From Cracked.com…
“The Amazon.com Kindle is basically a big ugly iPod that allows you to carry 200 books with you at all times. Which raises the important question: who the hell reads that much? This fake ad introduces you to the terrifying target audience.”
Google has impressive, interactive charts incorporated into many of their products. The best place to see them in action is Google Finance where stock prices are graphed over time allowing the user to zoom in or out, stretch or expand the selected view, and other fancy interactions. The result is a rich experience for viewing and manipulating data.
Today Google unveiled the public application programming interface to interact with their chart engine. While not as rich as Google Finance charts, this public charting tool is extremely flexible in
creating line charts, scatter plots, bar graphs, Venn diagrams, and even pie charts. Charts are generated by constructing a URL with various parameters, or options, to customize a chart dynamically. Making a URL request returns a PNG image which can be saved to disk or embedded on any web page. Some examples of the charts are shown below.
Documentation for charts can be found at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/ which provides a smattering of examples.
I am very excited by this release as there are a ton of different applications these could be used in. Using some simple JavaScript, you could take these charts a step further and create animated charts using various URLS with one incrementing data parameter. Kind of like this (JavaScript code borrowed from Chip Chapin).
I would like to see a user-friendly interface built on top of the API so those who are less developer inclined can make charts and graphs easily. It wouldn’t be too hard to make a simple JavaScript program to construct the URLs. I will try to crank something out tomorrow at work, because this is simply too cool to pass up.
When a video tells you to blog about it you just have to listen, right?
Hmm, I think he is on to something.
There is nothing web geeks love more than strutting their thorough knowledge of the subject. Knowing every single HTML 4 element by heart or to have each and every CSS property on the tip of your tongue doesn’t really help you in every day web development; understanding and realizing when to use each is more important.
But all of that goes out the window when it comes to quizzes like How Many HTML Elements Can You Name in 5 Minutes? or How Many CSS Properties Can You Name in 7 Minutes?
Out of the 91 W3C approved HTML 4 elements I identified 44, or 48%, in 5 minutes.
With CSS properties I did a little worse. getting 42 out of a possible 122 in 7 minutes, or 34%. I won’t disclose the simple ones I missed to give you a fair test when you take it. Most of them no one uses anyways!
How many did you get?
While there is nothing quite like Napster anymore for free music, AlbumBase.com certainly was close. The site was like a P2P network except instead of downloading questionable software and hosting the files on your own computer/Internet connection you would upload full albums to various gray-market file hosting sites like Rapidshare.com and then send the link to AlbumBase.com. AlbumBase acted as a middle man letting you search their database of links that would take you off site to download a complete album. The community really blossomed for the couple of years I have been using it. And the devoted fans constantly keep the selection of music up to date, they had pretty much everything I was looking for all the time.
But on November 7th, the site went dead. Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired reported on a rumor that the RIAA/FBI was responsible for the 404’d site but none of the rumors were ever confirmed. Calls to the Seattle police, the Seattle FBI department, the IFPI, the RIAA, and the BPI (the IP address of AlbumBase’s web server puts it in Great Britain) to try to figure out what exactly is going on turned up nothing. It’s a sad, sad day for mooching-music lovers like myself. Now what will I do?
Oh wait, AlbumHunt.com does pretty much the same thing and has an extensive collection of links already. Never mind, the beat goes on. Piracy never dies.
One of the hardest words for me to spell is definately definatly definetly… well the point is it is a difficult word. Luckily, there is a great protest-site at www.d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com which shows you the correct way. Although how would you find it if you typically use the one of the many misspellings? I like to remember it as de–fin–itely.
Yea, that is defiantly definitely tricky.
Much of our digital information is stored and accessed through online accounts, most of which only offer a standard username and password authentication process. While this single factor authentication is sufficient for most cases, two-factor authentication offers enhanced security. But before I go any further, lets make clear what single-factor and two-factor authentication actually are.
In order to authenticate who you are online, you need to demonstrate one or more of the following factors:
Most online systems require only something you know, usually a username and password combination. The weakness of this system is the password because if it is too short or easily guessable then an attacker can brute force, or systematically guess every possible combination, until they have access and compromise your account. A password that is too long and convoluted can be a burden to remember though harder to guess by a third party. Adding another authentication factor will greatly increase your security as well as making the login process less cumbersome.
This is where VeriSign comes in. They have developed an identity protection service that gives you access to a random, one-time use password that piggybacks on your existing username and password credentials. The device used to deliver the 6-digit code is the size of a credit card and easily fits into a wallet. With the press of a button, a new set of numbers will be generated for you to authenticate with when logging in to protected sites.
The system isn’t perfect as the card costs $54 and only works with members of the VeriSign Identity Protection Network. Right now that network includes eBay, Paypal, and VeriSigns own OpenID service. Keep in mind this is still in testing mode. With online identity protection becoming a bigger issue, I can see this growing and including more members in the near future.
Some sites that I would really like to see participating in this program would be Amazon.com, GMail, and my bank USAA.com. If I relied more heavily on PayPal and eBay for my income I would definitely sign up, but for now I will sit out and wait for more sites to join before plunking down the $50.
For more information about two-factor authentication check out episode #94 of Steve Gibson’s Security Now Podcast.
You gotta love that little, balding music nerd. Moby has just opened up a site that lets anyone sign up and license his music. Well not anyone but particularly film music for “independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.” The word “licensing” immediately fills my head with anxiety about a long, drawn-out, expensive experience. But not ‘ol Moby. He is making his music free to anyone who doesn’t profit from their film or video project. If you are doing a commercial venture then you can apply for an “easy license” with any money that’s generated being given to the Humane Society. Not a bad deal for top notch accompanying film music.
Currently there are 3 pages of songs to choose from. While a lot of the songs are unreleased experiments. There are a few from some of his albums including all of the songs on his album Hotel – Ambient. I wish he had God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters on there. That is a beautiful score that would be interesting to release as a Garageband mix for budding composers to see how the song was layered and put together. Expect to see more artists opening up their work to the remix/mashup communities as it benefits everyone by advancing our culture.
Washington DC had it’s first Startup Weekend event two weeks ago drawing a crowd of about 70 techies. The idea behind startup weekend is for a group of people to get together, conceive, build, and launch an Internet business in under 72 hours. The only thing more stressful than executing a new idea in such a short period of time is managing such a large group of random people. I didn’t have the pleasure of attending but I did follow along via the official blog and twitter posts from friends that attended.
The group settled on an idea about a social network for communities, later dubbed HolaNeighbor.com. The site is meant to help people plan events, share important information, meet the neighbors, and generally be a better member of the local community. It has been more than a week since the site launched and it is still far from even a proof of concept.
So far Helo Neighbor is a Google Maps mashup. You can search for communities by zip code which displays the location on a Google map with an exclamation point as a marker. Clicking on the marker lets you check out the community which only includes a list of members and three crude options: name of founder, public or private, and invite or open. There is also the capability to upload photos though there is nothing taking advantage of this feature yet.
The idea is half baked at best. I imagine there must have been way more ideas during the pitch of this business proposition to keep the team excited about this. I don’t see any advantage of launching HelloNeighbor as a standalone site. In hindsight it would have made much more sense to build on top of an existing social network like Facebook. By making this product a Facebook app the team could spend more time working on the features instead of building up the basic infrastructure like the sign up process and user management. As the site stands now, users are better off creating a group on Facebook to keep in touch with local events.
I hope the gang had fun, because the end result certainly falls flat.
Have you ever gotten a call from a random number across the country? I used to answer these calls only to get an automated message detailing how I can get a loan. This is an outcry since I signed up for the DO NOT CALL list and I am using a cell phone which I thought was off limits for telemarketers. Regardless, I Googled the number and stumbled upon this great little community.
800Notes.com is “is an online community where users can identify mystery callers by sharing comments about the calls. The website has a user-supported directory of unlisted numbers that provides info about who and why is calling and how one can stop unwanted calls.” Through the power of the Internet people are banding together and sharing information about these pesky junk calls burning up our valuable time. If someone finds out who the person or group calling is, they share it. If there is a way to get off the calling list, they post it.
Sites like these are awesome. To take this to a next level, it would be cool if there was a plug-in for phones that creates a menu option to automatically poll 800Notes.com for any call you just received. This is easily the best thing I Googled today, maybe even this week. Another option to 800Notes.com is WhoCallsMe.com.
