I can't follow “Who to follow”

Twitter just added a new feature they called it “Who to follow”, a nice idea, Twitter finds you people who have the same fields of interest as you have. I liked that idea, I wrote in the past about LazyFeed I like the idea that applications suggest you what to read or follow according to your choices in the past. In Twitter's case, people I follow. But “Who to follow” has some problems:

• The list shrinks when you choose to follow some body, no new person is added, so the more you follow, the shorter you list becomes. 

• The same with the “Hide” button, every time you decide to hide so one, the list shrinks. 

• The list never changes, it's always the same people, so once I check it, I chose who to follow, and thats it. The “Who to follow” finished its job. A result of the past two problems, the shrinking of the list. 

• At least ten people in my list are not active, they “twitted” once or twice and the last “twit” was almost a year ago. For what reason should I follow them.

• Some of the people that were suggested to me, well how can I say it, I wouldn't follow in a million years. I have no intention to follow Microsoft's Twitter or MS Window's Twitter. Some of them just write in a language I don't speak, like Spanish or French.

One think I did like about Twitter's new idea is that it finds people from my community or speak the same language I do, very useful if English is not you first language, like me. Cool idea, but you can see it's only the begging, hopefully they'll fix it soon.       

The Fast Death of Google Wave

What started in a big noise ends quietly, Google just announced it's ending the developing of “Google Wave”. Less then a year ago Google announced it's newest development “Google Wave” this time the same as in the past, in the begging only people who got invitations could register hoping that it will increase the buzz around “Google Wave”, this time it didn't.

If you look back on Google's history you find not once that if failed to develop or market a new web application or some thing they bought like “Orkut”. The basic fact is that Google's most profitable application is it's search engine, they have some other applications which came out quite good, the first one is “Gmail” - one of the leading mail service almost from the day it became public. They also have their calender , their RSS reader and “Picasa” . It dosn't look like this is going to change in the near future.

The most interesting web application, that is being more and more commonly used is “Google Docs”, the web based office applications, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation tool, lately they added a PDF reader and a drawing application. Until recently you could work off-line using “Google gears”, but since Firefox 3.5 came out it stopped working and Google didn't upgrade it. According to Google they took that option down to make “Google docs” work with HTML 5. I personally had been using it until then, but this days I can't use it any more cause I need to work off line some times. I hope they'll fix this soon.

Two more interesting tool are “Google trends” and “Google Insights for search” tool for discovering, analyzing and comparing trends in the web, I've used “Google Insights” to compare Google's applications to other web based applications, you can see the results.

Other Google applications which failed are there social networks like “Orkut” and “Buzz”, there notebook application “Google notebook”, “Google video” which they stoped working on when they bought “Youtube” and now “Google Wave” . I must say I've been using “Google notebook” all this time, and I hope that one day they will return working on it.

Those are only part of Google's products they have more then I can cover in one or two posts, here's a list of them. 

How The Internet Works

WOW !!!

I just bumped into this video and all I could think is WOW !!!

Five Blogs I read daily

Hear are five blogs I read on a daily base, I subscribed to them on Google Reader but I still prefer reading directly from the blog it self , and here they are.

    Lifehacker, was launched on January 2005 it features tips and downloads on getting things done easily and smarter. One of the things that I really like about Lifehacker is that the posts are written not only for Windows users but also for other O.S. users like Mac and  Linux users mainly Ubuntu. Their tips are always interesting even those that I know I wan't use like tips regarding Mac O.S., When I have a problem with my computer, my E-mail or when I need information about some thing, one of the first places I'l lookup is Lifehacker. Lifehacker has more them 61,000 followers on Twitter.

WebUpd8 the blog every Linux user must visit specially if you use Ubuntu.  It has the latest news regarding Linux and the Web, it brings tips and trick for Linux. Most of the applications I run on Ubuntu, I read a review  about them there, when I have a problem with an application I'l first look there, it has A large list of PPA (personal package archive) which is always useful. In my humble opinion one of the best Ubuntu blogs. It has more then 11,000 followers on Twitter.

OMG! UBUNTU  The second Linux blog I read, this one is for Ubuntu only, it brings new, updates, reviews, themes and more on Ubuntu. It was launched on  August 2009 and since then they have 12,000 RSS subscribers, 4,000 Twitter followers and 3,000 fans on Facebook. It also has a store to support it self.

makeuseof.com , as it's name is, you can make a lot of useful things with this blog. You can read there a bunch full of tips and tricks regarding all operating systems, the web and all kind of applications for all platforms. The grate's thing about makeuseof.com are there guides and cheat sheets some of them are very comprehensive and can be compared to a small book on the subject, and here it's free. Here is their guide for Ubuntu Karmic Kuala , 54 pages! It was launched on July 2006 and has 200,000 RSS subscribers  and more then 15,000 followers on Twitter.

    How-To-Geek   was launched on October 2006 it has a large number of "How to-" articles, a forum and you can always send an E-mail. but after all those hours reading about computers, the web and the digital world you also need some fun, here come How-To-Geek's geeky stuff, like the poll on who's a better starship captain Kirk or Picard. Also it has more then 11,000 followers on Twitter.    


Well that's my small list, I'd love to here about more blogs that write about the same subjects, leave me a comment below. And by the way Picard is far more better the Kirk...

Is Firefox becoming IE ?

Iv'e been using Firefox for last five Years,for the last two month Iv'e been using Chrome more and more until it became the default browser . Both of those browsers Firefox and Chrome are installed on my machine and don't get me wrong I have allot of respect for Firefox. Five years ago there was no real alternative for IE, at least on Windows Firefox was the only safe browser and Iv'e been using it  since then and of course since I started using Ubuntu Iv'e used Firefox. 

Lately something went bad at Mozilla, Firefox takes allot of time to start, the number of crashes is increasing and installing extensions became a big problem. In the meantime Chrome has started to gain more and more fans, It has almost the same extensions as Firefox and it's faster, so why not ?   

In January 2009 Firefox passed IE and it's peek number of users was in July 2009 but since then the number of users is going down. Firefox is still the most common browser, but one can remember that once was IE. IE is still the fastest looser of users mainly to Chrome but also Firefox (check the numbers here).

Since I had to add something graphic or a picture I add a graph I mad on Google Docs (I like to test it once in a while, It's getting better, but that's not enough for me) . back to the graph, the graph is made to January - June 2010, IE includes IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8. You can see that IE is loosing very fast to Chrome but Firefox is also starting to loose, is starting to loose users, will Firefox end up like IE ?

Browsers Usage (January - June 2010)

If you can't beat them imitate them

About a month ago I rote about a new interesting music web app called Muziic, the web app was developed by a 15 year old teenager, and was based on Youtube music videos. The people at Youtube didn't like the idea thatf someone was using their music videos, so they just decided to imitate him, take a look for your self and decide, they even copied the design.

Muziic

Youtube Music Discovery