In my previous post, I spoke about why I left Firefox for Safari. The basics — Firefox ran too hot for my liking. Safari is better optimized for my Macbook Pro.
However, a few weeks ago, I read about a program that has “forced” me to go back to Firefox. It is called Feedly. It is an add-on for Firefox. Scoble and Louis Gray have both spoken about it, which piqued my interest.
What does it do? Generally, it aggregates all of your feeds and creates a magazine like digest of those feeds. However, it has another function that makes it worth Firefox abusing my computer’s fans. Feedly Mini sits at the bottom right hand corner of my Firefox screen. Feedly Mini essentially turns every web page into a Google referenced page.
What do I mean? I can share any web page or article that I read through my Google Reader shared items feed. I can email it using Gmail. Feedly also ties into some other great web 2.0 programs, which I rarely use.
Feedly is great for me because my reading habits are not just confined to my 250 RSS feeds found in Greader. I read many other websites such as the Nytimes, Cnet, Techmeme, WSJ, WashPost, etc. I prefer to read over these general sites because they open me up to greater variety of information than I would otherwise gain from my more directed and specific RSS feeds. Until Feedly, I was never able to share (and, why I really like Greader, it allows me to save these feeds) the articles that I read outside Greader. I would read many great articles that were quickly forgotten.
With Feedly, these articles no longer go through my head and then a few days later, leave it. I have a record of my favorite articles that is kept for posterity (or for however long Google is around).
Feedly is not available for Safari so now I am back as a Firefox user.
I recently started blogging. I started with Blogger because it is one of the main services and is part of Google. While Google scares me at times, its programs tend to be some of the best. Plus, despite the eerie privacy issues, I love having a single log-in name for everything. Basically, I tend to really enjoy Google services and do not want particularly want to leave their bubble.
However, blogger lacks the functionality of WordPress. My customization options are few. Adding widgets beyond the mere basics is difficult. Frankly, it was not up to the level of other Google programs and is easily beaten by WordPress.
I still have some playing around to do with both sites and will reserve final judgement for later. One thing holding WordPress back from winning outright is that adding my Google Reader shared items to my WordPress blog is difficult. I am working on this now. Wish me luck.
Zune has a new website and a video. They are trippy. Thanks Techcrunch for pointing me towards it.
Watch the video and checkout the website (here). The video is neat but I think the website is very cool. It is different. It navigates in semi-3d space and you move from one space to the other simply by pushing your mouse forward or back. There doesnt seem to be any information in that 3d space except for trippy pictures. However, imagine if those pictures held portals to further 3d spaces with more information. One could conceive a whole new way to navigate. The site really made me feel as if I had entered a whole new world rather than just looking at, what is post-zune, boring old webpages. Of course, there may be some navigation limitations involved in creating a realistically useful site.
What this really makes me think is: we are desperately in need of a website revolution. We have Web 2.0. It changes the underlying nature of what we can do with a website. Yet the presentation of Web 2.0 website are still fundamentally Web 1.0. There are still boring and plain except filled with ajax features.
Since no one seems to know for sure what form Web 3.0 is going to take (although an underlying semantic web is a possibility), this could be it [from an interactivity/design standpoint]. Imagine a new way to navigate in a 3D world coupled with Ajax usefullness. Some people might not understand it and they could click a button to switch views. Add in smart searching to find the content you need, smart ads that stylistically couple with the content you want and you are golden.
Here is an example of what I picture: I go to a website like www.Buy.com. I can fly through their store from one section to the next (from DVDs to computers, to books, and so forth). Each section is stylistically different and the style coincides with the product category. I can either stay in that section and check out the various subsections that float in space with 3D pictures representing their sub-category. If I want to move to the next category, I can “fly” there. If, instead, I want to search for a product, I type in my seach and instead of a normal listing, I receive a floating group of products that meet my search criteria. The most relevant products are closest to the middle of the frame and then move out from there.
I have this dream of a web that sucks me into a whole new world…
Posted by Cogitatus 
Posted by Cogitatus 
Posted by Cogitatus 
