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Joongel Opens Search to Forgotten Sites

By Scott Loganbill October 6, 2008 Categories: Software & Tools

Ever want to search multiple sites at once and just blend all of their results together regardless of content or ranking or whatever?

Me neither. When I search, I want my results fast and I want them good. However, it didn’t stop me from trying out Joongel anyway.

Joongel lets you define what you are looking for, such as images, music, videos, etc… It then allows you to refine the search and then displays a floating tool bar above the search results with options to jump from site to site.

You may care more for search site conglomerations than I do, and if you do, Joongel might take you away. It’s a good looking site. It bridges the search sources together in a very web 2.0 way. The menus and buttons slide effortlessly across the screen. The buttons and icons are big, fluffy — I dare say, even cute.

To me, the questions and options get in the way of my search results — even if it is asking me to refine them to get what I want. Blame my short attention span, but I don’t usually go past the first page of search results than continue on to other sites, even if the results are easily accessible by tabs. There is one thing I really really like about Joongel.

The amount of sites it searches is intense. Sure, they’re all sites I’ve heard about and even tried once or twice. Several of them I even had accounts for from when I first tried out the service. Usually after starting up the account, I typically jump ship for whatever works for me.

The best thing about Joongel is the realization of other sites. The first page introduces a full page of sites I barely ever used. It reintroduced me to sites I’ve long forgot. My little dim bulb lit up bright when I ran across some image sites I’ve never heard of through a Creative Commons search. I usually go to Flickr, but Joongel had me clicking around to Dreamstime, Everystockphoto and Morguefile just to compare the results.

I had no specific goal in mind, but such is the nature of web surfing.

As a search aggregator, I’d say Joongel is about as good as you’re going to get, which isn’t saying much. I think Joongel’s best attribute is as a way to discover new sites. Every web page these days has a search box, Joongel allows you to surf the results.

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Tags: Joongel, search
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iPhone Firmware Beta Includes Streetview, Emoticons

By Scott Loganbill October 6, 2008 Categories: Software & Tools

A recent iPhone firmware beta was sent to developers with a few hidden features: Google streetview, Japanese Emoji icons and the option to turn off the iPhone.

Google Streetview mirrors the desktop version of Google Maps. The feature allows you to see destinations from a street view. Google first introduced the mobile version of the feature in its Android mobile operating system — available on the T-Mobile G1 phone in October.

Japanese Emoji icons are emoticons for text messaging. The addition of the icons to the firmware suggest the lack of the icons were slowing down adoption in Japan markets.

The ability to turn off the iPhone’s auto-correction feature will satisfy iPhone users with precise thumbs. The feature would automatically correct what it perceived of as misspellings and improper usage. The feature takes a while to get used to and has a tendency to overcorrect sometimes with improper suggestions. Correcting the iPhone’s mistakes becomes a time consuming task, particularly when ur txting w kewl shorthand.

[via MacRumors]

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Future of Search Won’t Be Incremental

By Adam DuVander October 6, 2008 Categories: Web Basics

A cyborg searches GoogleVoice input? Direct brain link? What does the future of search hold? If it’s to be created by someone other than Google, it sure won’t be much like today’s search. The future of search is unlikely to be incremental. It will be a radical shift from what we’re used to.

Miguel Carrasco oulined how Microsoft can beat Google using the social graph. Carrasco says that by combining what Live Search knows about our recent activity on social networks, it can provide better results. The examples show a way that search needs to improve: context.

The argument goes that armed with knowledge of our recent activity, a search engine can provide more appropriate results for our current frame of reference. If I’ve been planning a trip to Miami, to borrow Carrasco’s example, a search for night clubs should not return generic results. I should see Miami night clubs, especially those recommended by my friends.

It’s a nice vision, but it’s not likely to be enough for Live Search, or any search player, to take over Google. The approach, while important to the future of search, is too incremental. It has the vestiges of today’s search technology.

Personalization isn’t only coming, it’s here. Sign in to your Google account and you can activate it. Prepare to be underwhelmed. But even if it were as Carrasco describes, privacy concerns would stop personalized search from being adopted until the benefits were undeniable. It would take a radical shift.

When Google came along, it provided something that had never been seen before: good search results. Unlike all the other search engines, Google’s top few slots had what we were looking for. And it provided them fast.

It was a much easier time to make big changes. Someone has to make us realize that Google’s results are as antiquated as Yahoo and Excite were in the late 90s. A change in interface might be the most likely innovation. A search engine that takes voice input, understands what you say, and provides clear results still feels far away. That might be the sort of non-incremental change necessary.

A new version of Ask.com launched today. Among its features is the ability to reply to questions. Well, Ask has always been big on natural language searches. Though these results are better than ol’ Jeeves provided years ago, Google has also had answers to question searches for some time.

The most likely to create the way we search in the future is Google itself. It has the flexibility to create incremental advances and test them out on millions of people. The future of search is a problem they’re thinking about. I just hope they don’t find a way to put ads inside my cyborg eye.

[Photo by Linus Bohman]

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Tags: future, Google, search
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Linux Turns 17, Still Not Ready for the Masses

By Scott Gilbertson October 6, 2008 Categories: Operating Systems

PenguinYesterday marked Linux’s seventeenth birthday. While the open source OS hasn’t been available in useable form for nearly that long, the anniversary marks the day creator Linus Torvalds’ first announced that he was “working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers.”

As we all know that “minix-lookalike” eventually — with the help of thousands of other contributors — turned into the Linux kernel.

So far, 2008 has been a banner year for Linux. With the growth of the ultraportable PC, or “netbook,” market, Linux is now in the hands of many who would never have otherwise encountered it.

Unfortunately, for many of those people, Linux ends up being a disorienting and very different experience from that of the Windows OS they’re used to. In a recent interview with LapTop Mag, MSI’s Director of U.S. Sales Andy Tung says that return rates for Linux-based versions of MSI’s popular Wind netbook are four times higher than the Windows version.

People would love to pay $299 or $399 [for a netbook] but they don’t know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.

Of course even Linux advocates are well aware of the OS’s shortcomings, so while Tung’s statistics may be some fairly damning evidence, his data isn’t really anything new. And the problem seems to be less of a specific problem with Linux and more a sign that old dogs aren’t the only ones who hate learning new tricks.

For its part, Tung says MSI is “working on some of the issues with the SUSE Linux and even continue to explore other flavors of Linux.” He goes on to add that MSI has also discussed using “Ubuntu with a Mac OS type of look and feel.”

Whatever Linux’s fate is the netbook market, one thing is for sure — seventeen years on and Linux continues to make inroads, even if those roads are still a bit bumpy.

Slashdot has more on Linux’s birthday.

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Learn the Basics of Building an iPhone App

By Scott Gilbertson October 6, 2008 Categories: Mobile, Programming

iPhone SDKNow that Apple has removed the iPhone NDA, which prevented developers from talking about the nuts and bolts of their iPhone apps, a number of tutorials have started to trickle on to the web. One of the best we’ve seen is Matt Long’s simple, easy-to-follow write-up on developing a basic iPhone application.

For those of you more inclined to video tutorials, Long also has a nice video walk through available as well.

Keep in mind that Long’s tutorial is pretty high level and assumes a certain familiarity with both the Cocoa development framework and the model-view-controller paradigm. You’ll also need to have Apple’s developer tools and all the requisite iPhone SDK tools installed.

Still, as long as you have at least some programming background, it shouldn’t be to hard to follow. Long himself is a former Windows developer, proving that it isn’t all that difficult to jump into the Mac/iPhone development world.

[via Daring Fireball]

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Tags: iPhone, ipod touch
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Rainbow Vomiting Panda Bear Takes Over Flickr

By Scott Gilbertson October 6, 2008 Categories: Multimedia, Software & Tools

flickr panda

Flickr has added a new and very odd way to explore photos on the site — via a rainbow vomiting Panda Bear.

The feature itself isn’t anything too exciting — it scrolls through images based on Flickr’s “interestingness” criteria — but the interface is perhaps the most bizarre design choice we’ve ever seen.

We’re not sure what’s in the water over at the Flickr headquarters, but we want some.

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Tags: photos
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Fring Turns Your iPhone Into a Free Skype Phone

By Scott Gilbertson October 6, 2008 Categories: Mobile, Software & Tools

fring on iphoneBack when the iPhone SDK was first announced, one of the most wanted apps was a VOIP client, so we could free ourselves from the tyranny of AT&T’s per-minute calling plans. While Apple nixed that idea very early on, saying that VOIP over AT&T’s Edge or 3-G networks would be against the terms of service, it did say that a VOIP app that only ran over wi-fi would be just fine.

That’s exactly what the new application, Fring, allows you to do — make VOIP calls whenever your iPhone/iPod Touch is connected to wi-fi. Fring works with Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, Twitter, AIM and Yahoo buddy lists.

Of course Fring is not the first app to bring VOIP to the iPhone. Truphone gets that honor, but because Truphone doesn’t support Skype — undoubtedly the most popular VOIP service — its usefulness is somewhat limited. Fring on the other hand supports Skype, though of course to call non-Skype phones, you’ll need to purchase SkypeOut/SIP credits.

In addition to the VOIP aspect, Fring also allows for IM conversations over all the networks mentioned above, making it a kind of Adium for the iPhone.
Fring is free and you can grab a copy from the iTunes App Store. Although the app’s VOIP service will work with Edge/3-G on other phones, the iPhone app’s VOIP capabilities are limited to wi-fi, something that isn’t entirely clear when reading through Fring’s site.

Update: Now that we’ve had a chance to test Fring, we can tell you that, well, it’s a mixed bag. We tested Fring on both an original and second-gen iPhone and it does work. Call quality is about what you get with the desktop version of Skype — there’s definitely an echo and a bit of voice distortion, but calls are still understandable. The Unofficial Apple Weblog also did some hands on testing and reported that call quality is “slightly echo-y, but perfectly audible.”

There are also hundreds of reviews on the App Store which confirm that Fring does in fact work, but many users are also having problems. It took us quite a while to get the app set up, and Fring’s 4-character password limit is worst idea we’ve seen in some time. The Fring user interface could also be improved; for instance, we were able to add contacts, but then the contacts failed to show up in our Fring buddy list.

But the real problem with Fring is the iPhone itself. The iPhone automatically falls back to 3-G or Edge when wi-fi cuts out, and the device gives no warning. So, your Fring-based calls will just cut out. In other words, while Fring might work around the house where you have a stable wi-fi connection, we don’t suggest relying on it in the wi-fi soup of your local coffee shop. Also be aware that your iPhone is never going to ring the way the desktop Skype client does (unless you leave Fring open and running at all times), so it’s pretty much an outgoing-only solution.

Still, despite being a bit rough around the edges, Fring has promise. And even if you don’t use the VOIP options, it’s still a very nice multi-protocol chat client.

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Tags: iPhone, ipod touch
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New Google Spreadsheets Gets Desktopier

By Adam DuVander October 6, 2008 Categories: Software & Tools

Google Spreadsheets before and after redesign

The new look for Google Spreadsheets is now live. As the Docs team announced, there’s a completely new interface. And it’s looking a lot more like its desktop step-brother, Excel.

Most notably, Spreadsheets now has a full menu across the top: File, Edit, Format, and so on. The team ditched the strange tabbed method where each section had its own toolbar. Instead, the toolbar is reserved for the most common commands, mostly formatting-related.

The interface reshuffling also makes Spreadsheets look a lot more like its Docs siblings. The Word-like app gave the tabs the heave-ho in March.

Though there’s something to be said for web and desktop interfaces not needing to be the same, in this case organizing the options within pull-down menus makes sense. Everything feels like its within the same frame of reference. The entire toolbar changing always threw me off.

Google Spreadsheets form editingPlus, it’s now easier for Google to add new features. For example, the interface for manipulating a form is so easy now, because it can be another pull-down. You can even see the number of responses right in the menu.

Spreadsheets was already a part of my daily routine, replacing Excel for all except the largest, most complicated documents. These changes bring Microsoft’s offering even closer to my trash bin.

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Tags: docs, excel, Google
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First Set of SXSW Panels Announced

By Adam DuVander October 3, 2008 Categories: Events

SXSW 2009The first 73 panels of the annual geekfest conference SXSW Interactive have been announced. Organizers say it’s just a taste of the eventual 180 talks. The list is split into categories: Advertising, Business, Community, Content, Human Issues, Mobile, New Tech, Programming, Interface Design, and the ever-exciting “other.”

Among the programming-related panels that jump out at me:

At SXSW the public gets a say in the content via a panel voting system, which closed in early September. An advisory board and SXSW staff also helped make the choices.

For those that are more into the evening activities, keep an eye on this Upcoming search.

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Tags: conference, sxsw
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Swag We Don’t Want: CNN Headline Shirts

By Adam DuVander October 3, 2008 Categories: Humor

96 yr-old blind fan betting on Cubs winIf web t-shirt selling hadn’t already jumped the shark, surely it will with CNN headline shirts. The cable news network takes what appear to be its most humorous web headlines and prints on demand for t-shirts. Nevermind that CNN is supposed to have real news, the sort of stuff that shouldn’t be shirt worthy. And most of it isn’t.

This is something you might expect of satirical news site The Onion. While the site with funny headlines does sells shirts, it only includes vague references to its own stories. Too bad.

Maybe The Onion (or you–really anybody can do better than CNN) should use CNN’s provider Spreadshirt to make its own shirts on demand.

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