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I will be going offline for a couple of weeks, starting tomorrow. This is not some innovative web2.0 experiment intended to explore the possibilities of living without email. Rather, it is a much more mundane call to reserve army service :).
I will be back with a vengeance come May 1st, with further coverage of some cool new features from outbrain.com, plus a review of Google Calendar and the wonderful ways you can make it work together with Outlook 2007.
See you in a couple of weeks.
urig.
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Spotback which advertises itself as the "rate everything!" platform for the web 2.0 is finally out of private beta and available to the public.
Spotback provides widgets that blog writers can embed in their blogs. The widgets enable readers to both rate blog posts and see which blogs posts have received the highest ratings from others.
Spotback users are also provided with a personalized recommendation service that takes their past ratings into consideration - a bit like outbrain.com.
I haven't given Spotback a "run for their money" (note that the service is totally free :) ), but it sounds promising. Their public launch should spice up the competition in the emerging arena of personalized rating-based content.
Check back here for a full review of Spotback's new public features.
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Ever since I've upgraded from IE6 to IE7, I've noticed that whenever I reopen my Internet Explorer, all my toolbars get messed up. It's as if they are reset to the original "factory" setting, regardless of how carefully I've tweaked them before previously closing IE7.
Clearly something was wrong, but to my surprise the fault lay not with "Evil Microsoft" but with the "Benevolent Google"'s beloved Google Toolbar(!). I've learned here that the Google Toolbar uses some evil voodoo ("hijacks ITBarLayout from within its satellite BHO") which interferes with IE7's layout mechanism.
Luckily, a site called IECustomizer.com makes a simple solution available here. It's a small Windows Registry .reg file that disables the Google Toolbar's BHO with the effect of restoring IE7's toolbars to their normal self, while keeping the Google Toolbar alive and well.
I've tried it and I'm pleased to say that it works. Now it's up to Google to fix their code so other people don't have to go digging for third-part solutions. I wonder how I can submit a bug report...?
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A couple of weeks ago I've had the pleasure of attending outbrain.com's "friends night out". A small get together of bloggers, outbrain.com crew and sympathizers. Not only was it great fun, it was also educational as Dr. Nahum Sharfman (of shopping.com fame) gave a short talk about the recent web 2.0 startup boom.
Dr. Sharfman's bottom line seems to be that nobody knows what's going to catch on and what isn't, with the one exception that a viable business model should be the prerequisite for anyone thinking of getting involved.
I heartily second that. I dread the thought of a repeat of the .com bubble and its collapse. I think that if investors avoid spending money on ideas that have no clear way of returning that money, then that would keep the it market stabler and give a better chance for the genuine articles to succeed.
But I digress. What I'd really like this post to be about is outbrain.com. Outbrain's idea is to give you a steady feed of blog posts that are custom tailored to your interests and reading preferences. The key concept is that you rate whatever content you happen to read, wherever you get to read it, and based on these ratings outbrain's algorithms will supply you with relevant new sources.
Rating content is done through a small FireFox extension that gives you a standard "5 stars control" at the bottom of your browser:
An IE7 extension is to be released soon. The FireFox extension has recently been upgraded to also embed the "5 stars control" inside Google Reader, adjacent to each post:
Now how convenient is that? (With the exception of it currently only working in Expanded View :) )
In return, outbrain gives you an RSS feed with up-to-date blog posts that match your interests. This personalized feed is a great way to get to know blogs and other sources that you might not have the chance to find in other ways. I've already added 3 new blogs to my reader and I'm sure I'll be adding more.
Bottom line - You should definitely check out outbrain.com for yourself!
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I've finally gotten around for some long delayed blog maintenance. Here are some nice tweaks that you too can employ:
I've added a button linking to my LinkedIn profile. This is one of Guy Kawaski's Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn. LinkedIn have a wide selection of customized buttons available. If you want one, sign in, click "My Profile", click "Edit my Public Profile" and there find the link to "Promote your profile with customized buttons".
On a side note, I would recommend that you set "Your Public Profile URL" first. That would give you a friendly URL that goes directly to your public profile. Friendly not only means easier for users to type-in but also for search engines to index.
I've customized Snap Preview Anywhere to be less conspicuous for my web readers. That means setting the color scheme to match that of the blog, having it only preview external links and making it only pop out when you hover over one of the small bubble icons next to a link. I hope this keeps it useful and at the same time unobtrusive. (If you feel different - please let me know).
I've properly set the Title, Description and also the meta keywords and description. This should help both human and computer readers take an accurate first impression of what the blog is about and whether it's worth their time.
Further improvements to follow!
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Don't ask me how I ended up there, but "Dig Deep and Go Further with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005" has some nice freebie book chapters on VS2005 plus discounts on the actual books (mostly for US residents).