Author Archive

Yesterday’s post highlighted resources on the web for the uber-geek coder delighting in applets, widgets and mashups by the dozen. But what if you prefer a safe swimming pool to the ocean deeps? What happens if the ends rather the means are what take your fancy? If building the networks and the community are your [...]

Paul’s post on Ajax for the Common Coder touched on the core of Web 2.0 development – you just can’t build a community fast, unless you’re building with the community. In time 2.0, the difference between borrowing the barrow or reinventing the wheel is the same difference between leapfrogging, or being left behind. Wiki’s and [...]

A new helpline, if you happen to have a boss you’d rather not have. One option, of course, is to find another position. But if you’re quite happy where you are, and he (or she) is the only fly in the ointment…. Employmint is a new … um, you can’t really call it social networking [...]

Quite a number of people consider Google to be the top search tool – according to Searchenginewatch, it’s a shade below half of all searches. But is that really the best option. For general searches, maybe. But if you’re looking for some specific information, do you really fancy wading through a gazillion links to find [...]

Wanna get Skyped when any of your subscribed feeds gets updated? Check out Anothr.com – it’s a Chinese startup that provides a Skype alert for RSS feeds. From their website : Anothr.com is a skype-based robot which can provide just-in-time alerts for your favorite feeds. It can simplify your blogs/news reading experience and improve the [...]

Been tracking an interesting discussion on homophily on O’reilly – the social behavior of tending to interact and get together with people who think the same way. And whether social networking sites emphasise this. You know, the old people who saw this also saw feature, or the friends feature reinforcing similarities. But there are two [...]

An interesting sidelight to Web 2.0 is the emergence of new names to describe activities. Top of the list is “googled” as in “have you googled it?”, but there are others. But there could be some inadvertent trip ups. Especially if you’re trying to make money off it. Consider this media firm, that wants to [...]

If you can’t beat them, join ‘em. What do most students do with their laptops in the classroom? Surf Flickr, Digg, MySpace, Youtube (or is it now GooTube?) or others of their ilk. Block access to these through the network? Scores of proxy sites like this one springing up to meet the demand. Ban Laptops [...]

Remember the old days when everyone and his brother jumped on the “dot-com” bandwagon? And the famous “We’re the dot in dot com? ” (As an aside, looks like Sun wants to update it to “We’re the dot in 2.0″) As the latest buzzword, Web 2.0′s become de rigueur in any kind of promotional activity. [...]