The Web Services Report

The case of Twitter's missing followers

Harrison Hoffman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:24:00 GMT

Nothing could have caused more uproar in the blogosphere about Twitter than followers suddenly disappearing. We have all complained about and tolerated Twitter's downtime issues, but seemingly losing your hard-earned followers is something that users might not stand for.

In an update on the issue on Twitter's status ...

Would Google destroy Digg or take it to the next level?

Harrison Hoffman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:29:00 GMT

Digg commenter Hiji writes, "This is the beginning of the end. In a few years all the major blogs and social-media sites will be owned by large corporations, putting us right back where we started."

The topic of discussion is, of course, TechCrunch's rumor that Digg will soon be ...

Hands on: Facebook's iPhone app

Harrison Hoffman — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:52:00 GMT

Facebook's iPhone app gives you access to Facebook Chat.

Along with over five hundred other applications, Facebook's iPhone app made its debut today. The application gives you easy access to your friend's updates and profiles, along with Facebook Chat and your inbox. Facebook's app also ...

Digg's recommendation engine slated for release this week

Harrison Hoffman — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:48:00 GMT

The social news/video/photo site, Digg, will be rolling out their long anticipated recommendation engine to users this week. The rollout will be starting with a random sampling of users and eventually moving towards the entire user base at the end of the week. Digg's recommendation engine will try to engage more users in the upcoming section of the site by recommending stories from similar users.

Digg's upcoming section, where stories wait for enough diggs in order to get promoted, has been very intimidating for users to jump head first into, given the volume of stories being submitted. It was fairly hard to sift through all of the crap in order to get to the real gems. Hopefully the introduction of a recommendation engine will make it a lot easier for users to find the quality submissions.

I believe that the addition of a recommendation to Digg is going to significantly help with the usability of the site and direct people towards the long tail of submissions. By adding a lot of new eyes to the upcoming section, Digg's homepage will certainly get a much fresher look than we have seen recently.

Digg's new recommendation engine lets you compare your tastes with the tastes of other users.

(Credit: Digg the Blog)

The other important factor to look at here is the apparent benefit that the recommendation engine will be giving to websites. Making content more discoverable on Digg means more traffic for the sites that the content has been submitted from. I suspect that more and more sites will begin to feel the Digg effect as a direct result of the launch of this feature.

The introduction of a recommendation engine should give Digg a nice jolt. I haven't seen the feature in action yet, but if it is implemented correctly, I see Digg becoming a much more valuable resource and frequented by a lot more people. Kevin Rose posted a couple of videos on the Digg Blog which you can see embedded below. The first is an overview by Kevin of the recommendation engine, complete with graphics and the second features Anton Kast, Digg's Lead Scientist, talking about the new engine. You can read his whitepaper on the subject here.

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Two steps forward, one step back: NBC's online Olympic coverage

Harrison Hoffman — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:22:00 GMT

Ever since NBC announced their very ambitious plans for online coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I have been very excited to see how well they execute it. Promising 3,500 hours of online video, with 2,200 hours of live streams, full event replays, and highlights, for free, how ...

Curtains up: YouTube Screening Room makes its world premiere

Harrison Hoffman — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:13:00 GMT

YouTube has just announced the launch of the rumored YouTube Screening Room. The news broke yesterday that YouTube was going to be delving into professional films, with the possibility breaking out of their 10 minute mold and into longer form. YouTube is actively pursuing filmmakers to try and get high ...

5 tips for a techie traveling abroad

Harrison Hoffman — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:16:00 GMT

This post is part of a multi-part series about tech abroad.

(Credit: Harrison Hoffman/The Web Services Report)

It's summertime and that means that people across the world are taking vacations to faraway places. Many people would be satisfied with checking in on their email every couple of weeks, for five minutes, at an internet café while on vacation. Techies like me, however, crave a higher level of contact with their information online. You may not be as much of a power user as Robert Scoble, however the world keeps moving even though you are abroad.

Everyone knows to bring power adapters to hook up their electronics, but here are some tips that you may not have considered, that I have gathered during my stay in Europe so far.

1. Free WiFi is scarce, take advantage when you can. You may luck out and land at a hotel or hostel where they provide free internet, but most of the time you are going to have to pay or go without access. Orange is a popular provider of paid WiFi in Europe, for reasonable prices (15 Euros for 10 hours). They have a lot of hotspots, but you are going to want to watch your time and not go overboard there. Some cafés will have free WiFi and usually advertise it on a sticker in their window. For a more casual setting, the McDonald's, on the Champs Elysses in Paris, has free WiFi to go with your Royale with Cheese. Some public places, such as the parks by Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, also provide access.

If and when you find free WiFi access, jump over to Google Reader and download your RSS items with its offline Google Gears functionality. If you take the couple of seconds to do this, you can catch up on your news even when you're not basking in the glow of free WiFi.

2. With that said, bring your WiFi enabled phone. iPhone users take note, a quick download of your emails onto your phone saves you a lot of trouble of lugging a laptop around. This helps you to leverage the scarce free WiFi to the best of your ability. While you will benefit greatly from having WiFi on your phone, remember to turn off data roaming, or else you will rack up a massive bill during your trip.

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Baynote ramps up offering with Collective Intelligence Platform

Harrison Hoffman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Baynote specializes in using traffic and user data in order to tailor recommendations and generate more sales. Launched in June 2006, Baynote employs this "wisdom of the crowds" approach and provides customized reporting to large companies. Today, Baynote is launching their Collective Intelligence Platform. On top of their prior capabilities, ...

MLB.tv debuts killer iPhone app

Harrison Hoffman — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:17:00 GMT

MLB.tv on the iPhone
(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

Baseball fans rejoice. MLB.tv has just debuted a killer iPhone application at WWDC 2008. The application provides live scoreboards, with individual box scores and pitch-by-pitch updates, along with current and constantly updated video highlights, minutes after the play ...

Loopt demos free location-based iPhone app

Harrison Hoffman — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:53:00 GMT

The location-based social network Loopt, just announced and demoed its native iPhone application onstage at WWDC. The application, which will be free at launch, helps you connect with and find friends around you. Using the location technology built in to the iPhone, Loopt will drop pins onto a map, showing ...