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
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.
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.
