Point, Click, Repeat
General Tech related stuff from my web surfing adventures
Wednesday 27 August 2008, 3:19 PM
Ubiquity for Firefox
A very interesting tool that wraps Web 2.0 functionality up and houses it within the firefox browser. At first the thought of a command line driven tool in this interactive/Drag & Drop era is one that is set to generate a good ammount of interest.
So what is it about?
Well the phrase that this project is labelled with is "An experiment into connecting the Web with language". This indicates what the application hopes to reach in terms of long term goals, using command keywords to perform various actions when the user needs it.
This experimental Firefox extension that could allow you to reclaim time spent looking up that address on Google Maps. I for one like the wikipedia functionality as it's a daily stop of mine.
So will the time needed to perform online tasks be reduced overall? Hopefully, but I think there are some steps in learnign that will need to be mastered before you'll see any benefit.
There are some dangerous with such a system becoming bloated and full of useful functionality that nobody wants or finds useful. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it remains that way, currently the functionality appears limited to a set of tools that I'd happily use on a daily basis.
There is a video here that displays the functionality:
http://www.vimeo.com/1561578
Some screenshots can be found one this tutorial:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial
Friday 15 August 2008, 2:49 PM
Crime statistics Web 2.0
As promised by pre-election Boris Johnson, the trials of interactive crime maps are currently up and running aiming for official release in September.
The website found here http://maps.met.police.uk/ uses customised Google maps, focused on London with each borough with a colour coded rating system. Currently this rating is based on months of data and currently only houses information burglary, robbery and vehicle crimes.
Once clicked each area displays a pop-up that gives 3 tabs of data, the first shows the current crime rate for the last 2 months and if the figure has increased or decreased. The second tab compares the selected area with the Met figure (I’m guessing average as there isn't any clear indicator of what this figure is). The last tab gives the yearly Trend for the selected area for the last 3 years.
I guess it's a matter of time before any success this type of site will produce can be realised, but considering that this is only a demonstration of the planned idea, a good overall effort I feel.
Friday 14 December 2007, 10:29 AM
Googles Competitive Wiki
Seems Google aims to create content from those with knowledge on particular subjects allowing a greater sharing of knowledge, this new free tool is to be called "knol".
(Knol meaning a single unit of knowledge.)
Along with each knol will be some tools allowing for greater community interaction these include the submission of comments, questions and revisions as well as allowing a knol to rated. The ownership of a knol will remain with the author to manage and amend as required, there will be no google involvement.
So rather than using a wikipedia collaboration model for knols, authors of knols on the same subject will be in direct competition with each other to produce the best knol.
There are also some other interesting items that are listed in the googleblog, such as the authors that opt-in for adverts on their knol will receive a share of the revenue generated by those ads, providing their knol is popular.
Access to this new tool is invitation only at the moment in the first phase of testing and plus the application is still in development.
Source:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
Thursday 13 December 2007, 11:02 AM
Microsoft accquires Multimap
Microsoft has acquired UK based map service Multimap for a rumoured £25 million. With online map services being a frequently visited resource by browsers, this appears to be Microsoft's attempt to hook into the UK/EU map market, where it has a very small foothold with its late appearance to that sector.
I like many others, used Multimap extensively and exclusively back in the 2000 - 2005 era.
Sadly, Multimap did not seem to evolve, yes there were changes to the website and the use of the mapping tools. The main change that I encountered was the increase of adverts, which combined with a general slow down of the website; it really was a pain to use on my NT4 - IE5.5 machine.
Admittedly, it has all changed again and now has that smooth and slick feeling to it, using Ajax and drag-drop scrolling. There are still some adverts on the website and when I last visited it attempted to open a popup window.
Was it all too little, too late?
When Google maps appeared on the scene, it changed how maps were used and accessed online. Gone was the continual refreshing of the page and trying to focus on a place that was halfway between two sections of a map. It was quicker and less cluttered and didn't offer you cheap hotels on every screen.
I would guess Microsoft would be looking to link in this newly acquired service with its existing products, so expect Live Search to make an appearance soon along with the advertise side of things when the current contracts end.
Thursday 6 December 2007, 2:04 PM
Is it a butterfly?
Microsoft has set up a research website (http://www.inkblotpassword.com) that allows users to generate a password, based on a random series of inkblots that the user links to a keyword. The first and last letters of that word are entered by the user and so starts the base of their password.
The first thing you will notice on this site is that it uses another Microsoft research project asirra (http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/). On choosing your username and playing the "guess the animal right" game, you get to the generate password screen.
The Inkblots are stacked up in 2 rows allowing you to enter 2 different passwords based on the images. You can customise the number of images to show from 5 to 10, effectively limiting the password length between 10 and 20 characters in length.
The about page hints that this system can lead to highly randomised yet memorable passwords increasing security, Yet it's recommended you don't use your account for any important data.
In an effort to maximise the potential of this system it is run on a OpenID server and allows single sign-on usage using Open ID, across any website that supports the
Protocol.
Therefore, a different approach to password generation, can allow the user more chance to create visual relationships in order to remember their password.
It leaves me with two questions.
The first was originally a little fun, hence the blog title but then the second occurred to me.
1) How many passwords will contain the letters "by" (butterfly)? :)
2) And could all those butterlfies be a potential security risk?
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