Facebook Open Sources FriendFeed's Ultra-Fast Real-Time Web. Facebook just announced that it has released Tornado, the real-time web framework that powers FriendFeed, as open source code. According to Facebook's David Recordon, Tornado is one of the core infrastructure pieces that power FriendFeed's real-time functionality. The framework, according to Recordon, is similar to other Python frameworks like Google's webapp or web.py, but is faster and able to handle more simultaneous traffic than its competitors. On his personal blog, Bret Taylor, one of the co-founders of FriendFeed, explains the technical details behind Tornado in more detail.
Tornado is available under the Apache open source license. A basic demo of Tornado showing the commenting feature is available here. Developers will now be able to tap into one of the core infrastructure pieces that made FriendFeed tick so well. Here is what developers will get when they implement Tornado according to Bret Taylor: Coming soon: Finding your friends on YouTube. YouTube has always been a place for you to share and enjoy videos with family and friends. Soon, we'll be making it even easier for you to find people you know on the site.
We'll start by launching a "You may know these people" suggestions box on the homepage over the next few weeks that shows you the YouTube channels of people who might be your acquaintances, and lets you easily connect and subscribe to them. How will we make the suggestions? If you've logged in to YouTube and sent a video to a friend's email address, or if you have your YouTube account linked to a Gmail account, we will use this information to help identify your friends who already have YouTube channels. You'll only see channels whose owners have allowed themselves to be found by others who have their email address. Want to see if you've previously allowed your channel to be found by others who have your email address, or want to change your settings? Executives and Social Media. US executives have come to value social media very highly to enhance relationships with customers and build their company’s brand, according to the “Social Media: Embracing the Opportunities, Averting the Risks” white paper from Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law.
More than eight in 10 management, marketing and HR executives responding to the July 2009 survey cited relationship- and brand-building as benefits of social media. Execs also considered social media a good tool for recruitment (69%) and customer service (64%), and 46% thought it enhanced employee morale. Respondents reported using social media most for brand-building, followed by networking, customer service, and various research- and information-related activities. Despite high levels of usage and awareness of benefits, executives still have fears about the issues raised by social media. Such concerns are not new. Keep up on the latest digital trends. Check out today’s other article, “Web Users Seek Info in Pharma Ads.” Google Rolls Out The Mother Of All Updates: A Larger Search Box. Google is continually updating its search experience via the algorithms and the way results are displayed. But when it comes to the search box itself, it has largely left it alone.
Sure, it has added drop downs for suggested results, but the box itself has stayed a thin input field. But now it looks like Google may be thinking about a change. Today, while using the Safari browser, we noticed that the search box has been made bigger, and the buttons made square. We’re not the only ones who have noticed the change. It may seem like a trivial update, but remember, this is Google, millions of people use it every day to do searches, and a UI change, however small, is not trivial. Notice how big the input box now is compared to the Google logo (below). Also remember that Google goes over data for every little change it does to determine if the change is worth it. Anyone else noticing this change in any browser besides Safari? Says Mayer: Search, that is. My View of the Future of Search.
21 Great Shots [And How They Were Taken] PubSubHubbub vs. rssCloud grack.com. UPDATE: I’ve written a PubSubHubbub-to-XMPP gateway that solves some of the issues of running a real-time feed reader behind a firewall. UPDATE 2 rssCloud has a serious vulnerability that needs to be addressed in the protocol. I’ve linked some security recommendations here that rssCloud hubs should implement as soon as possible. These last few months have brought us not one, but two RSS-to-real-time protocols: PubSubHubbub and rssCloud. While rssCloud has been “around” for a while, it never saw much adoption or interest until recently. As a developer, the important question is: which of these two protocols should I focus on?
When you compare the two protocols technically, you find that there are some similarities (UPDATE: see here for a more in-depth comparison of the APIs): Both PubSubHubbub and rssCloud allow the hub to live on a different server than the server that is providing RSS. There are some significant differences between the two protocols, however: Yoko Ono: Beatle's Catalogue on iTunes Tomorrow. Paul McCartney's whooping encouragement, Lennon's calm breaths and Harrison's pensive plucking - if you're a Fab Four fan, you already know that tomorrow marks the official launch of the Beatle's remastered catalogue. But to further fan the flames of excitement, Yoko Ono spilled the beans that the discography will also finally appear in the iTunes store.
According to 9 to 5 Mac, Ono told Sky News that the entire Beatles back catalogue will be available for download in conjunction with tomorrow's Apple event. While the post has since been removed, Twitter has been a aflutter with rumors. The long awaited event will also happen with the release of The Beatles: Rockband. While diehard fans have been anticipating tomorow's digitally remastered Beatles catalogue since April, the iTunes rumor comes as a surprise. The Beatles catalogue has been mired in legal issues and label negotiations have always kept the catalogue off of web services like iTunes and Amazon. Time to Take a Stance on the Future of Journalism.
[qi:085] OK, I admit it. I’ve become one of those snooty guys who is telling the rest of us what the future will look like. Case in point: I’m one of the authors of the “Internet Manifesto,” a collection of positions about the future of journalism that was published yesterday. The original manifesto was in German, collectively written by 15 journalists and bloggers more or less known in the German new media landscape, but it has since spread well beyond the krautosphere. Journalist Jeff Jarvis tweeted about it yesterday, an official English version was published earlier today, and users have contributed Finnish and Romanian translations.
The manifesto is a collection of 17 declarations about the future of media production online. Newspaper publishers all around the world have been mounting attacks against search engines, aggregators and bloggers in recent months. “Numerous providers are using the work of authors, publishers and broadcasters without paying for it. 10 More Infographic Reasons Why You Should Go Green | FlowingDat. In this day and age, we should all be thinking about how we can better conserve the environment, because if we don't, well you know, the planet will die. In a follow-up to my previous eco-friendly list, here are 10 more infographics and visualizations on going green. How much water do you use? From GOOD In this collaboration with Fogelson-Lubliner, GOOD shows how much water you actually use during your daily activities. Where US Oil Comes From by Jon Udell US oil comes from places you wouldn't normally expect.
Virtual Water by Timm Kekeritz While you might see the water in the end product, it's still getting used. Deja Poo from Wired This nifty filtration setup lets you drink recycled toilet water. Track Energy Consumption with WattzOn This is how much energy you're using per day. Getting Around by Robert Di Ieso, Jr for GOOD Magazine Do you know how much gas you use with various modes of transportation? So Many a Second by Wouter Walmink Putting the amount of garbage we produce in perspective.
Creating A Social Business Is Your Next Social Media Challenge | You’re going to hear more and more people in the social media space start using the term “social business” in the coming months. It will likely replace “community building” as the corporate catch phrase of the moment. Trend setters in the industry like Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim and random other former Forrester Research employees now cashing in are already tossing it around. It puts a prettier wrapping paper on the larger payoff for what social media thinkers do.
What the term implies, at least from my perspective, is that the business in question, or what they’re trying to sell you, is one that is not driven by products or services. A social business is one that has products and services but prioritizes connecting with people, and facilitating connections between people, in an environment that is conducive to the company’s success. I’ll give you an example of a traditional business that has naturally become social businesses, perhaps without even knowing it. The FASTForward Blog McKinsey Survey: Seven Out of 10 Seeing We. By Close to seven out of ten respondents (69%) report that their companies “have gained business benefits [italics mine], including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.” This is probably the most significant set of survey findings I have seen yet that document actual benefits being seen from Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 deployments.
There has been quite a stir in the blogosphere lately about the lack of actual results being seen from these new methodologies (check out Dennis Howlett’s latest post on the topic, along with my colleague Paula Thornton’s observations ). What kinds of benefits, exactly, does McKinsey see coming out of Web 2.0 sites?
In the survey, half of respondents report that Web 2.0 technologies have fostered in-company interactions across geographic borders, 45 percent cite interactions across functions, and 39 percent across business units. Decreasing travel costs 40% Google Doodle's Mystery Revealed. Yesterday Google posted a mysterious doodle that linked to the search results for [unexplained phenomenon]. According to Google Korea's blog (English translation), this was the first from a series of 3 doodles that celebrate a famous person.
The next doodle will be posted on September 15th and the hints are: mystery, invisible, novel. As someone suggested in a comment, it's very likely that Google celebrates the birthday of H. G. Wells, a famous science fiction author born on September 21st. Here's an extract from a 1938 radio broadcast of a play based on "The War of the Worlds". Update (Sept. 15): There's a new doodle that points to a search for [crop circles] and this time there's a missing "l". Update (Sept. 20): Indeed, Google's doodles were related to H. WordPress › Blog How to Keep WordPress Secure. A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn’t sew my way out of a bag, but it’s true advice for bloggers as well — a little bit of work on an upgrade now saves a lot of work fixing something later.
Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.
The tactics are new, but the strategy is not. Where this particular worm messes up is in the “clean up” phase: it doesn’t hide itself well and the blogger notices that all his links are broken, which causes him to dig deeper and notice the extent of the damage. A stitch in time saves nine. Like this: There is no ‘I’ in Team, but there&#8217. One of the first things you begin to realize, as you delve into social media, is that there is a lot of trumpeting of personal brand and boosting of egos.
Whether it’s getting your article onto the front page of DIGG, seeing a couple hundred comments or trackbacks rolling into your blog or even just having that witty bon mot retweeted a dozen times over; the ego feedback loop is intrinsic and instantaneous. Given all the tools, means and tactics for sharing your message via the social platforms you can almost forgive brands and their communications and marketing professionals who step into social media, for treating it as another broadcasting platform. There is success to be had with those tactics. The cost of broadcasting your message online is nominal in comparison to traditional media, and arguably the measured results are more representative of interest in your message.
Locate the communities that matter to your brand and deliver your message directly. It’s efficient. Listening. China Sets New Rules For Music Sold Online. How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade. WordPress for iPhone › Beta Testers Needed. We are in need of beta testers for the upcoming WordPress iPhone application release version 1.4! If you’d like to be part of the fun and excitement and test the latest release on your device, please go and fill out a brief survey! (See update below.) Please note that this release only supports OS 3.0 and higher, and we have limited spots as Apple restricts these beta tests to a max of 100 people. We’ll be picking the beta testers at random — and if chosen, you’ll receive an email with instructions. Why do a beta test ? Of course, if you should happen to find a bug, please let us know the exact steps to reproduce it, and post that info to the forums. Thanks — and have fun! Update: We appreciate the many responses we received!
Like this: Like Loading... Contribute to or Contaminate the Conversation Direct Marketing. Nine Awesome iPhone Apps for Business - ReadWriteEnterprise. Maybe it's odd to be recommending iPhone apps right now, with the house of cards that is the confused App Store policy falling down on Apple's head. But business users, we know you've got no time for listening to the woes of developers. You need to get things done. From file sharing and mobile meetings to serious data analysis and business intelligence, here are nine of the coolest apps for enterprise iPhone users that we could find. Considering the economy, we also tried to stick to the free and low-cost options, and you'd be surprised just how much you can get for so little. Roambi For data geeks, this is the coolest enterprise app ever made. Cost: freeGet it Box.net Box.net is a SaaS collaboration and file-sharing platform that positions itself as a SharePoint alternative. Cost: freeGet it Fuze Meeting I prefer Fuze Meeting's mobile version for meetings and Web conferencing to the Cisco WebEx iPhone app.
Cost: freeGet it Bump Cost: freeGet it iXpenseIt Things Cost: $9.99Get it FreshBooks Yammer. Exclusive: Motorola bringing a “webOS” to An. Restoring API and SMS. Active Listening on the Social Web; It’s Overrated | PR2.0. How To Get Featured By the Press (Repeatedly) Even If Your Blog.
What the f**k ISN’T social media? | Blog. A Comparison of Open Source Search Engines zooie's blo. Operation “Silence Cyxymu” Crushes Twitter, MediaShift . Blogs, Twitter Become Force at TV Critics Press Tou. News Corp. and the Great Not-Free Experiment. Is Twitter here to stay? Brand vs. Brand Relationship: Let’s Not Confuse Them. Louisgray.com: To Jump on the Massive Unfollowing Trend Would Be. Social iGoogle Tested in Australia.
Women Dominating Facebook : Buzz Networker - Social Networking T. Seth's Blog: The bandwidth-sync correlation that's wor. The FASTForward Blog New Study Finds Social Media Becoming Main. TweetBlocker: Easily Delete Spammers From Your Twitter Stream. Why Cloud Computing is the Future of Mobile. How to create a social media department. How Different Groups Spend Their Day - Interactive Graphic - NYT. Stop Saying Sorry, Start Getting Really Social.
UN and Google Create Climate Change Mapping Resources. Is the advertising model dead? 10 Useful Thunderbird Add-ons for Almost Everybody. The Most Horrible Blog Post Ever. Building a Portrait of a Lie in the Brain.