Damn, I knew this day would come. Someone will actually try to organize Twitter into something coherent. It is, of course, complete and absolute folly, since the overwhelming majority of the stuff said on Twitter is completely useless - but hey, you can’t blame ‘em for trying.
TC says “The business of tracking the online conversation just a got shot in the arm with the tech equivalent of crack cocaine.” I agree wholeheartedly, although I wouldn’t say it’s crack - it’s LSD.
There’s a new site in town, dedicated to covering Croatian web projects and startups: Cromotion.net. The site is written in the English language.
Croatia is a small country, and therefore don’t expect too much news from this neck of the woods (also bear in mind that the concept of startup is somewhat stretched to accommodate for smaller projects), but whenever something new does appear on the radar, it’ll be there. The site is maintained by Berislav Lopac, the same guy responsible for organizing the first Croatian conference on startups, WebStart, which I was happy to be a part of last year. This year, WebStart will be held on May 8-9, and some interesting speakers are already scheduled to attend.
When I started FranticIndustries in 2006, the words “web 2.0″ and “startup” were virtually unknown here in Croatia. I’m glad to see the situation has changed for the better; hopefully, we’ll see some world class projects coming from these parts very soon.
Invite-beta, that is; which means that you don’t have to be invited to use the service, you can try it whenever you like. For those uninitiated, Pownce can most easily be described as a polished version of Twitter; some of its features actually make it a much better version of Twitter in my eyes, read some of my thoughts here and here.
Check out my Pownce profile here.
GlobalPandora is yet another try to bring Pandora back to users outside of the US. When Pandora was shut down for everyone outside of US and UK (it has since closed its doors in UK, too), I listed several proxy-related methods to access the service regardless of where you live, but most of them were short lived.
GlobalPandora gives out very little info about who’s behind the project, but so far, it works: you can even log in with your Pandora credentials. I hope the project won’t get shut down, but given how fast the folks at Pandora were banning various proxy IPs, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
[via TechCrunch UK]
Ewedrive, a simple online storage solution, has sent its users a notification saying that the service will close down, and current users will have a grace period to move their data from the service.
The developers will now focus on their other service, DesktopOnDemand, which is a WebOS-style desktop on the go that also integrates much of Ewedrive’s functionality.
Ewedrive has been featured here at FranticIndustries and has later become a sponsor of the site; this proves that a nice simple idea sometimes isn’t enough to sustain a business, especially if there’s loads of competition out there.
If you’re expecting gOS (you can call it Google Operating System, but the project is not officially supported by Google; the acronym actually stands for Good Operating System) to be Google’s answer to Microsoft Windows, you’re going to be disappointed.
But if you want a lightweight, simple Linux distro with a nod towards web applications, with features like support for Google Gears, simple online file storage through Box.net, Meebo support out of the box and the like, gOS might be a treat. You can run it as a live CD, or even on top of Windows or Mac if you just want to try it out.
Some new features in version 2.0 include:
* Virtual desktops: Available on the desktop, allowing easy grouping of applications across multiple desktop spaces
* Online Storage Drive: available on the desktop, allows easy online backup and file sharing powered by Box.net.
* Adobe Flash 9 for Linux: preloaded, allows instant use of YouTube, gBooth, Google Talk
* Updated Wi-Fi Manager “Exalt”: for improved reliability
Download the new version here.
One of today’s news items - Liberty Media buying Bodybuilding.com for $100 million - struck many journalists as odd due to the huge sum involved. I don’t know much about Bodybuilding.com’s financial stats, but having frequented the site, I can say that it’s one of the rare examples of a good domain name put to really good use. If you’re interested in bodybuilding, fitness or exercise in general, just this one link will do.
This is not to say that the site is flawless; in my opinion, their complete lack of criticism towards certain dietary supplements and “performance enhancers” is downright dangerous; I guess they don’t have any moral qualms about it and they don’t intend to bite the hand that feeds them. However, the site really does cover everything: type in any exercise you can think of, and you’ll get a video; imagine any training program and you’ll find it on the site.
Although the site has a social networking counterpart, it owes its success to doing stuff the good old web 1.0 way. Sometimes it’s the right way to go: if you have comprehensive info on a subject, decently organized and frequently updated, you don’t need to use innovations or 2.0 shenanigans to be successful.
Eh, sometimes I love this blog simply because here I can write with no holds barred. You can read my assessment of Wikia Search over at Mashable, but the fact of the matter is, it was hard writing it because if it weren’t Wikia’s project, I’d probably dismiss it in seconds.
In the search game, if you want to distinguish yourself from the pack, you have to be good. Really good. Wikia Search is not good - its search engine leaves a lot to be desired; options are scarce, and the social networking part is not really integrated with the search, so why have it?
This is one of those projects that might get closed down in two months and rebuilt from the scratch on a different engine - that’s how bad it seems at this point.
You are currently browsing the franticindustries - web 2.0, social networking, IT technology trends. weblog archives for the month January, 2008.
Longer entries are truncated. Click the headline of an entry to read it in its entirety.
