files you include), and with a single click download it to their own hard drive. AllPeers will work even when the sharer is offline - AllPeers is a bittorent client, and will allow files to be pulled from multiple sources. When downloading, the file may be grabbed partially or fully from others you have shared it with (or who shared it with you). So a user just clicks on a file, and waits for it to eventually download."
TechCrunch
Collaborative bargain hunting
Find a Deal with Clipfire.. "I like Clipfire , which allows users to submit ecommerce deals, and other members can vote the best deals to the top of the site, and add appropriate metadata, like tags, to the links."
TechCrunch
Using the web to cut out the realtor
Owners' Web Site Gives Realtors Run for Money. "Ms. Miller, 38, a former social worker who favors fuzzy slippers, and her cousin, Mary Clare Murphy, 51, operate what real estate professionals believe to be the largest for-sale-by-owner Web site in the country. They have turned Madison, a city of 208,000 known for its liberal politics, into one of the most active for-sale-by-owner markets in the country. And their success suggests that, in challenging the Realtor association's dominance of home sales, they may have hit on a winning formula that has eluded many other upstarts. Their site, FsboMadison.com (pronounced FIZZ-boh) holds a nearly 20 percent share of the Dane County market for residential real estate listings. "
New York Times
January 27, 2006
Cameraphone --> Scan, copy, fax
Turn Your Camera Phone Into A Mobile Scanner. "scanR is simple to use: • Take a picture of a document or whiteboard. • Send the picture to scanR. • Receive the scanned image in email or fax."
scanR
Text messaging brevity
Life and Romance in 160 Characters or Less. "Compared with an ink-and-paper letter, messages may seem disposable. The relative inconvenience of typing out words using a numeric keypad -- the letter "c," for example, requires three presses of the "2" button -- and the brevity of the message may seem a hostile environment for heartfelt discussion. But the discipline of having to distill thoughts into short bulletins, then waiting to receive the response, allows users to pour more meaning into the writing, some text-message users say."
Washington Post
January 26, 2006
Adding metadata to blog entries
Structured Blogging,The "Del.icio.us Lesson", Personal Datamining and The Knowledge Commons. "Structured blogging is an initiative to add structure to blog posts of similar content. For example, let’s say that I write a review of a piece of software on my Wordpress blog and someone else writes a review in their Movable Type blog. Not only are these two posts structured differently, with the blogging platforms writing different code, but each tool has customizable templates so that the blogger can write any code they want. So even though the content is nearly the same, the probability that the code in the end results looks anything similiar is very small."Smart Mobs
January 25, 2006
Quickly saving text clips
Save to Yahoo! Notepad bookmarklet. "Lifehacker reader stripoljub publishes a bookmarklet that posts selected text on a web page to Yahoo! Notepad. This is a pretty neat way to “remember” bits of text you happen across on the web. What I’d love to see next is the ability to append text to specific documents in your Yahoo! Notepad, so you can easily add to your “gift ideas,” “quotes I like” or “places to visit someday” lists."
Lifehacker
Interactive maps for showing local reports
New York Transit Strike - Readers' Commuting Reports . "A collection of reports from readers about their commutes during the strike. Click on the map below to browse by ZIP code. Click and drag to move to a different area."New York Times
Mainstream cameraphone images
Cameraphone Picture makes Times Best Photos of the Year 2005. "Time Magazine have chosen Adam Stacey's cameraphone picture as one of the Best Photos of the Year 2005 - of his experience on the london underground during the attack in London on the 7th of July 2005."
Smart Mobs
January 24, 2006
Dynamic music making
TransPose. "Computer vision technology captures the performer's physical actions captured and translates them to audio in real time. The performer sits in front of a camera, and his or her silhouette is projected in front of them in relation to a number of predefined trigger areas called "noteboxes." Using his/her silhouette to overlap the noteboxes, the performer triggers various tones. "
we make money not art
January 23, 2006
Wireless manipulation
3DID Wireless MIDI Glove Kicks Total Ass. "Twenty-four-year-old computer engineering graduate and musician Shaduz from Bologna developed a MIDI glove which can be used to manipulate music and sounds. The 3DID MIDI glove just isn’t any glove, though—it’s wireless and was built for about 150 euros, or $180. The glove features three gyroscopes, three accelerometers and 18 hours of battery life. It also has five “bend” sensors in the fingers for bending and manipulating musical instruments. Perfect for softsynths."
Gizmodo
One-person journalism
KRON-TV: everyone in the newsroom is a one-man-band.. "San Francisco's KRON recently became the first major-market TV station in the US to supply much of its newsoom staff with laptops and digital video cameras, then train them to shoot, write, and produce stories on their own. KRON calls them VJs. Others in the biz sometimes refer to the combo role as "sojo" (solo journalist) or "one-man-band," while a producer editor mashup is a "preditor.""
Boing Boing
Sharing sounds
Silence of the Lands. "Silence of the Lands enables participants to collect ambient sounds, then to create and share individual and collective cartographies. These sounds represent subjective interpretations of the soundscape of the urban or natural settings that affect the everyday life of the community, and act as conversation pieces about natural quiet."
we make money not art
January 18, 2006
Saving notes online
Web-based text files with Yahoo! Notepad. "Rarely-mentioned Yahoo! Notepad’s been around for ages, and it does everything Windows Notepad does, except that it saves files on the web associated with your Yahoo! ID. Now, lots of webapps save your info and make it accessible from anywhere, but Yahoo! Notepad’s nice because there is no prescribed data structure (the files are just plain text), and now there’s a slick new way to manage and edit your Notepad files without a web browser."
Lifehacker
Machine-readable blogs
Structured Blogging. "Structured Blogging makes it easy to create, edit, and maintain different kinds of posts and is very similar to an edit form on a blog. The difference is that the structure will let users add specific styles to each type, and add links and pictures for reviews. These styles and tags ensure that movie and book reviews don't look like calendar or journal entries, and that each content type can be quickly recognized and processed by automated search services and other applications. Woven into the HTML of a blog post, this information travels with it through syndication feeds, readers, and aggregators. Ultimately, it can even be converted out to other formats our Structured Blogging tools support such as RDF in XML."
Structured Blogging
January 16, 2006
Merging blogs and media
Boltfolio media sharing. "Clearly influenced by Flickr (and who hasn’t been), the neat thing about Boltfolio is that all your media types - photos, videos, audio and blog entries - are stored in one place. Surf everyone’s media by tag or search by keyword, make contacts, set your blog posts to public or private, and get RSS feeds of every media type by user."
Lifehacker
Keeping websites private
Secret sites. "someone asked their readers how many secret sites/blogs they maintained. That is, sites that no one knows you're the author of (written anonymously or with a nom de plume) or sites to which the general public does not have access. If I remember correctly, a large number of the respondents not only maintained a secret site, but had several. I have one secret blog, published under my own name, that only a small group of friends can read."kottke.org
Self-deleting text messages
This SMS will self-destruct in 40 seconds. "StealthText is a new service in the UK that allows you to send messages that will be deleted from the recipient's cellphone after they've read it, to address that nagging problem of all your top-secret SMS messages falling into enemy hands."
Engadget
Video blogging
TV Stardom on $20 a Day. "Amanda Congdon is a big star on really small screens - like the 4?- inch window she appears in on computer monitors every weekday morning or the 2? inches she has to work with on the new video iPod. Ms. Congdon, you see, is the anchor of a daily, three-minute, mock TV news report shot on a camcorder, edited on a laptop and posted on a blog called Rocketboom, which now reaches more than 100,000 fans a day."
New York Times
Online office applications
Writely Is Kicking A**. "Writely (profiled earlier) continues to lead the pack in online ajax word products. Writely has had great features from day 1: import and export into Word format, embedded images, a wysiwyg editor, drag and drop functionality, sharing with others, and tagging of documents."
TechCrunch
December 15, 2005
Low power photography
New digital camera chip slashes power consumption 50x. "They’re only in the design prototype phase right yet, but a couple of dudes by the names of Mark Bocko and Zeljko Ignjatovic at the University of Rochester have apparently worked out a way to digitize photography at each pixel of a CMOS sensor, the results of which are actually nothing less than fifty times less power consumption in taking a shot, and ten times the dynamic range of light captured — on chips expected to be smaller and less expensive than current devices."
Engadget
Simple online spreadsheets
JotSpot Tracker Furthers Office Online Experiment. "As more office applications move online, JotSpot Tracker joins NumSum and the open-source TrimSpreadsheet in the spreadsheet space. While Jotspot Tracker is clearly the most polished of the three, funcionality is very limited and the small visable area leaves a lot to be desired. Nonetheless, this is an excellent way to collaborate on simpler, smaller spreadsheets and bypass the hassle of email and chaotic version numbers. And the inport function was flawless. "
TechCrunch
December 14, 2005
Religious podcasts
"Godcasts” becoming more popular. “I would say probably anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of the podcasts available online have some dimension of religion or spiritual life to them,” estimates Lee Ranie of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Godcasts are created by houses of worship from every denomination, and from around the world. The wide selection is good news for web worshippers."Smart Mobs
Word of mouth sales
What Did He Say? - A Cockney gangster film becomes a DVD phenomenon.. "Layer Cake is a phenomenon that we're likely to see more of in the future, the word-of-mouth DVD hit. As such, it raises interesting questions about the future of movies in a business increasingly dominated by the home-video market—not just whether movies can perform markedly better in home video than in theaters, but what kind of movies are likely to do so."
Slate
Collaborative answer-finding
Ask questions, get Yahoo! Answers. "Yahoo! launches a question and answer service called, surprisingly, Yahoo! Answers. Submit a question about anything for free and other Yahoo! users will post answers. Two questions posted now include “What are the best windsurfing locations around SF Bay area?” and “Can you recommend a book for a 70-something conservative man?” Users vote on how good each answer is, and questions can be “resolved” when the asker determines the best answer to the question."
Lifehacker
December 13, 2005
Setting yourself up as an expert
Explore Lenses. "Everyone's an expert at something. Spread your ideas, make yourself known, and earn a royalty. What's your topic?"
Squidoo
December 09, 2005
Cameras that print?
Shake it like a Polaroid cameraphone picture. "Images of a “Polaroid Camera Phone” have surfaced on Mobile Korea, and the device looks more like a “hey, wouldn’t this be cool?” type concept than anything, so we’re not expecting to be popping a SIM card into one anytime soon."
Engadget
Keyboard for restricted input
F.O.S.K. your PSP. "Requiring only two keystrokes to enter in any given character, this definitely looks like it could help out in bringing you that much closer to a dedicated attachable keyboard, minus the attachable part. Divided up into seven blocks, each block holds nine characters (3x3)."
PSP Fanboy
Trust issues with public collaboration
Wikipedia Tightens the Reins. "Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute articles, is tightening its rules for submitting entries following the disclosure that it ran a piece falsely implicating a man in the Kennedy assassinations. Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St. Petersburg, Florida-based website, said Monday."Wired News
December 07, 2005
Printing from digital
Printing a Book with CSS: Boom!. "Can CSS be used for serious print jobs? To find out, we decided to take the ultimate challenge: to produce the next edition of our book directly from HTML and CSS files. In this article we sketch our solution and quote from the style sheet used. Towards the end we describe the book microformat (boom!) we developed in the process."
A List Apart
Online photo editing services
Edit photos online with PXN8. "PXN8 is a free online image-editor. And while we’ve mentioned online image-editing tools before, PXN8 has a lot to offer. Along with a slew of nice editing features, PXN8 also integrates with Flickr, allowing you to edit your Flickr photos with the click of a bookmarklet, then save the edits back in Flickr. For the Flickr-addicted, PXN8 gives you the opportunity to tweak your photos anytime you’re bored and at a browser."
Lifehacker
Living online and offline
The MySpace Generation. "Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they're already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today's young generation largely ignores the difference. Most adults see the Web as a supplement to their daily lives. They tap into information, buy books or send flowers, exchange apartments, or link up with others who share passions for dogs, say, or opera. But for the most part, their social lives remain rooted in the traditional phone call and face-to-face interaction. The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds at once. Increasingly, America's middle- and upper-class youth use social networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while (sometimes hours). While older folks come and go for a task, Adams and her social circle are just as likely to socialize online as off. This is partly a function of how much more comfortable young people are on the Web: Fully 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project."
Business Week
Growth in PC to PC syncing
Access and sync your data from anywhere. "But for consumers who open their laptop on the road only to find that a critical file is back at home - or who are frustrated by having different sets of contacts and browser bookmarks on every computer they use - there are some simple alternatives. They take somewhat different approaches to the job, but all use the Internet to some degree, and are best put to use with a high-speed connection."
Lifehacker
December 05, 2005
Leaving stuff somewhere for other people to find
BookCrossing. "Morgwn emailed in to tell us about a community service that lets folk swap books. Once you've read the book version of the film Jarhead, for example, simply tell the site where you're going to leave it. Then another user looking for the war-story book can search the site and find that it's available on a bench or in an office on Broadway, NYC. BookCrossing has 422,443 members since it launched in 2001."
PSFK
Any domain name
Company Takes Internet Address Names Beyond Dot-Com. "Technology provider UnifiedRoot, based in Amsterdam, has begun leasing Internet addresses that can end in any word, rather than in .com, .org, .net or other top-level domains. For instance, Brinks Home Security could replace its collection of different Web addresses with just one: home.brinks, according to an example the company cites on its Web site. "EWeek
Blogging while travelling
Wishyouwerehere.com: Blogs From the Road. ""My friends and family would write e-mails back commenting on my adventures," said Mr. Watters, who was interviewed by e-mail from an Internet cafe in Koh Samui, Thailand. "Like two-way electronic postcards, but with as many images as I could post and no limit on the amount of words - plus no two-week wait." That was the beginning of TravelBlog.org, a site that is host to travel journals, allows users to post text and photos and even offers maps that show where users are writing from and where they have been. TravelBlog is one of numerous sites that offer - many at no charge - travelers the ability to share a journal of their journeys and allows readers to leave comments. "
New York Times
Encouraging remixing of content
Washington Post asks readers to remix it. "The Washington Post has created a blog for highlighting mash-ups of Post content. Current remixes include: a news keyword cloud viewer, a world map interface to Post stories, and a dynamic news quiz. Although a bit skimpy on implementation details (or implementations, for that matter), the idea's surprisingly hip."Boing Boing
November 30, 2005
Digitizing everything
The automatic book scanner is here. "As the technology to automatically scan and digitize books is put to work it will multiply the speed at which libraries can put collections online. The vision of all the books ever written being accessible globally is made manifestly more realistic by the automatic scanner. Kirtas introduces its scanner here with an video of the process. Kirtas says the machine “automates the scanning of bound documents at a capture rate of 1200 pages per hour, while using a page turning process that is more gentle than the human hand.""
Smart Mobs
Search vs. e-mail
Search usurping email as top internet activity. "Search is catching up to email as the internet's number-one activity, according to a new poll. Forty one per cent of US adults who surfed the internet on a "typical day" in September 2005 used a search engine, up from 30 per cent in June 2004, according to the latest Pew Internet & American Life survey of consumer behavior. Email continues its online reign, though. Fifty two per cent of Americans online sent or received email on a typical day in September 2005 - up from 45 per cent in June 2004."The Register
Collaborative fiction-making
The Saga of The Saga. "Four days isn't a lot of time to weave an entire fantasy world of whole cloth. Yet in less than a week, scores of people from all across the world have crafted the Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga, a detailed history of the world of Battal, where powerful wizards seek adventure with ambulatory furniture at their side. Spanning more than 1,400 articles, the Epic Legends of the Hierarchs -- or as fans have unpronounceably abbreviated it, ELOTH:TES -- has all the trappings of modern fantasy franchises: a rich history that spans thousands of years; a contentiously out-of-canon cartoon offshoot, The Wizbits; as well as a crazed, seizure-ridden chief creative director, James Langomedes (an obvious caricature of mad comics genius Alan Moore). But despite references to 28 years of "real world" history, The Saga never really existed, at least in the conventional sense."
Wired News
Review anything
Why I don’t like Riffs. "Riffs, a review site for anything, launched quietly last week. It takes a hybrid wiki/social bookmarking approach. Any user can add a URL to begin a discussion (or just begin a discussion without a URL), and the Riffs community votes on the thing and discusses it in wiki fashion. All pages have RSS and the clean interface has some great Ajax features. Riffs also has tagging, including “common tags”, which I think is interesting."
TechCrunch
November 25, 2005
Small, powerful projectors
A movie projector in a cell phone?. "The reduction in size comes from a technique invented by Upstream for channeling the light from LEDs to a display in thousands of small beams. Light, whether from a candle or an LED, naturally shines in every direction. Upstream has built a complex micro-optical system that collects that light close to the source and sends a huge proportion of it to an intended target. The so-called "photon vacuum" optical system surrounds the LED like a shell. As a result, a tiny optical package can provide roughly the same level of illumination efficiency that larger systems can. "
CNET News.com
November 23, 2005
Better text editing with the browser
Turn Firefox into a web writer. "If you use web-based e-mail like Gmail, or if you post to forums or write a blog, you’re using a “browser” to author documents as well as browse them. A plain, tiny web page textarea is not very conducive to writing. If you spend a lot of time writing the web with Firefox, soup up your “browser” with a few extensions that will turn it into a powerful text editor."
Lifehacker
Using the web to scale down
He Figured That Business Is So Good, Who Needs a Store?. "Like most small-business owners, Mr. Truran first viewed the World Wide Web as an opportunity to grow. But as time went by, he came to see it as the opposite - a way to close up his Cambridge, Mass., retail store, move the business to his home in this Vermont village and accomplish his real goal: spending time on the things he wanted to do rather than running CourierWare. "The Web part of the business was growing," said Mr. Truran, whose company is known for its high-quality, durable messenger bags. "It was the only part of the business that was truly growing." CourierWare, which also stopped publishing its mail- order catalog in 2001, now takes only phone or online orders. "
New York Times (may require free subscription)
November 22, 2005
Sharing map information
Map your travels with Wayfaring. "We’d would like it to be a community of travelers who use our web-based tool to create, use, or share information about their travels and the places in their lives. We built Wayfaring because we thought it would be cool to see people share trip ideas and places with each other."
Lifehacker
Recommendation lists
Yahoo! Shoposphere - Yahoo! Shopping. "Pick Lists let you share the stuff you love and the stuff that matters to you with everyone or your friends... on the Shoposphere, throughout Yahoo! Shopping, by email, and even through RSS feeds. Make a good one and it could even show up as one of the most helpful Pick Lists on the Shoposphere."
Automatically capturing significant events
StartleCam. "Attention and memory are highly correlated with what psychologists call arousal level, and the latter is often signaled by skin conductivity changes; consequently, StartleCam monitors the wearer's skin conductivity. StartleCam looks for patterns indicative of a ``startle response'' in the skin conductivity signal. When this response is detected, a buffer of digital images, recently captured by the wearer's digital camera, is downloaded and optionally transmitted wirelessly to a webserver. This selective storage of digital images creates a ``flashbulb'' memory archive for the wearable which aims to mimic the wearer's own selective memory response. "
networked_performance
Extremem collaboration
Glypho: Collaborative Novel Writing. "Glypho a service that facilitates collaborative novel writing via the web. Here is how it works. Jot down your story idea. People around the world give character and plot ideas. Chapter contibutions are written. People review and vote for their favorite chapters. The story goes on… "
Lifehacker
Making a business out of new technology
Profits May Rock Podcasting World. "But nifty products and gizmos were ultimately a sideline at the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference, where attendees wrestled with a far more fundamental point: whether this podcasting thing is -- or even should be -- a business. "If somebody gives you money, you owe them something," said keynote speaker Leo LaPorte, who appears in ad-supported radio and TV shows but eschews commercial promotions for his popular This Week In Tech podcast. "I listen to my listeners, but I don't want to listen to advertisers.""
Wired News
November 21, 2005
Standard features for Web 2.0?
A Profile of Tagworld. "The site is going to try to own just about every web 2.0 experience of its users - blogging, bookmarking, photos and other media files, file storage, and tagging. They say they are going to have open data in and out, meaning if a user is really attached to say, Flickr, they’ll be able to integrate with those photos seemlessly. And they’ll have RSS and APIs to send data out. But their clear goal, as Fred said when we met, is to replace del.icio.us, flickr and blogger (among other services) for its users. All features are free to users (other than extended file storage); Tagworld makes its money from integrated advertising."
TechCrunch
November 18, 2005
Better digital imaging
Powerful Image Sensor Developed. "A Korean research center developed a super-sensitive image sensor with applications likely to dramatically enhance medical or military equipment such as endoscopes or guided missiles, as well as household electronics. The new sensor can record high-quality video images under moonlight, as it is about 500 times more light-sensitive than current versions, the Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) said. The researchers expect the sensor will be used for military equipment such as long-range missiles, night vision goggles, unmanned aircraft and surveillance cameras."The Korea Times
November 17, 2005
Aggregating your services, not just your feeds
Aggregate your feeds with SuprGlu. "SuprGlu is about bringing the pieces of your web content together into one central place for you, your friends, and maybe even your friends to-be. With the advent of so many fun to use applications, it is a shame for us to not use them. So keeping that in mind, what would be even better is to blog them."
Lifehacker
November 16, 2005
Social TV sharing
Tape It Off The Internet. "A global TV guide, Torrent tracking, your favourites and recommendations plus an innovative social layer to hang it off. You want it, we want it, let's build it."
November 15, 2005
Push-to-photo
Walkie-Talkie-Picture. "Sprint has announced a new service called Nextel Direct Send Picture, which lets you to take, send and look at a photo instantly while using the push-to-talk features. And you don’t have to switch between voice and data services to use it."
Gizmodo
Conveying emotions
eMoto. "Emotional communication between people meeting physically in the "real world" make use of many different channels, such as facial expression, body posture, gestures, or tone of voice, little of this physicality of emotions is used in a similar digital context. In eMoto users therefore use affective gestures to convey the emotional content of their messages which are then translated and communicated in colors, shapes and animations. "
SICS
November 14, 2005
Online voice messaging
YackPack. "In a nutshell, YackPack is simple, web-based voice messaging for groups. Simple - Sending a message is as easy as 1-2-3: Click, Talk, and Send. Web-based - Access your YackPack from any computer with an Internet connection. No installation required. Voice messaging - Combine the power of voice with the convenience of email. For groups - Send a message to as many as you choose, within the privacy of your group."
YackPack
November 11, 2005
Physical representations of other people
Phone-less phone calls. "To start a conversation, the user touches the panel(s) corresponding to the person(s) s/he wants to talk with. The panel starts blinking and the volume of that channel is amplified. To talk in private mode, the user picks the orb. This simple hand gesture mutes all the speakers and the public microphone. To switch the connection off, the user drops the ball and the system returns to the initial state. "
we make money not art
Personal photo booth
Kids Poloroid Booth-Bring on the Fun. "It’s got a little mirror and comes with a timer and flash for the same type of booth photos you know and love. Of course, the pics you get are on the tiny iZone film, and will only be one-inch by one-inch, but they can be made into stickers, so it’s all worth it. Comes with a roll of film, though it looks like it only uses the older iZone film, not the newer iZone 200, making it harder to find."
Gizmodo
November 10, 2005
Teen publishing
Pew study: Kids remix like hell. "American teenagers today are utilizing the interactive capabilities of the internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts. Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. Teen bloggers are more fervent internet users than non-bloggers and have more experience with almost every online activity in the survey."Boing Boing
November 09, 2005
Blogs as a business threat
Corporate reputations and blog relations. "Nearly two-thirds of businesses have not woken up to the threat posed to their brands and reputations by disgruntled bloggers, a survey of PR professionals revealed. While more than 60% of PR executives interviewed believed that web blogs by unhappy employees or exasperated customers can damage corporate reputations, but 58% said businesses were insufficiently aware of the threat."Smart Mobs
November 08, 2005
Translation phone
Olympic visitors to get Chinese-speaking phone. "If the conversation gets beyond the scope of the phrase book, the user can press a button to talk to a call centre in his or her own language (registered when the phone was hired), and get specific phrases translated. "GPRS and call centres are mature technologies," said Dr Chen. "We plan to use Wi-Fi and 3G, and have location technology in future versions of the system.""Techworld.com
November 03, 2005
Relating items through tags
Shadows 1.0. "If you choose to install their toolbar, you can click on “Shadow Page” from any web page and be redirected to that page’s Shadow Page. This page is a collection of metadata gathered from user bookmarks. For instance, here is the Shadow Page for Apple’s iPod Nano. The Shadow Page includes notes from users who have bookmarked the iPod Nano web page, a tag cloud of tags used to describe the page, users who’ve tagged it, etc. A user can choose to make any bookmark private, but any public bookmarks are included on the Shadow Page."
TechCrunch
My TV show
Telecommuting Video Blog. "This guy, Ravi Jain, is shooting a weekly video blog from the driver's seat of his car during his daily commutes between Jamaica Plains and Allston, MA (or five hours of "studio time," as he puts it). He has guests on (who are bumming rides), and when his wife commutes with him, they do a "Regis and Kelly" type show (or at least that's how Ravi fancies it), with some "marital banter to start the show" (oh joy!)."
Boing Boing
Posting management
Blummy means Bookmarklets Galore - Lifehacker. "Blummy provides quick access to all your favorite bookmarklets—those little JavaScript-based web utilities we all love—without crowding up your toolbar. Blummy creates an interactive window that floats over your web page. Use it to store and access bookmarklets as well as other web services."
Lifehacker
November 01, 2005
Sharing travel plans
Plan a Trip in a Single Search with Yahoo! Travel Trip Planner. "Trip Planner is a new tool that helps you organize your travel research from Yahoo! Travel and all over the Web to a trip plan. Save hotels, attractions, and useful web sites into your trip plan, then add your own notes, tags, driving directions and more. When you’re done, you can share your trip with a few friends or with the entire Yahoo! Travel community."
Yahoo! Search blog
Online database of anything
Google Base: All your base are, in fact, belong to us. "Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free. Examples of items you can find in Google Base: • Description of your party planning service • Articles on current events from your website • Listing of your used car for sale • Database of protein structures. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local."Ars Technica
Online creativity
Soundjunction. "Young people in the UK are being given the opportunity to create and remix music in order to inspire them to learn more about different types of music. The website, Soundjunction, has extensive video clips and audio for teenagers to listen to. In addition, there is some original music created for the site by Jason Yard, Tunde Jegede and David Horn. "
PSFK
October 26, 2005
Task-focused browsers
Flock: First Look. "Flock is a new collaborative browser built on top of open source Firefox code. It integrates with del.icio.us, with blogging, with RSS management and with Flickr. It’s also very pretty."
Lifehacker
Blogs with very short entries
Tumblelogs. "On my web travels the other day, I came across a new (to me) kind of weblog, the tumblelog. [...] A tumblelog is a quick and dirty stream of consciousness, a bit like a remaindered links style linklog but with more than just links. [...] Different ways of displaying various types of content...remaindered links, regular posts, book reviews, and movie reviews are all displayed differently. I'm working on incorporating photo albums and perhaps a daily photolog...as well as a couple other different types of content. "kottke.org
October 25, 2005
SMS from any device
Send SMS Messages Via TV With Your Remote Control (Mobile). " new SMS service sends text messages from TV to cell phone or from TV to TV. Infobank, a mobile solution developer announced the launch of Message on TV, the SMS based on interactive digital data broadcasting service."Lockergnome
Selling your videos
3 UK lets cell users make, sell videos. "The smallest of Britain's five mobile phone network operators said on Tuesday that customers could now use their mobile phone to make a 30 second video and upload it onto a "See Me TV" channel for others to view. Each time a clip is downloaded by one of 3 UK's 3.2 million customers, the performer gets paid one penny. "Reuters.com
October 21, 2005
Video participation
BBC To Start Using Viewers 3G Comments. "The BBC is trialling a new video messaging system for the venerable Match of the Day football show. Called 'Your Shout!', the system lets football fans send in 3G video messages with their opinions on the crucial England internationals and during Football Focus broadcasts. The best content will then be broadcast on live TV during and after the matches, which are being covered live on Match of the Day."
PSFK
Online task management
Need to Get Nagged? "Remember the Milk". "Remember The Milk is a free on-line to-do list management service. It has all the features you’d expect from this sort of site: multiple lists, priorities, due-dates, repeating tasks, etc. Then it adds the cool stuff. My favorite feature is the built-in nagging system that reminds you to get the job done. You can request reminders by E-Mail, IM or SMS. In addition, you can share and publish your to-do lists and create new tasks by e-mail."
Lifehacker
Non-US cellphone innovation
Samsung demos 3D camera, display for cellphones. "Samsung recently demonstrated a working concept that incoporates stereoscopic cameras and a 3D-capable display directly into a cellphone, allowing for a more lifelike rendition of the subject. The stereo cams work under the same principle as human eyesight, while a parallax barrier LCD display gives on-screen images more depth and robustness. The new camera setup and displays should start appearing on foreign handsets next year, by which time we’ll hopefully be seeing 3 megapixel phones with optical zooms here in the technologically-backwards US."
Engadget
Invention culture
Better mousetrap builders. "Mothers of invention have turned up here at the Yankee Invention Exposition in the old Armory. So too have some fathers and grandfathers, and not a few offbeat uncles and aunts. They watch for corporate product scouts, venture capitalists, anyone who'll inspect the whiz-bang widgets they have lovingly contrived."
csmonitor.com
October 18, 2005
Location-based podcasts
Placing Voices. "Placing Voices, by Brian House, is a mobile-sound-blog software which uses the built-in sound recording feature of mobile phones (which is optimized for voice) and MMS messaging to place these fragments on a web-accessible map of the city as they occur. The objective is to express a map in terms of these experiences, to restore some claim to my memory of physical spaces over the transient voices heard within them."
networked_performance
P2P e-mail
SnapMail. "Unlike instant messaging, SnapMail uses peer-to-peer technology and does not rely on Internet servers to send mail within your local network. This makes SnapMail a very fast in-house messaging system that complements your Internet email. All of your messaging can be conducted without fear of accidentally sending mail out of your company."
Lifehacker
Hacking together public media
Drive-on Movie Magic. "By attaching a video projector to the roof, hood or front your automobile, and popping a DVD player, or even a Mac mini in your car stereo slot, you may project your favorite flick onto the wall of your choice. Hell, why not invite a couple of friends, and use some kind of FM transmitting device to broadcast the sound over to their boogie-vans, too?"
Sponbustion
October 14, 2005
User-generated TV
MTV Creates User-Generated Channel. ""We are handing over an entire channel online to college students and everyone who wants new music. mtvU Uber gives them the power to create and program their own channel, and will remain in perpetual beta mode as they experiment and pioneer the digital future.""
PSFK
October 13, 2005
Broadcasting to those around you
Philips “Tune In” concept allows for anonymous music-sharing. "The “Tune In” is a flash-based player that both broadcasts its signal to nearby Tune In devices and can recieve tracks the same way. Philips envisions users becoming their own tiny radio stations, sharing their playlists on the subway, in the library, anywhere people congregate."
Engadget
October 12, 2005
Community journalism
Brattleboro community news and discussion for Brattleboro, VT. "Brattleboro, welcome to your only locally-owned participatory journalism site. Read and write your views, reviews, news, interviews, and more. It's your town to talk about. Get involved and shape the debate."
iBrattleboro
Relying on self-moderation
New reader comments system for BBC news. "The new system will rely mostly on "reactive moderation," asking readers to report inappropriate content and material that breaches house rules, according to journalism.co.uk. Readers will also be able to rate postings and other users can browse comments either in chronological order or by those ratings.The BBC is moving to the new system because the site is currently overwhelmed by the volume of submissions, as every comment currently has to be individually approved before being published.An average 6,000 comments are submitted on a typical day, and up to 20,000 on a busy news day - but only around 10 per cent of those are published". "Smart Mobs
Young people publishing online
Young blog their way to a publishing revolution. "On average, people between 14 and 21 spend almost eight hours a week online, but it is far from a solitary activity. There are signs of a significant generation gap, and rather than using the internet as their parents do - as an information source, to shop or to read newspapers online - most young people are using it to communicate with one another."Smart Mobs
October 11, 2005
Sharing locations
Share with Fallen Fruit. "West coast-based Fallenfruit.org provides maps that identify fruit trees that hang over public sidewalks. By law (depending on the town), these fruits are public property and you can harvest them freely. Although avocados are currently in season, the Beverly-to-Wiltshire map shows where you can find bananas, figs, grapes, lemons, loquats, peaches, oranges and more."
Lifehacker
October 10, 2005
Reputation through good tagging
Tag, You're It: Best Bookmarker. "When it comes to finding and categorizing new web pages, Chanchal Gupta is the most trusted surfer in town. New experimental software has identified Gupta as one of the most influential social bookmarkers on the web. The software, CollaborativeRank, is a search engine that places great emphasis on results found by highly ranked web "
Wired News
Gesture-accompanied singing
HandySinger. "The HandySinger system is a tool developed at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories to naturally express a singing voice controlled by the gestures of a hand puppet. A singing voice morphing algorithm smoothes out the strength of expressions delivered with a singing voice. "
we make money not art
October 07, 2005
Interactive business card
The rCard: Fully Interactive Business Card. "The rCard is a card that plays video and comes with a 1.875” x 1.875” full color flat screen, speakers, a navigational button, 1 gig of memory, and a USB port. The battery on it is as thin as a postage stamp and lasts about 4 hours of continuous use, but there’s a rechargeable battery option, and you can power it off and on. The whole thing only measures 2” x 3” and weighs a measly 2 ounces."
Gizmodo
October 06, 2005
Distant band members
eJamming. " If you're an accomplished musician, just plug your MIDI-enabled keyboard, electric guitar or bass, drum pads, or wind controller into your computer via the USB port and we'll connect you with as many musicians as you like so you can eJam over the Internet...in real time and totally in sync. You'll even be able to TALK to each other over eJamming™, just like you do in the studio and control room"
eJamming
October 05, 2005
Voice SMS
Voice-Text Service Next Killer Ap?. "Unlike leaving a regular voice mail if a phone isn't answered, users of the "voice SMS" service aren't trying to talk directly to the people they call. Instead they just want to send a message in the form of voice instead of text. The recipient's phone doesn't even ring for a voice SMS; the recipient is alerted with a beep and can retrieve the voice message by pressing the star key."Smart Mobs
October 04, 2005
Making money from podcasts
Podcasting Gold Rush Is On. "GrapeRadio podcaster Brian Clark is now gulping down about $1,000 a week from sponsors of his show for wine hobbyists. Grant Baciocco of the fiction serial The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd sells show-themed buttons and T-shirts and offers guest-voice roles for $50. Josh of Josh in Japan is asking for PayPal donations from fans of his tales of expatriate life, though so far only $14 has rolled in. And Jimmy Diggs uses his Vegas-based Daily Noise as a traffic generator for his internet radio site, LVRocks.com, where sponsors pay for banner ads."
Wired News
Renting the contents of your PVR
Rent my DVR. "Rent my DVR is an online marketplace for buying and selling TV programming. Buyers can scan online listings of available shows and download them via a proprietary P2P application for about 25 cents a pop. Providers in turn receive a 25 cent payment for delivering shows. "
Engadget
Homebrew technology
Hi-tech DIY to solve local problems. ""By personal fabrication, what I mean is ordinary people creating, rather than consuming technology, creating technology to solve local problems," Gershenfeld says. "
BBC NEWS
October 03, 2005
Drawing on digital photos
Memorylane and Okitegami. "morylane, by Ryo Sanpei, Sadamitsu Azuma, Akiyuki Kayama, Yumiko Yoshimoto, and Naohito Okude, is a picture frame for digital photos, which allows users to draw on digital photos and exchange them with friends. The demo video illustrates a cute episode of a boy and a girl making up using memorylane. "
we make money not art
September 28, 2005
Centralizing everything in your blog
Project Comet. "Community Aggregation: Gives you the ability to create individual blogs and share sections of them with other users in an elegant and customizable way. Multiple Streams: Provides a single place to keep everything that is important to you. A record of your life is created by incorporating streams from various media, like music, photos, videos and other blogs into a single customized blog with an identity of its own. "
Six Apart
Anonymous blogging
Blog censorship handbook released. "Included in the booklet, called The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents, is advice about how to blog anonymously, as well as how to identify the most suitable way to circumvent censorship. "
BBC NEWS
September 27, 2005
Simple 3D drawing
"Magical Tools" for 3D Drawing and Painting. "Teddy is one of the most well-known works of his, which allows users to create 3D models just by drawing freeform strokes. Such a 3D authoring method could allow anyone to create 3D objects and effectively support creative processes of making 3D characters and objects. Look what kids made using Magical Sketch 2. "
we make money not art
September 21, 2005
Launching a career online
Chinese pop idol thrives online. "Budding popstars are trying to make a name for themselves in China with just a laptop, headphones and a lip-mike. And it has worked for Xiang Xiang, China's number one internet pop star. "
BBC NEWS
Physical and virtual social networks
Superstar Tokyo. "To play, place your own stickers (with a star on it to recognize participants) wherever you want and collect the stickers of other players by shooting them with your phonecam. Whenever a player snaps a Superstar sticker both players earn points. A link is then created between the two players. From this point on, any time either player earns points (by shooting a new sticker or by having their sticker shot) the other one will also earn points (though not as many)."
we make money not art
Changing your photo after the event
Fail-Proof Focus. "Tired of blurry photographs? Ren Ng, a computer science graduate student at Stanford University, has developed a digital camera and software that allow photographers to refocus images after they have been taken."
Tech Review
September 20, 2005
Digital music creation
Scrapple. "In Scrapple, object placed on the table become sound-producing elements that determine the score's rhythm and pitch. They are interpreted as sound-producing marks in an active score: flexible shape-holding curves allow for the creation of melodies, a group of small toys and other moving objects yield ever-changing rhythms. Video projections on the table turn the installation into a simple augmented reality, in which the objects are elaborated through colorful and explanatory graphics."
networked_performance
September 16, 2005
Video Jockeys
Radio 1 Superstar VJS - Creative Archive Licence trial. "For the first time in our history the BBC is opening its video archives to the UK public. Download nearly 100 clips especially chosen with VJ's in mind. We've scoured the archives for skylines, sunsets, seascapes, wildlife, time-lapse photography & retro gadgets. We will be adding new clips/programmes and launching a major VJ based competition over the next few months so keep coming back for the latest updates. "
BBC
Cameraphones no threat to real cameras
Camera phones boosting digital camera sales-study. "Mobile phones equipped with tiny cameras are seen as less of a threat to replace digital cameras as camera prices fall, IDC said in its Mobile Imaging Survey. In fact the report said new phones help to introduce users to digital photography, which uses no film and allow pictures to be e-mailed. "Reuters.com
August 30, 2005
GPS in cellphones
Roamin' Holiday. "Imagine leaving your car at home and networking with other GPS-phone users to form impromptu car pools, or receiving Web pages on your phone about Pickett's ill-fated charge as you amble up Seminary Ridge in Gettysburg. Geo-aware devices that trigger location-specific services will become as natural as the very idea of wirelessness, and the Web itself will cease to be a placeless cyberspace and will be pinned at millions of points to the physical world we inhabit. "
Tech Review
Middleware game creation tools
Unity game engine adds Windows support. "Well, we support anything that makes developing games easier, because that’s going to ultimately mean more diverse games that break the stultifying parade of sequels that plague the industry. There are thousands of guys (and maybe dozens of girls) out there right now that have always dreamed of making a game but have been put off by the ever-escalating costs of doing so."
Joystiq
Online/Offline hybrid OS
GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS?. "I'm looking at the rest of the most commonly used apps on my Powerbook and there's not too many of them that absolutely need to be standalone desktop applications. Text editor, IM[3], Word, Excel, FTP, iCal, address book...I could imagine versions of these running in a browser."kottke.org
Legitimate music sharing
Downloading Disrupted. "PlayLouder have signed a deal with Sony-BMG, one of the biggest record companies in the world, that will allow PlayLouder members to download music and then share it with their peers. The PlayLouder software analyses the sharing and works out what songs are being shared and how frequently. They then pay a fee based on this to the record label that owns the songs rights. This business model is truly revolutionary. It allows users to continue file sharing and actively encourage this whilst satisfying the record labels by compensating them based on actual figures. "
PSFK
Artists encouraging remixing
Beastie Boys release vocals-only tracks to encourage remixers. "The Beastie Boys are posting acapella tracks -- just the vocals, in other words, along with BPM info -- from their songs and encouraging their fans to make noncommercial remixes of them. A new track goes live every Friday. "
Boing Boing
More online borrowing
Online librarian is 'overwhelmed'. "The website asks its members to add a list of 10 books they own to its online catalogue. The listed books can then be exchanged between members for the cost of postage and packing. "
BBC NEWS
Technology that connects two peope
Embrace. "Embrace is a concept bracelet that enables the user to be seamlessly connected to their significant other over periods of separation. "
we make money not art
Digital schools
Look, Ma, No Schoolbooks!. "Gypton said he assigns readings based on websites, lists postings to news articles, uses online groups and message boards to keep the students connected on weekends and asks them to comment on each other's work. "Wired News
August 25, 2005
Anyone can start a music store
BurnLounge Makes Anyone a Music Download Retailer. "The Web-based service provides the music library, e-commerce tools and business management software for virtually anyone to own and operate their own digital download store. The company’s founders hope to recruit everyday music fans, allowing each to decide which acts they want to feature and promote, as a sort of digital guerrilla marketing play."
Realtech News
August 24, 2005
Leaving notes in locations
System for Tagging Messages, Post-Inferential Semantics. "STAMPS is a little program that allows you to see a map of the place where you are, visualised on the screen of your mobile. There, you can write a kind of SMS and attach it to the map so that other friends can see your message appearing on their map."
Smart Mobs
People creating media
Citizens do media for themselves. "D Lasica's ourmedia is a place online where anyone can publish their own digital home movie, music, photos, or even plain old blog for free. [...] Since its inception in March 2005, not-for-profit Ourmedia has attracted more than 31,000 international members, and now plays host to 22,000 separate pieces of media, from travelogs to tastes of family life."
Smart Mobs
Growth in blogs
Visiting the blogs. "A new report out by a leading Internet research company has revealed that fully 30 percent of American Internet users visited blogs during the first quarter of 2005",this CNET news article says.According to it "almost 50 million--or one in six--Americans spent at least some time on blogs during that time frame.That's a 45 percent rise over the year before".Smart Mobs
August 10, 2005
Video booths
MYSQ: Video Purikura. "MYSQ (My Style So Qute) is an interactive "video booth" for shooting 30-second movies that can be viewed on mobile phones. [...] The booth can accommodate up to three people so you can shoot Prikura style video clips with your friends. Inside the booth is a fluffy thing called a MYSQ ring - you wear it on your hand. A camera detects the movement of your MYSQ ring. Also, floor sensors detect your foot movement. So, the system can control video effects based on your (and your friends') hand/foot movement."
we make money not art
Playing with video
Shapeshifter. "Shapeshifter is an installation for busy streets. People interact by standing in front of the large screen. A camera records the user one slice at a time enabling the user to compose strange bodies. The various slices are recorded and stored for other people to play with."
we make money not art
Printing one-off books
Rewriting the rules of publishing. "...Mr Young's website - called Lulu - allows authors to upload their manuscripts onto the site, where they can be printed off and sold individually as and when wanted. The same principal applies to other creative works that can be loaded onto the Lulu site, such as music, photos, calendars, and videos."
BBC NEWS
August 08, 2005
Collaborating with video
Video making for children. "In Shooting mode, the users insert a token in the camera and record a shot. They place the camera on the table and the video is transferred wirelessly to the computer. Once removed from the camera, the tokens can be used as a composition element on the table and the resulting video clips can later be combined by the group to achieve a common outcome."
we make money not art
August 06, 2005
Digital music mixing
iPod DJ Station is GO. "Big controls for iPod scroll wheel and transport buttons, Ins and outs for connecting other gear (like, say, a turntable?, 2-channel mixer, 3-band EQ, USB connection to Mac/PC; full docking support, S-Video out for iPod Photo, Recording support (in iPod)"
Gizmodo
Creative use of technology
Digital Citizens: The DIY DJs. "All this week the BBC News website is speaking to people whose creativity has been transformed in the digital age. From blogging to podcasting, millions of ordinary people are becoming writers, journalists, broadcasters and film-makers thanks to increasingly affordable and accessible tools."
BBC NEWS
More tagging
Web Tags Gain Backers at AlwaysOn. "The phenomenon of tagging the Web appears to be gaining more converts, as another online startup embraces the metadata annotations and as even enterprises begin to take note of the trend."EWeek
Personal cards
Pleasure Cards. "PleasureCards" are bespoke personal contact cards that also allow you to store and share all your personal contact information and more online at pleasurecards.com"
Pleasure Cards
Tagging instead of sending
del.icio.us links for: you and me. "The del.icio.us team released a fun new feature: tag a link for:username for bookmarks you want other del.icio.us users to see. I'll be watching for:ginatrapani, so if you're a del.icio.us user with a link for me, tag it up."
Lifehacker
Citizen journalism
Watch Out -- TV Reporters Are Everywhere. "With the commercial launch of wideband-code division multiple access (W-CDMA), people will be able to video-record a scene and send it to broadcasters or upload it to the Web. It is the precursor of video-based citizen journalism."
The Korea Times
July 18, 2005
V-Blogging
Blogging + Video = Vlogging. "Bloggers who previously wrote endlessly about everything from politics to tech tips to how to fry an egg on a hot sidewalk can now take their commentary, advice and random experiments to the next level by filming and broadcasting their work, thanks to the latest web trend -- video blogging."
Wired News
July 12, 2005
Selling your photos for news
the citizen journalist's photographic agency, selling mobile phone and digital camera pictures to the press and media.. "If you photograph a newsworthy event, you could have a valuable scoop on your hands. Scoopt represents you, making sure the right people see your photo and ensuring that you get a good deal."Scoopt
Location based websites
PlaceSite. "Savage announced his latest project, PlaceSite, which combines online social networking with real-life networking in Wi-Fi cafes by providing computer users with a website unique to a particular Wi-Fi cafe."
networked_performance
June 30, 2005
Social content sharing
Yahoo! My Web 2.0 beta. "My Web lets you save, tag and annotate Yahoo! web search results and make them public or private. This latest release lets you search only pages your friends (address book, Messenger buddies or Yahoo! 360 contacts) have bookmarked and recommended. Similar to Google's move toward personalized search yesterday, it seems the web search heavyweights are moving away from spammable PageRanked results and toward creating little universes of trusted content for each user."
Lifehacker
Sharing stuff online
Web Content by and for the Masses. "I'm photo- and calendar-sharing services to "citizen journalist" sites and annotated satellite images, the Internet is morphing yet again. A remarkable array of software systems makes it simple to share anything instantly, and sometimes enhance it along the way."
New York Times (may require free subscription)
Physical interactions with media
Draw your own tracks with Connect - draw - remix. "...the Connect - draw - remix prototype/concept CD Sequencer packaging by Matthew Falla? You plug it in to your machine's USB port, and design (and redesign) audio tracks that you mix by drawing on electrical traces with a plain old pencil."
Engadget
June 27, 2005
More google map hacking
Foundcity personal text and photo maps. "SMS a photo, tags, message and address to Foundcity from anywhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn in New York City and it appears on your map automatically. Check out a map of a particular tag (like "street art" or "gargoyles") or by user."
Lifehacker
June 14, 2005
Phone-based photo sharing
fotochatter. "1. Jack sends a picture from his phone to his fotochatter posting address. 2. All ten of Jack's fotochatter friends get an SMS notifying them that he has added a photo (if they have this option turned on). 3. They view Jack's photo on their phones either via the fotochatter WAP site or J2ME(Java) application. 4.Some friends make comments on his photo. 5. 5 minutes later, Jack receives several comments (via SMS) on his photo, and can reply to each individually via SMS."
Smart Mobs
June 03, 2005
Community through technology
Beyond Kiwanis: Internet builds new communities. "cell phones, e-mails, instant text messaging and Blackberries are helping mobile, busy Americans link up with neighbors on their commutes to work, in the middle of the night and on business trips."
USATODAY.com
May 31, 2005
Broadcasting from your car
Watch for Roadcasting Rage. "Stuck in traffic and sick of Howard Stern, you may soon be able to tune in to the music collection of the person in the car in front of you. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing an ad hoc networking system for cars that would allow any driver to broadcast music to any other vehicle within a 30-mile radius."Wired News
Radio station of audio blogs
BlogRadio. "BlogRadio combines the most recent Blogger.com audio posts into one online radio station to provide an answerphone for the world."
BlogRadio
May 19, 2005
Tele-band
MusicGrid. "A new First Monday article explores an educational experiment for collaborating with music online among remote schools near the polar region. Apparently, the experiment has been declared a success, in terms of getting remote students to be more enthusiastic about participation in school music programs".
Smart Mobs
May 18, 2005
Media through direct connections
Haptic Gloves. "Each participant wears the gloves, headphones (through which they can hear their personal music) and a clip-on box housing circuits. As soon as they touch the gloved hand of another, they can hear their own music mixed with the other person's sound. The more people holding hands, the more sophisticated the track."
networked_performance
May 16, 2005
Nutritional advice from a distance
MyFoodPhone "keeps dieters honest" with camphone food shots. "Customers use cameraphones to snap photos of their meals, send them to a web site and get back advice from a registered dietitian on how to modify the portions or selections to reach health or weight goals."
Engadget
Long distance health care
Technology Lets Patients Visit Doctors Without Leaving Home. "As part of remote diabetes care, a team travels to First Nations reserves, where the disease is endemic, to take photos of patients' retinas with a specially designed digital camera. Those images can be viewed via computer by an ophthalmologist hundreds of kilometres away to check for signs of diabetes-related eye damage."
CNN
May 12, 2005
Self created audio guides
Students make their own MOMA audio-guides. "Students at Marymount Manhattan College's Department of Communication Arts are recording their own audio commentary on the Museum of Modern Art's exhibits. They're also inviting others to make their own homemade audio guides to MOMA, which they'll collect and post online."Boing Boing
RSS TV
torrentocracy. "Torrentocracy (pronounced like the word democracy) is the combination of RSS, bit torrent, your television and your remote control. In effect, it is what gives any properly motivated person or entity the ability to have their own TV station. By running torrentocracy on a computer connected to your television, you not only become a viewer of any available content from the internet, but you also become a part of a vast grass roots media distribution network."
torrentocracy
New models for publishing
Watt-Evans's next novel published under Street Performer Protocol. "Each week that he receives $100 worth of donations, he posts another chapter of The Spriggan Mirror, which is to be the ninth Ethshar novel. When it is completed, it will be published by small press if no major publishers are interested."Boing Boing
Music stores from anyone
Channel 4 launches download store. "Tracks will be shortlisted by music industry experts before a public vote selects their favourite band, with the winner appearing on Channel 4. The site, the first download store from a terrestrial broadcaster, offers 350,000 tracks starting at 79p."
BBC NEWS
May 11, 2005
APIs for media providers
BBC Backstage: tools for remixing the Beeb to your spec. "BBC Backstage is a collection of feeds, APIs, and other tools for remixing the BBC's digital offerings, to "make your stuff using our stuff." They want the world to convert the BBC's raw material into individualized, idiosyncratic and wildly imaginative applications. It's the Flickrization of the Beeb and it's so exciting I can scarce contain myself."
Boing Boing
Self made visualizations
Music sampling's history, visualized. "This Java applet is a visualizer for the history of music sampling -- a timeline with colored dots represents some of the most widely circulated tracks; click to see all the tracks they spawned, click the tracks they spawned to see what other tracks they sampled."
Boing Boing
May 09, 2005
Physical representations of emotion
Web are you? - Networked emoticon device. "You set one up at home and plug it to your home network. Set the other one at your office location and plug it to your office LAN. Submit your mood state by pressing one of the icons and your home device will reflect and share it with your other significant. If there is only one home device, it can be accessed through a regular webpage or mobile phone."
we make money not art
Sharing between devices
InstantShareCam. "InstantSharecam is a service for sharing in real-time and on the spot high-res videos/photos with your friends or your crew right from your digital camcorder to other devices."
we make money not art
Too many pictures
Stop Them Before They Shoot Again. "Edit your pictures, people," said Ms. Weber, a writer in Brooklyn whose pen name is Anita Liberty. She suggests no more than three pictures by e-mail, no more than 12 to an online "album," no albums more than twice a year. (Exceptions may apply for grandparents and best friends.) Ms. Weber is not alone in her plea for restraint. At a time when this country is indulging in an unparalleled binge of personal picture taking, and some digital photographers find themselves drowning in the product of their enthusiasm, the notion is dawning that even in a digital realm less may still be more."
New York Times (may require free subscription)
One-off books
One-off coffee table books - the democratisation of book publishing. "A new web-based service that offers personalised single-copy high-quality coffee-table books could give the humble book a new life in the digital age."
gizmag
Wiki + Blog + lists
Backpack personal organizer. "Backpack's a fun combination wiki, weblog, to-do list and calendar that's featureful but not overwhelming. Make a page that contains check-offable lists, images, dated notes, and files about a project or idea. Link pages and share them with others for collaborative editing. Set up reminders that get sent to your email or mobile device about project deliverables - or to water the plants or pay the rent. Subscribe to page changes in your newsreader, and reminders in your calendar applicaton."
Lifehacker
Sharing photos over the phone
Playful ways to share mobile phone snaps. "A first set of ideas allows to exchange pre-recorded images in real-time during a voice-call with another person. Through a touch screen interface images are "pushed" and "pulled" to a shared viewing space. The analogue control allows for a variety of gestures, from the quick flashing of images, to rapid firing of image sequences to offering an image to be revealed by the other person."
we make money not art
Cool ways to visualize your photos
Main >Comic life. "Comic Life for OS X makes digital comics a snap. Use Comic Life to create high quality comics for posting on the web, including in movies or printing out for friends."
plasq
April 28, 2005
Family connections
Re-connecting remote families. "FamilyScrapbook is a service and an application. It relies on a third party to provide storage space, to which different devices will be connected. On the user's side, it's an application -- for the computer, the cell phone or the television -- that allows a quick view of new postings, facilitates fast uploads and has browsing capabilities."
andreea chelaru
Blogging on TV shows
'Canadian Idol' Raises Its Profile. "Beginning next month, CTV will give bloggers the ability to offer their views about the show. "Each person will have their own space, and they can come back and actually comment on the show as the show plays out and the competition goes on," Smith said. "We will still have the administration that we can accept or reject blogs, but I believe the plan is to just let them loose. We are going to have to moderate it to see how it goes."
EWeek
Podcasting-only radio stations
Podcasting Killed the Radio Star. "The world's first all-podcast radio station will be launched on May 16 by Infinity Broadcasting [...]. Infinity plans to convert San Francisco's 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to listener-submitted content. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio format, will be renamed KYOURadio."Wired News
April 26, 2005
International styles of blogging
Vive les Blogs!. "Spurred by a culture of popular expression and debate that can be traced back to France's 17th-century salons, the French are embracing weblogs with a greater zeal than anyone on the European continent."
Wired News
April 25, 2005
360-degree cameras
The Eye Ball R1 for a 360-degree view of the crime scene. "The Eye Ball R1, a wireless camera and microphone in a baseball-sized casing, can be tossed into a crime scene to give police watching a TV screen embedded in a handheld a 360-degree view of what the bad guys are up to."
we make money not art
Ringtones before singles
Cingular convinces bands to release songs as ringtones before singles. "First up is Coldplay, you'll be able to get their new song - Speed of Sound - as a ringtone six days before it gets played on the radio and a couple of months before their new album comes out in June."
Engadget
April 11, 2005
Digitizing printed books
The Infinite Library. "Once the knowledge now trapped on the printed page moves onto the Web, where people can retrieve it from their homes, offices, and dorm rooms, libraries could turn into lonely caverns inhabited mainly by preservationists. Checking out a library book could become as anachronistic as using a pay phone, visiting a travel agent to book a flight, or sending a handwritten letter by post."
Tech Review
TV with viewer participation
The Vee Pee's New Tee Vee. "Audience members will be encouraged to not only watch but also shoot, edit and upload their own bite-sized digital video segments to the Current TV website. If the editors and web audience like the segments, they will then be broadcast to the channel's potential viewer pool of 19 million."Wired News
April 08, 2005
Interactive music creation
reacTable. "The reacTable allows collaborative performances by professional musicians without the limits of many screen-based interfaces. The table is played by manipulating a set of objects placed on top of it."
we make money not art
April 01, 2005
Bring your own music
Hilton gets a line in. "It's an article about Hilton as in hotel, where they're busy replacing the standard-issue radios found in their rooms with stereo devices with line-in jacks for plugging in portable music players. Kudos to them for opting for a standard jack instead of a proprietary interface..."
Engadget
Individual's radio stations
David Byrne launches internet radio station. "Musician and artist David Byrne, known most widely as co-founder of the Talking Heads, has just launched an internet radio station that streams the music he digs."
Boing Boing
March 22, 2005
Ringtones from live music
Busker Ringtones. "For people who want to make a living of live and spontaneous music on the streets, the Busker Ringtones project, by Tamsin Fulton, offers buskers a new revenue stream but gives also the public the possibility to get unique ringtones for their mobile phones. The ringtones would normally cost 1,50: with 75p going to the musician and the rest to the requester's mobile phone network."
we make money not art
Posting photos of your in-game self
Invent in-game moblogging. "How about a Flickr uplaod button -in game-. See something cool? Hit the button, add the tags, designate it to your guild, upload. I suspect this would mean tens of thousands of accounts for a service like Flickr, but on a more macro level, people are going to start moblogging their virtual worlds just as much as the real world, why not use Flickr."
Boing Boing
March 07, 2005
Managed lending
Peerflix - Netflix alternative?. "Beta web service Peerflix lets you trade DVD's you own with other members for a pay-as-you-go 1 dollar a trade rate. [...] Peerflix provides the mailers - send out a DVD, receive a DVD. Keep the movies you get for as long as you want, until you trade again."
Lifehacker
February 25, 2005
Lending digital books
Public library lends out book-filled iPod Shuffles. "We have it on good word that the South Huntington Public Library in Suffolk County, New York, is doing just that. They apparently have a handful of Shuffles, pre-loaded with books, and are planning to add more."
Engadget
Fashion displays
.dot .dot .dot Bluetooth Display. "NYU's .dot.dot.dot project is developing an app for Bluetooth enabled phones that transfers images to a small, wearable LED screen. Users create an image from red dots on their phone and then broadcast the image to the display for all to see."
Gizmodo
February 21, 2005
New instruments
The musical curtain. "Each bead, when touched, lights itself and emits a unique sound. People play with the curtain by weaving their hands through it, touching it with their faces, and moving through it with their body."
we make money not art
Cellphones and the neighborhood
Camphone Citizen Action in London. "As of today, anyone living in the south-east London borough can take a snap using their camera phone of the many problems that blight London's roads, such as graffiti or fly-tipping and send it to the council."
Smart Mobs
February 15, 2005
Wireless trash
Spy in the bins. "Microchips inserted into the new bins in Croydon (S.London) may be adapted so that the council can judge whether residents are producing too much rubbish. If they are, they may be visited by officials bearing advice on how they might "manage their rubbish more effectively".
we make money not art
Consumer high-def camcorders
Home Video Made to Watch on HDTV. "All right, go ahead, ask it: "In whose twisted opinion does a $3,300 price tag make this a consumer camcorder?" Let's put it this way: the next least expensive three-chip, high-definition camcorder costs about $40,000."
The New York Times
February 09, 2005
Group submissions
The Human Clock. "Many people viewing this website end up sending in their own clock pictures, be they in an airplane, installing brakes, or on a playground. There are clock pictures from all over the world ranging from Outback Australia to Canada to Pakistan to Antarctica to Italy to Brazil. Other people travel around the American Southwest and end up taking a clock photo on a corner in Winslow, Arizona."
HumanClock.com
February 02, 2005
Viral games
Viral handheld gaming feature(?). "As well as a single-player mode, Infected will also take advantage of the PSP's wireless multiplayer functionality, and should put an interesting spin on things as, in addition to just blasting each other, players will be able to create a unique avatar which then spreads like a virus through the handhelds of players who lose to them. You'll then be able to check your rankings and see how far your virus has spread amongst your victims."
Smart Mobs
Mapping photos to the globe
Escape Lab Travel Album. "It offers 3D, 2D, and plain flat interface navigation through dozens of destinations around the globe with high quality photos from each."
Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting
January 28, 2005
Two-way internet
Information Wants to be Liquid. "Hegland's project, Liquid Information, is kinda like Wikipedia meets hypertext. In Hegland's web, all documents are editable, and every word is a potential hyperlink."Wired News
January 14, 2005
Mixing tags from different services
Technorati Tags: three great services on one page. "Technorati Tags are keywords that map to category names, keywords, and other cues in blog posts. When you bring up a Technorati Tag for "computers," you get all relevant blog posts that Technorati knows about, presented on a page with relevant Del.icio.us links and relevant Flickr images."
Boing Boing
January 06, 2005
Wireless cameras
Kodak Easyshare One Wireless Camera. "...you can add a WiFi card [...] to it to upload your photos right to the web, or even log in and view your Ofoto pictures on the camera. Plus Kodak sealed a deal with T-Mobile to make sure you can upload your pix from any T-Mobile Hotspot (aka Starbucks)."
Engadget
December 17, 2004
Scanning in awkward places
Flexible Plastic Book Scanner. "Tokyo University researchers have developed a scanner embedded in a flexible sheet of plastic that will allow archivers to get into the cracks of old and fragile books without cutting apart the spine."
Gizmodo
Internet library
Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database. "Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web."
The New York Times (may require free subscription)
December 10, 2004
The end of the "home" page
Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content. "Despite our long hours and good intentions, content aggregators throw this site-centric idea out the window. They allow users to bypass a large portion of the design, whose sole purpose is to get them to target content. In this way the information architecture the designer envisioned may go unused, with users never clicking on the carefully crafted navigation links, never using the location-specific breadcrumbs, and in some cases never even seeing the much-fretted-over home page."Digital Web Magazine
Changing face of the library
Libraries Reach Out, Online. "For years, library patrons have been able to check card catalogs online and do things like reserve or renew books and pay overdue fines. Now they can not only check out e-books and audiobooks but view movie trailers and soon, the actual movies. And they can do it without setting foot in the local branch."
The New York Times
December 07, 2004
Video-casting
Video Feeds Follow Podcasting. "Already, there are rudimentary applications like Vogbrowser, which offers video feeds to which people can subscribe, much like they do with RSS feeds. There are more products like this on the way."Wired News
Ambient monitoring
Wearables for everyday objects. "This key-chain radio station broadcasts the sounds you make through regular FM radio and shares them with people hidden from your eye. It works only within a radius of about 20 meters. The sound quality is not very clear, but people can guess what you are doing. In addition, the lower sound quality reduces concerns about privacy issues."
we make money not art
December 06, 2004
Home monitoring
Wireless Water Submeters: It's a ZigBee Thing.. "A self-forming, self-healing wireless mesh network of ZigBee-based Aqura submeters will provide real-time usage data - including the number of "flow events" (showers, toilet flushes, dishwasher cycles, etc.), flow-time in minutes, hot and cold water usage, domestic hot water energy, leak diagnostics and tamper detection - using a TV remote control-like meter reader. The readings will be automatically collected from the ZigBee network several times per day and uploaded to Wellspring's data and billing center; then made available to residents, apartment owners and third party billing services on the Web."
ExtremeTech
December 01, 2004
The impact of new communications technology
New Forms of Online Communication Spell End of Email Era in Korea. "The ebbing of email is a phenomenon peculiar to Korea, an IT power. Leading the big change, unprecedented in the world, are our teens and those in their 20's. The perception that "email is an old and formal communication means"is rapidly spreading among them."Smart Mobs
November 26, 2004
Ringtone creation
Mix Your Own Ringtones. "RingRanger has launched a ringtone site in the UK, that allows users to mix their own tones, which the site then plans to sell to other visitors. The site is at pains to emphasise that it's very easy to mix a tone, even for complete novices, using their simple-to-use tools."
The Mobile Technology Weblog
Legal P2P music sharing
Music giants feed the Wurld. "A new agreement between a peer-to-peer network and the major music labels has created the first peer-to-peer file sharing network for licensed digital music."The Register
November 24, 2004
Getting paid for sharing files
Weed Pays you to Share Music Files. "Play any Weed file up to 3 times FREE, then you can buy the songs you like. Then play, burn, and share. Share Weed files over P2P, on your website, or on CD. Make money when others buy."
Weed
Mobile music parties
Sound Pryer adds WiFi music pooling to the traffic jam. "Sound Pryer is a WiFi music "social" for traffic jams that creates mobile music parties when more than one driver attaches a WiFi device (like a PDA running Sound Pryer) to his car stereo."
Engadget
November 19, 2004
Sharing creative media
Global Grassroots Content Clearinghouse. "The idea is pretty simple: People who create video, music, photos, audio clips and other personal media can store their stuff for free on ourmedia's servers forever, as long as they're willing to share their works with a global audience."
November 17, 2004
Government RSS
RSS Edges Into the Bureaucracy. "To date, RSS feeds are offered by agencies such as the U.S. State Department, NASA, the state of Delaware, the National Hurricane Center, a number of state legislatures, local governments and more. However, many foreign governments, including England, France and New Zealand, are way ahead of those in the United States when it comes to RSS."Wired News
Doing things from a distance
That moose may soon be just a mouse click away. "Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his 330-acre (133-hectare) southwest Texas ranch by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world."CNN.com
November 12, 2004
Distant contact
Does Grandma Need a Hug? A Robotic Pillow Can Help. "Now, robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh have designed a soft, huggable pillow that uses sensing and wireless phone technology to provide a physical touch, and thus better social and emotional support, for distant family members."
The New York Times (may require free subscription)
November 09, 2004
Peer to peer radio
Music sharing that's free and legal. "...Mercora runs a Web-based network of roughly 8,000 broadcasters worldwide. Those broadcasters devise their own playlists, which are served up to 175,000 to 200,000 listeners connected over the Internet. Mercora's software also automatically streams music from an individual's hard drive, making each member of the network a broadcaster."CNET News.com
November 05, 2004
Mini-projectors for phones
For Your Viewing Pleasure, a Projector in Your Pocket. "It takes squinting and guesswork to make out the details of postage-stamp-size snapshots displayed on cellphones and digital cameras. But researchers are working on pocket-size projectors so that one day people will be able to see a high-resolution slide show right out of a camera, a cellphone or an organizer."
The New York Times(may require free subscription)
November 04, 2004
Citizen photo-journalists
Cell Phones Increasingly Used to Snap the News. "Twice in one month the biggest Dutch newspaper published front-page pictures shot by amateur photographers using their mobile phones, showing how advances in technology can assist traditional media in gathering news."Reuters.com
November 03, 2004
Displays in clothing
NYX Wearable Displays. "The display is quite flexible and is not raised from the surface of the fabric. To show scrolling text or a graphical animation, just plug in your a Palm Pilot loaded with the NYX software and enter whatever you want. From club kids to traffic cops, wearable displays will soon be fun, informative and sometimes annoying."
Cool Hunting
November 02, 2004
Video dating
Video dating can be great but you have to find the right signals. "My date with Yara Khalife does not go well. I thought that opening the call with a shot of a garden gnome was amusing. She looks confused."
Telegraph
October 28, 2004
Servers everywhere
The PicoServer, sensor control in a pack-of-smokes form factor. "...essentially a web/mail server with an Ethernet port and three sockets for sensors (one out, two in). Suggested uses include hooking up a heat sensor and have it mail you when Widget No. 24 is overheating..."
Engadget
October 27, 2004
User-authored news
Wikinews. "We seek to create a free source of news, where every human being is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere."Wikimedia
Integration of shared and local favorites
How To Backup Social Bookmarks: Del.icio.us Gets Foxy. "Foxylicious is a free Mozilla Firefox extension developed by Dietrich Ayala that integrates your del.icio.us bookmarks into your Firefox browser's bookmarks."RG News
October 25, 2004
Online, creative kids
A creative generation. "...the study found that 17% of young people have sent pictures or stories to a website and "online creativity can be encouraged through the very experience of using the internet." That is, the more time kids spend online, the more likely they are to produce their own content."foe romeo
October 20, 2004
Music on memory card
Robbie album sold on memory card. "Robbie Williams' Greatest Hits album is to be sold in memory card format for mobile phones and hand-held computers. It is believed to be the first time a major artist has sold music on the small, portable format."
BBC NEWS
October 08, 2004
The interet continues to change peoples behaviors
Ten years ten trends. "Ten years after electronic portals to the Worldwide Web were first opened to millions of computer users, ten significant trends have emerged that vividly illustrate how the Internet affects America, according to findings from the comprehensive year-to-year study of the impact of online technology by the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future."USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future
September 27, 2004
Quick websites for you phone
Mobile Community, Microcontent Publishing, Mobile Site Builder, Moblogging, Social Networking. "In minutes, you can set-up a free mobile site that's available worldwide on any web-enabled phone, PDA or desktop PC. Each mobile site is outfitted with easy-to-use mobile channels including chat, blog, mobile feed reader, surveys, journal, forum, calendar, guestbook, bookmarks, email and more."
WINKsite
August 28, 2004
Photo feeds
Decaying images via RSS. "I just signed up for the RSS Feed for the keyword "decay" on the Flickr image-sharing site. That means that my RSS aggregator gets a steady stream of photos tagged by their uploaders with the word "decay."
Boing Boing
August 17, 2004
Time for eBooks?
Net Publishing Made Profitable. "The books are written by a small stable of independent authors, who receive 50 percent royalties, a rate unheard of in traditional publishing. Edited collaboratively over the Net, the books are published "within moments of going to press" as small, downloadable PDF files."Wired News
August 16, 2004
Personalized communications
Turn your memories into stamps "Use our simple design tools to easily edit and create your customized PhotoStamps."
PhotoStamps
August 11, 2004
Photos by RSS
RSS feeds of keyword-tagged photos. "...every tag automatically gets an RSS feed, so that you can watch all the photos tagged with "cuba" or "outdoor" or "red" in your RSS reader, getting alerts every time a new one comes along."Boing Boing:
August 07, 2004
Location aware blogs
Has cell phone blogging found its place?. "One of the first such products is from WaveMarket, an Emeryville, Calif.-based software maker that invented a way for cell phone users to upload their location, along with photos and text messages, onto interactive street maps viewable by millions of other cell phone users."
CNET News.com
August 06, 2004
Mobile content
TiVo gets FCC approval for video sharing. "The new service will allow TiVo users to send videos to up to 10 other users who also have digital keys for viewing content. The initial rollout is aimed at allowing TiVo users to send content to their own computers and possibly even remote devices, but plans are in the works for ways to send content outside of the home, as well."ArsTechnica
Spontaneous gigs
Punk at a Moment's Notice. "Building on the spontaneous public gatherings that are flash mobs, guerrilla gigs took off in November, when Jane's Addiction flashed notices of London performances to fans using SMS cell-phone messages. This year, celebrated English rockers The Libertines joined in when they started using a fans' forum to announce concerts for their most loyal followers at the last minute."Wired News
July 30, 2004
Virtual sounds in real locations
Tactical Sound Garden [ TSG ] Toolkit"The TSG Toolkit is an open source platform for cultivating public "sound gardens" within urban environments. The Toolkit enables urban dwellers to "plant" sounds within specific locations using their WiFi enabled mobile device."
TSG
Video blogging
Welcome to vBlog Central. "vBlog Central lets you add video (and audio and pictures) to your existing blog. We host your video content and display it in whatever format your users want. It's transparent and easy.>vBlog
July 28, 2004
Reading short stories on devices
Short stories find a home on the Web. "Short stories, on the other hand, are brief enough to be computer friendly, and at the same time, sufficiently underrepresented in book shops that it can be easier to find a specific work online."csmonitor.com
July 23, 2004
News coverage direct from the source
P2P TV - How Independent News Video Producers Will Bypass The Mainstream TV Networks. "To be a real-time video journalist, all you need is a blog, a camcorder, and a laptop with WiFi."RG News
July 20, 2004
User controlled news
Interactive Tele-Journalism. "Interactive Tele-Journalism is a means with which to empower a community with the ability to act in aggregate as the director of a television news program. In a sense it is a merging of concepts relating to online communities, tele-presence, television news and interactive TV."
walking-productions.com
July 19, 2004
Songs entering public domain
European Copyright Clock Ticking on Elvis Hits. "If there are no changes in European copyright law, the track will fall into public domain Jan. 1, 2005. Anyone will be able to release it without paying royalties to the owners of the master or the performer's heirs. BMG will start losing a significant piece of its catalog income in Europe. As "That's All Right" is being hailed by some as the beginning of rock 'n' roll, the implications are that every year after 2005, more recordings that defined the genre will fall into public domain."Reuters.com
July 14, 2004
Controlled media sharing
Industry Deal Set on Allowing Limited DVD Copying. "A group of media and technology companies including Microsoft Corp. and Walt Disney Co. have agreed in principle to allow consumers to make legal backup copies of next-generation video discs and share their content on portable devices."Reuters.com
July 13, 2004
More bloggers
8,000 bloggers born every day. "That means that a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds. Of these, a reported 36 per cent irritate friends or family with their twitterings, while a staggering 12 per cent attract the attention of lawyers with their biting commentary."The Register
July 09, 2004
Blogging for teens
A new social scene. "According to the research firm Perseus, 52 percent of all bloggers are teenagers, and an additional 40 percent are in their 20s."MercuryNews.com
RSS feeds for everything
ListGarden RSS Feed Generator. "The ListGarden program is a tool for manually creating and maintaining RSS feeds."Software Garden Products
June 30, 2004
Streaming your music
Forget Radio, Tune In to Net. "The new medium still has hurdles to overcome, but analysts predict music fans will eventually stream their music to a variety of wireless devices, allowing them to take the music anywhere."Wired News
Clipping and sharing content
Companion Toolbar and Community. "Amplify is a free companion toolbar that gives you the power to find, collect, save and share content from multiple online sources in personalized pages called Amps."
Amplify
June 23, 2004
End of print (again)
Lots of photos, not many prints. "...simple digital sharing through e-mail and other methods threatens to undermine the need for photo printing, unless vendors convince consumers that prints are an archival method as well as a sharing vehicle."Digital Photography Review
June 17, 2004
What weblogs are good at
Weblog networks as social ecosystems . "A great summary of why weblogs are critical social networking tools and a bung of valuable reference links."
Mathemagenic
Personal FM broadcasting
iPod pirate radio bumper stickers. "I figure that anyone that can read the bumper sticker-- on the I-5, at a stop light-- if intrigued could tune in and listen to whatever I'm listening to."
Boing Boing
June 10, 2004
National blogging
National Day Parade 2004 :: MoBlog. "This National Day, Singapore will be the FIRST and ONLY nation in the world to adopt MOBLOGGING at a National Event!!"Celebrate Singapore
June 04, 2004
P2P file sharing for handhelds
Promiscuous BluePod file swapping - coming to a PDA near you. "Pocket Rendezvous allows Pocket PC holders to browse whatever you want to reveal on your portable web server."
The Register
May 19, 2004
Smart homes helping seniors
Smart homes offer a helping hand. "To help people cope, Accenture researchers are concentrating on five main projects: Persuasive mirrors; Connective tables; Shared scrap books; Interactive pictures; Activity monitoring"
BBC NEWS
May 18, 2004
P2P photo sharing
OurPictures How It Works. "Effortless Sharing To Anyone - Select the photos you wish to share and with one click, pictures are delivered to all of your friends and family. Those with the OurPictures software will receive photos directly to their PCs. Those without OurPictures will be notified by e-mail to view the photos on a private web page."OurPictures.com
May 10, 2004
Personal area networks that aren't connected to the web
WiFi.Bedouin. "WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity."
techkwondo
May 07, 2004
Digital movies on a budget
Kid Robot and the World of Tomorrow. "...every scene is at least partly computer-generated. The actors are real, but just about everything else, from city sidewalks to exploding zeppelins, is digital. "A lot of filmmakers would find it limiting, but I find it strangely liberating," Conran declares. "You wish you could just move that actor over an inch? Well, we can."
Wired
April 22, 2004
Baby websites
Online Diary: Web Sites for Music Playlists and Baby Blogs. "Trixie is 8 months old, and though I've never met her, I know when she is asleep, how much formula she's had today, and her lifetime diaper usage (going on 2,000). She's also cute, but that's beside the point."
The New York Times
April 12, 2004
RSS on any device
RSS and Mobile Devices. "So, what does all actually this look like on a device? Well, heres what I look at each day. For these examples, I made this article an RSS feed on my site. I didnt need to publish 100 different ways, just once and it was go to go."
dailywireless
April 03, 2004
45,740 people giving stuff away for free
Freecycle. "The worldwide (!) Freecycle Network is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Number of cities freecycling: 321 Number of people freecycling: 45,740"freecycle.org
March 30, 2004
Sharing music through your iPaq
a handheld ad-hoc radio device for local music sharing "tunA is a mobile wireless application that allows users to share their music locally through handheld devices. Users can "tune in" to other nearby tunA music players and listen to what someone else is listening to."medialabeurope.org
March 26, 2004
How will music downloading change music?
Downloading
"It would not be unusual for an aspiring musician to download a tune from, say, an obscure techno band in Japan. That would have been impossible two or three decades ago; that kind of music could not be found in the bins at the neighbourhood Sam the Record Man."CBC News Indepth
March 11, 2004
Timeline of your mobile phone items
Log your life via your phone. "The Lifeblog software automatically arranges all the messages, images, videos and sound clips people capture with their phones."BBC News
March 04, 2004
44% of US internet users have contributed material online
Americans get personal online "The report, entitled "Content Creation Online", notes that "while blogs or personal online journals have captured the attention of the technology community, most of those who have made contributions have done so in less cutting-edge ways"."The Register
Personal book publishing
Got a Book in You? More Companies Than Ever Are Willing to Get It Out "It's easy to publish your own book!" the "Borders Personal Publishing" leaflets proclaim. Pay $4.99. Take home a kit. Send in your manuscript and $199. A month or so later, presto. Ten paperback copies of your novel, memoir or cookbook arrive."NYTimes
March 02, 2004
Mediachest: eBay-like loaning, not buying
Organize, borrow, loan, and share books, CDs, DVDs, and video games "Mediachest is a social software site that allows users to inventory their collection of physical media items and search the collections of their friends and friends-of-friends for items such as DVDs or books that they would like to borrow."mediachest.com
January 27, 2004
Bands working for themselves
Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel are trying to form a musicians alliance that would encourage artists to sell their own music online.wired.com
November 07, 2003
Internet public radio
Here's an internet radio playing radio that broadcasts chanels from Peercast, a P2P internet radio network.cacheop
August 11, 2003
Choose your news
Growth of RSS feeds and news readers, allowing you to really choose your news.NewsIsFree:RSS feeds
Simple Multimedia Websites/e-mail
This is a sort of website/e-mail generation site that's supposed to be easy to add Multimedia elements to, and then share with others. Blog 2.0?Netomat