Facebook has just opened up a new section of the site called Facebook Prototypes, which is kind of like Google Labs for Facebook. I read about this on Mashable here. Then I went to test it out, and it almost lived up to its name as “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” I’d probably still rather have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but the new photo-tagging search feature is pretty sweet. Honestly, it’s features like this that show why the internet is so great. If you are looking for a photo of you and your friend and another friend, you can just find it in a second. That’s sweet.
Last year I wrote a research paper about critical reading and satirical news. It deals with how too often as a society we fail to be critical of news because we are not active participants with media. It also goes on to examine the role that satirical news may play in keeping people informed and critical. If you want to read the paper online, here is the link. Also, here is the pdf version.
I am writing this current post from my couch on my phone using the open source wordpress app for iPhone. Here’s my review of the app: sweet.
It’s very easy to use, and it has a great and simple interface. You can manage multiple blogs in a very intuitive and classicaly simple wordpress setup. If you are looking to manage your blog on the go (for some reason, I don’t really know why) wordpress for iPhone is the way to go.
One of the cool things about Google Wave is that you will be able to embed waves into sites very easily and users can interact with the wave. I wrote a java robot that adds random quotes to the conversation, and here it is (if you have a wave developer account).
–I have temporarily taken it down… but it will be back up soon
Currently, I’m all about Google Wave. But whenever people ask me to explain it to them, I kinda have a difficult time doing that. “It’s like email, in real time,” I would say. “And instant messaging, and there are robots that do things for you…” and then I blabber on a little more, and a person who was confused already is completely lost. Heres what wikipedia says.
I think the reason this happens is because Google Wave seems to be the next generation communication tool of the internet. Basically, I don’t think people have seen anything like it yet, so they have trouble accommodating it into their current web framework. “So its like email?” they ask. “It’s kind of like souped-up email,” I say.
Google Wave is coming out September 30th, which is pretty exciting. I’ve been trying to develop a robot with the wave apis, and it seems like it’s going to be pretty sweet. To me, google wave seems like everything you should be able to do with email, and very easily. You want the weather? Include the Weather Bot and type the city. You want to include a link or a picture? It couldn’t be easier.
Right now, at any time I have either one or no friends on wave–so I face the problem of the first telephone–who do you call? I think as more users start to use wave and as more developers create sweet bots and extensions, it will be a very powerful communication tool of the future.
Facebook has just opened up a new section of the site called Facebook Prototypes, which is kind of like Google Labs for Facebook. I read about this on Mashable here. Then I went to test it out, and it almost lived up to its name as “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” I’d probably still rather have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but the new photo-tagging search feature is pretty sweet. Honestly, it’s features like this that show why the internet is so great. If you are looking for a photo of you and your friend and another friend, you can just find it in a second. That’s sweet.