Internetling

I just found about about a new start-up on the social media scene (in beta) , called Hurox.

Normally, what should follow is a description of this web 2.0 ’service’ website, but I’m still deciding what to say. Roughly said, Hurox wants to be everything.

The sheer wealth of information and apps, which Hurox provides, is a bit overwhelming for the newbie user, and that’s why I think it won’t be as appealing to such Internet users. Instant messaging, listening to music, selling art, they even managed to integrate a friggin’ online desktop environment!

Upon signing up, Hurox asks you a few questions to learn about your interests. This enables you to customize Hurox to some degree (I still see a lot of ‘coming soon’ labels on the site).

I’m still getting used to the interface (waaay to much information), I’ll probably post an update later and we’ll see if Hurox will avoid the dreaded Dead-pool.

And no matter what others are saying about it, I think the guys at Hurox made a brave step towards creating the ultimate entrance to the Internet. Props for that.

P.S. I don’t know why, but I find the site to be extremely amusing, reminds me of the “999,999 games in 1!” cartridges for the Sega Mega Drive

Yup, Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s $44.3 billion bid. I  kind of saw it coming, that’s why I didn’t post about the news in the first place. The Yahoo! Board of Directors now what they are doing. Yeah, sure, Microsoft attempted to sweet-talk them into the deal, but Yahoo remains independent. Whew! Thank goodness… what would it look like if Flickr were owned by Microsoft.

Now Yahoo… do the right thing and OPEN THAT SEARCH ALREADY!

Let the ‘wow’ start! Buzzword is really just a word processor, much like Google Docs or some other counterpart. What separates Buzzword from the rest, you ask me?

Heh… almost everything.

You see, I use Google Docs for word processing (sometimes Zoho) only because most of the people I work with use it – it’s become a kind of a standard. Now Buzzword is not you everyday ajax app, it is built on top of Flash, which means teh interface looks much better than your standard web writing application. Now that Preview 7 is available, you can really enjoy the full power of Flash 9 : as Emily Chang wrote, Buzzword is not WYSIWYG, it is WYSIWYP.

And now for my favourite feature, the collaboration support: simply by selecting ‘Share’: now all your friends who have a Buzzword account work with the same version of the document. Neato! More points for web productivity there.

Of course, Buzzword still has a few flaws which I would like to point out: I’m not a big fan of the black interface, black interfaces are not for serious apps in my opinion, let the football manager games keep it. Also, don’t't forget, it’s still Flash. That means you’ll see the loading screen a few times.

That’s all I noticed, in comparison to others, it’s a great choice, especially for Opera users, because it ’s a Flash based app, so it’s not supposed to have any compatibility issues. You can sign-up and try Buzzword by signing up here.

In short, the guys at Virtual Ubiquity (purchased by Adobe somewhere in the beginning of winter 2007) have done a great job. Congrats!

Has anyone else tried Buzzword? How do you feel about it in comparison to other online word processing apps?

When I first found out about e-ink technology, all I could say is: awesome. We web productivity freaks don’t have time for a lot of reading. And ever since I heard about Sony’s e-reader, I couldn’t get my eyes off one of these babies.

There’s a new kid in town, though: the Bookeen Cybook Gen3, and this device is what I want to talk about today.

Unlike Sony’s device, which is pretty expensive and still has ‘coming soon’ status (no changes since summer 2006), including huge limitations, the Cybook is available now.

E-ink enables this gadget to economize in a much larger scale than other palm devices of the same size – with a fully charged battery the Cybook can endure 8000 page-turns (the e-ink monitor, in contrast to other monitors, does not need electricity to show a statical image). Not bad, huh?

It is much smaller and lighter than the Kindle, but the real treat lies inside: The Cybook uses Linux! It has also got a 6″ screen with an 800×600 resolution, you can read PDF, TXTs, HTML Mobipocket and lots of other formats, and not only that, you can listen to music, too (mp3 support) and use the device as a picture viewer. You get 200 Mhz and 16 mb RAM, with an SD card reader and 64 megabytes internal space.

The price is currently revolving around 350 euros… pretty good for new technology, I’d say.

Let’s be clear, the Eee does look neat. It uses GNU/Linux, too (although Xandros). But let’s face it, it’s not that great. It’s more of a marketing thing, much like the gOS computers. And since many people are literally going crazy (thus annoying me in the process) and buying all those laptops, I want to, as a tech savvy person, explain a few things which people wanting to purchase one of them often forget.

I’ve just been in our local tech store,  to check out a small black Asus Eee PC. After playing around with it for a little while I noticed the keyboard wasn’t configured correctly (a Slovenian keyboard has a very different layout), actually it wasn’t configured at all. It was really hard to find a friggin’ terminal, and when I finally found it, I successfully set up my new keyboard layout.

I cannot imagine how a non-nerd could possibly manage to do that. It’s not ready for prime time. That’s why I prefer the XO to the Eee. It’s a disgrace. I’d rather buy one with XP preinstalled.

Now secondly, the monitor is way too small. For the price of an EeePC, you can buy an iPhone. And what the hell are 512 megabytes of RAM doing there? You don’t need that much on Linux, plus what kind of powerhouse app are you going to run on a 7 inch screen? I hate the iPhone, but come on, compare them. The EeePC just isn’t your ultimate portable solution, it’s ‘the little portable device that could’.

What are your views on the subject?