Posts by Category: hmm..interesting

Mmm…wonder if it works?

cool tech May 23, 2007 posted by

Scratch – a kind of lego assembly kit for code

Scratch is an interactive programming project that lets you create animated items and share them with others. The editor is a downloadable program, so it’s not completely online, but there’s a pretty strong community aspect to the website anyway. It has the feel of an educational experiment about it, but will probably keep an 8 year old happy for a while, once they understand the interface. Worth a look.  Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to…


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hmm..interesting May 23, 2007 posted by

TalentSpring – job hunting gets peer voting

TalentSpring is a new type of job resume service where you get to vote on other people’s resumes and they get to vote on yours. A kind of ‘am I hot or not’ for job seekers? It sounds a little dodgy, but it would be churlish to dismiss innovation before it’s had a chance to get a fair trial. Wouldn’t it?  TalentSpring works because we align the interests of job seekers with companies that have jobs to fill. You’re only interested in certain jobs…


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hmm..interesting May 22, 2007 posted by

Climate Change – a guide for the perplexed

Climate Change: A guide for the perplexed. New Scientist debunks myths, explains issues and tries to make sense out of chaos. If you’re interested this is a great place to start. Even if you’re not interested actually. Oh and here’s the site which is probably the most authoritative on the whole vexed question – RealClimate (a pure science site which is run by  non political…gasp…climate scientists).  Our planet’s climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive…


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Bookmark This! May 21, 2007 posted by

Life size whale – up close to a denizen of the deeep

The Life Size Whale site from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society has a purpose. To make us aware of these majestic creatures….before they’re possibly gone forever. It’s rather spooky actually (especially if you have your sound turned up) and of course political, but worth a viewing nonetheless. [Via 4 color rebellion] Tags: whale+site, life+size, wdcs


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hmm..interesting May 16, 2007 posted by

Picture Yourself There – Navpix blog blogs locations

Picture Yourself There is a new blog from the Navpix GPS people, which marries their GPS camera navigation technology with a useful and interesting diary of interesting locations that you can visit using your Navman GPS system. Yes it’s a shameless marketing ploy to get people to buy Navman products, but if it gets traction it could actually turn out to be quite a valuable place to find new locations to visit on your travels. The idea is that the blog…


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hmm..interesting May 16, 2007 posted by

Schmedley – Netvibes for Mac lovers

Schmedley. It’s Netvibes created by an art director who’s just received a new Web 2.0 icon and widget palette for Xmas. You wanna know how I know? It’s got a Mac Dock clone at the bottom of the screen. Oh yes it has. It’s Alpha, and unfortunately all that eye candy makes for rather lacklustre performance, and much as I like some of the features (the Movies panel is uber cool), I suspect that Netvibes doesn’t have to worry quite yet. [Thanks Daniel]  The Web 2.0 world is overrun…


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hmm..interesting May 15, 2007 posted by

Adicate – web advertising booked by the hour

On the face of it the new Adicate hourly web advertising service looks really interesting. Advertisers register, log on and create ads which they run in hourly timeslots on publisher sites. Great idea no? Small advertisers can run limited length campaigns to get their message across and web sites can attract more small advertisers. Everyone wins. What’s a bit weird are the terms of service, and I can only assume that it’s some sort of Norwegian thing. For one thing,…


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hmm..interesting May 14, 2007 posted by

The NJ Electronics Lemon Law – a lame tech masher

Apparently the New Jersey legislature may enact an electronics ‘lemon law’ like the car one. This would mean that all consumer electronics devices, like iPods, digital cameras etc would be subject to the following: Any electronic device which could not be repaired within three attempts would require a replacement of equal value and condition. Defective items would require a full refund of the total purchase price; Stores that advertise in-home service for a electronics must provide such service and a…


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hmm..interesting May 11, 2007 posted by

The ISIS Adventure – puzzling for gold

  The ISIS Adventure is some kind of puzzle game for uber-puzzlers which is played…gasp….offline. Like, as in not in front of a computer screen. In the…real….world. It’s been called the ‘hardest game in the world’, with hieroglyphs, secret keys, hidden pyramids, gold coin prizes and everything. Kind of a glorified geek’s treasure hunt. To play, you’ll need to cough up £99.00 for a puzzle orb. Or you can try and find a free Orb to start off with. Here’s the…


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hmm..interesting May 1, 2007 posted by

Yell – local search competition hotting up

Yell.com (UK) has just re-launched its interface and it’s rather excellent. Super clean, versatile and with lots of useful features on the results page. Not only that but the map interface is also great (why isn’t every online map drag n’ move like this, eh? You listening MultiMap?). Looks like Google is in for a battle in local search. [Disclosure, I’m an advisor to the Yell group] Oh and while we’re on the subject of the big G., iGoogle? Hmm…Netvibes doesn’t have…


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Bookmark This! April 24, 2007 posted by

Revolution Health – online health goes all Rails and Web 2.0

Revolution Health is a classic example of our current online transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, with one subtle difference. First it’s a Ruby on Rails site – apparently one of the largest around. Two, it features a bunch of useful interactive health applications and tools (including blogging doctors for goodness sake) and thirdly, well it actually looks and works well. Clear design, legible etc etc. The difference? It was founded by Web 1.0 super guru Steve Case, yep the ancient…


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hmm..interesting April 19, 2007 posted by

Teacher James – teach or learn English online

Teacher James is a pretty cool new service which brings together English teachers and potential students via video resumes, availability calendars and profiles and webcam based tuition. There’s even a space for student reviews. Great way to offer global language tuition in an efficient way.  Teacher James, unlike other online tutoring programs, simulates a Face-to-Face Teacher/Student setting over the internet. The e-English interface is specially designed for those who have an internet connection and a webcam, to take English lessons…


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cool tech April 17, 2007 posted by

Octoshape – video streaming rival arrives Joost in time

Octoshape is a Joost rival which is gaining visibility without all the hype. Developed by a couple of Danish university uber-geek professors, the system uses a tech they call Grid-Casting (which looks a lot like BitTorrent in structure) to stream scalable video out of the door. As I said before, I don’t think that Joost is necessarily a shoe-in to own this market, take a look at the Egmont movie trailer channel to get an idea of the potential Octoshape…


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hmm..interesting April 16, 2007 posted by

Joost – like television but not

I’ve been giving the beta of Joost a trial over the past few days. Just in case you missed it, Joost is the newest application from the folks who gave us Skype. It’s an online television service based around Peer2Peer technology (and why not…?) which is being hyped as the next huge thing in online entertainment. First impressions? Um…it’s OK. The video quality is all right – think somewhat better than average YouTube in a larger image size – and the content…


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hmm..interesting April 10, 2007 posted by

Cozi Central – the family portal

Cozi Central. There’s something logical about using technology to reassemble the fragmented 21st century family, but we’re not sure just how practical these online portals are without a simple input mechanism. Family calendars, to-do lists and the like are great, but if everyone has to insert data via a computer it becomes more of a hassle than a time-saver. In our opinion of course. Nevertheless this version looks nice enough and is worth investigation.  Cozi Central makes life easier, less…


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