Google’s OpenSocial API & Facebook’s SocialAds

After Google lost out last week in it’s bid for a stake in FaceBook, it’s pretty apparent one of the reasons Facebook chose Microsoft instead was that Google is about to unleash a true contender to the stranglehold Facebook has on the social networking world.  Later this week Google will announce the OpenSocial API, it’s initiative to break down the walls of social networks exclusivity and open the data up for anyone to use.  I can’t comment to too much on how specifically it will work since the details have not emerged, but it’s pretty apparent that the social networking world will now be MySpace, Facebook, and everyone else, with “everyone else” being part of OpenSocial.

Facebook meanwhile is planning on launching it’s own competitor for Google’s AdSense with an upcoming announcement regarding its SocialAds network.  SocialAds will work by a cookie Facebook drops in your browser that follows you from site to site, and when you come across a SocialAds supported site, the (encrypted?) data is then sent to Facebook which in turn delivers an ad based on your profile.  Interesting concept, but I’m not sure how useful basic profile information will be in tailoring ads towards things I’d like to buy.

The next year should be fun as both companies, with egos like none other, try to out-do the other.

How To: Make Your Girlfriend Break Up With You

Just when girlfriends thought it couldn’t get worse than seeing their boyfriends playing Halo for 8 hours straight wearing their Halo 3 collector’s edition helmet, comes the latest uber-gamer toy, the FPS Vest.

“The gaming peripheral will consist of eight zones, all of which will be able to direct appropriate force to accurately simulate a plethora of sensations, including bullet fire, explosions, punches and even finger taps.”

Now you can strap on your vest, throw on your helmet, and soon enough you won’t have to worry about your girlfriend bitching at you to take out the trash considering she’ll run far far away when you bring this home.

Daily Links (2007/10/15)

• Wordpress 2.3.1 about to be released
• Fake Steve Jobs on last night’s Facebook kegger
• 24, season 7 preview (video) – The best show on TV is almost back!  Ditching CTU was a good idea, not so sure about bring TA back from the “dead” though, so I’ll be really interested to see the explanation behind that one.

Daily Links (2007-10-24)

• GMail adds IMAP functionality – Woooo!  I heart you google.  It will be interesting to see how they handle IMAP inboxes considering they preach “Don’t delete your email!”
  
• Google Calendar Now Works With Gears – Unverified.  Google gets another Wooooo! from me today if it is true.
• Microsoft buys 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million – No frickin’ way is Facebook worth $15 billion.  Keep drinking the Zuckerberg kool-aid Microsoft.
• Why Facebook is Worth $15 Billion – You can keep drinking the kool-aid too.
• DumbledorePride.com – Hah!  You knew it was only a matter of time.

IBM Aims to Patent Profiting Off Patents

• AP Link: IBM Aims to Patent Profiting Off Patents

Now I don’t speak legalease and their patent application is like a foreign language, but if they just tried to patent making money off patents, then we need patent reform, now!  Holy crap.  This is especially ironic since they pledged last year to not seek business method patents anymore.  Suuuuuure.

Love/Hate Relationship with Amazon

As innovative as I think that company is sometimes, HOLY FREAKING CRAP can they be retarded at other times! It looks like Amazon.com was just awarded a patent for “including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting.” Since when can you patent obvious stuff? YOU CAN’T PATENT mod_rewrite!  Hey Amazon, look at the search string in the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness

From the patent’s “Summary of Invention”

For example, a user wishing to search for “San Francisco Hotels” may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system. The system may also support the use of Boolean operators and/or other types of operators within the search strings.

You’ve got to be kidding me. If the user is smart enough to know to type their search term in the URL, wouldn’t that qualify as an obvious act? And don’t even get me started on prior art. How funny is this, the Wikipedia entry for “Prior art” at the address of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art goes back to July of 2004, prior to the patent even being filed!

Tonight’s project for me will be to write a patent application for ‘a method of using a permanent liquid stain (example: ink) on a contrasting color canvas to be used in permanently recording combinations of alphabetical and numeric characters.’  The publishing industry will be mine!!!

Can we please overhaul the patent system now? Pretty please?

Daily Links (2007-10-23)

• Yahoo Caught Cookie Stuffing – They again remind me why I don’t use their search.
• KDE 4 Screenshots – Ooooo… Purty.
  

• There are now more US World of Warcraft players than farmers – Can’t say I’m shocked, mostly just an eye-opener.
• How 9 tech companies burned through 2 billion dollars – etoys.com, pets.com, kozmo.com, go.com, etc… represented just about everything that was wrong in the early web.  Glad you provided (costly) learning lessons for the rest of us.
• Pissed off customer calls Dell Tech Support – I think we all share his frustration.
  
• Mozilla’s Moola – Mozilla financial report says it had a revenue of $66 million last year with $56 million coming from Google.  Who says open-source doesn’t pay?
• 250,000 of the 1.4 million iPhones sold have gone to unlockers – In other news, some AT&T exec just threw his chair out the window.

Google’s Purchase of Jaiku Raises New Privacy Issues (NY Times)- Would you people shut up?  This is all we’ve been hearing over the last couple weeks.  Don’t you fear-mongers say this about every Google purchase?  How about you focus on AT&T providing illegal wire-taps, Comcast making a boatload off wire-tapping, and the Bush administration seeking retroactive immunity for telcos which it admits have been breaking the law (why seek immunity if they haven’t been?).  I trust Google a hell of a lot more than I trust our own government.  That aside, Jaiku rocks, the only information Jaiku & Google will have is the information you choose to give it.  Worried about privacy?  Don’t use it.  That simple.

• Just a link to some themes for a new Wordpress blog I’m thinking about starting
• BitTorrent Gets More Social with AllPeers – Social Bittorrent?  This could get interesting.  And hey… anything to make BT easier for the masses is great for the technology cause I cringe everytime I have to explain what it is or how to use it to a novice.
• Social.FM Signs Microsoft Deal, Launches New Client – Just came across this service.  Free music + Smartphone client = me likey.
• List of 4-letter domain names – Sadly anything pronounceable is long gone, but there are still a few thousand left.

Test post from Google Docs

I just noticed Google Docs has the ability to post to a Wordpress blog, so I’m giving it a test drive.

What’s you internet meme IQ?

Memelabs.com has a What’s Your Meme IQ quiz, check it out.  I got 37.  I was sad they forgot to mention Patrick Tribett.  Oh well Patrick, you can’t win ‘em all.  But, I’m sure you already know that.

Enabling Wordpress 2.3 Tagging in Windows Live Writer

Part of the reason for my recent increase in blogging is mostly due to my discovery of Windows Live Writer, I absolutely love it.  The only complaint I’ve had so far is that it doesn’t support tagging for Wordpress 2.3, something recently introduced with the release of Wordpress 2.3.  I assumed I’d have to wait for an update from Microsoft to be able to use WP 2.3 tagging, but it turns out that isn’t the case.  Check out this post from Ruhani Rabin who provides a great tutorial on how to enable tags support in WLW for WordPress:

• Enabling Tag support in Windows live writer for Wordpress

In a nutshell all you have to do is download the wlwmanifest.xml file and upload it to wp-includes.  This file is what tells WLW a bit more about the blog and it’s capabilities.  Once that is uploaded, update the blog in WLW (Weblog > Manage Weblog) and viola, the “keywords” box shows up in the advanced options menu below your post in WLW.