Posts Tagged ‘Social web’

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? :-)

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.

Lesson of the day: Open source software rocks

As those of you following me on Twitter (I'm larskjensen) may know, we recently launched our WordPress powered blog community.

For those of you who don't know what WordPress is (although you should! :-)) it's the state of the art blogging software - and it's open source and free of cost. For our blog community we use the multi user version of WordPress, the aptly named WordPress MU.

Well, we've had some problems with some of the themes of an older date. The CSS in them acts quite weird - most often in Internet Explorer 7…

Anyhow, I have an email correspondance with one of our bloggers and I tell him that either I'll try to find an update for the theme or otherwise we'll have to phase out the theme. But before I can do anything he has written me another mail telling me that there is an updated version of the theme and he also gives me the link.

So I translate the theme (by adding the _e and __ WordPress translation functions to .php files of the theme) and update my already existing language file with the new theme, upload it and email our most friendly user to tell him that the new theme is now online for him to test.

All this just to point out one thing: Open. Source. Software. Rules. :-)

PS: This blog is running on the single blog version of WordPress - of course.

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.

Facebook trying to get rid of the "is"

As you may or may not know, I use the social browser Flock and loving it — except it doesn't support WordPress' tagging system :-( — but today I noticed something strange.

In my Facebook people sidebar in Flock all of my friends' statuses what suddenly saying "is is" instead of just "is". For instance: "Søren is is confused".

Since I haven't updated Flock I assumed, that the issue related to Facebook itself. So I did the only decent thing and asked Google.

And what pops up as the first result? A blog post from Flock's community ambassador, Evan Hamilton, explaining this issue.

The reason for the "is is": Apparently Facebook is trying to get rid of the "is" in the status messages, to give the users a broader use of the status updates. What at nice thing to do, to blog about it :-)

"Lars is is happy" ;-)

Surfing Facebook just got a whole lot better

And I owe it all to the new beta (release candidate 3) of the social browser Flock.

I've been testing the beta for some time now, but it wasn't until now that I discovered the actual power of the People sidebar. Whenever people update their profile on Facebook, the sidebar updates itself. I can also choose to sort by name if I'd prefer that. And I can search through my friends.

Plus I can view my friends' media directly in Flock, I don't even have to visit the profile and click "View photos of %username%". Now that is sweet.

To the developers at Flock: That's a mighty fine piece of work!

The People sidebar also supports accounts on YouTube, Flickr and Twitter (not Jaiku, sadly…).

TechCrunch and I agree: Flock 1.0 is nice

After running alpha builds of the 1.1 I just got my invitation to the private beta of the upcoming 1.0 version of the social web browser Flock.

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch feels the same way about Flock 1.0 as I do: Flock 1.0 Beta Released: Surprisingly Very Good

I'm not going to go further into the functionality of the new version, since Riley covers this very well in his post.

Get Flocking, people :-)

For those of you that might not know: Flock is build on the Mozilla Firefox core, which means that a whole lot of Firefox extensions will work with Flock as well.

Flock 1.0 is underway

The Flock team has introduced the 1.0 version of the social web browser at TechCrunch 40.

One of the new features in the new version, that I've had the change to test in a nightly build of Flock, is the People sidebar. What is basically does is, that it, for instance, shows your Facebook friends in the left sidebar, when you're logged into Facebook.

From the sidebar you'll have various options. For more information, watch this People tutorial which gives a pretty good introduction.

Right now I'm sitting on Flock 1.1a1pre and People isn't really working here, so no sense in downloading the latest Flock trunk right now.

Instead you could sign up for the Flock 1.0 beta — which I have just done.

As Flock 1.0 is on its way, Flock 0.7 is sliding into the dark.

Microsoft investing in Facebook?

Just saw that The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft might be very interesting in investing in social startup Facebook.

Facebook has — according to the WSJ — 40 million users, and Microsoft (and apparently also Google) is now trying to grab a piece of the action.

Microsoft's approach to Facebook in recent weeks with proposals to invest in the fast-growing site is part of the software giant's effort to catch up with the Internet rival Google. If successful, Microsoft's talks with Facebook could give it an up-to-5% stake in the closely-held startup—a stake potentially valued at roughly $300 million to $500 million, the people familiar with those talks said.

The people familiar with the matter said that the discussions are still preliminary and Facebook could wind up not taking an investment from either Microsoft or Google. Factors in the discussions include the valuation the suitors would offer to Facebook and other business considerations they could contribute to sweeten any deal.

I wonder if there's anything else than an increase in Facebook's value in store for us, if either Microsoft or Google starts to invest in a company like Facebook. Some time ago Rupert Murdoch snatched MySpace — the far biggest social site/community.

In the past years Google and Microsoft have been in an internetish "battle of the titans". Things might get a lot more interesting…

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Tags: Businesses, Microsoft, Social web

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