Facebook in challenge to Google – BBC News

Posted by lemiffe in Business, Communication, Computers, Entertainment, Internet, Society on Aug 11th, 2009 | 0 comments

“Facebook was unable to acquire Twitter so this is the next best option,” said Ben Parr, associate editor of Mashable, a news blog covering social media.

“Google look out, Facebook knows the real money is in real-time search,” said respected blogger Robert Scoble.

“Google is the king of regular search. FriendFeed is the king of real-time search. This makes the coming battle over this issue much more interesting,” Mr Scoble told the BBC.

“FriendFeed is well known for having some powerful and intelligent technology that allows users to aggregate everything they do online and do it all in real time.

What does FriendFeed do?

• Friendfeed lets users bring together many of the accounts they have on social media and networking sites such as Facebook and Flickr
• Updates posted on those sites by a user and their friends are echoed on FriendFeed.
• A built in chat system lets FriendFeed users instantly comment or start a conversation about an update.
• These feeds of what friends are up to can be embedded in webpages or fed out to services such as Twitter.
• FriendFeed works with almost 60 sites including Delicious, Reddit, LinkedIn and NetVibes.

“With this acquisition, Facebook is gunning directly not only at Twitter, but at Google. This is a warning shot to those two companies,” Mr Parr told BBC News.

via BBC NEWS | Technology | Facebook in challenge to Google.

Smalltalk about Feminism, Chauvinism and FCPs

Posted by lemiffe in Life, Politics, Society on Aug 2nd, 2009 | 0 comments

I’ve always uphelp that morally, ideologically, culturally, laborly, and socially women and men should be treated equally. Many activist groups, thinkers, writers, jorunalists, photographers and general members of society have fought throughout the years to achieve this.

But we are a long way away from achieving this. As author Ariel Levy wrote in her first book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, “If Male Chauvinist Pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.”

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The increasing level of connectivity between Social Sites

Posted by lemiffe in Business, Computers, Internet, lemiffe, Security, Society, Technology, WebDesign on Jul 31st, 2009 | 0 comments

A few years ago I dreamt of being able to have all this connectivity, lets say, things being published here, automatically-published there, and elsewhere. I knew we were getting there, as I have been configuring my services for the past few months, but I didn’t know we are so advanced.

If I made a rundown or a graph explaining the connectivity between social media sites I currently have, it would grow too large, or the connections would not exactly be easy to draw. * Update: Well I’ve decided to draw it anyway:

For instance: My Youtube is posting to facebook, google reader, twitter and two of my blogs. One of those blogs is lemiffe.com which when receiving a post will alert ping.fm which will then release a post of my new blog post to facebook, twitter, my blog at blogger, myspace, google talk’s status, and quite a few other sites.

Now, the only problem I currently see is the level of redundancy. Sites talked to other sites, which in turn talk to other sites, so whenever these sites provide much more connectivity to other services we might end up in a cyclic-post system in which one service posts to the other which in turn posts back to the first one initiating a never-ending cycle in which the user would have to stop one or the other service manually.

I really believe more insight should be applied, like, verifying the other sites connectivity and checking it will not repost to a site the first site has already posted to. This can be done via pure XML transactions between both sites, I mean, thats what web services are for, right?

Another thought I came up with is a Centralised User Account Service, which deals with the connectivity between users of different sites. Lets say: Gravatar meets facebook and ping.fm. All the services first verify the users information on the Centralised service, then they verify which permissions the user has applied concerning posting, which pages must the service send the new update, video or blog message to, and negotiate it only with the Centralised site, which will in turn send off the appropriate XML for all other “connected” sites.

It’s just a thought, Security-wise I am not sure where this would lead to as very tight security would have to be placed. Gaining access to the account of a user at the Centralised Site would be, well, Armageddon for that user. So probably a tighter security would have to be placed, with 128 big encription, SSL sockets, MD-6, who knows what else, but it’s just a thought anyway.

Are we becoming Robots?

Posted by lemiffe in Communication, Life, Misc, Society, Technology on Jun 12th, 2009 | 0 comments

I would like to know one thing… Where is our dehumanisation and systematisation leading us to?

This is the world as I see it:

People are tending to flock towards online lives, social networks and chat instead of the telephone, live conversations, excercise and real life.

People are becoming more violent, we are also starting to swear a lot more. A lot of people are losing respect for their elders, siblings and even friends.

People are tending to buy more things every time. Technology has led to more consumer-oriented marketing. A lot of people can’t live without the latest items. Status division is becoming a serious rising issue.

Education is going down. War, greed and control is increasing. A growing percentage feels their life is worthless, boring or monotonous.

Why is all of this happening? How can a few generations change so much the aspect of life itself. Is technology the sole factor in the systematisation of people?

It sickens me. Greed? Envy? Violence? Need for Control? Lack of respect? Murder? Lack of respect? Indiference?

Many of these are claimed to be “natural instincts”. Many think they are embedded in us, as animals we are. But then on the other hand, we claim to be civilised, we claim not to be animals.

So then what are we?! If not animals. We sure act as such.

Our past generations had a greater sense of decency. We are falling fast into constant degradation. I remember in primary school, there seemed to be a constant battle for who was the worst student. The best ones got rocks thrown at.

So as I see it, there are those who strive for knowledge, and there are those who prefer to live indiferent unknowledgeable systematic-consumer lives. By doing so not only are we finishing off with out earth and our resources, but with the little hope for knowledge and progress we have.

Maybe it’s not all our fault, but the education system, the goverment and the social laws and restrictions. But nonetheless, where is our curiosity? Why not leave the box? Why not chose to become aware over staying behind.

How Gadgets Lose their Magic

Posted by lemiffe in Life, Society, Technology on May 8th, 2009 | 0 comments

The following is an extract from a post by Steven Levy. I identified myself with this situation. Is it not true that the oversaturation of technological advances leads to being unsurprised and finding interest in that which is technologically backwards?

Read on:

We all, I think, have become inured to Moore’s law. The astonishing advances that once would have brought us to our knees are now reduced to a thumbs-up on Gizmodo. They’re removed from the realm of magic—they’re just cool gear.

Which brings me back to Sir Arthur. His quote makes me think of the European explorers who encountered previously unknown tribes. I used to imagine what it would be like to venture deep into the bush and unveil my latest gadget—a digital tape recorder, an iPod, an electric toothbrush.

But now my daydreams are different. As technological magic becomes routine, I wonder whether a visit to a preindustrial society might teach me more than it teaches them. The only thing more fascinating than our technology is the idea of getting along without it. Maybe the way to recapture the magic is to turn all that stuff off.