Firefox campus edition blows

14 Sep 07

Just when you thought Firefox couldn't get any better, along comes the back to school version of the browser - Firefox on multimedia steroids, as it were.

The premise of Firefox Campus

Slowly but surely, Firefox is making headway into the Internet Explorer user base, and thanks be to the browser gods for that. And what better way to drive home your advantage for the long term than woo the students of today, so they become the evangelic users of tomorrow. It isn't exactly rocket science marketing. iTunes, the software engine behind the iPod was a student driven phenomenon, and look where that got Apple today, so the same approach could work with Firefox Campus, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

Foxytunes

Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web? FoxyTunes lets you control almost any media player and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more with a click right from your browser.

Maybe they should re-word that from the teachers' point of view?

Instead of finding quotations, illustrations and graphs, news footage, biographical data and the like, invest your astronomical fees developing a 360 degreee overview of Britney Spears . That should help your job prospects by course end, no end, not.

StumbleUpon

The second element of the Campus Edition is an account with StumbleUpon.

Connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering.

Oh, that sounds like a good one for all serious academics! But for attention deficit youths of today, shouldn't that say,

Instead of interacting face-to-face, you can chit chat about the game with your neighbor over the internet; compare in-dorm gossip, and most importantly, share the URLs of essays and presentations you found to plagiarise.

The Firefox Campus edition is no Trojan horse.

There is already a skeptical feeling in teacher land that the internet is not that great a learning tool in most hands. These two lame add-ons look like yet another type of trivia-oriented Google- and Wiki-based research that is replacing good old reading and assessing and thumbing through multiple opinions. Firefox Campus is shallow and won't allay any teachers' fears about the dumbing down impact of the internet in education.

If IT people want a place in education, they need to be aware of the negatives of the right tool in the wrong hands and realise that there is a good reason behind the reversal of some laptops for kids programs. The internet and the use of technology aint that great, yet. I am not saying studying cannot be fun, and there is a place for computer stuff, but the art of learning is a serious business best left to teachers to supervise. This idea of encouraging students to flirt alone between music, Stumbled sites and study is way off base, in my opinion.

Mozilla, find these academic students some academic value in the browser, don't add to the mindless distractions.

I'm back to my Britney thesis now, which is OK, because I have finished studying for today.

...

Mobile links to the Pisstakers

26 Jul 07

I did a post recently, explaining why we created a mobile theme for The Pisstakers blog, and why we made it work with the Opera mini browser.

Bottom line: now the iPhone is out, there will be ever more demand to access sites from your cell phoner. Until the iPhone takes off, standard cell phones without full-blown browsers onboard will continue to be the norm, so webmasters have to make the effort to get their site themes mobile-ready. Opera are readier than most with a working solution to get a website onto a small phone screen.

Below are a couple of pieces of info to give you a chance of accessing The Pisstakers from your crappy non-iPhone phone.

To link to The Pisstakers from a cell phone, go to wam.tw and input 1010 (1010 is a bookmark for the Pisstakers!)

Create similar bookmarks from your cell to all your fave sites too.

To create a bookmark from your mobile theme to the Pisstakers, input the following HTML into your theme code for a quick link to The Pisstakers.

<p><anchor> <go href="http://wam.tw/addlink.jsp?lnum=1010" /> <img src="http://wam.tw/wam.wbmp" alt="wam" /> </anchor> </p></textarea></form><br /><br /><h2>Opera v Safari</h2><br />Opera offer the best solution for viewing a blog on a tiny screen, I think. Opera Mini is a hobbled version of a full browser, but does scale a page down brilliantly, so you can easily access all the relevant info within the confines of your screen. This mobile friendly browser is especially impressive when a site has a custom mobile style sheet - like The Pisstakers!. <br /><br />Opera is geared up to making the best of a bad job - who seriously wants to surf the internet on the average cell phone? Apple have taken a totally different approach and decided that a phone could be a great tool for surfing the internet, if it were designed right. Rather than reinvent the web with a need for special mobile browsers, Apple invented a phone format that can recognise and display full-on web pages in Safari - without making users go blind or crazy. <br /><br /><img class="imageStyle" alt="safari-on-windows" src="page53_blog_entry290_2.jpg" width="375" height="77"/><br /><br />It sounds spectacular when you say you have the front page of the Times on your iPhone, but let's get real. It gets even more spectacular when you zoom in with a flick of the fingers and you can actually read the Times on your phone. <br /><br />(Detractors say you can only surf Safari on the iPhone if you have sufficient bandwidth to even download a page, and enough juice before your battery runs out. That is not really a fault of the iPhone, more a criticism of the infrastructure in the US.) <br /><br /><h2>In conconclusion</h2><br />I am sure Apple will continue to wipe the cell phone industry floor with ease of use, but for now, I think they have moved mobile website design backwards, or at least caused some confusion. <br /><br />Until the iPhone arrived, web site designers were beginning to try and scale down and modify sites specifically for use on a mobile phone screen. Now they may be wondering if it is worth it, as Apple are likely to induce changes in attitude towards browsing at all the big cell phone manufacturers. <br /><br />We shall see where it leads, but Apple will tease and taunt and lead the way for full browser-enabled phones, while Opera continue to dominate as the <em>mini browser kiddies</em> in a massive but ever shrinking genre of cell phone. <br /><br /><div class="blog-entry-comments"><a class="blog-comment-link" href="javascript:HaloScan('rw_unique_entry_id_290_page53');"><script type="text/javascript">postCount('rw_unique_entry_id_290_page53');</script></a><font color="white">.</font> 
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<a href="http://www.addthis.com/feed.php?pub=edtheeditor&h1=http%3A%2F%2Fxfruits.com%2Fpisstaker%2F%3Fid%3D20270&t1=" title="Subscribe using any feed reader!"><img src="http://www.thepisstakers.com/imagez/rss-single-icon.jpg" width="14" height="14" border="0" alt="AddThis Feed Button" /></a>
<font color="white">  . </font> <a class="blog-trackback-link" href="javascript:HaloScanTB('rw_unique_entry_id_271=page53');"><script type="text/javascript">postCountTB('rw_unique_entry_id_271_page53'); </script></a></div></div></div><div id="unique-entry-id-269" class="blog-entry"><h1 class="blog-entry-title"><a href="Powerset-natural-and-intuitive-search-Or-is-it.html" class="blog-permalink">Powerset natural and intuitive search. Or is it?</a></h1><div class="blog-entry-date">19 Jun 07  </div><div class="blog-entry-body"><a href="http://www.blognewcomb.com/blog/2007/06/powerlabs_the_first_screenshot.html" rel="self" title="search in the 21st century"><img class="imageStyle" alt="powersets-banner" src="page53_blog_entry269_1.gif" width="375" height="115"/></a><br /><br />I have been hovering on the edge of my seat for a web search engine called <a href="http://www.blognewcomb.com/blog/2007/06/powerlabs_the_first_screenshot.html" rel="self" title="powersets search">Powerset</a>. It is a natural search engine which could be a Google killer if it works. But the company seems to be getting more bad press than good.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff3333; ">This morning I wrote </span>People don't like that they are teasing us with sideshows, holding back the main show for release, perhaps in September. To add insult to injury, the background to the search page is black! Just a couple of obvious issues that have planted seeds of doubt in another start-up company. <br /><br /><span style="color:#ff3333; ">No wonder it made people doubt the credibility of these rocket scientists, because someone called Ed, plus a fair few others, got the wrong end of the stick when reading a press release this morning. To clarify in words of one syllable:<br /><br />The search engine is called Powerset. It isn't released yet.<br /><br />The pictures above are of Powerlab, which is like a preliminary exercise or run-out for the technology that is going to be used in the finished search engine. <br /><br />Powerset just launched Powerlab. Got it? Good. <br /><br />This clarification also  means the people who can't stand black can probably be guaranteed that the final search page will not have a background color: 000000.</span><br /><br />I had another more cerebral doubt. Is this really a natural and intuitive system for finding info, or are the owners just spinning?<br /><br /><h2>Powerset is intuitive?</h2><br />Working on the basis that software is a reflection of the owner (Google and the Google owners have a certain snug fit symmetry, I think) what is really going on with Powerset's intuitive and natural search engine? <br /><br />The<em> About</em> blurb on the CEO's blog site raised my hackles about "<em>intuitive</em>" straight away and made me wonder at what level the intuitive idea starts to permeate the software, because intuitive sure doesn't start with PR from the top! To show you what I mean, join me if you will in reading this:<blockquote><p>Powerset is a San Francisco company building a transformative consumer search engine based on natural language processing. By making search more natural and intuitive, powerset is fundamentally changing how we search the web, and delivering higher quality results.</p></blockquote>I had to read it three times to work out that I understand everything except <em>transformative</em>. Not being a smart ass, but I have a pretty good vocabulary, and sorry, but this member of the masses hasn't got a clue what the hell you are talking about with <em>transformative</em>. However, my intuition tells me it probably isn't that big a deal of a term, probably some cyber geek terminology. <br /><br />Let's not get too nit picky, though, this is a start up. Just assume the PR wording is a minor geeky detail, of interest to a tiny minority only. <br /><br />And let's not get too irate at the idea of drip feeding a product launch to the press, and just accept that in this day and age it was a dodgy tactic that is simply unintuitive not illegal. <br /><br />And let's embrace the idea that something deep in my subconscious tells me black is not welcoming but it still works. <span style="color:#ff0000; ">And now we know that the black screenshot isn't even the search engine, we can totally relax! </span> <br /><br />In fact I  won't get too hung up on the train of thought that<em> intuitive</em> and <em>About Powerset </em>don't quite gel. I will be kind and assume that the CEO got carried away with the use of <em>transformative</em>, and that he didn't write the software, and the developers are more the intuitive type and they have a search mind set that has been intuitive from the start? <br /><br />Let's hope so - and if <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/exclusive_launch_of_powerlabs.php" rel="self" title="rocket scientists at Powerset">this guy is to be believed</a>, the people building Powerset do indeed have 2 brains and think in the 5th dimension, so it should all work swimmingly.<br /><br />This is a product to watch, and I for one look forward to trying it out and I will of course start with a search for <a href="http://thepisstakers.com/search/theoptions.html" rel="self" title="web search options">The Pisstakers web search</a>, <em>Funny Quotes of the day</em>, and <em>roger my uncle</em>. Powersetting should be an interesting exercise, but whether it is more natural and intuitive than Googling, only time will tell.<br /><br /><h2>Powerset is a natural search engine? </h2><br /><div class="image-left"><img class="imageStyle" alt="powersets-thumb" src="page53_blog_entry269_2.jpg" width="75" height="41"/></div> There was a bigger alarm bell this morning , however, about whether this Powerset deal is more spin than revolution when a sharp-eyed geek <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/15/powerset-to-launch-social-network-around-search-engine/" rel="self" title="techcrunch featured powersets and critics flocked">commenting on Tech Crunch</a> wondered why could he see a category on the screenshot called <em>Porn</em>? <br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000; ">As has been mentioned, however, the </span><span style="font-size:14px; font-weight:bold; color:#ff0000; font-weight:bold; ">PORNOGRAPHY</span><span style="color:#ff0000; "> crisis is over. That screenshot isn't the search engine and the Porn category, pah, it's a joke that all you sex industry tourists hoping for good deals for Thailand can just wipe from your sleazy minds. So I too can strike the words that tumbled out my irrelevant mind.</span><br /><br /><s>As I understand it, Porn is short for pornography . Soft porn is an unnatural representation of a natural act. Hard core porn can be a graphic representation of some pretty unnatural acts. This reference to porn in the promo screenshot therefore seems to go directly against what the Powerset guys are trying to achieve right out the box - natural search for the masses.Or does the term transformative explain away these criticisms , and Powersets is natural, intuitive and for the masses who struggle to read a black background?</s><br /><br />Never has so much confusion reigned over natural language! But thanks to <a href="http://deliberateambiguity.typepad.com/blog/2007/06/powerlabs_scree.html" rel="self" title="the full picture of powerset and powerlab">Powerset Product manager</a> Mark Johnson for calling my attention to this confused state of mind. And I guess that judging by the way he mainly referred to "PORN" on the blog as the P word, the PTakers won't get a mention in our entirety!<br /><a href="http://www.powerset.com/" rel="self" title="powerset landing page"><img class="imageStyle" alt="powerset-banner" src="page53_blog_entry269_3.gif" width="375" height="114"/></a><br /><br /><div class="blog-entry-comments"><a class="blog-comment-link" href="javascript:HaloScan('rw_unique_entry_id_269_page53');"><script type="text/javascript">postCount('rw_unique_entry_id_269_page53');</script></a><font color="white">.</font> 
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