Information Architects have released the 2008 edition of their Web Trend Map. The screenshot below is a 500×354 image and looks fuzzy because the original is 6470×4768! However, there is also a fantastic interactive version available at Zoomorama.
Adobe plans to bring its Flash technology to your TV screens by having TVs and set-top boxes built with support for Flash. Flash is the format used for roughly 80% of video online as well as many online video games.
This will certainly make it easier for studios to create content that is viewable on both TV and the Web.
I think that one of the things that needs an update is many of the interfaces and remote controls for the set-top boxes. Why? Because one of the powerful uses of Flash is building applications that are interactive. Take games for example. If Adobe would really like Flash to be used to its fullest, then those set-top boxes need to improve their current horrible non-intuitive interfaces as well as their power (I’m looking at you Motorola).
Adobe expects Flash-supported hardware to begin selling late this year.
Do you surf the Web at work? Watch funny videos? Catch up with your friends on Facebook or IM? Well that’s ok. Turns out you’re more productive than your coworkers who don’t or your friends who can’t.
Recent studies have shown such workers are up to 9% more productive than their restricted counterparts. So go on, surf away.
Fantastic 5 minute video that gives a great insight into the impact that technology is having on all of our lives, the economy and job market.
What’s the bottom line? Mostly unknown. However, if I were a student right now, it should give me pause as I’m trying to decide what direction to point my career in.
Twitter has seen exponential growth that has surpassed even Facebook, well at least on a percentage basis. On a raw user # basis, Twitter has but a mere 8 million members compared with Facebook’s monstrous 175 million.
But lots of folks just don’t get it – what’s the point of Twitter? Perhaps it doesn’t fill an obvious need and that’s their issue. Perhaps Twitter and other similar services (yes, there are others like Plurk) are inventing a need, or at least a service that will precipitate a need. Did you *really* need TiVo?
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IBM may buy Sun Microsystems in what may be a $7 billion deal. Apparently, IBM is offering $10/share which at the time the news came out was more than twice Sun’s then stock price.
IBM would be purchasing a fellow hardware and software vendor, and there is a decent amount of discussion and speculation as to what they are primarily after. After all, IBM has invested a fair amount into Java development, tools and solutions. Further speculation is that IBM does not care for the hardware component, but Sun has considerable high-end mainframe-type hardware in its repertoire.
Of further concern is how the industry will react and in particular, Sun customers and users. As a former Solaris sys admin, I know that Solaris shops & admins are fiercely loyal to the OS; and so are many of the Java developers.
I for one, will miss Sun should this come to pass, as I felt that Sun was very much there from the very beginning of the growth of the public Internet and World Wide Web.
Computer scientist, Stephen Wolfram, feels that he has put together at least the initial version of a computer that actually answers factual questions, a la Star Trek’s ship computers. His version will be found on their Web-based application, Wolfram Alpha.
What does this mean? Well instead of returning links to pages that may (or may not) contain the answer to your questions, Wolfram will respond with the actual answer. Now the caveat ‘factual’ is important. You can ask it questions like ‘why is the sky blue?’ or ‘how many bones are in the human body?’, but probably not ‘do you think abortion is wrong?’. This computational knowledge engine uses natural language to parse the questions and can also accept coded queries.
For the subject areas that Wolfram covers, they not only had to either enter or import data on those subjects, but had to build models or create algorithms for breaking down and describing that data in simpler building blocks. Long story short, my question is how easy is it going to be expand into additional subject areas?
Don’t bother trying to visit the site just yet – it’s not launching until May 2009. If this works well, this is going to revolutionize computing and in particular, the search engine market. Google of course comes to mind. Would they see this as a threat? I imagine they should. so I think what will be important here is how quickly Wolfram can expand into additional subject areas. If they give Google enough time to get into this market, then they could be sunk.
The Interwebs can be a funny place. Take for example, the rumored Google GDrive which would essentially be your own hard drive in the sky, umm… cloud. You could store all of your data on Google’s servers and have it accessible anywhere as long as you had a browser (presumably).
So what’s funny about that? Nothing. Sounds amazing really. No, the funny part is that Google hasn’t announced it. It’s just a rumor. However, a blogger called Brian Ussery noticed a comment in some Google code that he downloaded that mentioned it.
Funnier still is that Wikipedia already has an entry for ye ole GDrive. Nice. The Internet – even ahead of itself.
Happy New Year everyone, have you downloaded the Beta of Windows 7 yet? If not, you better get your skates on as the Beta download is for a short time only.
I have been busy reading over the holiday break and have some good recommendations of reading for you. The first is the thought provoker “The End Of Mr. Y” and the other is the techno-thriller “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez which I heard this morning is heading for moviedom. If you have an interest in Web Development you could also check out Understanding RESTful Web Services which has some fine examples of accessing web service API.
There are a number of community review sites out there, but ExpoTV is arguably the first one to combine video with consumer reviews and incentives in the forms of rewards, particularly monetary ($) ones.
Now you may be thinking YouTube or other similar video sharing sites already exist and you can upload whatever you want there. But what if you’re looking for a video review on a specific product or perhaps a brand? That suddenly becomes pretty tough on a YouTube, doesn’t it? ExpoTv has everything categorized properly.
The best part is that you can earn some cash doing this as well as becoming the resident expert on a subject and/or product line. Just sign up, pick an assignment and film away. Refer your friends and earn even more.
One more nice thing – your videos can also end up on real TV that’s seen in 25 million homes.
