A pretty awesome tribute to the works of John Williams. Can you guess which songs they come from?
Source: YouTube
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Showing posts with label The Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Internet. Show all posts
Website Review: Qwiki
With much anticipation, Qwiki finally opened it’s doors to the first Alpha testers earlier this month. After quite an extended use I must say, it’s a lot better than I’d first thought it’d be. The hyped up engine that powers Qwiki, essentially the core of the website simply works and there is already an abundance of content at this early stage of it’s development.
Qwiki produces a rich video experience for it’s user summarising information into an easy to digest format on the fly without the need for any human intervention. It currently holds a database of over 3 million articles and is constantly expanding. Search terms that I couldn’t find on the first day of release could be found two or three days later. Using the website is very easy and the content produced is about 90% accurate. There were a few issues with it such as finding the wrong images for actors in films on a few occasions but these should be ironed out if the feedback program gets some attention. Otherwise most the information delivered is in a crisp and very entertaining fashion with the electronic voice sounding unnaturally natural if you will.
Qwiki recently received an additional $1.5m in seed funding hopefully towards expanding it’s servers and increasing capacity so it doesn’t fall down the same route as places like Twitter. As it currently stands, it’s an interesting service but not one that could be considered critical as it stands. I think where the service would succeed is in implementing it ubiquitously into mobile devices and into household electronics. In the future you never know, we might just have our first Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Guidebook in the palm of our hands.
PS: if anyone is looking for an invite into Qwiki, drop a message in the comment section below or get in contact with me for an invite.
How to get from Japan to China… via Google Maps
A rather brilliant little tale in the making if ever I’d heard one but this little known discovery from a colleague of mine at university found what happens when you try and go from Japan to China via Google Maps.
If you try and get from Japan to China via Google Directions, it’ll rather funnily inform you that this particular journey will take 3 days by car. However if you shift your attention downwards, well instruction number 43 might have something different to say about the matter.
Awesome.
Click to read the rest of the article ...OMGS: The “e” in eBay
The “e” in eBay stands for Echo
The creator of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, originally named the company Echo Bay Technology however the domain name echobay.com had already been taken. Therefore he shortened it and took the next best thing, the ebay.com that we all know today.
Source: History of eBay
Click to read the rest of the article ...Qwiki: The Future of Information Technology?
Aside from the big news that AOL would acquire TechCrunch during their latest disrupt conference, there was another major piece of news that many of you guys I’m sure would be interested in knowing. Quite simply it can only be described as the future of information technology as we know it. Meet Qwiki, the first step towards technology that could revolutionise the way we look at information on the internet.
Internet users at the moment have a number of tools at their disposal ranging from a simple Google search to a perhaps little bit more in depth Wikipedia article summarising the search term in question. However the internet has evolved in such a way that it’s become so loaded with information that as normal human beings we simply do not have the mental capacity or the ability to process and take in all this information. It simply becomes an information overload.
In steps Qwiki, a technology that aims to transform experiencing information from a chore into an experience. Doug Imbruce, one of the co-founders and CEOs of Qwiki, describes it as transforming information into an art form. Check out their demo video at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference below.
You can sign up to their Alpha program here and be first to test out the new system.
Source: OneCoolThingADay
Click to read the rest of the article ...High tide drags Google Wave back into the Ocean
As we say goodbye to Google Wave, just what has it taught us about the future of internet communications? Is Wave to be branded as a failure or simply just an evolution on the long and twisty road of web technologies. Has it in fact created a significant enough ripple in the online space to warrant a second chance further down the line or was it always doomed from it's inception?
Google Wave was unveiled at the Google I/O conference just over a year ago in sunny San Francisco. It swept the audience away (no pun intended) with it's promise of revolutionising the internet communication space. The concept of a real-time email service that had within it, the social features of an IM client while bringing in the dynamics of an all in one information resource with it's embeddable maps and Posterous-like items. Now a year later and Google has confirmed it's stopping developing the entity that is Google Wave. Ultimately Wave may have failed for a number of reasons, that it was too confusing for your average user to utilise properly, or that not enough users were able to use what is evidently a social-orientated tool or perhaps simply that it doesn't fill a hole for users as Google may have intended. I'd gotten onto the Wave bandwagon early on in it's roll out thanks to a Beta invite from a Twitterer I'd been following. And herein lies the first problem with Wave. The very limited Beta roll out of Wave meant that there was a colossal scramble for
invites to be first on this gleaming new offering Google fed us. As the economist inside points out, too much demand and an inefficient supply quickly leads to shortages and that's precisely what happened. There was a "bedding in" period where new users wouldn't be given invites and you'd have to wait for some random allocated time to be up before you'd get all of 5 invites. What's a user to do in this time? Send a message to himself?
invites to be first on this gleaming new offering Google fed us. As the economist inside points out, too much demand and an inefficient supply quickly leads to shortages and that's precisely what happened. There was a "bedding in" period where new users wouldn't be given invites and you'd have to wait for some random allocated time to be up before you'd get all of 5 invites. What's a user to do in this time? Send a message to himself? When Wave was finally rolled out, the next main obstacle in it's path seemed to be explaining what Google Wave was. In the usual fashion of Internet companies these days, a series of instructional videos with a monolithically patronising tone tried to explain what Wave was to users. Except I think in this day and age where instant messaging has become so simple that my Luddite of a father regularly uses it and email is more universal than snail mail, we can't introduce yet another medium of communication unless it's either dead simple or would blow our minds. In my heart of hearts, I don’t think Google succeeded in either of these goals.
Wave also wasn't without it's many gripes. My personal usage of the system consisted of having group conversations with more tech savvy individuals who were in my Twitter circle. At first it started well, the real time talking although very creepy but also a dash of awesome, didn't hold up for long or complex conversations. Perhaps this was because it was still during it's beta stage of 
development (then again, what Google product isn't these days) and wasn't the finished article but often conversations that went longer than 100 messages would cause severe lag. I'd tested this with three OS's (Windows 7, OSX, Linux Ubuntu) and across browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari) and found the same results. Although it was a gripe, it made Wave infinitely more convoluted with multiple conversational threads popping up left right and centre to avoid the dreaded lag which would make typing out messages simply undoable.
development (then again, what Google product isn't these days) and wasn't the finished article but often conversations that went longer than 100 messages would cause severe lag. I'd tested this with three OS's (Windows 7, OSX, Linux Ubuntu) and across browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari) and found the same results. Although it was a gripe, it made Wave infinitely more convoluted with multiple conversational threads popping up left right and centre to avoid the dreaded lag which would make typing out messages simply undoable. So what will happen to Google Wave? Will it ultimately be thrown into the pile of failed technologies (soon to be accompanied by it's friend Buzz I suspect) or is this promising enough a concept to continue? I don't think this is the last we've seen of Google Wave. Of all it's flaws and many of them there are, it did arrive onto the scene with good intentions. Throughout my use of Wave, it always felt more like a proof of concept than a consumer product. If we take it as a concept alone, then yes it brings some very clever ideas to the table. Group collaboration has matured into an important part of the working environment with project managers and even corporations utilising sites like Google Documents and the soon to be released Office Live to aid them in group activities. Ultimately I think we'll see Wave slowly amalgamate itself into other projects such as Google Docs and perhaps even into the Big Daddy that is Gmail. It'll be particularly interesting to see if Google.me will emerge as a social networking site to challenge the likes of Facebook and if so, I could definitely see a finalised version of Wave being popular. So although respectable in it’s aims to change the way we think about technology, if it isn't simple or it doesn’t knock us out of our proverbial shoes, the chances of success will be slim to none but as this is Google, it’ll probably be taken apart and used for parts like a broken down Ferrari.
I'll give the final word to Google CEO Eric Schmidt,
“We try things. Remember, we celebrate our failures. this is a company where it’s absolutely okay to try something that’s very hard, have it not be successful, and take the learning from that.”
What is your opinion of Google Wave? Do you see this venture as a short-term failure or a long-term success or both? Feel free to leave a comment in the section below or on my Twitter.
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Block-Proof Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook founder/father/leader/creator Mark Zuckerberg cannot be blocked on Facebook. If you head to his Facebook profile, and try to block him, it will return with the screenshot you see above.
This maybe just an inside joke or perhaps it’s a bug but either way it’s pretty funny on multiple levels.
Source: Mashable
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Motivational Posters - Volume 2
![mooseknuckle[6]](http://lh3.ggpht.com/_aKKWPCT-5gQ/THFZeYvUKxI/AAAAAAAACrk/BcMHje44ms4/s1600-h/mooseknuckle%5B6%5D%5B4%5D.jpg "mooseknuckle[6]")
After many requests for a rerun of motivational posters, here is what I’d like to call: Volume 2 of awesome motivational posters. Enjoy!
![24ovyn8[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_aKKWPCT-5gQ/THFZfqPK6wI/AAAAAAAACr0/uPXPG6QcWGc/s1600-h/24ovyn8%5B1%5D%5B4%5D.jpg "24ovyn8[1]")
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OMGS: Google Gravity
Ever wanted to see what it’d be like if Google collapsed? While not literally, there’s a little known Chrome experiment that’ll let you have fun with the idea.
If you type in “Google Gravity” into Google and hit “I’m feeling lucky” , the page will collapse under the weight of gravity.
Hope you have fun with this!
Source: Chrome Experiments
Click to read the rest of the article ...Flamethrower vs Fire Extinguisher
So who would win in a fight between a Flamethrower and a Fire Extinguisher? This amazing music video from little known band Dancing Pigeons helps to shed some light on it.
It's an awesome music video as I'm sure you'll all agree and the song itself has managed to embed itself into my head and it doesn't look like it's going to leave for a while. (PS. watch the video in HD if you can to really appreciate Super Slo Mo Awesomeness) Click to read the rest of the article ...
It's an awesome music video as I'm sure you'll all agree and the song itself has managed to embed itself into my head and it doesn't look like it's going to leave for a while. (PS. watch the video in HD if you can to really appreciate Super Slo Mo Awesomeness) Click to read the rest of the article ...
The Best of “Bed Intruder” Remixes
I don’t usually play host to internet meme’s on my site here at The Urban Shogun but I felt this “joke” had to be posted. I’ve spent days resisting but I just can’t get the “Bed Intruder” song out my head so I’ve given into temptation. Here is a list of my top 5 versions of the Bed Intruder anthem. Yes that’s right, I called it an Anthem.
5) NC A&T Marching Band Remix
4) Bed Intruder Chipmunks Remix
3) Ballad for Antoine Dodson Remix – Sounds like it came off an American Sitcom
2) Disney/Cartoon Remix
1) Accoustic Remix – Actually sounds like it could be in the charts as a proper single!
And of course, here is the official version from the awesome Gregory Brothers:
Can’t wait to see what they come up with now that they’ve signed for Comedy Central.
Source: YouTube and “The Internet”
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