RSSfeeds.nl

A search service, which allows a user to search the content of RSS-feeds. It proclaims to search mainly dutch feeds (based in the NL or in the dutch language?). I saw english language feeds as well.

I am not we need this. A specific dutch language feed might be useful. But this is to limited. Google can do this for me. I want an Orkut blog search service, i.e. search my friend-of-friends-blogs (or feeds) who are looking for friends and are subscribed to community-groups. Implying that I want to create more complex queries.
[inspiration Adam Curry]

RepCheck

Gerrit mentioned Repcheck as a new service. It is however not a new service (check my directory). I signed up many years ago. The service still knew my userID. I was however not able to sign i, as my email-address had changed. Anyway I signup again (I am now double in their system). I guess this is another Social Networking Service avant-le-lettre. The problem with these services is that I can not find somebody else I know. And I am not going to search. This is what I like in Orkut. It is very easy to expand your network. The services is also very american (I do not know how long I am in feet) and I do not live in the US. It is yet another profile I have to fill in. They should read my FOAF-file! Anyway I am not impressed. We are still waiting for the service that puts all the puzzle pieces together. None is good yet.

Random Numbers

I find this a bit silly service, but it is probably very useful for security. The service allows you to get a set of random numbers based on quamtun processes.

But its a service in my IT-category, which I do not see vey often.

[inspiration BoingBoing]

TinyURL

People seem to dislike long complex URL. Especially when you want to email such an URL, it gets chopped up and you must glue it together. TinyURL has a solution for this. Copy@paste the long URL in the input field, run the service and you will be provided with a short URL, that can be emailed.

What to think of this service? Shouldn’t each service work with short URL’s or better human-readible URL’s. I guess that that is not possible. If everybody uses TinyURL’s, their system will breakdown. People use to many URL’s. Each service might a tinify-button, just as they use to provide a print-version or email-this-button.

[inspiration Wired]

Freecycle

This service is a geographic based directory of freecycle groups. A freecycle group helps people exchange things (for free) that they do not want anymore. It helps people recycling.

It is a pity that each group has to organise their own group services.

[Inspiration Judith @ The Social Software Weblog]

Craigslist

The last days I saw several blog-posts about craigslist. I did not now what it was, so it was a good moment to check it out.

The service seems to be a search service combined with communication and broker services. The service has a remarkably simple interface, only text and not very well formatted. The search services presents a simple two level directory tree. Most of the entries point to the other services hosted by craigslist. All the services are local in nature, i.e. they are targeted to a specific geographic locale. The broker services are about personals, jobs, community, housing, etc. The community part consists of discussion forums. Users can vote for popular items, but I am not sure how this works out. 

Starbucks and Music

eMerce reported that Starbucks will create a Music Shopping outlet in their coffee bars. Funny that they enter into this field. However the coffee bar is very popular in Barnes & Noble, so why not introduce shopping facilities in a Starbucks.

EMerce notes that Starbucks has created deals with music companies. Yet another who is making deals with music companies. They are busy. Where is the intermediary who already did all the deals? Just put on your own brand and there is yet another music store.

.mob

I saw some messages passing by on the idea of creating a top-level domain for mobile. This could be called .mob, or .mobile or whatever. And I thought who cares? But I found on Telepocalypse an excellent explanation how this could be used: If you manage the top level domain, you can also decide who you will pass on and who not. You can create a walled garden based on who comes by and tries to access your domain. Indeed an excellent idea. Telepocalypse calls it evil. It depends how they will use it. If you can only go to this tld from your mobile device, then it is evil. But if you can freely access other tld’s, then why care? There is enough free info around. Why do you want to go to this mobile tld?

Robot Radio

This site is attempting a new experiment with radio: publish various RSS-feeds as radio. Through Text-to-Speech an RSS-feed can be transformed to audio. Add some jingles. Glue everything together. And you have a audio track. Publish it on Internet or Satellite Radio and a new channel is born.

This is an interesting experiment. From a services point-of-view I do not see anything new. It is just another radio channel. Also the input-service add nothing new: RSS and email. It is the technology within that is interesting.

[inspiration Adam Curry]

BugMeNot

Are you annoyed when you have to login at some service, just in order to access a little information? Do you enter fake information? Well try BugMeNot. This service maintains a database of usernames and passwords to help you login quickly.

Which shows that a login-system is only useful if it offers something valuable for the user.

[Inspiration Mark Frauenfelder @ The Industry Standard]

Topix

Finding the right news is always a pain in the ass. Just this morning I tried the new RSS-feeds of Yahoo. But I was very disappointed and threw them away immediately. This service provider adds a new twist to news and news-feeds. It has categorised all news into 150.000 topics. Browse through the topics that interest you and get four ‘personalised’ news. Each topic is also available as RSS-feed.

It looks pretty good. I will try it out for a while and see whether it serves me.

[inspiration John Battelle]

BlogBinders

An interesting service, which allows you to create (and order) a book based on your blog. The service works only with two blog-hosting service providers. You have various personalisation options for the book.

A pity it does not work with my blog-service.

Plaxo

Plaxo is trying another way to keep your address book update. The service is only for Windows Outlook users, which is a pity. Plaxo helps you to request updates (by email) from people in your address-book. If some sends you an email update your Outlook address book is updated. What happens is that this information is also stored at Plaxo. So the next time an update of that person happens all related address books are update as well. In this way Plaxo slowly builds up a database and its relations.

Sound pretty smart. I would however prefer a P2P solution based on Foaf.

[inspiration Techdirt]

Address Services

Many services that are based on address or contact information require a user to input this information. This is extremely tedious. You forget where you entered information and slowly it will become obsolete. It is much better to have a distributed solution. One in which you manage your information and can change it as needed and more importantly where you have to this only once. Any website or service this information can come and get it. If all is well, it will be at a standard location.

I re-discovered that Alexa is trying to implement such a solution. On their website they have a tool where you can enter contact information and a short description of your website. Then you have the option to download this information as a small text-file (info.txt). You can then download this to the root of your website and Alexa will retrieve and use it. I think that this is a good solution that need to be improved, standardised and XML-ised. It could be a great infrastructure for a wide range of services.