My good friend and ex-colleague at Object1 Phillipe Parker has set up an online social network community for us all to discuss and disseminate information on anything of interest to web world professionals.
I’ll let the man himself introduce you to the wonders of Web Innovation UK:
“We’re providing an open discussion forum for professionals who want to push the boundaries of what’s possible on the web, whether for their own online presence or those of their clients. Forums allow you to ask general questions, you can send messages to individuals, or you can just listen in.
Clients get to ask questions, suppliers get to show how clever they are. I don’t want to constrain what gets discussed: it can be commercial-driven, design-led, technological, whatever you like as long as it’s relevant and no one else complains.”
Come and join us at Web Innovation UK and help us grow the network as a spot on resource and place to go for assistance. It is very early days yet so you will get to be a pioneer!
By the way, Philippe set this up using Ning and you can read more about this on one of my previous posts,’Create your own social network with Ning.com‘.
Popularity: 96% [?]
I have been doing some research into the various social networks and their uses, audiences and so forth lately and came across the rather great http://www.ning.com. Ning allows you to set up your own social network with most of the usual tools you would find on things like Facebook and MySpace.
The templates aren’t exactly pretty but you can customise the designs and utilise your own domain name. So users coming to your social network will think you’ve done a fine job of setting something up for them and won’t know it’s running from the ning platform.
It could be used for all sorts of things of course. For instance, we were thinking of using it as a social ‘intranet’ for the agency I’ve just been working with. Might get people off of Facebook for five minutes!
Or maybe I should set up ‘BruceSpace’ for all the Bruce’s out there. Might not make my millions on that one….
Popularity: 98% [?]
Google is busy working on providing a common set of APIs aimed at the whole world of social networking. You know, that world that every client now wants stuffed into their website whether appropriate or not!
Apologies, that was actually a bit cynical. I’m actually working on a new site design and build for a charity that will actually add value to their offering so it’s not all ‘let’s create a Facebook app’ all the time!
Anyway, the common set of APIs will make it easier for developers to create apps for social sites and of course work across sites. There is an impressive list of sites involved, including MySpace, Ning, Linkedin, ILike, Hi5 and so forth.
So if you are a developer then have a look; might not be of great use just yet but it could be soon.
OpenSocial – Google Code
Popularity: 81% [?]
November 12th, 2007
Bruce
I was watching an episode of ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip‘ last night which was entitled the 4am miracle, and ostensibly about Mathew Perry’s character searching for that inspiration at 4am that would break the hiatus reached in their creative comedy writing, with only a couple of days to go before the next show.
This reminded me so much of the times we in the web world have been working late and stuck on a coding or design issue with the clock ticking rapidly before launch hour. You’ve all been there, the site is broken and nobody knows how to fix it and you only have 4 hours until it is supposed to be live to the world.
Then your developer goes outside for a cigarette or a bit of a walk and all of a sudden inspiration hits and we are back fixing and rolling again. Usually at 4am.
So I like the terming of such breaks for inspiration as the 4am Miracle, whether at 4am or not. A fine tip for new Producers, Project Managers and Account people to ease off of your dev and design people when it all looks like everything has gone up the swanny. Encourage them to destroy their lungs via a cig break or make them a cup of tea, tell them to sit down and switch off (or take them for a coffee / beer outside) and you will find that inspiration will hit sure enough.
There’s no point getting too stressed and het up as this just carries on the cycle of panic thinking. Take a break, a deep breath and await that wonderful 4am Miracle!
(By the way, why they cancelled Studio 60 I don’t know. It’s witty and engaging and makes you forget that Mat Perry was ever Chandler!)
Popularity: 35% [?]
I’ve been undertaking some consultancy work down here in sunny Brighton and was fortunate enough to be around for the start of a very interesting video focused website build; whose details I can’t go into until it’s live of course.
We had a few solutions along the way as to how we were going to enable users to upload their own videos and so forth. Attempting to use YouTube wasn’t as straightforward as expected and so another route needed to be found. The guys at Bionic Media were kind enough to tell us about Limelight Networks and their UGC framework which does all the upload, storage and delivery you could possibly need if delivering videos to your users.
It’s new and is only just being utilised for it’s first few projects just now but is based on their usual global structure that a lot of the big media firms hire Limelight Networks for. Worth checking out.
Popularity: 31% [?]
This is very good and bloomin useful! New from google maps. They have produced 360 degree views of streets in a few US cities to begin with. Try the link below for New York:
http://tinyurl.com/3bm34n (or go to google maps NY and select street view)
Click on a blue street or drag the little yellow dude onto one and get a nice panorama of the street itself. You can drag it around or follow the arrows to the next street. Pretty awesome…
Thanks to the excellent Googlemapsmania blog where I found this info this morning and am exploring many many other google maps functions and mash-ups. Go there yourself as it’s an amazing source of information.
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com
Popularity: 24% [?]
Blue Organizer (I’ll forgive the US spelling!)
http://www.adaptiveblue.com/
This is very interesting and pretty powerful. At the basic level, it understands the context of web page you are viewing and then (upon right-click) gives you access to related links on google, flickr, wikipedia, delicious etc. Also does some very nice stuff for you bloggers out there that I haven’t quite investigated yet.
“What is BlueOrganizer?
BlueOrganizer is the new smart-browsing technology for Firefox. It automatically recognizes things like books, wine, travel destinations and offers contextual shortcuts between your favorite sites. With BlueOrganizer you can instantly send books to your Amazon Wishlist, find wines with similar taste on Wine.com, lookup maps on Google – all from one simple, personalized menu.”
Popularity: 12% [?]
This is a very interesting way of searching for Amazon products.
Amaznode: “Amazon related product search” that lets you type in any word, then creates a web of Amazon products that are in some way related to that word. The process is similar to what Amazon does when it recommends products for its users, except instead of basing the search on prior purchases (which could have been gifts for very boring people, thereby throwing off the whole system), Amaznode bases the search off of any one keyword.
It displays the results in a good visual fashion. So if you searched for ‘Rome’ it show you related books and DVDs etc but all grouped together nicely and you can check out the ifo before you click through.
http://amaznode.fladdict.net/
Popularity: 10% [?]
This has been around for awhile and is looking interesting – bit of a buzz about its uses going on at the minute:
http://www.platial.com/
Briefly then, it’s a tool for people to create their own maps – i.e. adding own places to google maps to create a map of say their top ten bars in London. This can then be shared with others users and added to by these users. Piccies and video (from Flickr and Youtube) can also be added – and as these maps can be easily incorporated into most blogging engines it’s a possibly interesting way of doing the whole ‘user generated content’ doo dah.
Popularity: 18% [?]
I came across these excellent videos from the University of Wisconsin today. They are Quicktime vids showing how people actually use screen readers and magnifiers in real life and what we can do as web designers to assist them.
It’s not without contention (the use of d-links fro example) but is very well presented and informative.
Accessibility videos
Very good work and the presenters voice is strangely soothing!
Chz
B
Popularity: 9% [?]
