Karen Ruby

Netvibes

I've been using Netvibes every day for about three weeks now and I must say that it's a very cool and useful homepage. I am totally impressed with the customization and features offerred.

This Web 2.0 app provides you with your own totally customized homepage. You can add almost anything you want to your homepage, including mail services like Gmail and Yahoo, any RSS feed you want - including Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, (even my own blog). You can add podcasts, Google search, to do lists, notes, bookmarks, eBay, Flickr photos, Writely documents (which I'm still waiting for my invite so that I can use that cool web word processor). I'm sure that Picasa Albums will be added too, once that app out of limited test release (hopefully soon).

I love that my home page has the ability to add multiple tabs and I can drag 'n drop (very cool!) any module that I want to any tab that I want. It's totally customizable! You can even title your page to whatever your heart's desire.

Developers are adding modules all the time to Netvibes web services, including the FIFA World Cup 2006, games, local weather, map mashups, calendars, Soduku, and so many other very useful services that I keep finding and adding to my home page.

This is pretty darn cool. I can see something like this definitely hanging around as it's so useful. Why go to tons of other sites when all the information you want is on one customized site? 

Check it out.

Tags: Netvibes Google Writely Digg

New Hard Drive and DVD Rewriter Challenge

This old Dell computer of mine needed a serious upgrade. I was running out of hard drive space since when I bought this Dell more than 2.5 years ago, I thought a 20GB hard drive would be enough. That's not nearly enough for today's large file downloads. I was just happy that it had a 1.6 Gig processor and a CD writer when I first bought it. That alone was a major upgrade from my crappy little P100 computer which I bought back in 1999 for $2300 of my hard earned student loan money. I wonder if I'm still paying that off since I still have some student loans left?

Anyways, it was time to upgrade my hard drive and buy a DVD rewriter. Which I did last night. Whoopee, now I have a 160GB Western Digital 7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache monster hard drive and I have been downloading stuff all day. What freedom! I also bought the LG 16X Super Multi DVD/CD Rewriter with 8.5 GB DVD+R Double Layer with Tri-Formats (DVD +- R/RW and DVD-RAM). I have been putting off these purchases for so long. No matter when you buy computers or computer parts, there's always a sale in a week, but I think I got a good price at $99 (after rebates) for the hard drive and only $79 for the DVD rewriter. Oh, and they threw in some free DVD discs.

It took me about four hours to install them both, because I had to install the hard drive first (the DVD software needed 10 GB free and I only had 4 GB remaining on my original drive). I didn't have any trouble making the new drive the slave by changing the jumper on the drive (the directions were pretty straightforward). What caused me a problem was connecting the power cord to the new hard drive. It just wasn't long enough. That is, until I closed the cover a little and then it reached. That was dumb and frustrating for me.

The DVD installation was super-easy. I had to install the software that came with it before installation, but installing it was a repeat of the hard drive installation -  change the jumper, attach the cord to the existing CD writer and attach the power cord to the DVD unit.

I have two points to this post:

1. I am absolutely so proud of myself for installing both the new hard drive and the DVD rewriter. I'm usually a software girl and I surprised myself that I was able to do this without calling one of my friends (read: male geek friends) to come over and get him to do it for me. I am WOMAN, hear me ROAR. It made me realize how far I've come in IT. Maybe for some it's not a big deal to install and format a hard drive, but it was a minor big deal for me to do this.

2. The tech guy at FShop told me to FDisk the new hard drive after I install it because my operating system wouldn't recognize the drive since it was too large. He mentioned going into my BIOS and changing some settings at startup and ensure that I go into Safemode to format the drive. Usually, I try to sound intelligent when I talk to the hardware techies at computer stores so I don't get ripped off, but am I ever glad that I didn't listen to this guy. I read the instructions that came with the hard drive, which basically said to go into Control Settings/Administrative Tools/Computer Management and format the drive. It was so easy to do this. It formatted the drive (I chose 1 extended partition and 1 logical partition).You shouldn't always believe what those computer store techies are telling you. It made me think, if someone like me who works in IT and is pretty darn computer literate, can be given wrong instructions, anyone walking in off the street can be so easily taken advantage of and believe anything that is told to them. I'm sure the techie believed what he was telling me, but he was just plain wrong. Oh, and I'm glad that I didn't pay the guy to do it for me.

If I can install a hard drive and a DVD rewriter, then I'm sure a lot of people can do it, too.

But, I think I will stick to software from now on. Going to learn how to burn DVDs next. Any good DVD burning advice?

craigslist in Toronto

A friend sent me the link to craigslist here in Toronto. Here's the link: http://toronto.craigslist.org/

Q: What is craigslist?
A: Local community classifieds and forums - a place to find jobs, housing, goods & services, social activities, a girlfriend or boyfriend, advice, community information, and just about anything else -- all for free, and in a relatively non-commercial environment.

Q: Which parts of the site have the most page views?
A: 1) jobs 2) housing 3) for sale 4) personals 5) forums

I didn't realize but the site has been active for Toronto since April 2003 - we were part of the first 25 cities. I'm bookmarking the site now.

Top 10 Dot-com Dogs

The Top 10 dot-com flops, according to CNET.com include:

1. Webvan (1999-2001)
2. Pets.com (2000)
3. Kozmo.com (1998-2001)
4. Flooz.com (1998-2001)
5. eToys.com (1997-2001)
6. Boo.com (1998-2000)
7. MVP.com (1999-2000)
8. Go.com (1998-2001)
9. Kibu.com (1999-2000)
10. GovWorks.com (1999-2000)

Was 2001 really over 4 years ago? How time flies, when you don't even miss sites like Flooz.com or Pets.com. Good riddance.

[via Izzy at Undisclosed Location]

Thursday Night Roundup

Here are some IT-related links to articles that I thought were really interesting from the last week. Enjoy!

• Teens more wired than ever --> how kids these days are inundated with technology and how they view technology
• Gates puzzled by computer science apathy --> how kids these days don't care to go into the computer science field and in particular programming because they think it is dull and tedious. Gates has a different opinion, of course. [So do I, programming is fun! and lucrative]
• Dot-com-bust doldrums over, Sun says --> "It sure feels nice to make money — that always feels good," said Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive. No kidding!
• The Web cookie is crumbling – and marketers feel the fallout Ahhh, those poor marketers
• Dork Pride! Suddenly, it's cool to be uncool --> I prefer geek, myself.

Top 10 Web fads

C|net has come out with their Top 10 Web Fads (via Izzy at Undisclosed Location);

1. Hampsterdance (1998)
2. Mahir (1999)
3. All Your Base Are Belong to Us (1998-2001)
4. Dancing Baby (1997)
5. Hot or Not (2000)
6. Friendster (2003)
7. Ellen Feiss (2002)
8. Star Wars Kid (2002)
9. Blogger (1999)
10. JibJab (2004)

"Once the masses could put anything online easily, they turned up weird fetishes, hilarious parody, jaw-dropping narcissism, and moments of brilliance. And over the past 10 years, some of these ideas broke through to the mainstream."

What's missing from this list? What are you surprised at seeing? Does Blogger really belong on this list?

Proximity Search on YellowPages

I never click on ads while I'm reading the net. Well, hardly never. I actually clicked on a ad for the new Yellow Pages today. What caught my eye was the words 'Proximity Search'. Apparently, now Yellow Pages.ca comes with LBS and nearest neighbour functions.

I tested the Proximity Search by typing in my address and 'hair salon' into the search fields and found that there was 132 various places that I can get my hair done that were within 1km of my address. I had no idea that there were that many!

What crossed my mind is that companies are really starting to pay attention to the all the hoopla that Google Maps and it's Local Search feature have been receiving lately.

Yellow Pages lists the results of the search (full contact listing) and has options to Map it, Driving Directions to the location, and businesses that are Close By. Nothing really that new, except for the Proximity Search. Since the company is the largest telephone directory publisher in Canada, it makes sense for them to use the data they already have in their vast databases. I don't really use the Yellow Pages online features that much. I've probably used the site twice in the last 6 months to find postal code and complete addresses for people, but I'm bookmarking the site now to find businesses near my address. I'll still use Google Maps to graphically display the location of the businesses, but to find them? Definitely Yellow Pages.

It looks like the the local or proximity search feature is going to be the next big thing that businesses will use to gain revenue.

Digital works storage and sharing site

A friend of mine from work turned me onto this cool site: Ourmedia.org. Need somewhere to showcase your podcast, video blog, Flash movies, home video, photo album and other digital work?

Ourmedia bills itself as "a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We'll host your media forever — for free." It also is:

• An open-source project built and staffed by volunteers
• A destination Web site that freely hosts grassroots video, audio, music, photos, text and public domain works
• A community space to share and discuss personal media
• A learning toolkit to help our members create rich and compelling works
• An archive so that these works can be preserved for the ages
• A clearinghouse that allows anyone to search for licensed video, audio or music, download it and remix it, with proper attribution. Legally.

The site is in alpha development (pre-beta release) and since it's open source and volunteer driven, you can help build the site during these early stages. Looks like they have a lot of cool things planned (check out their What's ahead page). Very ambitious and also very cool.

Check out the site, browse for some free media and get inspired.

Google Maps vs. Microsoft MSN Virtual Earth

Looks like Microsoft has been watching very closely the buzz surrounding Google Maps and their Keyhole acquisition and will coming out with their own internet mapping service, called MSN Virtual Earth, later this summer. (via All Points Blog "MSN Virtual Earth To Take On Google Earth"). Check out some of the screen captures on the link. This showdown between MS and Google should be very cool and interesting.

MSN Virtural Earth will provide:

Satellite images with 45-degree-angle views of buildings and neighborhoods

Satellite images with street map overlays

Ability to add local data layers, such as showing local businesses or restaurants

Allow users to choose from a number of different data types plus allow people to contribute their own information.

Microsoft already has their TerraServer which allows you to use their satellite imagery as a web service, but it doesn't match Google Maps for ease of use and for the 'coolness factor'. Google has outsmarted Microsoft by bringing mapping, satellite imagery, and local geographic searches to the layperson. All my GIS friends think that Google Maps is pretty fantastic (so do I). Even more so with all the cool web sites people are building to extend Google Maps functionality.

With the world's biggest (or is it second biggest now?) company entering the mapping arena, new technologies and the related functionality that developers will dream up, will just explode. I, for one, can't wait.

My prediction: Google will beat out Microsoft.

Update [05/23/2004]: Apparently, the original article is from The Wall Street Journal by Robert A. Guth. Check out another take on the initiative here. Couldn't find the orignal WSJ article online, but BookofJoe has it here. Hmm, seems to be a discrepancy on the timing of this. They may have been thinking of it back in March and are just announcing it now. Adena Schutzberg from All Points Blog posted that they announced it today.

Things you can do with RSS

Tim Yang has a great list of 15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away). Some of the things he lists include:

• Get the news as it happens from multiple news sources
• Collect your email from all your email accounts in your RSS reader
• Track Fedex packages
• Get notified of bargains at Ebay
• Get stock updates
• Get the weather reports
• Find out what people are saying about you, your company or your product online
• Get music, radio programs and TV clips
• Stay updated on someone's schedule
• Get cinema schedule updates
• Read your favourite comics
• Find out what other people surfing
• Automatically backup your weblog posts
• Get software updates
• Get the latest bittorrent files and ahem, p*rn

A lot of other people are adding things to do with RSS so check out the post and comments. You can also check out my earlier post on RSS here.

I'm off to add my RSS Gmail and check out podcastalley (since I just bought an iPod) and the other links.

Very cool.