Ben Shoemate's Notebook

via http://www.furniturestoreblog.com/2008/06/19/unique_house_plans_with_sloped_ceilings.html

(author unknown) via John Battelle's Searchblog shared by 5 people

Brady reprises the Google Alphabet (the first word auto-populated by the newly integrated Google Suggest for each letter in the alphabet).

via http://www.qbn.com/topics/441052/

Frederic Lardinois via ReadWriteWeb shared by 12 people

this February, Google released its Social Graph API, which allows developers to give users the option to easily find data on their social connections around the web. Google itself, however, hasn't really implemented any of this technology yet. Starting today, however, it seems Google is starting to surface some of this information from your Social Graph in your Google Profile, which might be a first sign that Google is planning to do more with these profiles than it has done so far. Google has also started implementing the hCard microformat there. The first person to noticed this was Chris Messina.

Google's Social Graph API harnesses this information from XFN and FOAF data that is published by Wordpress, Twitter, or any other social network or blog that wants to implement these open standards.

Once you open your Google Profile, you might start seeing some suggested links at the bottom of the page (as usual, it seems Google is rolling this out slowly) and, as far as we can see, these links are pulled from your Social Graph. If you don't see anything there, you can help your profile along by, for example, adding a link to your FriendFeed account at the bottom of the page. After you do that, Google will suggest adding the feeds you import into FriendFeed to your profile and, from there, it draw even more conclusions about your online habits.

hCard

Also, as Chris Messina points out in this video, the profiles now also support the hCard microformat, which makes importing them into other products a lot easier.

Privacy

When Google first announced the Social Graph API, we had some concerns about the privacy implications of this. After all, nobody on the net knows more about your behaviors than Google. For now, Google seems to be moving slowly and by just rolling out suggested pages for your profile, it doesn't startle users with too much information.

The Grand Google Profile?

Google, so far, never really pushed the profile. Right now, it is only exposed in Google Maps. However, if Google starts pushing it a bit more, especially now that it is linked to you social graph, it could potentially start marketing the profile as 'the' central repository for your online identity.

Google is already a member of the DataPortability workgroup, which also advocates the use of microformats like hCard and XFN. These additions to the Google Profile could suggest that Google does indeed have greater plans for it has let us to believe so far.

If you are not quite clear about how the Social Graph API works, here is a short video of a Google engineer explaining how it works:

via http://planetaki.com/gorriti

Amit Agarwal via Digital Inspiration shared by 22 people

You can do lot of interesting stuff with Google Talk like get alert notifications, save bookmarks to delicious, manage web calendars, set reminders, write blogs, and so much more.

Such features can be easily integrated into Google Talk through ‘bots’ which, in simple English, are like virtual friends who are online 24×7 and will always respond with a smile to your questions or requests.

Here are some of the most useful ‘bots’ that transform Google Talk into a more useful program:

1. imfeeds@gmail.com - Add this IM Feeds bot as your Google Talk buddy and you’ll be able to read any blog or website that syndicates content via RSS feeds.

To subscribe to a website in GTalk, simply send a new IM message that says "sub abc.com" where abc.com is the address of the website / blog you want to read inside Google Talk.

2. friendfeed@imified.com - This secret bot lets you post to FriendFeed from Google Talk. You may submit either hyperlinks or text messages.

3. imified@imified.com - This imified bot turns Google Talk into a real powerhouse.

You can post bookmarks to delicious, send messages to Twitter, submit blog entries to WordPress, Tumblr or Blogger, manage events in Google Calendar, shorten long URLs, run whois and so on.

4. inezhabot@gmail.com - Like IM Feeds, iNezha bot helps you read feeds inside Google Talk but this is slightly more versatile. For instance, you can simply say "digg" and it will show a list of all feeds that match that search term so you don’t have to type (or copy-paste) feed addresses.

5. Translation - This is a free service from Google that helps you translate words from a foreign language into your native language. Just add the relevant bot (e.g. hi2en@bot.talk.google.com for Hindi to English or en2hi@bot.talk.google.com for English to Hindi) as your buddy, send him a message and it will get translated instantly.

6. Set Task Reminders - If you need to remember something important, Google Talk can send you reminders for that event.

Just add timer to your Twitter friend’s list and then add twitter@twitter.com to your buddy list in Gtalk. Now if you want to get a reminder after 50 minutes, send a direct message to twitter  like "d timer 50 pick kids from school" and a reminder will automatically pop up in your Google Talk after 50 minutes.

7. Transliteration - If you want to chat in your mother tongue (like Hindi or Tamil) but feel more comfortable using the English keyboard, Google Transliteration bot will come in handy.

For instance, add en2hi.translit@bot.talk.google.com to you friend’s list in GTalk and all messages you type in English will get transliterated in the language of your choice.  Available only for a few Indian languages.

Also see:
» Add Google Talk Badge to your Site
» Play Live Music via Google Talk
» Put Google Talk in Firefox Sidebar

Useful Google Talk Bots That You Must Add as Friends - Digital Inspiration

Seth Godin via Seth's Blog shared by 6 people

Tom Fishburne has a new book out, and you should take a look if you're seeking a new way to think about marketing, your brand, or your colleagues. The whole tour is here.

Andrew Kaufman's book does the same thing, but in a totally different way--with text that has the same power of a great cartoon. Thanks, Andrea, for sending it to me... I loved every word of it.

Cartoons work because they're not monologues. Even though the medium is one-directional, a dialogue takes place. In between the panels, in between the talk bubbles, the cartoonist demands you fill in the blanks.

This call and response gives the reader far more of a jolt than a paragraph in a book could. Even better, it gives the cartoonist the confidence to proceed boldly. He knows you're there, volleying with him, interacting with the idea as you read it.

Marketers are taught from the beginning to grab the microphone and never let it go. We can learn from authors and cartoonists and talk show hosts that sometimes you gain more power when you let the other person feel engaged.

via http://www.swiss-miss.com/

(author unknown) via Boing Boing shared by 6 people

Shared by SharonG

אפשר תוסף כזה לוורדפרס?

Here's an idea who's time has come: YouTube Comment Snob is a Firefox plugin that nukes comments with too many spelling mistakes, weird capitalization or punctuation, and too much cussin'. It works pretty damned well, too. As XKCD has pointed out in the past, YouTube has the worst, just the worst comment-areas on the Internet. YouTube Comment Snob (via Making Light)

(author unknown) via The Inquisitr » Tech shared by 4 people

Shared by robdiana
Does it concern anyone that a bank is obviously storing their passwords in a readable manner? Security 101 would say store it as a one-way encrypted string.

Slyly insulting your bank with the word “pants” can have its consequences.

Sound crazy? Check it out: A British bank customer says he wasn’t pleased with his bank, Lloyd’s TSB, so he changed his banking password to “Lloyds is pants.” Brilliant insult, if I don’t say so myself.

But things only get funnier from there. The guy says he soon discovered a bank staff member had changed the password — to “no it’s not.”

So our fella, of course, tried to change it again. This time he opted to go with “Barclays is better,” referring to a competing British bank. He says, though, the system wouldn’t let him; he had mysteriously been locked out of changing the password at all. And when he called the bank, he says they wouldn’t let him change it back to “Lloyds is pants,” either — because they thought it was inappropriate.

“I asked if it was ‘pants’ they didn’t like, and would ‘Lloyds is rubbish’ do? But they didn’t think so,” he told the BBC.

Our saucy lad asked if he could change it to “censorship,” but the bank shot that one down too.

The bank has since apologized and says the employee who made the initial change no longer works there.

What a load of pants.