Tag Archives: Applications

A nock for Flash mobility?

windowslivewritersilverlight.gifFact: Flash Player is the most widely installed software in the history of computing.

Question: Given today’s press release from Nokia, are Adobe going to be outmanoeuvred by Microsoft’silverlight on mobiles ?

Answer: Pull the other one, it repeats “I’m a Flash killer” in a squeaky voice

Sparked by Daren Waters over at dot.life blog

The next stage in the evolution of the mobile web has become clearer [this] … announcement is a powerful message to the internet industry. Because Nokia’s phones, and specifically those running the S60 operating system, have a dominant place in the market, with more than 53% of the market share.

It means that Silverlight could well become the standard platform for web development on a phone and that in turn could have a knock on effect on the PC because smartphone sales will overtake laptop sales any day now.

Fair enough, if it was an exclusive deal – but it isn’t. In Nokia’s own words they are: “Adding support for Silverlight” which “will extend opportunities for developers”

Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java(TM) language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.

FlashEarth balloon enters Google Earth orbit!

flash-earth-in-google-earth.jpg

FlashEarth, the marvelous mashup of online mapping services by Paul Neave from the UK, has broken into new territory, thanks to Valery Hrosunov and Barry Hunter.

“What if the current view in Google Earth was quickly viewable in other maps, such as those made accessible by FlashEarth? Well, now it is. As you move around the globe a little white arrow follows you around, simple click it to get an approximation of the current view in FlashEarth in a popup balloon”. #

First, Valery posted to the Google Earth Community that you could include FlashEarth within a placemark bubble – if you are using GE 4.2 on Windows. Then, using the new capability of Google Earth to embed Flash into placemark bubbles, Barry Hunter has produced a KML network link. Open it in Google Earth, and a white arrow will appear in the center of the screen. Click on the arrow, and a bubble will pop up giving you the Flash Earth choices of imagery for that area.

Layers available in Flash Earth arenasas-aqua-satellite-on-august-26-07-fires-in-greece.jpg

* Google Maps
* Microsoft Virtual Earth (VE) Aerial
* Microsoft Virtual Earth (VE) Labels
* Yahoo Maps
* Ask Maps
* Ask Aerial
* Open Layers
* NASA Terra (Daily)

via | gearthblog

Previous post on FlashEarth:
Flash Earth adds NASA satellites

POSH home page – open source NetVibes-like

posh.gifPortaneo, another Parisian web company offering Ajaxified start-page packages akin to NetVibes & Webwags, have just taken a boulevard perhaps less travelled but in the long run one that could prove to be more interesting, by giving away the source code of their web portal – available for download here. Continue reading

Netvibes spice it up

netvibes.gifTariq Krim will be will be launching a major Netvibes update at the FOWA – Future Of Web Apps – conference being held in London over the next two days. The CEO of the Paris based – Ajax-ified start page – company is scheduled to speak on Wednesday.

The Frenchman was quoted recently as saying “Browsing RSS is kind of boring right now…It should be sexy.”

So wot ye got ? Continue reading

We’re Jammin

webjam.gif In private beta since the end of November Webjam was publicly launched last week.

Pete Cashmore from Mashable called it “Myspace plus Netvibes on steroids”, Sam Sethi from Vecosys “An extremely powerful tool for creating and remixing web pages”.

Squeezing this UK start-up into a nutshell isn’t easy. Continue reading

The widget wagon rolls on…

criteo.jpgFrench start-up Criteo, the distributed recommendation service, is dishing out their ‘collaborative filtering technology’ for use in the blogosphere with the AutoRoll widget.

The idea is a dynamic blog roll made up of similar sites that the people who visit your site have an affinity with. It’s a community thing I suppose, a kind of MyBlogLogs for recommending other sites or blogs. Continue reading

WWW cut to widgets

webwag_wod.jpgToday Webwag launches Widgets On Demand (WOD) their widget killer application as announced by Webwag’s founder Franck Poisson on a comment to an earlier post here on quoi9. I’ve been having a look at it over the weekend and its quite nifty really. We’ve recently seen Pageflakes proposing ‘widgets to take-out’. Then there was Netvibes with ‘lend us your google gadgets’ and now we’ve got ‘if you like it, just cut it out‘. Because that is how simple WOD makes it to change, just about anything on a web page, into a widget and bung it on you Webwag portal.

Once you’ve given WOD the URL of the page your interested in, that page opens inside Webwag, then you just highlight the area that you want as a widget on your start page, click done and that is all. Your – up to date – XML driven – dynamic widget is yours.

After all, thats where the interest in widgets lie, they contain updated information. With this in mind I tried a couple of DIY widgets myself. First off, a visit to auntie (the BBC) to cut out the news ticker. Which worked well – although a little short in length, (auntie’s tickers are quite long, as befits her age I might add), Webwag are working on a ‘free-size WOD’ version Frank tells me. Next up, Météo France to cut out the weather map for ‘le gard’ (the county I’m stuck in) and that worked fine, complete with little rain clouds moving. Over to Last.FM to cut out the Similar Artist Radio Station, slap it on Webwag, throw in a band and were off into streaming music. All done in a the wink of a WOD.

webwag3.jpgwebwag.jpgwebwag2.jpg