So
Stumbling across the very fun asciimaps made me think about the time before 'the web' when there was just the Internet. It made be chuckle about all of the talk lately defining web 2.0 as being all about making the web read/write. The funny thing is that before the great Internet land rush brought about by the browser and HTML, the Internet was an intensely read/write place: email, usenet, telnet, gopher, ftp (all from the command line, please). It wasn't until the proliferation of brochure-ware, me-too web sites that the 'write' part of the equation started to fade.
To me, it seems like the 'web 2.0' stuff is really just an natural evolution of when web sites discovered the interactive possibilities that a web site could provide via good old CGI-BIN and others. Probably the biggest difference is that the user interface has gotten a bit more sophisticated with DHTML, CSS and Ajax versus the full-page-refresh-to-do-anything mode of initial web sites.
So
It has been a bit quiet here for the last two weeks or so because I have been on vacation. Just got back last night and still a bit jet lagged. Finally got around to uploading some of the pictures to flickr, but still need to go about the task of inserting titles, descriptions and tags.
Things should pick up this weekend (or next week) as I recover from the backlog.
So Pin In The Map is another Google Maps mashup that allows you to click on a spot in Google Maps, add some text to it and then send out the resulting link to whomever might be interested in it. This could for example be used to show someone the location of a favorite beach or restaurant. I suppose this is sort of a more personal version of the wikimapia that I mentioned previously.
Be warned though, every time that I have visited this site with Firefox for OSX it has caused Firefox to hang and/or crash. Not sure what the issue is, but be aware.
This should be a bit sobering for the pundits who think that the Internet is the conduit for reaching the world. I agree with one of the accompanying comments that much of the world not currently accessing the Internet will likely do so in the future via mobile phones. However, you couldn't tell this from current/trendy design and development trends.
So
This is an awesome combination of Google Maps and annotation capabilities of a wiki combined into wikimapia. As well as being great fun to browse, it is even more fun to annotate locations that you recognize from the air.
What a simple, but incredibly useful tool (and idea)!
So
I am happy to see the release today of Google Notebook. While the chief grumble appears to be that it doesn't allow for tagging, I am okay with that (it will no doubt be added soon enough).
What Google Notebook does provide is a means to nab portions of web pages and add them to an online 'notebook'. Notebooks can have folding sections in them and the text that is nabbed can be edited using a basic function online editor. The editor allow you to modify fonts, color and hyperlinks and a few other niceties. Sections of a notebook can be moved from one notebook to another by simply dragging and dropping. Snippets can also be rearranged within a notebook via drag and drop as well.
Google Notebook reminds me a lot of another application that I use on my Mac called StickyBrain. I use StickyBrain to grab text and graphics from various applications that I can then file away, organize and search for future reference. I find it very handy for when I want to just grab a snippet of something from a web page rather than bookmarking the entire page. Because StickyBrain is a Mac app, I also found myself wishing that I could do the same on the Windows based laptop I use for work. Until now, this really wasn't possible. I could get part of the way there by using LookLater to have visibility to bookmarks between work and home systems (keep in mind, this was beforedel.icio.us provided private bookmarks) .
Google Notebook now lets me just nab the bits of pages that I want and share them StickyBrain-like between home and work. Frankly, I was relieved to find that the provided Firefox plugin works identically under both Windows and Mac OS X.
Now if only chronosnet would come out with a way to synch my Google Notebooks with StickyBrain this could be a very powerful solution (they already have an excellent Palm synch conduit and a .Mac synch so this is not new territory for them).
Currently, Google Notebook doesn't appear to integrate much with the other Google offerings except for search. To me, the big opportunities her are integration with gmail and Google Maps. I would guess that other things like tags and the ability to subscribe to shared notebooks online will come in due time.
Overall, I like what I see with Google Notebook and am curious to see how it will evolve over time.
So
I just became aware of the process called promession through the RSS feed of the excellent worldwidewords.
This is an ecological alternative to cremation or burial. The corpse is frozen in liquid nitrogen and then shattered into powder by ultrasonic vibration before being buried in a biodegradeable box in a shallow grave. Green campaigners believe the technique could ease the crowding in graveyards and the increasingly harmful emissions from cremations.
The inventor, the Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak, claims that the process is good for the environment because the powder (which is essentially compost) breaks down in the soil more thoroughly and quickly than by conventional burial. She suggests that relatives plant a tree or bush above the grave as a long-term memorial.
A quick google search indicates that this idea has been around a while, but, like I said, it is the first I have heard of it.
I can imagine that this might have a certain appeal to geeky types (the liquid nitrogen and ultrasonics aspects) and for those who are environmentally conscientious (the composting and tree planting aspects). It might also have some appeal in places like Japan where I have heard that there is little land for conventional burials.
So
I am not sure why people are getting excited over share your OPML; this seems like yet another vanity/popularity service that will soon attract spammers and other bottom dwellers much like Google Page Rank did. It is definitely attracting the attention of those who see it as a marketing tool (sorry, I mentioned bottom dwellers already).
I can get excited about someone that truly implements a relevance system for my OPML or RSS reading habits. I define relevance as presenting me with things that I want to read based on what I read, not on someone else's notion of popularity. I really, really don't care what is popular, I do care about what is important to me — it's that simple. And I can't imagine that I am alone in that feeling. Sadly, only the dearly departed Searchfox has come the closest to implementing this.