Latest Posts from Download Squad

This is pretty friggin' sweet -- Yahoo is integrating blog search with their news search, as well as adding Flickr photos and My Web 2.0 results into the mix. This brings together user-created and mainstream media in a way that's unprecedented, totally beating Google to the punch on this one as well as leveraging the goodness of both Flickr and My Web 2.0. The index only includes a subset of the larger blogosphere (those that are included in the My Yahoo feed directory), but will grow to ideally include everything from the blo.gs ping stream. The interface doesn't quite put blogs on equal footing visually -- they're off in a sidebar while the regular news search results are in the main pane -- but I actually sort of like the way this is done. It's not going to alienate mainstream users who want to stick with their traditional MSM sources, but will provide a still visible alternative. Social software nerds (raising hand), bloggers, and others already kicking back with their second (or fifth...) cocktail in the cluetrain dining car can just click on through to the interface that shows blog search results in the main pane and Flickr results in the sidebar at right (here's an example search on Web 2.0). I dig it. For once, I only have one small request -- I want a way to make the blog news search interface my default for news search, so I don't have to click through each time (with option to click through the the mainstream search results).

Huzzah -- a utility for backing up your Flickr photos in one fell swoop to a computer of your choice. Flickr Backup looks like a really handy way to corral all of those photos you've sent from various machines and cellphones into one safe backup location. It's a Java utility, cross-platform, and open source -- three things we tend to like as a general rule.

[Via del.icio.us]

Beware, it's "so alpha it makes us cry" -- but considering alpha is the new beta, Slawesome probably ends up doing alright. It's a simple web-based way to add a voice message to an email. The interface is dead simple, and all you need is a microphone of any flavor. I tried it. It worked. Party on.

[Via Tech Crunch]

This has been getting a lot of buzz lately -- NetVibes is another personal portal in the vein of Google personalized home and Microsoft's Start page. You can syndicate RSS feeds in drag and droppable DIVs, embed a search widget, and get a preview pane for your Gmail account. One notably handy addition is the ability to add notes to a page, which adds some of the flavor of Protopage to the mix. I won't be too surprised if we keep seeing more of these gloriously AJAX-ified personal portal page offerings.

Gobby is reminiscent of SubEthaEdit but will work in a mixed environment of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other UNIX flavors (SubEthaEdit is Mac only). It's a collaborative editing environment in which multiple authors on the same network can collaborate on text documents. Gobby also sports an IRC-like chat environment for communicating in realtime outside of the coding or authoring session. Each author can use a unique color to identify their contributions to the text. The app is only at version 0.2.2, so don't be too surprised if it's a little rough around the edges -- but the cross-platform aspect of this is definitely a step in the right direction.

[Via del.icio.us]

Here's another entrant into the growingly crowded space of social calendaring: Planzo bills itself as an "online planning community," allowing you to quickly and easily share your calendar entries via simple cut and paste. It speaks the Web 2.0 lingo: AJAX, RSS, XML, etc., and promises a dead easy interface with one click event creation and drag and drop event changes. The service offers a number of ways to export and/or share your calendar: to yourself as a daily email digest, reminders via SMS, event sharing with contacts on Planzo (including access controls for private events), and and via RSS. You can also customize the look and feel of your calendar. Oh, and, there's a bit of example that lives here...

[Via Robin Good]

Take a dictionary, add AJAX-y goodness, season to taste and you've got ObjectGraph, a dictionary that displays results automagically with each keystroke. The interface works like Google Suggest, where a dropdown DIV element displays results as you type. You have your choice of four different word sets: Classical is the websters 1913 dictionary (which is rather amusingly out of date), the freely available FOLDOC online dictionary (which should probably really be the default selection), the periodic elements, and a Thesaurus mode.

[Via Digg]

In a rare, extremely cluetrain response from a corporation whose product has been hacked, Lego is actually welcoming the modification to its 3D design program that will enable users to avoid purchasing too many extra blocks when making custom kits. The backstory is that last month Lego launched a new program that lets users make custom Lego designs using the provided free 3D design software, then actually order the kits that would create their custom models. The trouble is, users would sometimes end up over-ordering too many extra bricks because of the way brick packages or 'palettes' contained multiple bags of bricks. The software would generate an order based on which palettes to order, causing a glut of extra bricks -- so users created a database of the type and number of bricks in the bags, and modified the software to display the number of bags to order instead of palettes, bringing the cost of many custom pieces down. Instead of flipping out about users hacking their software, especially when the net result is a loss of revenue for the company, Lego is embracing the modifications. Lego senior producer Ronny Scherer said, "It was a puzzle to us. They took us completely by surprise. We think it's great." Wow, a company embracing its users' efforts to make its tools more useful -- how unfortunately novel.

[Via Slashdot]

Well, it was short but sweet while it lasted. The populicio.us service that tracked the fastest growing popular links on del.icio.us is now defunct. Developer xabi indicated in the farewell message that del.icio.us made some changes to the way links are displayed on the homepage, such that populicio.us could no longer generate real statistics. Good thing we've got Memeorandum to turn to!

[Via Waxy]

This is some pretty promising stuff -- the new incarnation of Memeorandum is an automated tech and politics blog news aggregator that hopes to keep an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what's hot in the blogosphere. The new code has only been public for a few days, so the sample size is still low -- but from what I've checked out so far, I'm genuinely impressed. The biggest caveat is that it's only tracking technology and politics -- but within those domains it stands to be an incredibly useful tool. Essentially, stories that get linked most frequently rise to the top, then sink down again as they're replaced by newer, hotter stories. The algorithm favors posts with some meat on their bones, and disfavors blog posts that are quick one-liners linking to something else. I'm definitely going to be utilizing this as a quick way to see at a glance what's going on.

[Via Read/Write Web]