Google Wave is the company’s ‘online tool for real-time communication and collaboration.’ It’s basically a media rich messaging client that allows users to embed documents, videos, and pictures directly into conversations. The Google API can be used to build live social gadgets, such as live real-times games (chess, etc.). Continue reading for a video presentation.
(Via Tech Blog.)
Ever wish your RSS reader worked more like a Twitter client? Or even FriendFeed, where updates just appear in real-time? Well, that idea has been gaining ground for some time, and it just got a whole lot more appealing now that WordPress has announced support for RSS Cloud.
RSS Cloud takes advantage of the cloud element in the RSS 2.0 specification. Actually cloud has been there since RSS 0.92, but no one paid much attention to it until Twitter and others ushered in the idea of a real-time web. The cloud element is used to deliver push notifications to your feed reader.
That’s essentially the reverse of how RSS readers work right now. At the moment, most popular RSS readers poll sites to see when they have new content. Another, slightly better method is to wait for a ping from your blog to let the RSS reader know when new content is available. But as WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg notes in the announcement, ‘getting every ping in the world is a lot of work… RSS Cloud effectively allows any client to register to get pings for only the stuff they’re interested in.’
The result is that new posts from your favorite blogs arrive much faster using the RSS Cloud method. As Marshall Kirkpatrick writes over at ReadWriteWeb, the difference in wait times is like ‘the difference between checking your e-mail every once in awhile and using a Blackberry to get new e-mails pushed to you as soon as they arrive.’
Sounds good, no? More news, delivered faster. Well, the bad news is that there’s really only one feed reader that currently supports RSS Cloud — Dave Winer’s River2. However, with WordPress now implementing the cloud element in its feeds, some 50 million posts a week are potentially accessible to cloud-enabled feed readers, which should be more than enough to tip the balance in RSS Cloud’s favor.
Of course there are some competing specifications, like pubsubhubbub or FriendFeed’s SUP proposal, which both do something similar to enable push updates.
WordPress has already said that its working on other ways of pushing notifications to news reader, including pubsubhubbub, so while you may have to wait a while before your favorite reader enables support for RSS Cloud and others, the WordPress announcement has certainly added incentive. And, hopefully, it will give RSS readers a much needed kick in butt — let’s face it, RSS readers aren’t exactly hotbeds of innovation right now.
Indeed Dave Winer is trying to get popular Twitter clients to support RSS Cloud. If they do, they could well end up supplanting RSS readers as the way most people get their news.
We’ll just have to stop calling them Twitter clients and start calling them what they should be referred to as: news clients.
(Via Webmonkey.)
Back in March, Hulu took some initial steps into what we like to call ‘social TV’ by adding some basic social networking components to the site.
Today, they took another step in that direction with the launch of the Hulu: Watch Now Fall Premieres apps for Facebook.
The new app works much like CNN’s integration with Facebook for the Obama inauguration, with the video playing on the page next to a widget for updating your Facebook status and seeing what other people watching the video are saying about it.
From the main Watch Now app you can check out any of this Fall season’s premieres of popular shows like Fringe, The Office, Heroes, Family Guy, and more. You can stream them from the Facebook app as soon as they become available on Hulu, and see them side by side with what other watchers are saying.
There are also individual apps for each show, where you can watch new episodes of Fringe, Heroes, The Office et al throughout the season as it airs.
Because it’s not quite as interesting to be watching the shows perhaps asynchronously with others, Hulu is also scheduling specific events around the show premieres. You can RSVP for this coming Tuesday’s Season 4 premiere of Heroes for example, to ensure that you’ll have a number of other users online to actually enjoy the social TV experience with.
What do you think: is this style of ‘co-watching’ TV online the future of television? Will people tune in on a schedule to stream shows online, or does it counteract the great benefit of being able to sit down and watch whenever it’s convenient? Is the promise of social interaction enough to turn TV watching back into an event?
(Via Mashable!.)
Is reading online news broken? Google seems to think so as they just launched Google Fast Flip, a Google Labs experiment that’s designed to help you flip through news online as fast as you would if you were holding a print magazine or paper.
Fast Flip is essentially just a funky way to flip through articles from three dozen Google partners including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fast Company. Partners share in advertising revenue generated through the labs experiment.
With Fast Flip you can flip through snapshots of the day’s popular news, drill into specific sections and topics, or narrow stories by publisher source. Once you select a story, you can view the article in its totality and use the arrows to flip to the previous or next story.
Fast Flip comes with additional features like the ability to share stories via email, story liking, dynamic content based on your viewing experience, and mobile-friendly versions.
According to Google’s post on the launch, the point is to replicate the magazine or print reading experience and make browsing stories faster. The company writes:
‘Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting.’
On first look, Fast Flip feels like a bit flop. While certainly unique, it’s likely to appeal to a very small segment of online news consumers. Sure, the online news reading experience could be improved, but Fast Flip is more of a tangential approach than it is a step in a revolutionary direction.
(Via Mashable!.)
Following the US rollout last night, Facebook Lite, the lightweight version of Facebook that hides distractions like Apps, is now available internationally.
As of this morning, our European editors are able to access the service at lite.facebook.com. Meanwhile, European Twitter users also report that the service is working for them. Mashable commenters in Singapore, the UK, Sweden, Estonia and many other countries report that it’s working for them too.
Some claim that if the site doesn’t work initially, you can get access by setting your language to US English.
Are you able to access Facebook Lite yet? Let us know in the comments.
(Via Mashable!.)
The curtain has closed on Apple’s big event. While we’re still recovering from all the big news surrounding Jobs’ return, the new and improved Nanos, the arrival of iPhone OS 3.1, and the fact that iTunes 9 comes with sharing, we’re now able to actually play with our new toys and we’ve discovered something remarkable.
Amid all the hype around iTunes 9 was one new instrumental feature for iPhone owners — app management. We were thrilled by the possibilities of finally being able to organize and manage our apps via iTunes, and now we’re even more impressed by the reality.
After toying with the new feature, we can officially say that the iTunes 9 application management features are fantastic. Gone are the days of painstakingly moving apps one-by-one on our iPhones. Today we welcome effortless drag and drop app management and syncing, and here we’ll walk you through how to create application harmony between iTunes and your iPhone.
First things first: download the new iTunes, install it and fire it up. You should also update your iPhone to OS 3.1 for a smooth transition (a word to the wise: sync your iPhone one last time before you update to the new OS). That process might not be quick, but it should be rather painless.
Once your software updates are complete, connect your iPhone to your computer via the USB cable. Select your iPhone from the Devices section in iTunes, and then click on the Applications tab. You should be greeted with an electronic view of your entire installed app catalog and your iPhone’s existing application screens.
All the applications you’ve installed using iTunes will now appear in the Sync Applications portion of the page. You can now search applications by name, or sort them by name, category, or date.
You’ll notice that checked applications coincide with the ones you have on your iPhone, while unchecked ones can be checked to be virtually added to the digital iPhone interface. You can also uncheck apps you no longer want on your phone to have them instantly removed from the iPhone mock up.
Of course any and all changes won’t be made until you hit ‘Apply’ and sync your iPhone with iTunes.
The real beauty of the new application management feature is the addition of an electronic model of your iPhone’s various screens, with proper pagination, and easy drag and drop functionality so that you can move apps around with speed and simplicity. You can even remove apps from your virtual iPhone, in the same manner that you would remove them from the physical version, by selecting an app and clicking the X.
You can configure your apps in any way you’d like by dragging them around on the current screen, or moving them from your existing view onto one of the screens in the right-hand column. You can also use the command key (use control key for PCs) to grab multiple apps to drag them all at once, or pick up a full page of apps and drag that up or down to alter page order. Changes are instantaneous, and don’t forget that you can select and deselect applications from the left-hand menu to add and remove them from your mock up. Pretty cool right?
Hit ‘Apply’ when you’re good and ready to apply your application changes to your actual iPhone, and you should be just a few minutes away from reaping the benefits of application management bliss.
(Via Mashable!.)
It’s the last day of an unusually long weekend, and there’s absolutely nothing on the schedule. Break out the tools and pull up one of these nifty DIY projects to improve your living space and boost your can-do cred.
Buy a mess of ground-staked, solar or battery-powered yard lights from your local big box store, and people might be impressed at your ability to space the sticks you plunge into the ground. Convert some run-of-the-mill mason jars into hanging votive lanterns, battery-powered backyard lights, or go the way of weekend editor Jason and make your own solar-powered sun jars, and you’ll get some real kudos, and have a nicer looking yard, to boot.
Three different solutions of varying DIY-ness can get your Wi-Fi out to your grassier spaces. A self-powered solar extender is the ultimate in techno/eco-cred. If that kind of cost, soldering, and circuit knowledge is a stretch too far, you can install DD-WRT or boost your household router with Tomato to boost its signal strength and, in the case of DD-WRT, turn an old or spare router into a dedicated repeater. That still involves a bit of installing, though, so for a casual shot at backyard Wi-Fi, try a tinfoil parabola, a wok-style strainer, or a dollar’s worth of extender parts.
If you’ve had wood-fired pizza before, you know it’s notably different and tasty, and almost always pricey. You can have the good stuff whenever you feel like building a fire, however, with two different Lifehacker readers’ brick-by-brick instructions. Kevin Lester showed us his fourth pizza oven build, while Mike Wilkie based his two-level oven on Forno Bravo’s extensive wood-fired guide. You can do the same, and become the grill party invitation nobody turns down.
Your couch can only seat so many people. Your yard or patio, however, can fit as many folks as feel comfortable, and offers a much nicer environment to eat, drink, watch, and enjoy the waning bits of summer air, whether for the kids or with friends. Wired.com has hit upon this project twice, once with a house-mounted sheet and DVD/projector. Then the Geek Dad tackled the idea with a stand-alone outdoor screen, built with PVC pipe, mounted in cement, and ready for easy setup and take-down. You’ll need a decent projector for either setup, but often times, nobody at work minds if the presentation room is a little de-stocked on weekends.
You can’t pull off the total renovation that you can with an XBox Media Center, but your Wii can do a lot more than let you play tennis against the in-laws. You can surf the web with the recently-made-free Opera browser, and once that’s installed, a free Orb software package lets you use your Wii as a media center. These days, opening your Wii to the Homebrew channel doesn’t even require the purchase of an (admittedly great) Twilight Princess game and extensive hacking, and once that’s done, you can back up and load games from a hard drive, play old-school games in an emulator, and much more.
Two or three good, sharp knives are really all you need, but you’ve probably got more than that. If you bought them piece by piece, or don’t want to shell out for a generic hunk of wood, consider making your own wall-mounted magnetic holder for easy access and visual appeal, or cut a holder out of a counter for super-quick access. We’re also partial to Chris DiClerico’s DIY universal knife block, which requires only a few bucks of wood, dollar store bamboo skewers, and access to a table saw.
Go beyond the color spread at your local paint store, and you’ll likely find a good deal of neat paints that can inspire some awesome projects. Dry-erase or ‘whiteboard’ paint lets you jot down your ideas anywhere, and that inspired reader Chris Burke to make this awesome wall-size speech ‘bubble’. He also layered some magnetic paint underneath, the kind that lets you hang posters without nails or tacks. If school-style chalkboards are more your speed, you can grab a bucket of chalkboard paint, or make your own, and then craft an erase-as-you-go wall calendar, kid-friendly table, or wall mural (sorry, original link is apparently dead). If they made tinfoil-based Wi-Fi boosting paint, we’d simply declare the whole house in need of a new look.
You only occasionally need an extra seat or two for groups of guests, or maybe you just need a cheap place to sit when working in the garage. The Evil Mad Scientist blog suggests buying a few sheets of paperboard or plywood and crafting some flat-packing but sturdy stools. If it’s little ones you’re looking to seat, and entertain while you do so, the FoldSchool tutorial site details how to help kids make their own stepladders, creative kids table seats, and much more. (Original post)
Gina’s father-in-law used rope lights (and a nifty reverse circuit switch) to craft an automatic pantry light system. Jason added an eye-pleasing and light-improving touch to his extreme home office makeover with strategic rope lights. Other crafty folks have found rope lighting useful for kitchen looks and ridiculously awesome home theater setups. It’s inspiring, illuminating stuff, and fairly easy to get started with.
Not every notably blank wall in your dwelling requires custom-framed artwork or expensive prints. Gina combined her Flickr account and a few dollars of craft store hardware to craft a sleek wire photo wall, inspired by this wood block example (original link down). Adam found his inspiration in used record stores and great album art, crafting an album art wall on the cheap. If great-looking books are what you want to show off, you can get by with very little by converting a colored wire hanger.
(Via Lifehacker.)
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