I’ve told anyone who would listen for some time now that Facebook was the future in social networks. It’s underlying technology blows away anything MySpace or Bebo brings to the table. LinkedIn is a more comparable site.
Now Facebook has announced their new online platform strategy, f8, which seeks to approach an online operating system serving it’s extensive network with third-party web apps from providers such as Amazon.com, Microsoft, Obama for America, and Warner Bros. Records.
According to Dan Farber, other developers at at the Facebook f8 launch include:
30 Boxes; All Widgets, LLC; Amazon.com; Attendio; Bitnik; Blue Nile; Box.net; Bunchball; Channels.com; Chumby Industries; CollegeHumor; Digg, Dogster Inc.; EF Tours; Ether; Fantasy Moguls; FASHION FOR THE PEOPLE; FeedBurner, Inc.; Fliptrack, Inc.; Forbes.com; FORD MODELS; Glimpse.com; HOT or NOT; Jangl; Jaxtr; Jobster; Lending Club; LocalPlatform LLC; Microsoft Corp.; MOG; Mosoto; Obama for America; Oodle; Photobucket, Inc.; Photojojo; Pickspal; Platial; Plum; Project Agape; Prosper.com; QOOP, Inc.; Radar; Rapleaf; Red Bull Energy Drink; RockYou!; Rupture; Scrapblog; Scribd; SideStep, Inc.; Slide; Snapvine, Inc.; SplashCast, Inc.; TERRALEVER; Twitter, Inc.; Uber; uPlayMe; Veoh Networks, Inc.; viagogo; VIRGIN MOBIL USA; Warner Bros. Records; Washington Post; Newsweek Interactive; Widgetbox; and YackPack.
Exciting stuff!
Each time someone was interested in a local web design meetup here in Austin I would receive an email alert. This has been happening for many months since the first time I sought out such a group. There are already a number of other corollary groups that I attend that relate to this industry, Refresh Austin being the one I’m most closely associated, but it seems our fair city was lacking official an Meetup presence in this area.
With 146 and counting persons interested in an Austin Web Design Meetup and no way to communicate to them, I felt someone had to start it up if only as a social meetup or to steer them to more appropriate groups on Upcoming or Google Groups. So, I gulped and plopped down the fee to initiate one. (Why does Meetup charge so damn much for a service that so many other sites provide on an ad-driven model?)
Find us here: http://webdesign.meetup.com/457/. Join. RSVP.
Our initial meetup will be Thursday, May 17, 2007, 6:30 PM @ Halcyon (218 W 4th St, Austin, TX 78701)
I hope you can make it!
Wondering why the local Austin paper doesn’t have a Twitter account so I can get updates like NYT. Ryan, thoughts?
Paul Menard via Twitter
Well, it’s true that you can find Twitter accounts for the New York Times, CNN, BBC, TechCrunch, et al. However, it’s not clear how many of those are actually official branding efforts by those media organizations. In fact, the open nature of the Twitter API and the fact that these companies offer their latest headlines as RSS feeds mean anyone can create a news “river”.
Regardless I had to take up the challenge after being called out directly. I quickly registered accounts from both Statesman.com and Austin360.com. A quick and dirty PHP script later set up as a cron job and voila! While these sites are among those of my employer, my Twitter accounts do not constitute an “official” use of this syndication method. The NYTimes twitter was set up in a similar vein by Jacob Harris
http://twitter.com/statesman
http://twitter.com/austin360
Update: I’ve turned off the cron job until some sort of contextual relevance can be offered to any potential users. Breaking news, weather, jury verdicts, traffic, ticket sales, event listings, A-List events are all options.
What are your thoughts? What kind of updates would you be interested in receiving?
Their tag line reads “What if your photo collection was an entry point into the world, like a wormhole that you could jump through and explore”. I have to say that I think the last time I felt this excited about software that wasn’t designed to improve my efficiency, but is instead designed to improve my experience was when I downloaded Google Earth and discovered their 3-D rendering of downtown New York. Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them, and then displays them in a three-dimensional space such that their relationships become clear. You can view different camera angels and other spatial relationships.
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
The good folks over at Live Labs even released a Firefox plugin back in January. How nice of them.
