Category Archives: Technology

Robert Scoble vs Facebook (or Freedom of Information vs. Commercial Silo-ing)

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The Robert Scoble vs. Facebook saga is me thinks a taste of some of what is to come in the year and even years ahead. Its the old silo-race rearing its ugly little head again. Basically Facebook is saying you’re allowed to use ‘your’ accounts information as long as you do so manually, thus their de-activation of Mr Scoble’s account after he used a bit of software to scrape his friends’ contact details. In the end they own the data and are a little bit jealous of it and there is the matter of the Facebook Terms and Conditions.

(The irony is that there are a few useful little odds and ends floating around that can do a whole lot more than get names and email addies from facebook, the last one I gave a test-drive did all of that plus mine out images and other media and went way beyond mining just facebook :-) the hard part is actually figuring out something useful and worth-the-effort to do with such data)

So of course there is a group to go join – Continue reading →

WordPress 2.3 ‘will break a few plugins’

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A brand new – and much better way of dealing with the old tags vs. categories dilemma is probably one of the most exciting aspects of the new WordPress. On the downside it means that some of the more interesting plugins – those plugins that work directly with the database will need some intensive care and updating. Me, I’m pretty glad I havent released the sticky post & manual category based ordering plugin I wrote for www.DavidKrutPublishing.com into the wild yet. :-)

If you’re into the nitty-gritty see Ryan Boren’s post » WordPress 2.3 Taxonomy Schema boren.nu

What I haven’t worked out is if the new core schema allows includes nice-ities afforded by UltimateTagWarrior like showing related posts for the current post etc… or if that will require a new plugin?

the new UNIVERSAL Google search

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The interface design changes that go along with Google’s new ‘Universal Search Model’ – maybe it means Google wants to make more of the decisions for the user, maybe they feel the blended search result types makes specific search types less important – which it probably does.

Google’s New Navigational Links: An Illustrated Guide
… Those vertical search links have been directly above the Google search box for years. Over the coming days, they will now jump to the top left-hand side of the page.
In addition to linking to Web, Images, Video, News and Maps search, there’s also a new Gmail link.

Some interesting reads on the ‘new’ Google : Continue reading →

kiss online radio goodbye, courtesy the Royalty Rates Crisis

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Pandora, that piece of Internet magic that you can could ‘train’ to feed you new music is allready no-longer available in South Africa. They’ve also had to cut their streaming to Canada. I see you can still log into Pandora Backstage to browse and research artists and albums, but… it is terribly mute.

Dunno if you noticed the comment by Tim Westergren – the founder of Pandora – on my previous post on this topic. (Sadest ego boost I’ve experienced in a long time). It’s hectic.

Continue reading →

Telkom Social Media – uhm that’s ironic :-)

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Telkom Media – Riding The New Wave – Tyler Reed
Telkom Media said that Online Communities is a key element of their planned online service offering. This includes social networking, news, photos and video communities.

I would really love to see how they get this right. Maybe I am being too critical but…
same here, me thinks TR is right. Telkom has all the bits and pieces, somehow though they just never get put together properly.

Take the recently re-designed online accounts service’s interface. At a glance it looks ver sleek – but, with Telkom there’s always a ‘but’ somewhere :-)…
Continue reading →

Some Ends and Odds of SEO

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SEO Grand PrixITWEB’s new publication ByteSize, inaugural edition (March 2007) features a nice short and sweet introduction to SEO on page 98, geared like the rest of the publications smartly at the SME context. It closes with a url for a Forrester report based on interviews with 20 companies, including Avenue A | Razorfish.

(ByteSize is a pretty decent piece of work, love the cover which is one of the most successful uses of spot varnishing I’ve seen in a while. It features a goldfish leaping out of its bowl, lime green title-typography on a rich blue background. Excellent job, even with the typo in the article on IPV6 on page 146 :-))

One look at that Forester report will make most mere mortals mouth that mystical magic word involuntarily – ‘OUTSOURCE…’, Continue reading →