Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category
Twitter needs to change their meta description
When you add a page to Facebook, maybe for later keeping or sharing it with your friends, Facebook looks at the meta field "description" in the source code.
On Twitter ALL pages have the same meta description:
<meta name="description" content="Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time">
This means that when you post a Twitter page (no matter if it's a profile page or a single tweet) the description posted to Facebook (which you can't change) is: "Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time".
That doesn't really say anything about the content behind the link, so I sugges that the folks at Twitter change the meta line to something more meaningful, depending on what page the user is posting to Facebook:
- If it's a Twitter profile page, use the "Bio" that the user has written.
- If it's a single tweet, well, just use the text in the tweet. It's only 140 characters long (at most) - perfect for a meta description.
I could do it in WordPress (you can customize it even further using custom fields). So how hard can it be? :-)
Related postsTags: Facebook, Microblogging, Social web, Twitter, Web, Web 2.0
New in WordPress 2.7 trunk: QuickPress
Just uploaded the recent WordPress trunk version (nightly build) to test it out.
The first thing I discovered is a new feature labeled "QuickPress". It's basically a form which allows you to post (title, body text and tags) directly to your blog from your dashboard.
Click image for larger version:
I'm not too sure what to think about this. I think I preferred the old dashboard with recent comments, incoming links and so on.
Related postsTags: Blogging, Blogs, CMS, Open source, Web 2.0, wordpress, wordpress trunk
Jaiku better come up with nothing short of a miracle
Setting up our nest in a new datacenter, after finding an issue with a server on Friday. Sorry for the inconvenience. We're working to get back online soon.
That is what Jaiku.com has to say at the moment.
So what is Jaiku? Or what was Jaiku before it went down?
Jaiku is a microblogging service - basically like Twitter but with the functionality of commenting (below a micro post) and native support for adding feeds to your stream.
But all that hasn't been working since Thursday/Friday last week (today is Wednesday!) when Jaiku.com simply said that the service was closed to a server upgrade.
Now the reason is another: »an issue with a server«
Needless to say that this is no small issue — and needless to say that Jaiku will suffer bad from this. Jaiku has soon been down a week and that's a long, long time.
Ironically, a lot of Jaiku's problem started after the service got acquired by Google. Then it was announced that it would be one of the first projects to switch go the Google App Engine.
But that doesn't appear to have made things a whole lot better.
Fact is: Google and Jaiku have to resurface with nothing short of a miracle. Jaiku just can't return to its normal service and expect forgiveness from the users. And fact is, that while Jaiku is down, people are switching to Twitter.
One wonders whether they will come back again.
Related postsTags: Google, Jaiku, Microblogging, Social web, Twitter, Web 2.0
WordPress 2.7: Administration interfaces gets new design (again)
The administration interface in open source blogging software WordPress recently got a (much needed, if you ask me) face lift, but now it seems that it's time for a design upgrade once again.
A new feature is the "Inbox" feature, that I have included in this screenshot (you can click the image for larger version):
I haven't been able to find a lot of information on the new inbox feature, but I imagine that it would be a welcome feature in the multi user version of WordPress, WordPress MU, where bloggers can write messages to each other without necessarily revealing their email addresses.
The sections in the menu in the administration interface (which now lives on the left hand side), "Content", "Templates", "Utilities", "Settings", "Plugins" can be collapsed and expanded.
I came across this list of new and interesting features coming in WordPress 2.7. Note that I am in no way sure whether or not these features are finally confirmed.
The write interface in the WordPress 2.7 trunk also appears to get an upgrade to the design (once again: click the image for a larger version):
I found this great post with some more info on some of the updates in the WordPress administration interface.
The screenshots are now in colour, stupid export mishap in my image editing software :-)
Tags: CMS, Open source, wordpress, wordpress trunk
YouTube is number 5 in Denmark
The Danish Union of Internet Media (FDIM) has recently conducted a quite thorough survey on the Danes online behaviour in January 2008.
Number 1 is Google (surprise surprise!) with 15 millions visits(!) in January. But what's interesting, for me anyway, is that YouTube is at number 5! YouTube had b little over 1.1 million Danish visits in January, which is more that any of the online newspapers here in Denmark.
The only ones to beat YouTube (apart from Google, of course) are:
- Krak (a service which lets you look up addresses and phone numbers and view the results on a map (think white and yellow pages))
- DR.dk (the Danish Broadcoast Association, which gets a lot of visits, apart from the news service, from people viewing the online TV-guides, listening to internet radio, downloading podcasts and reading more about the various shows)
- TV2 (the largest private television channel in Denmark, which (just like DR) gets a lot of visits from people viewing other things than news and watching online television (their main product) - TV2 also offers online games)
So considering all of this, I think it's a fairly good result for YouTube. I for one use YouTube all of the time, sometimes just for listening to music. I had no idea that the service is that popular in this country, though.
My good friend Kim has the entire list [in Danish] (taken from Danish media news site MediaWatch) [also in Danish]. You can download the entire report from FDIM [it's a PDF file and yes, it's also in Danish].
Related postsTags: Danish media, Denmark, Google, Internet newspapers, News sites, Video, YouTube
del.icio.us down for two hours - at least
Wow, I guess internet services still can crash with style.
For two hours I haven't been able to get in contact with bookmarking service del.icio.us, which is one of my most used online services. Needless to say, I felt quite handicapped.
It's back online again now, but a very strong reminder, that the performance needs to be in place if you want to rely 100 percent on a service as del.icio.us to keep your booksmarks, like I do.
At this moment nothing regarding the crash has been posted at the del.icio.us blog, so the only information regarding it is an error message, which appeared a few minutes before the service went back online:
Internal Error
Apologies, it seems something is horribly wrong with our code.
If you keep receiving this message, please send us a message with the offending URL.
Apology accepted?
Update @ 17:26:
Another blog post on the downtime on del.icio.us and with a link to a neat service (Summize) which you can use to scan/search Twitter.
Update @ 17:35:
In our Jaiku talk (in Danish) Mark posted a link to the service Down for everyone or just me? — great tool.
Tags: del.icio.us, Online applications, Social web, stability, Web 2.0, Web applications
Is Web 2.0 growing up?
According to The Wallstreet Journal more companies are spending more money in the field of "Web 2.0" (we SO need to come up with another term for that) — mostly social networking or blogging.
Also the investments in Web 2.0 companies has started to move outside the San Francisco Bay Arena which is "known for producing some of the most high-profile Internet companies".
In the first half of 2007 New England topped the Bay Arena with $102 million invested dollars, Bay Arena had $90.5 million.
Also companies are becoming better at investing in web companies:
Related postsTags: Businesses, Web, Web 2.0
Upload and discover documents with Scribd
What is Scribd?
Scribd lets you publish and discover documents online. It is like a big online library where anyone can upload. We make use of a custom Flash document viewer that lets you display documents right in your Web browser. There are all sorts of other features that make it easy and fun to publish, convert, embed, analyze, and read documents.
Part of the idea behind Scribd is that everyone has a lot of documents sitting around on their computers that only they can read. With Scribd we hope to unlock this information by putting it on the web.
Sounds like something I should be checking out…
Related postsTags: Social web, Web 2.0
Download YouTube videos as…videos
One of my personal heroes, JD Lasinger, has a post with links to how you can download YouTube videos as videos instead of .flv-files.
One is the Spanish site Comunidad UEM and the other is the FLV Converter.
Related postsTags: Social web, Video, Web 2.0, YouTube
Media use of web 2.0 increasing
Web 2.0 — I'm really starting to hate that term — is apparently growing in popularity among the mainstream media.
At least, according to article at ReadWriteWeb.
I think it's really nice to see that the big media is incorporating services such as del.icio.us, Digg, RSS and others, instead of forcing some of their own services — which are basically clones of the original ones — down upon us.
Related postsTags: Media, Social web, Web 2.0