Web 2.0 sites

Posted on | June 26, 2007 | No Comments

Since this topic is quite popular at the moment, I had a look at different solutions. For anyone curious to explore more, you can look at sites such as AjaxProjects for a comprehensive list, Digital Trend for the best a year ago (according to them at least) or maybe you should simple start stumbling upon them? Looking at Stumbleupon, I start wondering what actually should define Web 2.0, since I used that site about 5 years ago before going tired of so many stumbled spam sites…

Some say that Web 2.0 is about mashing it up, creating sites like del.icio.us and digg, or maybe collecting the most popular sites to one, and showing feeds from the mentioned sites and others, also including media sites such as Flickr and ifilm…

Before uploading your photo to Flickr, you can edit online with tools such as picnik, and the videos can be fixed at sites like eyespot before putting them on for example youtube or Revver….

If you feel like being passive for the day, you can instead use services such as Songbird for streaming from a multitude of online radio channels, or go to Travelistic to see travel videos…

When you look at all the sites and what they have in common it can be difficult at a first glance, but then you start to think of words and terms like ‘user experience’, ‘creativity’ and ’simplicity’ – which are very important parts of the new web taking shape for the future. For example, you don’t always need AJAX or other new technologies to make it ‘Web 2.0′ – but you need to make it worth the time spent to visit the site…

By the way, is anyone else tired of hearing terms such as ‘Web 2.0′, ‘AJAX’ and similar? The technology and thoughts have been around for ages…

Googling for the term ‘Web 2.0′ gives results showing people aren’t tired of it, and actually it’s one of the most hyped terms our there at the moment. Sites like All Things Web 2.0, WebWare and Web 2.0 Magazine try to list as many as possible in categories, while some show the contenct from multiple sites, for example the before mentioned popurls or the iGoogle portal.

Category: Development, Internet, Maps, Travel

Travel, or simply phone the world

Posted on | June 21, 2007 | 2 Comments

Something I’m thinking about now is how to set up a good travel section for this site. While working with development for a travel search engine where I’m now adding search for other travel related items to accompany the flight search already available, my interest for traveling has increased even further compared to before, also leading to insight in accommodation sites and finding out a little about what’s happening behind the scenes. Of course, I can’t share any of this knowledge here because of contracts and NDA’s, but can at least recommend what I come across and am impressed by. For example, I’d like to recommend having a look at Hip Hotels for some nice views before a trip, or if you feel like backpacking there’s usually some hostel with available beds through HostelBookers – or maybe you want to do some lifechanging travel, for example by volunteering in a third world country?

While on the road I usually bring the laptop, and there’s often available net either at or close to the hotel so I can use Skype which is of course connected as my home phone with SkypeIn and SkypeOut. This is actually what I also use at home, instead of getting a regular phone after moving to Denmark I simply decided to go with Skype, and can have a phone number in any country no matter where in the world I am at the moment. Now there’s even software to help if you want a temporary number – where Numbr sends any calls to the temporary number onward to your normal phone.

[Some of the links in this post are affiliate links where I earn a small percentage on sales - if you're curious about the products but don't want to support my blogging, the url's are www.Skype.com, www.HostelBookers.com and www.i-to-i.com]

Category: Internet, Life, Maps, Travel

Blogs, feeds and Thesis

Posted on | June 20, 2007 | No Comments

Every morning while having my breakfast, instead of reading the newspaper or watching tv like regular people, I often go online to read the news and check the latest updates on some blogs. My current favorites include problogger, Wired Top Headlines and lifehacker, while also following a few through iGoogle about areas I’m interested in such as photography, languages and coding.

Today lifehacker recommended a tool for embedding a flickr slideshow on your site, problogger looked at why you should attract RSS Subscribers, while Wired look at how some new Virtual Reality applications (someone told me a couple of years back that VR is dead, and that Augmented Reality is what we should talk about – still not much has changed on that front) use techniques seen in Sci-Fi movie Bladerunner to zoom in on image objects and rotate them. The topic in Wired sounds very much like my MSc thesis, so it caught my eye a bit extra for that reason – early in the thesis process, there was even talk of me and my thesis partner going to one of those conventions in the US and present our project. In the end we both had jobs though, and the idea ran out like sand in the hourglass…

In the article from Wired I notice that MS haven’t been able to solve more of the image to 3D than I did during the thesis project, so I’m still not behind in that field of science. The main difference between their successful project and what I did in the thesis is that they use hundreds of images to create a 3D model, which is fairly simple – with few images it’s much more difficult, something I’ll probably describe here in the future. I heard about the product while at work last week, but then thought they had solved how to create 3D from only one image – but since this was not the case I’m still not impressed…

Category: Internet

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