Post by Grey on Jan 17, 2005 6:56:51 GMT -5
Okay, this is me playing the "Techie Guy" role, despite my relatively non-existent interest in the so-called Hi-Tech". However, I do find the below few web innovations are definitely notable in their own ways, and actually assist me in my numerous online endeavours. So, for those who haven't try them, please do so. Here goes.
www.flickr.com/
We have seen lotsa photo-sharing free hosting sites emerging from last year, and other than the ever-reliable photobucket.com/, Flickr gotta be best online photo management and sharing application out there.
It not only boast an extremely user-friendly, fool-proof engine for uploading photo from mobiles and email, it also has other features such as posting photos to blogs (LiveJournal, Blogger, Moveable Type, Typepad, etc), set privacy meter on which photos to share online with which particular groups, add notes and tag to images for more convenient ways to locate them later. Where it really excels is in its presentation, with the Flickr Daily Zeitgeist, which is built in Flash, and displays recent photos from your account in a spectacular way, and which you can put it on your site by copying the html codes. Oh, and there's one features that I don't really give two shoes about but perhaps many others will, is that it actually encourages some kinda social actions revolving the images, a'la www.friendster.com/. Which a anti-social person like myself resents.
del.icio.us/
del.icio.us acts as some kinda social bookmarks manager which allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others. When you find a web page you'd like to add to your list, you simply select the del.icio.us bookmarklet, and you'll be prompted for a information about the page. You can add descriptive terms to group similar links together, modify the title of the page, and add extended notes for yourself or for others.
I basically uses del.icio.us as a managing system for a record of my online misadventures and to categorize infos of interests in am ore comfortable way. Being able to see the links that others have collected, as well as showing me who else has bookmarked a specific site enables me to view the links collected by others, and subscribe to the links of people whose lists I find interesting. Which brings to me another similarly different but definitely better service...
a9.com/
A.9.com (a9.com/) was one of the many innovative web search services that went live last year and bar none, it is one of the better one, if not the best. Being a subsidiary of www.amazon.com/, A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book® results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more. However, its key features is that it lets you store all your web browsing and search histories, customizing the way you view the search results, while at the same time taking notes of all these in a personal diary which in itself, an almost automatically self-managed system.
On top of all that, when you install the A9 toolbar, you can view infos on the particular site like the average traffics, which site links to it, related sites which people visiting this site also visits, so on and so forth. All in all, it just make online searching much more convenient for regular online surfer like myself.
www.blinkx.com/
This could be what keeping A9.com from being the single best search engine service online. A start-up called Blinkx launched two new servcies, a free desktop search program (www.blinkx.com/) and the BlinkxTV video-search engine (www.blinkx.tv/). While the search program boast an interestingly bold approach on searching, by looking at not just the keywords you type in the search box, but also at what documents you have open on your computer. Smart, huh?
The video search engine captures video and audio from websites, then uses special software to make them available for searching.
Gmail(gmail.google.com/)
Okay, it ain't no fresh news already that Web-mail services such as wwww.yahoo.com and www.hotmail.com had already upped their storage quota, but it was still Gmail (gmail.google.com/) from Google that initiated the controversial services, which quickly raised the hackles of privacy advocates as it displays text ads targetted to the contents of your inbox. A vaild point, I must say. While Google said that it offers this trade-off of one gigabyte of free email storage in return for those ads, which appear alongside, not inside, messages and are matched up by software, not people, the repercussion are definitely felt all across the world wide web.
www.skype.com/
One of the pioneer in Internet telephone service, Skype Technologies (www.skype.com/), launched SkypeOut in July. One of the cheapest way way to make oversea calls, it lets users of the software to call any phone line in the world at rates mostly under 2 US cents a minute.
Strictly for online users that make constant oversea calls.
www.newsnow.co.uk/
For those news-weary people, News Now.CO.UK automatically searches all news sources every 5 minutes. Just type the keyword of the news, say "Tsunami", and prepare to bombasted with links to related news form all major and minor online news provider.
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Okay, that's it, the more innovative web services we had online in 2004. However, innovative web services doesn't always serves noble purposes, as you know, the usual "Flip side of the same coin" theory. There're some web services that I personally resents, to the extent that I'm not going to post their links here, in an effort to stop their propagandate. To briefly describe their functionability, just to warn those online bozos who just signs up on simply every "Friend-making" online services they bump into. There're some which simply cater to the delight of guys, ie. one where you just key in your address and sign in and see what "Wonderful" neightbour you might have across the street. Anyone heard of the term "Stalker"? That's one of the most easier way to create one. So basically, for the kids, and especially the girls, always abide the golden rule for internet, that is never meet anyone you get to know via internet in person.
www.flickr.com/
We have seen lotsa photo-sharing free hosting sites emerging from last year, and other than the ever-reliable photobucket.com/, Flickr gotta be best online photo management and sharing application out there.
It not only boast an extremely user-friendly, fool-proof engine for uploading photo from mobiles and email, it also has other features such as posting photos to blogs (LiveJournal, Blogger, Moveable Type, Typepad, etc), set privacy meter on which photos to share online with which particular groups, add notes and tag to images for more convenient ways to locate them later. Where it really excels is in its presentation, with the Flickr Daily Zeitgeist, which is built in Flash, and displays recent photos from your account in a spectacular way, and which you can put it on your site by copying the html codes. Oh, and there's one features that I don't really give two shoes about but perhaps many others will, is that it actually encourages some kinda social actions revolving the images, a'la www.friendster.com/. Which a anti-social person like myself resents.
del.icio.us/
del.icio.us acts as some kinda social bookmarks manager which allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others. When you find a web page you'd like to add to your list, you simply select the del.icio.us bookmarklet, and you'll be prompted for a information about the page. You can add descriptive terms to group similar links together, modify the title of the page, and add extended notes for yourself or for others.
I basically uses del.icio.us as a managing system for a record of my online misadventures and to categorize infos of interests in am ore comfortable way. Being able to see the links that others have collected, as well as showing me who else has bookmarked a specific site enables me to view the links collected by others, and subscribe to the links of people whose lists I find interesting. Which brings to me another similarly different but definitely better service...
a9.com/
A.9.com (a9.com/) was one of the many innovative web search services that went live last year and bar none, it is one of the better one, if not the best. Being a subsidiary of www.amazon.com/, A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book® results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more. However, its key features is that it lets you store all your web browsing and search histories, customizing the way you view the search results, while at the same time taking notes of all these in a personal diary which in itself, an almost automatically self-managed system.
On top of all that, when you install the A9 toolbar, you can view infos on the particular site like the average traffics, which site links to it, related sites which people visiting this site also visits, so on and so forth. All in all, it just make online searching much more convenient for regular online surfer like myself.
www.blinkx.com/
This could be what keeping A9.com from being the single best search engine service online. A start-up called Blinkx launched two new servcies, a free desktop search program (www.blinkx.com/) and the BlinkxTV video-search engine (www.blinkx.tv/). While the search program boast an interestingly bold approach on searching, by looking at not just the keywords you type in the search box, but also at what documents you have open on your computer. Smart, huh?
The video search engine captures video and audio from websites, then uses special software to make them available for searching.
Gmail(gmail.google.com/)
Okay, it ain't no fresh news already that Web-mail services such as wwww.yahoo.com and www.hotmail.com had already upped their storage quota, but it was still Gmail (gmail.google.com/) from Google that initiated the controversial services, which quickly raised the hackles of privacy advocates as it displays text ads targetted to the contents of your inbox. A vaild point, I must say. While Google said that it offers this trade-off of one gigabyte of free email storage in return for those ads, which appear alongside, not inside, messages and are matched up by software, not people, the repercussion are definitely felt all across the world wide web.
www.skype.com/
One of the pioneer in Internet telephone service, Skype Technologies (www.skype.com/), launched SkypeOut in July. One of the cheapest way way to make oversea calls, it lets users of the software to call any phone line in the world at rates mostly under 2 US cents a minute.
Strictly for online users that make constant oversea calls.
www.newsnow.co.uk/
For those news-weary people, News Now.CO.UK automatically searches all news sources every 5 minutes. Just type the keyword of the news, say "Tsunami", and prepare to bombasted with links to related news form all major and minor online news provider.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, that's it, the more innovative web services we had online in 2004. However, innovative web services doesn't always serves noble purposes, as you know, the usual "Flip side of the same coin" theory. There're some web services that I personally resents, to the extent that I'm not going to post their links here, in an effort to stop their propagandate. To briefly describe their functionability, just to warn those online bozos who just signs up on simply every "Friend-making" online services they bump into. There're some which simply cater to the delight of guys, ie. one where you just key in your address and sign in and see what "Wonderful" neightbour you might have across the street. Anyone heard of the term "Stalker"? That's one of the most easier way to create one. So basically, for the kids, and especially the girls, always abide the golden rule for internet, that is never meet anyone you get to know via internet in person.
