September 24, 2007
Microsoft are eyeing a stake in Facebook; that’s the story, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Well, not so much the WSJ; more like”people familiar with the matter”)
Hot on the heels of the news that Google is about to expand on their efforts in the social networking services space, with the goal of out-Facebooking Facebook, the news that Microsoft is waving their cheque book around isn’t really news. This is Microsoft at their most predictable:
- identify a space they want to occupy
- identify a company who is already doing great stuff in that space
- try and buy them before someone else does
In this case, buying Facebook outright might not be an option. Yet.
That might change when/if Google do publish an API that would enable open and cross-platform access to the social graph. Microsoft may feel that they have little alternative but to dangle a big enough carrot in front of Mark Zuckerberg to ensure they don’t lose any more ground to the mighty “GOOG”.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, social networking, social graph
Share This
Posted in Google, Microsoft 
Comments Off
September 18, 2007
I just noticed what looks like a bug with Google Reader in Firefox. I was reading long post by Marc Andreessen, and wanted to declutter the screen so clicked the “collapse sidebar icon” (highlighted at left; notice also the width of the scrollbar in the article pane - highlighted at right):
And I found that with the sidebar and subscription list collapsed (again, highlighted on the left), the scrollbar on the article pane (see right) had also collapsed, and was so thin that it was almost impossible to grab:
So, I tried IE7, to see if that had the same problem:
As you can see, it looks fine in IE, so the problem appears to be with Firefox. It’s a minor cosmetic bug, but I’m sure it’s something the Reader developers would want to fix.
I don’t have Opera or Safari for Windows installed, so can’t test with those browsers; nor do I own a Mac, so I can’t test whether this is specific to the Windows versions of Firefox, either. If you’re running another browser on a non-Windows hardware platform, maybe you can help.
Share This
Posted in Google, applications, web2.0 Comments Off
September 13, 2007
Splashcast, the site where users can create their own media channels using pretty much any media they like - video, photos, audio, text, PDF documents, and even Powerpoint presentations - has announced today that, among the new features, their latest Splashcast player offers inline posting to Twitter.
To show you this in action, I’ve embedded Paul O’Flaherty’s channel, just here. If you click Start, you’ll see a small “t” icon just above the player controls; click the icon and the channel is paused, while a box is displayed over the top for you to provide your Twitter username and password. The message you twitter will include a link back to the channel.
I can’t think of any other site that has Twitter messaging so deeply embedded into its guts; something echoed by Rick Turoczy. Twitter users are used to manually processing URLs they want to tweet through services like TinyURL, or URLTea, but Splashcast viewers can now do this without having to leave the site.
Via Marshall Kirkpatrick, who has been Twittering this like a proud Dad!
Share This
Posted in media, web2.0 1 Comment »
September 12, 2007
The latest update for Windows Live Writer is available for download; in addition to a bug reported here, it also seems to contain a couple of extra, and unsolicited surprises. When the installer starts, you click through the ToS, and are faced by this:
I just wanted Live Writer installed on my computer - I have no idea what Sign-In Assistant does, and I don’t use Messenger, so it’s of no use to me, but there they are, being installed.
At first, I thought I had simply clicked through on a previous screen without deselecting the two options I didn’t want, so I cancelled the install and started again. Same result - at no point was I asked if I want to deselect these optional extras, which means you can’t install Live Writer on its own.
The system requirements for Live Writer make no mention of Sign-In Assistant and Messenger being required components, so I can’t understand why they’re not optional. There’s no good reason I can think of for a legitimate application vendor to install stuff on my computer that I don’t want or need, and Microsoft really should know better.
Equally annoying (but, at least de-selectable) the 4 boxes for Mail, Toolbar, Photo Gallery and Family Safety are checked by default.
The new release does have some new features, like the ability to insert video and preview within a Live Writer dialogue:
The Insert Picture dialogue is improved too, featuring a Preview for pictures inserted via the web.
Also included in this release is support for printing, which is a bit of a puzzle to me, but I guess someone might need to print out their blog posts, as well actually post them.
After going for so long without an update, it’s good to see another release (and not just a bug-fix, too,) so soon after the last one. Live Writer is easy to set up, easy to use and is still my blogging tool of choice. And, despite my mini-rant just now, I would highly recommend you check it out, if you haven’t already.
Hat-tip to Springnet, for the heads-up via Twitter.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Live Writer, tools, blog, writing, utilities
Share This
Posted in applications, blogging, software 2 Comments »
September 6, 2007
Just yesterday, when asked about reducing the price of the iPhone barely 10 weeks after release, Steve Job’s response was “..that’s technology“.
Today, after the early adopters, who were prepared to pay a stupid amount of money for the kudos of owning a locked-down, locked-in cellphone-cum-music-player, voiced their unhappiness, the thought of all those torch and, presumably, iPhone-wielding villagers descending on Cupertino was sufficiently scary to prompt Steve Jobs to do an about turn and offer them a $100 olive branch.
While everyone accepts that the price of any consumer electronic device will fall, no-one - especially not the crucial early-adopters who are prepared to pay a premium for, essentially, beta-testing the thing - expects to see it fall by that much, that soon.
In the end, this will cost Apple a few tens of millions to put right, but with the huge margins on the iPhone, it won’t really hurt them financially. The fact that Steve Jobs has acted so quickly speaks volumes about how good Apple are at responding to the mood of their customers, so unless they decide to rebate only those people activated their phones with AT&T, their reputation won’t be damaged by this either.
Share This
Posted in Apple, gadgets Comments Off
September 6, 2007
When I made the switch from Attensa to Google Reader, one the first things that I noticed was that there was no Search function.
Something I noticed today, though, is that this (blindingly obvious omission!) has now been rectified:
If I was being hyper-critical, I would say that the new Search box look like it’s been plonked there with little or no thought about design aesthetic. I hope that in the next update they move it to the left-hand side, where the other functions live.
Despite that, it’s a welcome and much-needed improvement. The default is to search all items - both read and unread - but a drop down menu allows you to filter down by Starred, Shared, feed, folder or tag.
Read more about it here.
Share This
Posted in Google Comments Off
content rss
Recent Comments