Google Gears is Google’s latest product, and it’s a bit different than what we’re used to receiving from the ubiquitous search giant. It’s a browser add-on which other online applications, such as Google Reader, can use to work offline.

By “work offline”, we mean the application can store resources locally, and store data locally in a relational database. It does this throgh asynchronous Javascript, which means that the user shouldn’t care much if he’s offline or online: the application will work in both states.

We’ve written quite a lot about the benefits of offline capabilities of online applications. Now, with Google Gears beta, it’s time to test it hands-on.

And, as I’ve suspected, there’s nothing much to it. I’ve installed Gears, rebooted Firefox, and the first application to ask me whether I want to use Gears or not was Google Reader. After I’ve accepted, Google Reader asked me whether I want to work in online of offline mode. Switching to offline mode will simply cause all the items from the Reader to be downloaded immediately.

After a short wait, I was able to plug out my network connection and read all the items in Google Reader without any problem. I was also able to star items and perform some other actions.

However, trying to change the Feed Settings caused this message to appear:

After going back online, everything was back to normal. Neat.

We’ve also tried several other Google services, but haven’t found any which could make use of Google Gears. Although what we’ve seen so far is nice enough, one important benefit of offline access - increased security - hasn’t been tackled yet.We hope to see some other examples of how this technology can be used, so we can do a better assessment of its usefulness.

Read R/WW and O’Reilly Radar for good overviews of Google Gears, too.

Niall Kennedy’s project that launched yesterday, StartupSearch, makes it easy to track web startup companies, as well as products and people in the industry. It’s a directory that gives you basic info on a company or product: its founders, its description, and traffic details based on Alexa, Quantcast and Compete stats.

Another very important feature of StartupSearch is BuzzTracking. Click on Buzz, and you’ll see some important metrics of the buzz that surrounds a product or a company: number of links; number of mentions on Technorati, number of searches, and news reference volume.

Currently, StartupSearch’s directory is severely underpopulated, but this is bound to change in the future. I’m sure that StartupSearch will become an important and valuable resource for web professionals.

Thanks to CleverClogs for notifying us about StartupSearch.

Latest startup to come from Jason Calacanis’ workshop (he doesn’t really have a workshop, it’s a figure of speech) is Mahalo (Hawaiian for “thank you”) - a human powered search engine.

Yes, we know what you think, and we were thinking the same thing: you ask your query and then wait till the clueless human agents on the other side Google the stuff you were searching for, and they do a poor job at it. Right?

Well, no. Mahalo is “human powered” in the sense that it has real people working on the results, removing spam, and adding cute little symbols to some results - Guide’s choice is one of them.

Luckily, search engines are easy to test out. First, we’ve tried the obvious term: “FranticIndustries. As you can see below, Google does a good job at it, but Mahalo found nothing.

OK, so very specific searches don’t work well. Let’s try something broader: “hotels in Hawaii”. This time, Mahalo fares a bit better, finding some results from its own index. They all lead to a hand-picked collection of links, which are quite good - info on restaurants, hotels, and activities in Hawaii - it’s all there.

For our last term we’ll choose a generic but tech-related term: Web 2.0.The results are quite disappointing. Yes, the links you see in the screenshot below will give you quite detailed results, but surely there’s a lot more to Web 2.0 than this sad handful of terms.

Each time I review a new search engine the conclusion is the same. It has some neat features, but I can do it all faster on Google. I’m afraid that, at this stage, Mahalo is not an exception. We’ll see how they’ll do populating those indexes in the future. We also must not forget that human-powered anything is a very expensive venture; I hope Jason has a good business model behind this one.

[via]

This is not a hack of any sort: if you remember, EMI recently signed a contract with Apple to sell their entire catalogue in DRM-free format. Now, with the new version of iTunes, 7.2, it is actually possible to buy DRM-free music. The 256 Kbps AAC files can be downloaded at $1.29 per song, and upgrading previously bought music to DRM-free versions will, in most cases, cost 30 cents per songs, and $3 per album.

Ah, the sweet sound of victory. Although DRM is still infesting most of the music and video in major labels’ catalogue, this might be the defining moment when they all start switching to - definitely preferable for everyone - DRM-free alternatives. Let’s just hope that EMI does well (which it definitely should), and that others will follow suit.

I do have one beef with Apple’s press release on this, one that has been bugging me since the dawn of MP3. Pay attention to this bit:

“DRM-free music tracks featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings”

(emphasis by me)

Erm, no. 256 Kbps is not virtually indistinguishable from 1440 Kbps. No MP3 or AAC (with lossy compression) will ever sound the same as the original recording - and, if you have a decent Hi-Fi, it won’t even be “virtually” the same. If 256 Kbps AAC is the same as the original CD, well then a DivX is the same as the original DVD. And a DVD is the same as a Blu-Ray. Hell, they’re all the same with that line of reasoning.

Yes, I know that most people listen to music on $5 computer speakers and that they can’t tell the difference. But if that’s the case, why progress at all? Why have better formats, like SACD?

If the record industry had spent some money on advertising the advantages of the CD sound over MP3 sound, instead of spending it on lawsuits, maybe the CD sales would be a couple of percentage points up by now. Instead, they’ve always insisted that it’s basically the same thing, and that’s what led to the whole lawsuit and DRM problem in the first place. I hope that someday they will learn one of the basics of economy (well, common sense actually): if you have a competitive advantage, you focus on that; you don’t try to convince people that an inferior product is the same as yours.

Acquisition rumors have lately been hit or miss: some were totally off (like the Microsoft - Yahoo deal) while some turned out to be correct (like the Google buys Feedburner one).

Well, here’s a new one for you to chew on: CBS acquires Last.FM for $280 million. This deal, if it goes through, doesn’t surprise. Last.FM is a great service, has 15 million users, and has recently announced a video counterpart to its site, as well as signed contracts with several big content providers.

On our scale of corporate evilness, this one scores quite bad. Media powerhouses like CBS are as evil (greedy) as they come, and we wouldn’t like to see Last.FM turned into some vessel for promoting CBS content. Thread lightly, CBS; this is Web 2.0, and users don’t like to be manhandled.

If this turns out to be wrong, blame Mashable.

*update: if LA Times seems like a credible enough source to you, consider it confirmed.

One of the neatest new features of Google Maps is called Street View; it enables users to see certain streets as if they were there, from the ground persepctive. It looks quite spectacular, but, unfortunately, it works only for users in the USA.

Well, someone figured out a way to avoid Google’s IP filter: simply add this string of characters, “&gl=us”, to the end of the URL. Example here.

Of course, chances that this will work after it spreads all over the net are slim to none, but if you’re fast, you still might be able to catch it in action. Screenshot below (have in mind that I’m not living in the US, therefore in normal circumstances I should not be able to use the service)

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Need more motivation to workout and keep your exercise program going? Here’s another tool to help keep you going: PrimeCondition’s customizable audio exercise programs for your mp3 player. You can select the exercises and how many reps you want to do of each. You can also select your cardio routine and how it progresses in intensity. After selecting your exercises and their order, you choose music to go along with it (whatever you like if you have a premium account, or one from their list if doing it for free) which is then mixed with the audio of a woman letting you know where you’re at in your program and what’s coming next. After all of the set up, you can download it to your computer and use it with your mp3 player to motivate you and keep you where you want to be with your workout.

In their own words:
“PrimeCondition.com creates unique MP3’s of your personal exercise
routine. It provides an easy way to put together your own workout -
the exercises you want, the repetitions you want, the time you want -
and in moments, our on-demand audio technology combines music and
narration to create downloadable MP3 tracks with your personal,
customized exercise routine. It’s completely web based and requires no
software install.

“Create and download a different workout every day, exactly the way
you want it.” Find out why it might be a killer and vote for this
startup at KillerStartups.com.

Recently I’ve written about a minor Reddit-Netvibes annoyance: the Reddit RSS feed in a Netvibes box doesn’t let you open the story on Reddit; instead, it skips directly to the source. Because of this, Reddit probably loses quite a lot of pageviews; furthermore, some users, like me, like to read Reddit comments before looking at the source article.

The poll results (the poll is mysteriously gone at the moment, courtesy of PollDaddy) I’ve set up in my article on this subject show that the majority of users prefer Reddit RSS links as they are; but quite a number of you would like to see this changed.

Well, thanks to our reader Aaron Bassett, who is quite a JavaScript wiz, now you can have it both ways. Aaron has created a Firefox bookmarklet for this purpose. Drag it to your toolbar, and click it while on your Netvibes page (with the Reddit RSS feed in it), and all the Reddit links will now lead to the Reddit comments instead of the source article. Thanks, Aaron.

Sorry for breaking the embargo on this one, but it has already been broken.

We’ve got our hands on a neat desktop application called Particls. The idea behind it is to bring the news to you, right on your desktop, and Particls does this in several ways: through desktop alerts, a news ticker, and pebbles, which is a fancy word for creating an RSS stream out of Particls’ alerts.

Unfortunately, the ticker cannot be moved to the bottom of the screen.

Particls is designed to automate the process of finding news for you, but you can also go very in-depth. For example, you can only enter some tags and get news based on that. I’ve chosen several Web 2.0 related terms, and was satisfied - to an extent - with the results. However, if you like, you can customize every detail of the way Particls brings you new items; you can set individual feeds and import OPML files.

Generally, Particls offers a lot of options - almost everything is customizable. You can set levels of interruption, you can rate various news sources (Particls will make them more or less important based on your ratings); you can even see a very detailed history of Particls’ actions. Unfortunately, we were unable (obviously because the product is in early beta) to modify some important settings; for example, the news ticker was, by default, on top of the screen, and this didn’t work well for me at all; the option to change this exists, but it’s not modifiable.

How’s that for an in-depth set of options?

As far as Particls’ different ways of delivering the news go, they work quite well and replace several other tools I normally use. For example, you can submit stories to social media sites like Digg or Reddit directly from the news ticker, or copy the item URL with a single click. I’m not a big fan of scrollers, tickers and popups, but Particls has done everything to make them exactly as annoying as you would like, and the whole experience with it was quite enjoyable.

Whenever I see a product with lots of attention to detail, and lots of effort put into it, I think it’s worth trying. If you’re an RSS/information junkie, Particls might be right up your alley; even if you’re not a big fan of tickers. It’s also worth mentioning that Particls supports 3rd party skins and plugins, which will probably make it even better in the future.

If you’re bored with the same old social media / web 2.0 buttons and badges, you might want to try out our new collection. They’re absolutely free and available in two sizes: 150×150 pixel and 75×75 pixel PNGs. If you like cute little 3D boxes, these will be right up your alley.

You may have noticed that FranticIndustries has a new logo (there in the upper left corner), and in the process of making it, I figured, why not create several more for some popular social media sites (plus RSS)? So, here they are: 8 buttons. RSS, Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Firefox, Netscape, Newsvine, and FranticIndustries. Download, enjoy, and let me know if you have an idea for a new one (although I cannot promise anything, these take a lot of my time). To download, just right click on the one you like, and choose “save image as”.

*All trademarks and logos used are properties of their respective owners.

Pligg, the open source CMS that lets you easily create a RSVC (Digg-like) site, has a serious security vulnerability in all its versions, which enables malicious attackers to take control of the website. All Pligg admins are advised to apply the patch immediately.

In an unrelated incident, Reddit users discovered that Reddit doesn’t clean up the code in its comments very well, which can be used to employ an XSS-based attack. The vulnerability has already been fixed, and pasting the code in a Reddit comment will now result in the display of the following text: “I am a terrible person”. So, if you don’t want to be ridiculed by Redditers, don’t try it. Some more information about the hack can be gathered from this Digg thread.

At Facebook’s F8 event there was quite a number of announcements, most dealing with the all new Facebook Platform, which will let developers create exciting new applications for Facebook. What strikes me as fascinating is Facebook’s growth, which has been 3 percent weekly since January 2007. Yes, that’s weekly growth. You can read the very detailed coverage of the event over at MashableW.

MyBlogLog, the blogging community with the widget that lets you see who’s visiting your blog, has added tagging to their service. Although FranticIndustries has quite a big community at MyBlogLog, I’ve had to remove the widget because of frequent slowdowns. It will be returned after the next major upgrade.

Lastly, Google Calendar has had an upgrade: it now works on your mobile phone. And, this means it really works on your mobile phone; as there’s no special mobile portal: you can simply open it up in your mobile browser and it works.