Web 2.0
| Judging someone by their Facebook Profile
New Scientist reports this week on a study which looked for a correlation between how “friendly” somebody was percieved to be and how “friendly” their Facebook profiles page appeared to be.
I suppose it’s interesting to quantify, but not particularly surprising. People don’t make things up on their Facebook profile because their network is full of people they know well. It would be interesting to see whether the same relationship could be seen from somebody’s tweets or their Myspace profiles. I suspect that the relationship is stronger for Facebook because it’s based around keeping in touch with people you know – as other social networks have more of an emphasis on meeting new people, people may be more tempted to portray “idealised” versions of themselves. | |
| Introducing Twittify – a Twitter & Spotify mash-up to share music in real time
Music has always been a social activity. People go to concerts to listen to music together and there was a day when teenagers would gather together just to listen to new tracks on the turntable! With people now spending listening to the majority of music at their computer, this doesn’t really happen very much any more. Twittify (requires Spotify) is an experiment to try and bring this shared music listening experience back to the computer. As the name suggests, it’s a web 2.0 style “mashup” which combines microblogging service Twitter and music listening service Spotify. Twittify allows you to “follow” music in real time. It checks Twitter once a minute for a new song posted to the tag (e.g. #mgmt) or user (e.g. @khloplay) that you’re following. If it finds a new song, it’ll play the song in Spotify for you and everybody else who is simultaneously following that tag/user. When might Twittify be useful?
Try it out
Try it out at the Twittify webpage. Send a tweet to the @khloplay account which includes the Spotify URI of a song (right click a song in Spotify to get the Spotify URI). e.g. @khloplay spotify:track:6Z14gdQNMJenVFA4eqpS6M time to pretend by #mgmt – fav song Limitations
Please remember that this is a very rough and ready “proof of concept”! Got thoughts? Send a tweet to @khlo or leave a comment here. | |
| Nokia’s N-Series with Skype angers mobile operators
Mobile Choice reports today that Nokia’s plans to integrate Skype into it’s future N-Series multimedia smartphones has angered mobile operators O2 and Orange who are worried about lost of call revenue. Both O2 and Orange may refuse to carry the new phones, although T-Mobile and 3 have supported Nokia’s decision. From the consumer point of view, it’s fantastic to see Skype being integrated into smartphones. It’s a fantastic feature and can lead to huge cost savings for the consumer. Mobile operator 3 have already experimented with their own Skype-enabled phones: SkypePhone and INQ1. However, Skype on Three’s phones have a crippled version of Skype which does not allow SkypeOut to be used. In other words, if you want to make a call to the public telephone network, your choice to make this call through VoIP (and at a much more competitive rate) has been intentionally crippled – you must make the call through Three’s network.
One gadget I’ve very seriously considered purchasing is the Nokia N810. It allows you to browse the internet, make calls on Skype&Gizmo (and the rest of the world through SkypeOut), make video calls, track position with GPS and to download and play a vast wealth of multimedia content. The N810 is everything you would expect from a phone but with one caveat – it doesn’t connect to the celluar networks. You can only use it on wifi. Whilst the N810 is everything I’d want from a phone, it doesn’t actually contain a real phone – and I don’t like the idea of having to squeeze another gadget into my pockets. One could imagine the N810 with a cellular connection being a very very popular phone – but chances are mobile operators won’t allow it because it’s too much of a threat to their business model. Anyway, it’s fantastic news for the consumer that Nokia are beginning to integrate Skype into their handsets. It’ll be interesting to see which networks carry the phones but I’m sure that mobile operators which allow use of Skype on their networks will have customers flocking to them. | |
| Integrate Facebook Identity & Comments into your Blog
If you run a blog or a website, you might have heard about Facebook Connect and the possibility of using it with the WordPress blog system. Basically, Connect is Facebook’s attempt to spread their identity system across the rest of the web. By integrating connect, you can use Facebook’s user system, comment system, etc. on your site. You give a lot of power and leverage to Facebook over your website but it could make interacting with your site a lot more attractive and easier for users. Their first widget allows you to use Facebook Connect to add commenting functionality to your site or blog. Here’s some Facebook developers explaining it all…
I made a proof of concept of something similar about 8 months ago. As far as I can see, this is a very easy way to add commenting functionality to your site without needing to have your own user, moderation system, etc. Comments made on your site will appear on the news feed on Facebook which can be good advertising. But the problem of course, is that your comments are not accessible. Google will never be able to index it and anyone with Javascript turned off won’t be able to see it. And when all the useful discussion, knowledge and information is tied up in comments in Facebook’s system, it’s a lot less open and less useful for everybody. | |
 | Free Facebook Alerts on your Mobile Phone
Many people probably aren’t aware that they can recieve totally free SMS text alerts from Facebook on their mobile phone through Facebook Mobile. Important: Several visitors from the US have contacted me to say that they are charged for receiving Facebook alerts. Please check with your mobile network first to avoid unexpected charges. Receiving Facebook Alerts You’ll need to sign up with Facebook Mobile to receive alerts (alerts are free unless your network or carrier charges you to receive texts). According to Facebook, the supported networks and carriers at present are:
One of my friends uses Facebook Mobile on a different mobile network which is not listed on this list and I’m told it works. So if your network isn’t on this list, it might work for you but your milage may vary. If you end up getting charged by your network, don’t say I didn’t warn you! Once you have verified your phone number through a confirmation code, you can choose to receive alerts of:
An option which is probably worth considering is to disable alerts between 10pm at night and 9am in the morning – after all you want to be able to switch off at the end of the day and to get some proper sleep without being interrupted by a Facebook alert. Note that if you reply to these alerts (e.g. to respond to a message or to confirm a friend request) you will be using the “Facebook Texts” service and may get charged unless you have a free text allowance. More info on Facebook Texts on a later post. |
| 3 INQ1 – The Facebook “Web 2.0″ Mobile Phone For all the social networking addicts out there, mobile network 3 has brought out a new mobile phone called the INQ1 (the phone name has a superscripted 1, which rather frustratingly always makes me look for references!). The new phone builds on the SkypePhone which 3 previously released and the phone offers Facebook, last.fm, Windows Live Messenger and Skype. According to 3:
The phone supports HSPDA which meaning super high speed 3G internet access and the phone can functions as a USB modem. The unified contact list of Skype, Windows Live Messenger and Facebook is something which hasn’t even yet been achieved on the desktop. Sounds pretty impressive. Three are currently offering it on PAYG in the UK for £80 on contract from £15/month. INQ is a new handset manufacturer from the UK, fully owned by Hutchinson Whampoa, who also own 3. As such, it’s quite hard to comment on what the INQ mobile is actually like: it would be fantastic to see some reviews of how it performs in the real world. | |
| A Chat With David Schwartz, Music Search Engine, Jogli CEO
Although Jogli crawls the web for music, the vast majority of content comes from YouTube. That has both blessings and shortcomings: Because it piggybacks on YouTube, Jogli doesn’t have to pay royalties or individually sign agreements with media companies. This means Jogli can offer more music. The downside is that some videos are “broken” (no longer exist), of a poor quality or misindexed. I caught up with the Jogli CEO David Schwartz. I asked him about Jogli, the future of music on the web and the mobile and how he believes Jogli differs from other similar sites. First of all, could you tell us a little bit about Jogli? Jogli is a search engine for music. It scans the internet for existing music and music video clips, and then indexes the music in order to enable an easy and efficient search. As a result, users have access to huge free inventory of music. Users can search and listen to any desired album (out of 12 million albums!), music video clips, individual tracks, and other users’ playlists. They can also view the lyrics, artists’ bios, image galleries, etc. The story behind Jogli It’s basically fulfilling a personal dream – I wanted to make my dream of going to a web site or a music shop and get all the music I like for free – true. I believe that Jogli does to music what Google did to the internet – you want a web site, you go to Google, search for it – and there it is. Well, it’s the same with music now – you go to Jogli, you search for the music you want – and there it is – just click and play. “All the music in the world is going to be available for free on any mobile platform in less then a year.” Are the days of people going out to buy CDs or paying for a song on iTunes are behind us? What, do you feel, is the best way of giving people access to music whilst ensuring artists are properly compensated for their work? Well, as for buying CDs – yes, that’s ancient history these days. iTunes and other on line music shops – well, at my humble opinion, they will die soon enough. My belief is that as all the music is going to be available for free on the web (99% of it is available already!) and music search engines, like Jogli, will allow immediate access to it. While it’s easy to tell how people are going to access music, it’s a bit harder to predict how artists are going to make money of it, and how the music industry is going to look. My personal guess is:
We’ve seen people streaming Pandora internet radio to their iPhones. Nokia has launched their “Comes With Music” phones where customers have access to free music downloads for 12 months. How do you think the convergence between music and mobile will develop in the future and how will music websites such as Jogli be a part of this?
“Jogli allows people to listen to whole albums, play personal “MTV” channels though its radio feature, gives access to the whole lyrics” Do you feel the music industry has been receptive to working with startups and smaller music websites? How does a small company compete in the world of large record and media companies making million dollar deals? Well, traditional music industry knows it’s a matter of life and death for them – they have to get a foot in the web door. As a result, the “traditional industry” became very involved. Just a few examples – partnerships with YouTube, the purchase of last.fm and the eagerness to invest money in Jogli (we got several investment propositions from the traditional music industry). Yet- the current financial crisis may change all that… With Jogli’s content coming primarily from Google’s YouTube service, how do you feel Jogli provides additional “value added” in this area? Music experience is far more then listening to one song (which YouTube does great). Jogli allows people to listen to whole albums, play personal “MTV” channels though its radio feature, gives access to the whole lyrics – and much more. We provide a full and exciting music experience. By the way – Youtube helped us and supported us amazingly. And we are grateful. These guys are cool. How does Jogli deal with YouTube content which is mistagged, mislabelled or of a poor quality? We have algorithms designed to find the best option for each song. This algorithm uses not only textual meta data (such as file name, description, number of views, etc.) but also the actual file, its quality and its size. Naturally, we don’t have 100% success (though we are not so far!). When you encounter bad quality or wrong result you can click “get alternatives for this song”, then you will get a list of options to choose from. We are aggregating these choices to improve the results. “We intend to…provide the largest offering of music and give our users the best music experience existing.” What do you feel differentiates Jogli from the rest of the crowd – the music websites such as Deezer, MySpace and Last.fm? First of all – Jogli has much more music – 12 million albums and 500 million songs, secondly- the experience we offer is more cool – as we offer much more then the music only. What direction do you see Jogli going in, in the future? In the very near future we are going to launch a widget that will allow anyone to place any albums or playlists in their web pages and blogs. Then – expand to mobile. For the long term – Our mission is to be the best and most popular music web site in the world – no less. We intend to accomplish this by remaining 100% free, provide the largest offering of music and give our users the best music experience existing. Finally, what are you listening to at the moment?
A huge thank you to David for taking the time to speak to Cow’s Blog. On behalf of our entire community, I’d like to wish David all the best of luck with Jogli. I am sure we are all very interested in seeing which direction Jogli goes in! I’d love to know how you listen to music and how you think the way that we interact with music will change over the coming years. Drop us a comment or an email! | |
| Reflection.js 2.0 I’m pleased to announce the release of Reflection.js 2.0 – a cross-browser script to add reflections to images on your webpage.
It works in all the major browsers – Internet Explorer 5.5+, Mozilla Firefox 1.5+, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera 9+. On older browsers, it’ll degrade and your visitors won’t notice a thing. Best of all, it’s under 5KB. What’s new? Version 2.0 adds support for the new Google Chrome browser. Cheers to Levenez for the heads-up on this. This version has also been tested in Internet Explorer 8 and works absolutely fine and dandy! Demo See a demo of reflection.js 2.0 in action or try it out with one of your images on the reflect-o-matic. The reflection.js download includes some more examples of how reflection.js can be used including varying the height, opacity and responding to user actions. Thanks! Thanks once again to everyone who has used the script, left feedback and helped to iron out any bugs or issues over the last years! If you use the script on one of your site or photo galleries, please leave a comment! It’s really fantastic seeing how people put the script to use! | |
| Sociologists describe Facebook “Ambient Awareness” As a blogger and an avid user of social networking and new forms of web-based communication, I find it absolutely fascinating how they are changing the ways in which we communicate and live.
It’s just passed the second anniversary of the introduction of the Facebook “News Feed”. For people who don’t use Facebook, the News Feed keeps you up to date on what’s going on in your social circle: new photos, wall posts, relationship statuses, events and parties your friends are attending and so on. I must admit that when I first signed up to Facebook I found this really scary. To me, it seemed really strange that a) instead of email, people would send communique to me by writing it on my wall which is publicly readable and b) these “wall posts” and my conversations would sometimes appear on the front page of Facebook for some friends of mine, who would then be provided with a link to view our entire conversation. When the news feed launched two years ago, 750,000 students protested against its launch. Since the launch of news feed, Facebook has grown from 15million active users to 100million active users. It’s now become an integral part of the site, and the upcoming profile redesign makes the feed even more prominent throughout the site. After two years of news feed, sociologists now describe an “ambient awareness” of friends. There is a fascinating article over at the New York Times about this:
The article goes on to describe microblogging where people post small and short updates throughout the day of their activities (e.g. Twitter or Facebook)
The article goes on to describe further research. At the end, Thompson concludes:
Certainly I think it’ll take a bit more time to see how Facebook changes the dynamics of society in the short run. At the moment, it’s impact is very limited to people at college and university. Perhaps it’ll be a welcome thing in our celebrity culture – where Paris Hilton and Wayne Rooney seem to be more important than issues such as climate change and where we feel we know celebrities better than our next door neighbours. Perhaps it’s a cool that’ll lead to a more responsible society.
Certainly the subject of some interesting research. What’s more, browsing the internet on our mobile is still something most of us seldom do. Here in the UK, various mobile companies have been advertising free Facebook access on your phone and new phones such as Android and iPhone make mobile internet access something which is much more palatable. We’ve definitely got more of this coming our way. | |
| Facebook Connect can make any website social
In June, I posted a proof of concept which allowed you to log in to an external website using your Facebook identity: in effect taking it around the web with you. The proof of concept worked by utilising Facebook’s Applications system to pull certain pieces of information (e.g. User ID, name, profile pic) passing it on to an external webpage. There is a more elegant solution which has now opened up to developers called Facebook Connect. It promises to allow you to seamlessly integrate Facebook identity into your website, manage your privacy and to be able to take your friends list with you around the web. The fantastic thing about this is you no longer need to create a Facebook application and to rewrite and “force” your webpage into a Facebook application in order to utilise Facebook’s range of viral promotional channels. I’ve downloaded the sample application (view a live demo here) and it certainly doesn’t seem too tricky to integrate and build social features around. Unfortunately you can’t launch your websites with Facebook Connect just yet. It’s just for developers at the moment, but Facebook claim that you can open your social websites up to the public some time late summer. As I’ve blogged before, I’ve had some considerable results building Facebook-based communities. Facebook Connect is a very exciting product launch and I believe will be a significant milestone in building the social “web 2.0″. Well worth playing with! |
All the music in the world is going to be available for free on any mobile platform in less then a year. We in Jogli are already working on extending our web sites to Nokia devices, iPhone and Android. Think about it – your phone, which is also you portable music player, is going to allow you access to millions of albums and hundred of millions of songs! Just click and play! – Its amazing!
