Posts Tagged ‘Online applications’

Updating your Mozilla Prism to the latest build

I have already twittered about it but figured I'd might as well share it here.

You may know Prism - Mozilla's lightweight version of the Firefox browser. It makes the perfect browser for online applications that you might have running the entire day, such as Gmail or Google Docs that can slow down your browser.

What you might not know is that Prism (formerly known as "Web Runner") is built on Mozilla's XUL Runner runtime:

XULRunner is a Mozilla runtime package that can be used to bootstrap XUL+XPCOM applications that are as rich as Firefox and Thunderbird.

Now, Prism doesn't have nightly builds (a daily developer version of the software for testing purposes) like for instance Firefox, but XUL Runner does. This means that if you (like me) are a sucker for having the latest build, you can update the engine which Prism runs on (XUL Runner).

The recipe can be found here but all you really need to do is to download the latest XUL Runner build (from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/xulrunner/nightly/latest-trunk/), extract it and put the content of the "xulrunner" folder in the already existing "xulrunner" folder in your Prism installation.

This actually solved an issue with my Prism which sometimes wouldn't load right. Now it does, and all it took was a bit of nerding around :-)

WordPress 2.6 to support Google Gears

You probably already know Google Gears - Google's browser plugin, that allows web applications to work in offline mode. This can be Google's own, for example Gmail or Google Docs, but developers can also use the Gears.

And that is what open source blogging sofware WordPress apparently aimes to do in the next version 2.6.

I just downloaded the most recent trunk build and noticed a "Speed up!" link in the top right corner of my WordPress administration interface. When you click it, this screen appears:

The first time you click "Install" you're taken to gears.google.com (if you don't have installed it yet), and after that you restart your browser, klik "Speed up!" again - and now you clik "Enable Google Gears".

Select that you trust WordPress, and now you just have to wait for Google Gears to update your WordPress files:

Nice!

James from Geniosity Musings has a good post on WordPress 2.6 + Google Gears (he has apparently experienced some speed ups!). Also check Google Blog Search to see what others are saying (sorted by time).

Sadly, Google Gears doesn't support the browser I use the most (Firefox 3 trunk).

Enter Hobnox - music production in your browser

More and more applications are living the browser nowadays - especially office applications counting Google Docs, Think Free, Zoho and numerous others.

Some time ago I received an email from a US and German start up, entitled Hobnox - which I just have to tell you about :-)

The first though that strikes you when you enter the homepage is "not another social networking site". But, the most interesting thing with Hobnox is the audio tools, especially Audiotool.

True oldschool equipment
So what is it that Audiotool can do? It allows you to produce music directly in your browser. And it works. Currently you have to TB303 basslines and two drum machines: TR-909 and TR-808.

Connoisseurs will note that this is the exact same setup as in Propellerheads' ReBirth (note: site is down right now) software, but where Rebirth had relatively few effects (delay, distortion, compressor etc) Hobnox features a good range of effect pedals.

And the beautiful part of all this is that you don't have to upgrade or worry about system requirements. The Hobnox team is constantly working to improve the application and the next update will be this summer. I can't wait.

Coming up: Coolness
MIDI control (video: 1 and 2), which allows you to control the application from your MIDI equipment, is in the pipeline and I've also been told from the Hobnox folks that they are working on support for VST instruments and effects.

As for now, you can't save but that is on its way, so is a sequencer and the ability to collaborate with your friends.

When all of the above is implemented, and I can upload my own samples and buy access to more, I'll put my production software to rest and embrace Hobnox in full effect.

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.

Another social bookmarking service from Google

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch writes that "Google Wants You To Share Stuff".

The method: Google's new service for sharing your favorite content: Shared Stuff.

I haven't really had the time to test it yet (I dragged the Shared Stuff icon to my browser bar — but the pop up window doesn't always load correctly) so give it a spin and see what you think ;-)

Google's online presentation application is online

Google's online application for producing presentations, formerly knows as "Presently", is now ready. Read more at the official Google blog.

Yahoo takes a leap forward: Buys e-mail company

CNET News reports that Yahoo buys e-mail software firm Zimbra:

Zimbra offers branded e-mail with calendar and mobile features as well as the ability to work offline. The company has more than 200 educational, business and ISP partners, including Comcast, that offer branded e-mail service to roughly 9 million subscribers.

What differentiates Zimbra are the "Zimlet," Web service mashups that offer richer functionality in e-mail. For instance, people can simply mouse over airline flight information in an e-mail to check on flight status. Users are also able to track FedEx deliveries and get maps, stocks and other information in e-mail too.

GigaOM also has a post on this.

Looks like there's a great deal of stuff happening in the field of browser based email applications. Again. Nice. Very nice.

Check out the Bloglines beta

I use the online feed reader Bloglines to manage and view my various feeds.

Today, when I looked at referrers to this blog and came across beta.bloglines.com.

As you may have guessed it's a beta version of the upcoming Bloglines — and so far I think it looks good.

The first thing you notice, is that you can now generate your own frontpage, based on which of your feeds you drag to the frontpage. Also, I haven't tested this yet, you should be able to drag feeds into and out of folders.

Well, give it a try and see what you think :-)

Microsoft Works 9.0 will cost…nothing

Mary Jo Foley has a post, that Microsoft Works 9.0 will be free of charge and powered economically by ads.

She also writes that there might be a hosted version of the Works office productivity suite popping up in the near future. Read Foley's post for more info.

Facebook buys Parakey — exciting things happening?

Parakey logo This is probably old news already, but as the BBC reports, social networking site Facebook has bought Parakey a startup by two of the founders of the Firefox project, Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt.

Even though the Parakey.com site doesn't offer much enlightenment on exactly what kind of project this is, Wikipedia has an interesting article on Parakey.

It states:

Parakey is a Web-based computer user interface proposed by Firefox contributors Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. Ross describes it as "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do." The idea behind it is to make image, video, and writing transfer to the web easier.

He explains that the current problem with transferring data to the web is that in order to move an image onto the web you first have to transfer pictures from your digital camera, then upload them to a place like Flickr.

Sounds very exciting, eh? I just signed up for an e-mail heads up when Parakey will be launched - I wouldn't miss it for the world :D

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