Category: Interesting

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Mashups

Mashups (Wikipedia definition) are a new kind of web applications, which combine multiple services into a new one by using existing APIs. Here are a few examples:

  • Weather Bonk combines the Google Maps API with weather and webcams to create a live weather map.
  • diggdot.us is a news mashup of Digg.com, Slashdot and del.icio.us.
  • MusicMap finds albums which you might be inclined to listen to based on your own album list (click “new search” when the website appears).

You can always look in Mashup Feed to find other popular and new mashups.

If you’re interested in mashups as a developer, then MashupCamp is running these days. Another good place to look is Dion Hinchcliffe’s Enterprise Web 2.0 blog. But you can just look for “mashup” in Google.

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Multi-Touch Interface Video

There has been a lot of hype lately regarding multi-touch user interfaces, which are the natural advancement of touch-screens: they react to multiple touches at once instead of just reacting to a single touch point.

I admit that when I first heard about multi-touch user interfaces I didn’t think it was a big deal until I saw this video demonstrating what you can do with such an interface.

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The Caffeine Nap

If you’re very tired and can’t keep your eyes open, researchers at the Loughborough University in Britain found out that the combination of a cup of coffee with an immediate 15 minutes nap afterwards provided the most alertness for the longest period of time.

This is called The Caffeine Nap, and was deemed by the researchers as the most effective method for tired drivers to keep themselves awake.

I’m a big believer in power naps. Snoozing for 20 minutes really gives me a boost after lunch time. Here’s an article that categorizes naps and explains the different benefits of each kind of nap.

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Google to create an Internet alternative?

For a while now it has been known that Google is buying “dark fibre”, fibre optics cables which have never been connected because of the tech industry’s downturn of year 2000. There have been many speculations regarding the reason Google is doing this. The picture is starting to clear up as Google is apparently trying to create an alternative Internet.

This reminded me that Microsoft once tried to create an alternative internet. This network was called MSN, and was different from the MSN that we know today. If you wanted to connect to MSN you had to use your dialup modem to call a different network that was not the Internet. Needless to say, this attempt failed.

Now that Google is losing its shine in the eyes of the public (privacy concerns, products which failed to impress like Google Video) it will be interesting to see if they can really attract a critical mass of users to an alternate internet.

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“Where’s George” helps to model the spread of infectious disease

The website Where’s George lets people enter their dollar bills and see where bills have traveled. I always thought it was an interesting idea. For example, check out this example of a dollar bill trace. You can even see a map where the bill has been.

Lately, however, a surprising use was found for Where’s George. From this article: “…scientists have unveiled statistical laws of human travel in the United States, and developed a mathematical description that can be used to model the spread of infectious disease in this country.”

(via Slashdot)