Posts Tagged ‘News’

Running Windows Live Messenger 2009 beta

I just updated my Windows Live Messenger to the 2009 beta. I've only been using it for a few seconds and as with the last update (to 8.5 if I remember correct) it has received a visual upgrade. As you can read in my Twitter stream, the installation kinda annoyed me.

Here's a look at the chat window:

The Beta can be obtained from http://download.live.com/messenger.

When will we see the Summize for Facebook?

What happens, when you spend almost an entire evening playing some stupid game? You miss important news, that's what happens :-)

Anyhoo, the rumors were true: Twitter has bought Summize (a real time search engine indexing Twitter) - you may have read this on TechCrunch.

Summize is now aptly named "Twitter Search" and located at search.twitter.com.

Good news. Those of you out there who are using Summize dread what Twitter would be like without it - and the rest of you (Twitter users) are about to discover a nifty tool :-)

The Summize approach to Twitter has got me thinking. When will we see a real time search engine indexing Facebook? It could index the mini feed of every Facebook user (Facebook users should be allow to hide or to select "only index my status updates") and be searchable right away.

Now why the heck would you want that?
The reason? As the Facebook platform evolves (you may have noticed that it's possible to comment on things in another person's mini feed like, say, their status updates), more and more people post more and more information into Facebook. As you may know it's virtually impossible to follow what your friends are posting on Facebook - unless you can spend an entire day doing nothing else.

When the comment feature gains momentum and a larger audience we'll no doubt see a great deal of conversations taking place in the "Face sphere". And wouldn't it be nice to be able to search all that information and subscribe to a certain phrase (like your name) by RSS (like with Summize) or with an internal Facebook subscribe tool, so you'll know when someone mentions you or a certain phrase, that you'd like to watch.

Maybe it should only be possible to search in your friends mini feeds, I don't know - I haven't thought this feature completely through, just realized that I would like it :-)

Relations between people are going to be huge this year and the next and Facebook is a major ingredient in this recipe.

Click the images for credits

WordPress 2.6 is out

Wow, one month ahead of schedule, WordPress 2.6 has been released. More about the new release at the WordPress.org development blog.

All signs point to more e-shopping in Denmark

In a recent press release (in Danish) The Danish Distance Selling and E-business Association can see and predicts more e-shopping in Denmark.

According to the analysis 57 percent of all male internet users in Denmark have shopped online within the recent month in 2007. In 2006 that number was 43. The ladies are a bit behind with 49 percent in 2007 and 33 percent in 2006.

The numbers match those of studies elsewhere:

Another recently announced English analysis from it company Fujitsu shows a significant growth in e-shopping and a stagnation in the physical shopping. The consumers will do more shopping online expecting to do a good deal.

Let's just hope that the Danish postal service doesn't get any worse than it is now, cause that could seriously pull the carpet away under online shopping - providing that you buy goods and not software, of course.

Danish bookstore goes mobile

The largest online bookstore here in Denmark, Saxo, has just announced that it will be launching a mobile version of their shop, designed for, you guessed it, the mobile phone.

This is no doubt a sign that the mobile web is growing, and the iPhone and Android phones are no doubt going to fuel that tendency. Which is good, really good.

The Saxo mobile shop works in the simple way that you type "Saxo" into an SMS message and send it to 1230. This will send you a link for the mobile shop. During my short test, however, I was only able to purchase a single book (entitled "Cash"), which is probably the result of some kind of error or the fact that it's still in an early/test phase.

The mobile shop is done in corporation with DIBS, which is one of the largest providers of secure payments here in Denmark and their solution is already used by a variety of Danish online shops, and Cellpoint Mobile, who delivers the mobile platform.

So, as soon as the shop will be fully functioning I'll be sure to have e good look at it. Image, now you can buy that particular book while your friend is recommending it to you. Talk about impulse shopping :-)

Related posts

Tags: Books, Mobile, News, shopping

WordPress 2.4 is cancelled, is now 2.5

The lead translater of the Danish version of open source blogging software WordPress, René, writes on the official WordPress DK blog, that WordPress 2.4 has been cancelled.

The reason is that there are too many corrections to be made, and therefore WP 2.4 could not be ready until March. The next WordPress release will be 2.5, which is set to be out on March 24th.

A Google blog search shows that WPAssist also has a post on this.

Google announces Jaiku acquisition - cut and paste?

Google itself has now officially announced that it has bought Jaiku.

Interesting thing though.. when you look at the blog entry in the blog and in the feed, you'll see a difference:

From the blog:

[...] We plan to use the ideas and technology behind Jaiku to make compelling and useful products. [...]

From the feed:

[...] We plan to use the ideas and technology behind Socialite to make compelling and useful products. [...]

A minor detail, I know ;-)

Google buys Jaiku

Apparently Google has bought microblogging service Jaiku, the Jaiku team writes:

Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.

What does that mean? First and foremost, we’re of course continuing to support our existing users. So fear not: your Jaiku phone, the Web site, IM, SMS, and API will continue to work normally.

The acquisition means that Jaiku has closed for new user signups for the moment — although existing users can invite their friends.

This is great news for Jaiku users and could be Jaikus big break — as far as I've head, Twitter is by far the most popular microblogging service in the US — although Twitter really can't be labeled as 'blogging' since others can't comment on the microposts — Jaiku supports this.

Jaiku is a service that gives you 115 characters per micropost. You can either post from the Jaiku website, your instant messaging client (for instance Google Talk or from your cellphone. More about Jaiku.

Firefox 2.0.0.1 is here

Mozilla has just release Firefox 2.0.0.1 with some security fixes.

View the Firefox 2.0.0.1 release notes and the list of security issues fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.1.

Get Firefox.

Mozillas has also just released Firefox version 1.5.0.9 and Thunderbird 1.5.0.9.

If everything works as planned users of Firefox 2, Firefox 1.5.x and Thunderbird 1.5.x should recieve these as auto-updates.

And, from the Mozilla press list:

Note: Firefox 1.5.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until April 24, 2007. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 2.

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