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Make Magazine Weekend Project: Beetlebot - Simple robot from your parts bin that avoids obstacles
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 21, 2009
Asia Continues to be Facebook's Strongest Growth Region
November 20, 2009
With Facebook topping 330 million active users over the past week, the company's strongest growth region continues to be Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook added close to 17M active users in Asia alone. Since my previous post, the share of active users from Asia grew by 2% (to 13.5% of all users), and roughly 1 in 7 users now come from the region. With a market penetration under 2%, Facebook is poised to add many more users in Asia (and Africa).
Four short links: 20 November 2009 - Social Network Search for Morons, Bulking Up Bio Data, Better E-Mail, Better Standards
November 20, 2009
Introducing the Open Web Foundation Agreement -- Applying the open source approach to better standards. The Open Web Foundation Agreement itself establishes the copyright and patent rights for a specification, ensuring that downstream consumers may freely implement and reuse the licensed specification without seeking further permission. In addition to the agreement itself, we also created an easy-to-read "Deed" that provides a high level overview of the agreement. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Health gets personal in the cloud - Google Health Beta and Microsoft's My Health Info
November 19, 2009
Healthcare in the near future will be quite different than it is today. Web enabled technology is already changing the way medicine is practiced. As the digital nation comes of age we will see new opportunities, and new challenges, bringing healthcare in America into the 21st century. Health consumers will come to expect they will have control over their own health data. Having secure, interoperable access to clinical data will allow patients to partner with their care providers in new ways incorporating Web 2.0 principles.
Google Closure: A New Way of Developing in JavaScript - A Guide and Links to Google Closure's Mature and Complex JavaScript Framework
November 19, 2009
Every day million people make use of Google products and these products are written mainly using one well known language: JavaScript! What makes this online software stable, fast and responsive is a good use of the language and an excellent system of data compression and asynchronous loading. Today this power is available to everyone, since Google has released its magic tool under Apache 2 license.
Featured Ignite Video: Blessed Are the Cheesemakers - Episode 39
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 19, 2009
Subscribe to this video podcast series via iTunes. Or, visit the O'Reilly Media area at iTunes to find other podcasts from O'Reilly.
Open for Business - Designing Social Interfaces
November 19, 2009
This is an excerpt from Designing Social Interfaces. From the creators of Yahoo!'s Design Pattern Library, Designing Social Interfaces provides you with more than 100 patterns, principles, and best practices, along with salient advice for many of the common challenges you'll face when starting a social website. Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone share hard-won insights into what works, what doesn't, and why. You'll learn how to balance opposing factions and grow healthy online communities by co-creating them with your users.
Four short links: 19 November 2009 - Chumby One, Gorgeous IE Debugger, Freer Than Free, and Phone-a-Friend for Government IT
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 19, 2009
Less Than Free -- Begins by talking about Google giving away turn-by-turn directions on Android, and then analyses Google's "less than free" business model: Additionally, because Google has created an open source version of Android, carriers believe they have an “out” if they part ways with Google in the future. I then asked my friend, “so why would they ever use the Google (non open source) license version.” Here was the big punch line - because Google will give you ad splits on search if you use that version! That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally “less than free” price point, Symbian or windows mobile would need to subsidize. Double ouch!! This and more in today's Four Short Links.
CarTunes
November 18, 2009
Green Technologies and Interactive Audio are two fields not generally considered related, but a new trend may change that: "Generated Sounds for Electric Vehicles", aka "EV Audio", aka "CarTunes". When I first heard that "electric cars are so quiet, manufacturers want them to make noise", I had a strong memory flashback to 1995, when I was contracted to produce my first ringtone (Fur Elise for Sprint PCS). At the time, I thought "mobile phone plays melody when it rings" was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard of; now, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. If you think audio personalization of your cellphone is an important statement of your individuality (as many do), imagine how much more important personalizing the sound of your car will be!
Success of a Broadcast Medium: The Muzak Transmission Process
November 18, 2009
Muzak grew from constant technological innovation and originally succeeded as a broadcast medium using spare spectrum, a business model rarely examined today.
Visualizing Stackoverflow's data dump
November 18, 2009
Stackoverflow releases a monthly XML data dump (CC-licensed) of all the data in their system. Unlike a lot of other data sets that just reflects what developers are buying, this data reflects what developers are actually using and asking questions about, which is pretty cool. I used this dataset to create a topic map that reflects the relationships among the top topics (based on how frequently the topic was used as a tag on a post) for the month of October, 2009. There was a lot of interesting stuff in here. For example, I love the fact that plain old "regex" is the main link between "php" and "c#." Also, it's interesting that only PHP has a direct link to various database topics; I would have expected databases to be more central.
E-Readers Up Close: Using the Sony PRS-700
November 18, 2009
William Stanek here, continuing with the in-depth look at e-readers and e-books. The recap: In my earlier blog entries, I've explored the ins and outs of e-ink, electronic paper displays (EPDs) and e-readers. Now, I'm examining individual readers as a case study in how e-readers work. As I stated in previous posts, my hope is that if you are better informed, you can decide whether e-readers are right for you. So here's another installment in the Sony Reader discussion, focusing on the features of the Sony PRS-700.
Four short links: 18 November 2009 - Web Time Travel, UK Map Data Liberation, Streetview Mashups, 3D Retail
November 18, 2009
Mapsicle -- Is an open source Javascript library to create mashups and application on Google Streetview, from NZ developers Project X. It has been released by Google as part of the Maps Utility library. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
The iPhone: Tricorder Version 1.0?
November 18, 2009
The iPhone, in addition to revolutionizing how people thought about mobile phone user interfaces, also was one of the first devices to offer a suite of sensors measuring everything from the visual environment to position to acceleration, all in a package that could fit in your shirt pocket. On December 3rd, O'Reilly will be offering a one-day online edition of the Where 2.0 conference, focusing on the iPhone sensors, and what you can do with them.
What Does Innovative Social Engagement Look Like For Businesses and Governments?
November 18, 2009
I've been thinking about the topic of Government 2.0 a lot lately. Part of this topic deals with the multi-directional engagement between government and citizens. It seems to me that everyone can celebrate the fact that government entities merely have a YouTube channel here, a Twitter account there, or a Blogger profile some other place (the so-called "TGIF revolution"), or we can think a little harder about what the goals of citizen engagement really might be, and how to go about achieving them.
Four short links: 17 November 2009 - Digital Natives, Supersexy C64 Debugger, a Google Tripwire, and a Patient Botnet
November 17, 2009
ICU64 -- an open source Commodore 64 emulator (Frodo) hacked to visually and textually display memory. Watch the video embedded below, it's hypnotic and seductive. It immediately made me want one for my programs (without having to port my code back to 6502 assembler). (via waxy whose return from pneumonia is greatly welcomed)
Flex 101: Customize Scrollbars
By Andrew TriceNovember 17, 2009
Customizing scrollbars in Flex is something that I see requested all the time, and it's actually really easy to do. I see requests for things like getting rid of the buttons, or making the scroll bar less intrusive to the UI. In this post, we'll walk through some simple css style changes to customize scrollbar appearance.
Live in New York: Web 2.0 Expo - The Power of Less
November 16, 2009
The Web 2.0 Expo is happening right now in New York. You can watch selected sessions streamed live from Web 2.0 Expo New York plus additional off-stage interviews and demos! The morning schedule includes: Designing Social Websites Part I Real-Time Marketing: Operationalizing The Use of Social Media Simple is Hard The Lean Startup: a Disciplined Approach to Imagining, Designing, and Building New Products Good Design Faster Communilytics: Applied Community Analytics Search as Strategy: Connecting with Customers in the Age of Google Find news coverage and the latest photos and video, plus the full session schedule at the Web 2.0 Expo site.
The War For the Web
November 16, 2009
It is becoming clear to me that we are heading into a bloody period of competition that could be extremely unfriendly to the interoperable web as we know it today. If you've followed my thinking about Web 2.0 from the beginning, you know that I believe we are engaged in a long term project to build an internet operating system. I've outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the "small pieces loosely joined" model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects. We're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill. And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.
URI Manager Utility
November 16, 2009
Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - URI Manager Utility. In the past I have talked about using RegEx to create a utility for replacing tokens in a string. My uri manager utility follows the same concept but helps you organize all of your URIs in a external file. Not only that but when you request them when, you can customize their values on the fly. Whether you are keeping track of 1 or 100+ URIs this simple utility will help make your life way easier.
Four short links: 16 November 2009 - Visualizing Adventures, Droid Deployments, Fly Vision, and Mass Meat For You
November 16, 2009
Meat Band Aids and Mass Production of Living Tissue -- Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions), that, when applied to chronic wounds (particularly nasty problems like diabetic sores), can seed healing and regeneration. You'll find this Gizmodo Q&A is informative. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Lost Screw Finder - A MAKE Magazine Weekend Project Video
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 14, 2009
The Wall Street Journal on DIY - Make Magazine Grows with America's Renewed Interest in Tinkering
November 13, 2009
Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis — "Make magazine, with articles on building items such as solar hot tubs and autopilots for robots, has grown from 22,000 subscribers in 2005 to more than 100,000 now. Its annual "Maker Faire" in San Mateo, Calif., attracted 75,000 people this year," writes reporter Justin Lahart in the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, he continues, "the American tradition of tinkering--the spark for inventions from the telephone to the Apple computer--is making a comeback, boosted by renewed interest in hands-on work amid the economic crisis and falling prices of high-tech tools and materials." Read more.
Featured Gov2.0 Video: Cybersecurity Challenge - The Future of War is in Cyberspace
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 13, 2009
Four short links: 13 November 2009 - Open Source Design, Interesting NoSQL Use, Copyright Documentary, Location Intelligence
November 13, 2009
Open Source Enters The World of Atoms -- An academic statistical analysis of open design. We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Featured Ignite Video: Language is a Map by Tim O'Reilly - Ignite Show Episode 38
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 12, 2009
Four short links: 12 November 2009 - CRM on Rails, Data Mining on Hadoop, Disappointing Keynotes, The Teapot Effect
November 12, 2009
Bixo -- An open source data mining toolkit that runs as a series of pipes on top of Hadoop. Built on Cascading workflow system for Hadoop that hides MapReduce. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Quarantined Conferences: Claustrophobic Technophiles or Attentive Audiences?
November 12, 2009
Loren Feldman. 1938 Media. Audience Conference. That’s about as much of a summary as you’ll find about the Audience Conference held in New York last Friday. That’s because there were no open laptops allowed during the performances. There was also no Wi-Fi, no video streaming, no tweeting, and no blogging. I disagree with the notion that everything needs to be live streamed, live blogged, and live tweeted merely because we can.
Counting Unique Users in Real-time with Streaming Databases
November 12, 2009
As the web increasingly becomes real-time, marketers and publishers need analytic tools that can produce real-time reports. As an example, the basic task of calculating the number of unique users is typically done in batch mode (e.g. daily) and in many cases using a random sample from relevant log files. If unique user counts can be accurately computed in real-time, publishers and marketers can mount A/B tests or referral analysis to dynamically adjust their campaigns.
Smartphone Data Dependency--Is It Good for Us? - Joshua-Michele Ross Predicts Changes in Products and Services
November 11, 2009
When Your IPhone Knows Everything--"We are becoming accustomed to using our phones in-the-moment to answer all manner of questions (from nearby movie times to the name of the last Steven Soderbergh film)," writes Joshua-Michele Ross in a new O'Reilly Insights column on Forbes.com. "This small behavioral change has enormous consequences as more and more of our physical world finds its "data-doppleganger" online." Ross thinks products and services will change with data available to consumers nearly 24/7. See if you agree with his predictions.
Featured Make Magazine Video: The Inductor - Learn About Induction and Make Your Own Electromagnet with a D Cell Battery, an Iron Nail and Enameled Wire
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 11, 2009
Four short links: 11 November 2009 - Participation Tools, Open Data Requests, Go Programming Language, Why Open Source is Better
November 11, 2009
Go -- new language from Bell Labs and Unix central figures Rob Pike and Ken Thompson, who now work at Google. Bits of C, bits of Google, it compiles to native binaries and runs nearly as fast as C. Built with concurrency and memory management as central figures. Not used in production at Google yet, but grew from a 20% project to something worthy of public release. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Leaked Draft of EU Interop Framework
By Rick JelliffeNovember 11, 2009
Two months ago I alerted readers Europeans: only two weeks left to comment on ICT & standards whitepaper. I am not sure on which dots actually join up, but a Dutch website has what is claimed to be a leaked late draft in English of European Interoperability Framework for European Public Services (EIF) Version 2.0. Here are some of the general recommendations related to standards and issues raised on this blog.
Converting to Electronic Health Records: fits and starts
November 11, 2009
Data and communications are critical contributors to health care. I recently attended a forum on how my state, Massachusetts, is facilitating the move to Electronic Health Records, a prerequisite for many things doctors, patients, and insurance companies can do to improve health. It's notable that the chief sponsor of the event, the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, was largely set up by insurance companies. Lots of invective has been thrown at these companies recently, but the questions of technology can pull together the insurers, providers, and patients in a common quest. My own understanding of the progress and frustrations in deploying heath care technology was enhanced by the conversations I had that day and the statistics bandied about.
Featured Gov2.0 Video: The Three Revolutions in American Law
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 10, 2009
Four short links: 10 November 2009 - DIY Diagnostic Chips, Genetics on $5k a Genome, Cellphones as Diagnostic Microscopes, AR-Equipped Mechanics Do It Heads-Up
November 10, 2009
A children's toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips -- Microfluidic chips (with tiny liquid-filled channels) can cost $100k and more. Michelle Khine used the Shrinky Dinks childrens' toy to make her own. "I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels the right size for microfluidics," she says. This and more in today's Four Short Links!
E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 2
November 10, 2009
William Stanek here, continuing with the in-depth look at e-readers and e-books. In my earlier blog entries, I introduced EPDs, discussed how the technology works, and delved briefly into ways they're being used. Now, I'm examining the Sony Reader as a case study in how e-readers work. My hope is that if you are better informed, you can decide whether an e-reader is right for you. And who knows, an e-reader may just replace your MP3 player as your favorite device. And now, back to the Sony Reader discussion of the PRS 505 and the PRS-700.
Upcoming Webcast: Tokyo Cabinet in One Hour - Meet Experts Online
November 10, 2009
Tokyo Cabinet is a fast, synchronous key/value database library with support for several major languages, including Ruby. We will look at both its benefits and its problems, and work through several examples that demonstrate its capabilities, ease of use from Ruby, and performance potential. At the end of the talk there will be a question and answer session. Attendance is limited, so register now! More Upcoming Webcasts and Online Conferences: O'Reilly Where 2.0 Online Conference - An Emphasis on iPhone Sensors Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!
Today in O'Reilly Answers - The Droid, Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect, Technology for Political Candidates, and more
November 9, 2009
Should I Dump My iPhone for an Android? If the Droid's "unlimited" data plan from Verizon is only 5 GB a month, how much data do people usually use? How to Overcome the Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect I'm a Political Candidate. What Technology Do I Need for My Campaign? Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.
5 Tips For Flash Unit Testing
November 9, 2009
Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over 5 Tips for Unit Testing. Unit Testing and Test Driven Development are a hot topics in the Flash community lately, especially on Twitter. A few weeks ago, after realizing how complex my F*CSS library was getting, I decided to go back and write FlexUnit test for the library in a hope to use TDD moving forward.
The Minds Behind Some of the Most Addictive Games Around - If you've wasted half your life playing Peggle, Bejeweled, Zuma or Plants vs. Zombies, blame these guys!
November 9, 2009
The gaming industry tends to focus on the high end products, first person shooters that crank out a bazillion polygons a seconds and RPGs which spend more time developing the plot in cut scenes than in actual gameplay. But for every person playing Borderlands, there are scores playing casual games like Bejeweled and Zuma. PopCap Games has been at the forefront of casual game development, with a catalog that includes bestselling titles like Peggle and Plants vs Zombies, in addition to the two previously mentioned. I recently had a chance to talk to Jason Kapalka, one of the founders and the creative director of PopCap. We discussed the evolution of PopCap, how the casual gaming industry differs from mainstream gaming, and the challenges of creating games that can be engaging, without being frustrating.
Four short links: 9 November 2009 - Moth Mind Readers, Shiny UI Futures, Usable Newspapers, Hardware Testing
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 9, 2009
New Microsoft Interface Technology -- videos from Craig Mundie (Chief Research and Strategy Officer) on the MS Campus Tour talking about the future of UI using a sexy glass prototype that features tablet PC, gesture, speech recognition, and even eye tracking. Lustable. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Unlikely Group Working Happily Together To Solve Patent Problem
By Carl MalamudNovember 9, 2009
People following the issue of open sourcing the U.S. Patent Database might have been surprised to read an announcement in the official business opportunities web site of the U.S. Government: Synopsis for Public Data Dissemination Sole Source Contract to Google, Inc. While the first reaction of many might be "OMG, WTF, how could they," this is actually good news, with an unlikely cast of characters working together including Google, Intellectual Ventures, and the Internet Archive.
E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 1
November 9, 2009
William Stanek here, taking an up close look at e-readers. First up, the Sony e-readers. Sony unveiled its first reader device in January 2006 and the device became available in early 2007. The Sony Reader, like all currently available e-readers, has a black-and-white active matrix EPD display. As with other devices and E Ink itself, the Sony Reader has evolved through several generations of products.
Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Three
November 9, 2009
As we move from the "web of information" to the "web of people" (aka the Social Web) the output of all of this social participation is massive dossiers on individual behavior (your social network profiles, photos, location, status updates, searches etc.) and social activity. This loss of control over personal information is on a collision course with the law of unintended consequences Amidst this barrage of good news for how much power we wield in the transaction of commerce one has to wonder if we are giving away something quite precious in the bargain.
How to Make an Atlatl Throwing Spear - A Make Magazine Weekend Project
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 7, 2009
Practicing the Art of Less - Web 2.0 Expo Co-chairs Jennifer Pahika and Brady Forrest on Minimalism
November 6, 2009
The Power of Less — "Practicing the art of less, whether it's agile development, minimalist business plans or spare graphic design, has had a momentum all its own during the rise of Web 2.0," write Jennifer Pahika and Brady Forrest in new O'Reilly Insights on Forbes.com. "But the art of less got a significant boost since economic conditions deteriorated, and less became the one thing we all had plenty of. In the best case scenarios, creative "power of less" responses to dramatic budget cuts have resulted in outcomes much better than the status quo, especially when technology was leveraged," add the chairs of the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo in NYC. See if you agree. Read more.
Why Speakers Earn $30,000 an Hour - Scott Berkun's Confessions--A Sneak Peek
November 6, 2009
"I know I'm paid for something that, in the grand scheme, is not Work." writes Scott Berkun in his new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker. In this free excerpt, Scott discusses speakers' fees, his and others, along with what's cool or not so hot about talking for a living. Scott adds: "The unspoken risk I run is having no salary. I have no pension. I have no extended contract guaranteeing me lecture gigs forever. This book could bomb or be destroyed in reviews, and my speaking career could come to an unfortunate and immediate end, which in the grand scheme of things would be OK." Read the entire excerpt now.
Will Google Wave Reinvent the Way We Communicate or Fall Flat? - Share Your Knowledge of Google Wave
November 6, 2009
Today in Answers, a user wants more info and less hype on Google Wave: "What's so revolutionary about Google Wave? Can somebody break down the features and benefits of the service in such a way as to convince the average user of its ability to change the way we communicate?" Join the conversation and share your knowledge or ask a question of your own in O'Reilly Answers.
Featured Ignite Video: Visualizing the US Senate by Social Graph - Ignite Presentation by Andrew Odewahn
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 6, 2009
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