Carl Conrad » Internet

Gmail Priority Inbox takes care of our time

Carl — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:38:37 +0000

Gmail introduces Gmail Priority Inbox. To help saving time, Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else” based on our emailing history.

I can’t wait to see my Gmail updated.

Source: Official Gmail blog.Similar Posts:

Do you aka-aki?

Carl — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:46:28 +0000

Combine Facebook and twitter and Google Latitude. You have aka-aki.

Operated by a Berlin, Germany based company, aka-aki is an online community that puts social networking on the street. That’s why aka-aki does not only consist of this community website but also includes a mobile phone application. Using the GSM, Wi-Fi or GPS information which ever is available, the aka-aki mobile phone application shows you details about people belonging to your circle. In the city, in the region or up to 50km away. For instance, when other aka-aki members are there, your mobile phone will show you a photo, mutual friends etc.. Even other functions associated with an online community like writing messages, saving friends, etc. will work while you’re on your way using the aka-aki mobile phone application.

Going into some details, aka-aki shows you on your mobile phone the profiles of people in your circle. You also see which friends in the community are online at that moment and may exchange mails with other members. You can also use aka-aki to show people around you, who you are and what you like by adding stickers to your profile. You can create and maintain your profile at the aka-aki community website. There you may also check whom you recently met while out and about, since aka-aki logs the encounters. And probably more of things still to come.

Installing it on the iPhone is a straightforward task as the application is available from the App Store. Some quick information and your account is created.

While the application is obviously big fun to use, who knows what can be done with it and the stored information especially when in wrong hands? Google Latitude raised some scepticism, why should it be different for aka-aki? Not sure I really want to use it.Similar Posts:

Internet radio to hit the roads?

Carl — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:41:15 +0000

At CES 2009, Blaupunkt and miRoamer have announced a partnership that will put internet radio into car dashboards for the first time.

Blaupunkt has put together two prototype devices, the Hamburg 600i for single-height dash configurations and the dual-height New Jersey 600i. The devices use the 3G phone’s Bluetooth connection to get online and access miRoamer’s thousands of internet radio stations. In addition to these stations, the devices can pull playlists put together and hosted online, pointing to MP3s and other music files found across the internet. Embedded 3G connectivity will probably be the next step…

Internet radio really looks more and more as the future of digital radio.Similar Posts:

War 2.0 and free press

Carl — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 09:31:59 +0000

We’ve seen this initiated in the Iraqi war and in the recent attacks in Mumbai but in the on going conflict on the Gaza Strip, Web 2.0 methods are widely used to communicate as much as possible on each side. Two examples ; Israel demonstrates how precise Tsahal’s bombings are but posting videos on YouTube. On the other hand, AlJazeera has open an AJGaza twitter to communicate on-the-fly on the most recent events.

But in the end, does all this help to really understand the conflict, its reasons? Does it show the path to its possible solutions? I’m afraid not. More, it looks like a more and more common way to criminalize the conflict in order not to seek a solution. A strategy more and more encountered all around the world. Unfortunately, a war has never been won by lack of combatants.

It is just another illustration about the difference between information and communication. True independent journalism gets more and more difficult but biased information does not help solving issues. What is the solution? And how many innocent people will die before we have one?

A must read: Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press by Kristina Borjesson

Similar Posts:

State of the Twittersphere

Carl — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:35:28 +0000

Do you twitt?

A recent study provides some interesting insight of the State of the Twittersphere based on about 500,000 accounts tracked by Twitter Grader.

Twitter has lots of newer and less active users
- 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008
- An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day
- 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers
- 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all
There is a strong correlation between the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow.

Check out the whole study:

Twitter is currently a free and ad-free service but is now hiring a product manager to find a business model and revenus. Interested? Read their job description.Similar Posts:

Facebook blackout

Carl — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 02:06:43 +0000

A Facebook group calls for a one day Facebook blackout on december 15th. This group has a quite strong momentum as it is reaching 900.000 members, 700.000 members planning to “attend”.

Why? A protest against the Facebook administrators: “Friends account deleted, limited in sending message or poking, stupid new layout”.

How many members will this group reach? Is a one day really relevant? Will this change any thing?

Probably not as it looks more as many other groups creating a short term buzz.Similar Posts:

Ever heard about Media RSS?

Carl — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:12:31 +0000

May be not. Media RSS is a media syndication format extension to RSS developed by Yahoo! in 2004. More than a simple technical niche extension, Media RSS is a powerful while easy to implement means of sharing media and in particular photos.

From the insider point of view, support of Media RSS simply consists in adding some tags if a RSS feed already exists.

As you can do with standard RSS feeds, Media RSS feeds help you keeping in touch automatically with the latest posted items of various sites.

Dealing with digital pictures, Frame Channel allows for easily pushing contents of Media RSS feeds to digital photo frames.Media RSS may still not widely available but no doubt that it will gain notoriety as RSS did. As usual, it is a matter of available implementation. Several photo sharing sites such as Photobucket and Smugmug already provide support for Media RSS, KoffeePhoto photo sharing is the latest to date to announce its support of Media RSS.Similar Posts:

Google to launch its Google Chrome browser

Carl — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:39:42 +0000

Just a couple of days after the announcement of the reconducted partnership between Mozilla and Google and although the link is not yet active, Google has just announced its soon release of its new open source browser, Google Chrome. Among the sources, Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox.

The Google Chrome download link is to be made active tomorrow, no doubt it will be heavily downloaded and commented.Similar Posts:

Mozilla introduces Ubiquity

Carl — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:49:14 +0000

Mozilla Labs introduces Ubiquity. While still in a very early stage, Ubiquity is a pretty impressive functional addition to future Firefox. Ubiquity’s goals are to:

Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone (not just Web developers) to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)

Better than a long speech, check out the video and test it by yourself.

Let’s hope this will also run with Thunderbird…Similar Posts:

WordPress for iPhone

Carl — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:55:40 +0000

Mad about your iPhone? Here is a good way to spend a lot of time playing with its virtual keyboard: write posts on your WordPress blog. Install WordPress for iPhone now and off you go!

WordPress for iPhone is a free application available from the AppStore and installs very easily.

WordPress for iPhone supports the minimum requirements to efficiently post on your blog. Text, title, tags and categories are supported. WordPress for iPhone allows for posting on multiple blogs (wordpress.com hosted or not), supports local and remote drafts, allows preview of posts and, last but not the least, publishing of the posts.

You want to post what you see? Easy, take a picture, WordPress for iPhone allows for including photos available on your iPhone into your posts.

While WordPress for iPhone does not feature all the plug-ins available for WordPress, it provides a rather complete featureset for an efficient blogging on the go.

The only limitation may reside in your ability to write long posts using iPhone’s virtual keyboard, you will have to be patient.Similar Posts: