Alltop.com – The New Mac-Daddy of News Portals
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 | Marketing, Mashup, New Beginnings, News, Promotion, RSS | 2 Comments
Introducing Alltop.com, the latest venture from Nononina (the same company behind Truemors.com – an increasingly popular source for the latest internet rumors). Alltop.com, which is still in beta form, is an ever-growing collection of RSS feeds broken down into various categories, including everything from “Moms” to “Sports.” They essentially have attempted to categorize the web in what you could consider a one-stop-shop for whatever type of late-breaking-news you might be seeking. The sites featured in each category seem to change as better suited feeds come to light, however the most interesting part of this collection of data is just the sheer number of sources that they pull from. As I said, each set of feeds is based on a particular category, even including an “Ego” (where you’d find Scoble & Mark Cuban’s blog) and “Celebrities” (TMZ, Dlisted, and all other Britney-obsessed tabloids) category thrown in there for those who secretly fiend for celebrity gossip. The idea originally stemming from another multi-source RSS portal, Popurls, and piggy-backed on the success of Truemors, this new venture has already been widely talked about in both press and (obviously), the internet. Nononina is run by infamous mac-evangelist/idea-generator Guy Kawasaki, Will Mayall, and Kathryn Henkens. This trio also were the founders of Fog City Software, producers of the long forgotten (unless you were a mac/apple geek like me) Claris Emailer.
From personal observations, I’ve noticed that only a select crowd use their own custom RSS News Aggregator (a la Google Reader), or even social bookmarking services like del.icio.us. That positions this site as a convenient alternative to having to rely on iGoogle or a “customized” Yahoo! homepage. With those the user would have to already know which feeds he or she was interested in vieweing, whereas here the average internet user would be able to explore not only the sites they typically frequent, but would also be given the opportunity to discover a whole new realm of similar content. With that in mind, I applaud the trio for creating this news-portal, the only catch is whether or not they will be able to create enough “buzz” about the site to draw that targeted user demographic away from their most likely “widgetized” homepage. Hopefully posts like this will help the cause. I look forward to seeing how it evolves over the next year. Good luck guys!
For more information on Alltop, check-out this great post on the evolution blog featuring an interview with Mr. Kawasaki himself, or just go read what they have to say about themselves via their about page – alltop.com/about/
Botanicalls Twitter DIY – Your Plants Are Now Online
Thursday, February 28th, 2008 | Mashup, Twitter, Unusual | No Comments
Yes, The title is true, now you can stay updated on the health of your plants via Twitter. From the people who enabled your plant the ability to talk to you on the phone (yes, this is no joke) – Botanicalls, they have now incorporated it with a DIY setup for incorporating Twitter. For those of you thinking this is a joke, being able to actually “hear your plant” talk to you is all done via a DIY setup that incorporates PHP, some light soldering, the open-source Asterisk phone system, and a solid afternoon. For information on how to get your plants talking, first visit their website and read how – www.Botanicalls.com. Then continue on to incorporate Twitter.
Well, if you followed the link above and were successful, it is now time to take it a step further. Why not let your plants automatically twitter you when they need to be watered? They’ve even made it so that you’ll receive insta-gratification after feeding it with a polite thank you, letting you know that your plant appreciates all the work you’ve done setting up the communication system. For instructions on incorporating twitter with the Botanicalls system, go to www.botanicalls.com/twitter/ and follow their instructions (step by step photos are included as well).
Pretty interesting usage of twitter. This is the result of people who have way to much time on their hands, love their plants, and are addicted to twitter…. that aside, it’s pretty cool if you ask me. It could also be considered the ultimate “mash-up” – plants + phone + instant messaging + open-source + twitter.
If you want to see it in action, here’s their flickr page, to add to it just tag your photo with botanicalls or botanicallstwitter.
Guess My Crime & Stuff White People Like
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 | Funny | No Comments
Did the above character get busted for Shoplifting? A DUI? or a Failure To Comply?
I won’t give away the answer, but that’s the basis behind a new site called Guess My Crime!
There you are presented with numerous, real-life mugshots and are asked to guess what they really did based on the photo..
If you want to have a good laugh go check it out, you’d be surprised how some photos can be REALLY deceiving.
http://guessmycrime.blogspot.com
While I’m on the same category, here’s another recent gem Stuff White People Like.
My favorite I think is #68 – Standing Still At Concerts
You definitely have to read through some of these numbered items, a few will almost make you cry.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com
Get Chris Anderson’s “Free” for FREE!
Monday, February 25th, 2008 | Books, Business, Marketing, Promotion, Unusual | 2 Comments
It must be nice to be the editor of Wired Magazine, because to promote his latest book entitled “Free,” Chris Anderson is going to showcase a chunk of it in next month’s issue of the magazine and as a clever promotion you can register to get a FREE copy. It’s only for the first 10,000 people who sign up, so hurry before it’s too late.
To sign up for your free copy of Wired Magazine featuring Chris Anderson’s new book, just follow the link here: Get “Free” for Free.
A nice way of promoting the very material that he’s trying to sell, the business of “free.” From what I’ve read so far, it’s all about the marketing technique of providing the user with a free service or product. In return you end up with a company evangelist who will, “potentially,” purchase your products. Not only that, but because they were hooked when it was free, their more likely to relate the brand to a positive experience, which would better enable them to share it with friends/co-workers/family members….. I think you can see where I’m going with this one.
Anyhow, sign up if you’re interested… I just thought that I’d pass the info along.
Once again, here’s the link: Get “Free” for Free.
Enjoy!
Adobe AIR + Flex Builder 3 Final Released!
Monday, February 25th, 2008 | AIR, Adobe, Flex, Software Update, WebApps | No Comments
Today Adobe announced the release of both the latest version of their AIR project as well as the final release of Flex Builder 3 (A GUI front-end for the now open-source flex platform). This means those beta’s copies that you’ve been using are soon to expire.
Adobe AIR, formerly code-named Apollo, is a project that lets developers use practically any programming language to build Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) that can be deployed across almost any operating system. It also allows the developer to create an application that can store data offline and easily re-synch later on when re-connected to the database/internet. There are already a handful of applications out there that are build around this project, with my favorite being Pownce. Speaking of which, feel free to stop on by my profile on Pownce here: www.pownce.com/brentter/ and add me as a friend if you’d like. It’s a combination message board, calendar, file exchange server, and image host. To cut down on server load they’ve incorporated Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service) to house all their file storage needs.
Another useful implementation of Adobe AIR is a desktop-based app that lets you check on your Google Analytics accounts without ever having to open up a browser. You can sign-up for the beta download on About Nico’s site.
Download Adobe AIR (for free) from the official Adobe AIR page.
Flex Builder 3 Pro clocks in at a whopping $699 with the standard edition coming in slightly cheaper at $249. If you are a student or teacher however, they STILL offer a free copy to those that apply (which I think is one of the best things any software company could have done). The Flex 3 SDK can be found on their official Flex page for a free download if you don’t want to shell out that kind of cash for the complete Builder Application. Apparently there is a big difference between the standard and pro edition too – with the pro version including built-in memory/performance profiling tools, their “Advanced Datagrid,” and comes with its own set of scalable charting components for “rich data visualization.”
Flex Builder 3 was in beta for quite a while, which let users learn how to utilize it’s advanced database manipulation features, most of which can be viewed on the Flex Showcase site.
Today’s announcement was most likely timed to coincide with the big 360|Flex Conference that kicked off today here in Atlanta, GA. It runs from the 25th-27th and features some of the leaders in Flash/Flex development. Day passes are still available if interested.
Something interesting with Flex is it gives you the ability to manipulate whatever you design with other programming languages in ways that were almost un-heard of using flash. My favorite is its integration with Ruby On Rails. RoR can be used as a streamlined back-end solution for your web-app, using Flex as a pretty front-end to display the data. A really great site I’ve come across with helpful examples of Flex/Rails in use is Derek Wischusen’s site – FlexonRails.net. If you want to see an example of both pieces of technology being used in new ways, check out his post where he explains (with source code) how to do a Server push with Ruby on Rails using Flex, JRuby, and BlazeDS. Another interesting one is where he tries to integrate as many new forms of languages/services as possible is his post on integrating Flex, BlazeDS, and a web-app framework for Scala called Lift
Read more about Flex Builder 3 and the Flex SDK on Adobe’s official website – www.adobe.com/products/flex/
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