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If It's on Super Wall, It May As Well Be Public Record

In December of 2007, a judge, U.S. Magistrate Judge Patty Shwartz, ordered the plaintiffs in two cases (Beye v. Horizon, 06-Civ.-5337 & Foley v. Horizon, 06-Civ.-6219 were consolidated for discovery) to turn over their children's online emails, diaries, and other writings to the court. They had until January 15th to comply. The plaintiffs fought the order, saying the online writings were therapy tools and not meant to be shown to others. However, Shwartz was not swayed.

Horizon believed that the children's writings on their social networking sites and emails could show that their eating disorders are wrapped up in emotional causes, and therefore not the insurer's responsibility (since N.J. law says only biological mental illness must be covered).

On Jan. 24th, Horizon claimed that the Jan. 15th set by Shwartz come and gone with no disclosure on the plaintiffs' parts, even though Beye's parents had turned over the child's Yahoo emails. But the Foleys had yet to disclose their daughter's emails. Horizon insisted the plaintiffs turn over not only the children's emails, but also the corresponding emails and the email accounts of the girls' families. They also requested a mirror-image copy of the hard drive for each computer in the plaintiffs' family.

When it came to disclosing the writings on both Facebook and MySpace, David Mazie, the Beye's lawyer, stated that they have produced what documents they can and they have no Facebook or MySpace pages to turn over. The Foley's lawyer, Bruce Nagel, says "he believes his clients have no Facebook or MySpace pages."

However, anyone who knows a 15-year-old girl, knows that that these statements were likely false, and the lawyers were just trying to buy some time.

As it turned out, Horizon moved to dismiss Beye and Foley cases on the ground that the court should abstain from ruling due to pending state legislation would resolve the issue for good. While the new legislation may provide respite in these particular cases, those who are interested in internet privacy laws and protection are now feeling a knot in their stomach over what may have been.

What You Say Online is Not Private

The internet is not like a diary, although many people use online journals, blogs, and social networking sites to share their innermost thoughts, feelings, and secrets with the world. With a hardbound diary, you only had to be afraid of your little brother finding it under your mattress; but with the web, the words you write are etched in stone for the entire world to read. And even when you remove your accounts and disable your profiles, you may not really be gone. With Google's caching, the Way Back Machine, and even the websites themselves, your data is retained for a lot longer than you may have realized.

Take for example, the U.K. user who realized that he was unable to fully delete his Facebook profile. It seems users wishing to remove their Facebook profiles are only given the option to deactivate their accounts. These accounts become inaccessible, but still remain in Facebook's database. To really wipe out all information, Facebook advises users log in and manually remove all data from their profile before deactivating their account. This greatly concerned Dave Evans, the senior data protection practice manager at the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office: "One of the things that we're concerned about is that if the onus is entirely on the individual to delete their own data," he told BBC Radio 4."An individual who has deactivated their account might not find themselves motivated enough to delete information that's about them, maybe on their wall or other people's site."

Only months earlier, the ICO had been warning social networker of possibly jeopardizing future careers by posting explicit photos or pictures of them "partying."

So What's a Social Networker To Do?

Reputation management companies have stepped in to fill the void in defending users' online reputations. A site like ReputationDefender, for example, will search all information about you (or your child) on the internet, provide you with a report, and then destroy whatever information you deem inappropriate or slanderous. Through non-legal means, the company works with the site owners where your data resides to get it removed. Claiming a thorough process that can remove data from almost anywhere online, ReputationDefender, and those like it, are poised to be the next major companies of the Internet Age. As the GenY and the YouTube Generation enters the workforce, a place still dominated by many Baby Boomers and others who grew up sans internet, the potential damage those MySpace photos could cause will then become much greater.

In the end, the best you can do is think carefully before you post photos, before you blog, and even before you send an email because the internet is more of a permanent record than anything your teachers ever threatened you with back in school.

In the digital age we must all be aware that the illusion of privacy is just that: an illusion. And you may never know went it could come back to haunt you.

(Sources: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/01/21/dlface121.xml and http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1201779829458)

The Industry Standard Returns - Will It Stick?

In 2000, the Industry Standard was one of the hottest magazines on the planet. It was flush with VC dollars and sold more ad pages than any magazine in history. But when the dot-com wave it was riding finally crashed, the magazine receded with the tide and filed for bankruptcy in 2001.That's why when news that it was coming back leaked this fall, it prompted some to declared that the "bubble is back."

The Industry Standard will relaunch today in public beta as a strictly online publication coupled with a futures market. We got a chance to check it out early and speak with Derek Butcher, the magazine's General Manager.

According to Butcher, the magazine's brand still had so much equity left in it, that publisher IDG (who was an investor in the original magazine and bought out the publication's assets) couldn't resist trying it again. Now that Silicon Valley is hot once more, and ad dollars are flowing on the web, it seemed like a good time to try relaunching the business mag. There's just one problem: blogs have this space covered to death.

So rather than focus on breaking news, the Standard is opting to focus instead of analysis of the business and technology news. Content will be short editorials (300-400 words) that break down business news written by outside contributors (that is, bloggers, analysts, and industry pundits will submit content to the Standard for publication). It's an editorial approach that Butcher seemed to describe as one part ReadWriteWeb and one part Huffington Post -- though unlike HuffPo, the Standard will pay its contributors, and unlike RWW, the focus will be on business over tech analysis.

"No single voice will dominate the discussion, which is why we decided to forgo the somewhat print-centric idea of an editor in chief, despite talking to some great people for the position," said managing editor Ian Lamont in a press release. "We want readers to get viewpoints from the widest range of contributors possible, with the common theme being that these contributors are all people who believe that the Web is a major paradigm shift in business."

However, the editorial isn't the most intriguing part of the relaunch. What really sticks out about the new Industry Standard is the prediction market. A prediction market is something like a stock exchange where the cash value of assets is tied to predictions. People invest in predictions they think will come true with the idea being that the more people who predict something, the more likely it should be to actually happen in real life. Most prediction markets in the US use play money because of gambling restrictions, and the Industry Standard's is no different.

Users start out with $100,000 in play funds and invest in time sensitive predictions like, "Apple will ship 10 million iPhones in 2008," or "Yahoo! will accept Microsoft's takeover bid by February 8." Users can also suggest predictions, which are in turn voted up or down by other users.

Prediction markets have shown a remarkable tendency to accurately predict the future, and the Industry Standard's market can theoretically be used to keep writers honest. Any writer who is constantly throwing out wild predictions can have his ideas tested on the open market. Butcher hopes that the prediction market will have a reciprocative effect on the editorial, with writers playing off the things people are betting on in the market, and the market reacting to the things people are writing about.

The market is very well designed and rather easy to use, but will it, coupled with the out sourced editorial content, be enough to recapture the late-90s magic that made the Industry Standard a household name? The other quintessential Silicon Valley magazine of the dot-com boom was RedHerring, which relaunched in August as a web-based publication (including a video site and social network) to little fanfare. RedHerring's traffic has actually declined since then, according to Compete, and even articles on big stories like the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! only attract a handful of comments -- compared to, say over 800 on Digg -- and thousands if you count how many times the story made the main page.

It's possible that the media market has shifted so much since the late-90s that magazines will never be able to reinvent themselves on the web in the face of competition from a now established and well-connected blogosphere and user-powered aggregation of sources (like Digg and Reddit). But the Standard is probably smart to eschew the traditional editorial structure and follow the example set by successful blogs communities like the Huffington Post and Seeking Alpha, by bringing together a group of outside contributors who may already have a readership elsewhere.

Try out the Standard web site and prediction market and tell us what you think. Can the Industry Standard return to glory or will they flame out again? Let us know in the comments below.

Plaxo Pulse First to Use Google's Social Graph

Although only announced hours ago, Plaxo's Pulse is already using the new Google Social Graph API. They got a head start due to a collaborative effort between their Chief Platform Architect, Joseph Smarr, and Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick. Now, the Plaxo public profile pages will serve as the flagship example of what this new API has to offer.

An Open Social Web

Plaxo's Pulse platform, mistakenly thought of by some as just another social network, is actually an attempt at an open version of the social web where sites inter-operate with each other. Currently Pulse supports integration with flickr, YouTube, digg, LiveJournal, Windows Live, del.icio.us, yelp, MySpace, webshots, last.fm, Pownce, xanga, tumblr, jaiku, twitter, smugmug, Yahoo 360, Picasa, and Amazon.

A great example of the type of interaction Pulse aims to achieve on their platform is the new two-way synchronization feature between Pulse and Twitter. A little over a week ago, Pulse quietly launched a "status" feature. Then a few days ago, they announced that this feature could now be used to synchronize with Twitter, two-way. If you set up your Pulse status to sync to Twitter, when you update your status in Pulse, it instantly updates in Twitter. You can also update in Twitter, and this will be synced back to Pulse. And if you have the Twitter Facebook app installed, it will update there, too.

Dynamic Public Profiles

With the launch of Google's Social Graph API, Pulse is now giving users the ability to create a unified public profile enriched by some or all of the aggregated content streams from the social web. Pulse uses the API to gather together your various URLs on the web to create a public identity that you can control. With this, you can manage your own data and content and determine how you want to present it to the world.

This is a new sort of public profile page. Instead of a being a static page, like the one you would have on MySpace, the page is constantly being updated by your stream of content that you create all over the web.

The public profiles are a completely opt-in feature. You decide for yourself what content and information is included. The resulting pages are tagged with microformats, so your profile page is readable by Google and other web sites.

Over the next few weeks, Plaxo promises to introduce even more in this area, as this is just the first release.

To get started setting up your Public Profile, Plaxo members can go to Pulse, then click on "My Profile" at the top. On the left-hand side, click on the "Public Profile" link to begin.

Google Releases Social Graph API

Google today announced the release of a new API for graphing social net connections on the web at large. The Social Graph API is a way for developers of social applications to let users easily find data on their social connections across the open web. The information the API returns can be useful in helping users locate and add their friends when starting up at a new social application.

It was only a few weeks ago that Google announced that it had joined the DataPortability.org work group. It didn't take them very long to make good on the promise of contributing to the cause of data portability, though I suspect that Social Graph API has been under development at Google since before they joined DataPortability.org.

The Social Graph API uses the same algorithms at play in Google's search engine to discover how people are connected across the Internet. In fact, it only uses publicly available data -- if it's not on Google, the API won't be able to find it -- which Google says puts users in control of their own data since anything they don't like showing up, they can change at the source level.

The API works by searching for connections between people based on how people are linked on social networks and via publicly available profiles and pages -- i.e., if Marshall Kirkpatrick and I linked to each other on our personal blogs, or if we followed each other on Twitter, the Social Graph API might consider us friends because we have a strong connection. So, if I then sign up for a new social service, I can feed it links to my social presence elsewhere (like my blog or Twitter profile) and it will analyze those public connections and suggest to me that maybe I should be friends with Marshall on this new service because it looks like I'm friends with him elsewhere.

I spoke this morning to Google Developer Advocate Kevin Marks (whom we interviewed in December), and he showed me a demo using his blog as an example that shows how strong each of his various online presence points are connected. I.e., how his blog is connected to his Twitter account is connected to his Flickr page, etc.

As more and more users are beginning to suffer the effects of "social networking fatigue," anything that helps automate and make easier the process of adding your existing connections to a new network is a useful tool. The Social Graph API could be an important part of the data portability movement in that it allows users to find and evaluate their public social connections and take control of that information.

Google has set up a Social Graph API group as well as provided developer documentation.

Kylie takes Olivier Martinez back - on the promise of marriage and a baby (Daily Mail)

Daily Mail:
Kylie takes Olivier Martinez back - on the promise of marriage and a baby — Kylie Minogue is back with her French boyfriend Olivier Martinez after a year apart. — But there are strict conditions to their reignited romance. — The couple, who met up in Paris last week …

Scarlett Johansson Lesbian Sex With Penelope Cruz

Scarlett Johansson has a steamy lesbian sex scene with Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona that’s slated for release towards the end of the year. Page Six reports that the scenes are extremely erotic and will have people blown away and even shocked. Apparently Penelope and Scarlett go at it in a red-tinted photography [...]

Scarlett Johansson lesbian with penelope cruz

Scarlett Johansson has a steamy lesbian sex scene with Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona that’s slated for release towards the end of the year.

Page Six reports that the scenes are extremely erotic and will have people blown away and even shocked. Apparently Penelope and Scarlett go at it in a red-tinted photography dark room, and it will leave the audience gasping. The women later have a threesome with Javier Bardem (below), who plays Cruz’s husband.

Enough reasons to watch the film and make the wait - Vicky… has December 2008 release date - quite miserable.

Lindsey Strutt In Loaded Magazine

This 20-year-old student from England has been a Page 3 girl and a top model for a variety of magazines. Lindsey Strutt’s making a big splash this month with the latest edition of Loaded!

case holloway solved

Dutch crime reporter "peter r de vries" claims to have solved the holloway case, The whole story will be telt in his weekly crime show on dutch television this coming sunday. The dutch bloggers of Vkmag.com also found an open backdoor in the site of mr de vries and pulled out this page that shows something like joran v/d sloot confessing the murder on the girl.
Abcnews also has a story about this.

Holy crap!! dont get me wrong but why does it take a crime reporter to solve a case instead the local justice department that oviously cant handle this kind of cases.

Andrey Golub :: Tips for Pursuing a New Career Outside IT

Life in IT can be thankless, but you don't have to suffer. A 25-year IT veteran turned professional coach offers advice on how she and many other technical professionals found fulfillment and fortune outside IT.

Seven Tips for Pursuing a New Career Outside IT

February 13, 2008 — CIO — Let's face it: Life in IT can be thankless. Your work often goes unnoticed, unless you do something wrong. You put in long hours, working evenings and weekends. Expectations are high. Users are seldom happy with results.

Believe me, I understand. I spent more than 25 years in IT, having started as a systems developer and ending as director of career development in a high-tech consulting company. As my career in IT evolved, I realized I enjoyed management and staff development more than technical work. After the IT downturn of 2001, I decided to begin a new career as a professional coach.

It's easy to tire of a career in IT. I've talked with dozens of technical professionals who say they are burned out or who no longer feel challenged by their jobs. Many more senior professionals are forced to consider a job outside the field after being laid off and finding it difficult to land a new job, either because their skills aren't in demand or employers don't want to pay for their experience.

You don't have to suffer in IT. If you've ever considered a career outside the profession, the following seven steps will help you make your move. They worked for me and many others, as you'll see.

1. Identify your interests: What do you like to do?

Tom Prince knew he wanted to do something besides sell CRM software when he was Siebel's vice president of sales, but he had no idea what. After he left Siebel in 2002, he and his wife Mary decided to investigate the possibility of opening a restaurant. They loved good food, dined out often and understood their local, Boston-area market well. They partnered with Lorenzo Savona, a former general manager of two chic restaurants in Boston, who had been planning to build a restaurant similar to the one Tom and Mary Prince envisioned. In 2004, they opened Tomasso Trattoria in Southborough, Mass. Today, they also run Panzano Provviste e Vino, a market and wine shop next door to the restaurant.

"There's so much disillusionment in high-tech. You rarely get the feeling that you're selling people something they really want," says Tom Prince. "Here, we're providing something that people actually know and care about—something that people really want. Food affects their sight, their smell, their taste, their touch, all of their senses."

If you don't have a clear idea of what you want to do, start by evaluating your existing position. Make a list of everything you love and hate about your current job. Use those likes and dislikes to form criteria for a new career. Look for opportunities that feature the things you love but not the things you hate. For instance, if you love your job because of your relationship with your clients, look for jobs that focus on customer service. Or, if you love being the expert and sharing your knowledge, teaching is a possibility.

Also think about what you do in your spare time. What do you enjoy doing most? What is it about these activities that makes them enjoyable? If you love dogs, consider starting a boarding, grooming or training business. If you practice yoga, find out what it would take to become an instructor. Brainstorm ways you can make a career out of your passions the way that the Princes did with food.

2. Leverage your strengths: What do you do well?

For 24 years, Norman Daoust worked in corporate IT roles, except during a sabbatical when he focused on his music. Daoust plays fretted instruments—the guitar, electric bass, banjo and mandolin. After three years of trying to make a living as a musician he decided to return to corporate IT, only to remember exactly why he left before: the inability of large, bureaucratic organizations to embrace and manage change. He had to get out, but instead of going back to music, he opted for consulting in his area of expertise, information modeling and systems integration. He prepared for that transition by participating in several consulting workshops. When he was laid off from his corporate job in 2001, he took the leap. Seven years later he has built a successful consulting practice with many clients and the freedom to make his own schedule, including time for his music.

A great tool you can use to identify your strengths is the book StrengthsFinder 2.0. When you buy it, you get a code to take the StrengthsFinder assessment online at no additional cost.

3. Assess your options: What could you do that reflects your interests and leverages your strengths?

Tom McGoldrick performed many roles during his 30 years in IT: systems programmer, project manager, department manager and senior vice president. He left IT in 2002 during a downsizing. When he stepped back to look at his life, he realized how much his career had taken him away from his family. He and his wife Sue Ann decided to look into running their own business.

They considered more than 1,200 different businesses and eventually narrowed the list down to six. One option was inspired by their beloved pet Labrador retriever, Apollo, who had a champion bloodline. They considered breeding dogs, but further research showed they couldn't make a living at it. When Apollo unexpectedly died, they looked for a burial/cremation facility that would provide Apollo with the honor and respect the McGoldricks felt he deserved. They discovered Paws in Heaven and were very pleased with the care and attention Apollo received there.

In 2003, the owners of Paws in Heaven decided to retire, and the McGoldricks bought the business. Tom McGoldrick recognized that the business savvy, technical knowledge and relationship-building skills he had honed over the course of his career in IT would lend themselves well to running and growing their new business. Paws in Heaven perfectly combines McGoldrick's love for animals with his business and technical acumen.

Focusing on your interests and strengths the way McGoldrick did will help you more easily recognize opportunities as they come along and determine whether they're a good fit for you.

4. Try your possibilities on for size: What would this new career really be like?

Technical graphic designer Marissa Rosenfield Smajlaj was shopping at a bookstore in downtown Boston when she came upon a copy of the book Colette's Birthday Cakes by world-renowned specialty cake artist Collette Peters. As she flipped through the pages and admired each cake, she had an epiphany: "I could do this!" she thought. Smajlaj got a part-time job in a bakery to see if she'd enjoy the work. She loved it, decided to go to culinary school and was accepted at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu in London. She completed the Le Cordon Bleu Diplome de Patisserie. The following year, she became a pastry chef at a New York City restaurant. She hasn't looked back since.

5. Be open to opportunities: What's out there?

Bill Sobbing didn't start out as an IT professional. In college, he majored in English. When he graduated, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. He looked at many different possibilities, but none of them excited him. Eventually, a relative got him a job where the relative was working. When the IT department at Sobbing's company posted an entry-level position, he applied for it and was accepted. Sobbing found a career that interested him and spent the next 20 years working in various IT roles. He enjoyed the work but, like many IT managers, he tired of corporate politics. He decided to become an independent consultant and began working primarily from his home. One morning, he picked up a newspaper and read about a local school, The San Diego Golf Academy, which offers a program in golf course management. He had played golf casually since high school but never considered making it his career. Yet something in the story about the Golf Academy compelled him to check it out. Three years later, Sobbing is general manager of a nine-hole golf course in Phoenix, Ariz. He could never have done it if he hadn't indulged his curiosity.

6. Select the right opportunities: Which are viable?

In 2002, Alan Klug was a senior consultant with KPMG. He enjoyed working with clients, but the consulting industry was suffering from the post-9/11 economic recession at that time. Klug knew future consulting opportunities would be limited and decided to pursue something entrepreneurial. He considered opening a custom closets business, a car wash, and franchising a quick-service restaurant. He developed business plans for each idea, but none of them really grabbed him. Then he came across a small ad in Fortune for 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Intrigued by a company that got paid for taking people's junk off their hands, he says he "researched the heck out of it." He learned that it was a lucrative and fast-growing business with a solid strategy and good management team heading it up.In 2003, he became a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchisee with four territories. He has since expanded to eight territories. He is on track to become a $2 million business in 2008 and is already thinking about what he might do next. "If an opportunity comes along, don't count it out immediately because it seems too good to be true. Just research it and find all the downsides," he says. "There are plenty of opportunities out there to be exploited."

If you have a couple of options and can't decide between them, take out a sheet of paper and divide it into columns—one for each possibility in question. Write the title of each option at the top of each column. List the pros and cons of each possibility side by side. If neither choice stands out, answer the following questions: What will happen if I pursue this career? What won't happen if I pursue this career? What will happen if I don't pursue this career? What won't happen if I don't pursue this career? Those four questions sound similar, but they're all slightly different and designed to help you explore the nuances of each possibility. Use your answers to those questions to decide which option is the best for you.

7. Create a career action plan.

Once you have decided on a career, you can put together a career action plan. This is a simple project plan with tasks, deliverables and target dates. It includes a long-term career objective (from six months to three years) with short-term tasks and deliverables for the next three months.

If your career objective is, for example, to launch your own consulting business next year, one short-term task to perform might be to talk with several consultants to learn more about what it's like. Other tasks might include investigating what areas of specialization are in greatest demand and what it would take for you to build your expertise in those areas. A deliverable might be to draft a preliminary business plan with a list of potential clients and the financial resources you have available to launch your business. At the end of three months, add new tasks and deliverables for the following three months. This simple approach works well for planning and tracking your progress.

As you begin building your career action plan, answer the following questions:

What do I need to accomplish my goal?
Do I need education, equipment, office or other space?
Do I need hands-on experience?
Do I need financial aid?
Do I need a mentor or a coach?
Who among my friends and acquaintances can provide assistance with my career change? What assistance can they provide: resources, expertise, moral support?

Remember, no one succeeds alone. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. There is something wrong with not asking for help when you need it. In most cases, people are more than willing to lend a hand.

These seven tips come from my own experience as well as the experiences of others. I leveraged my own interests and strengths in training and professional development to move from IT into my coaching business. In my corporate role as director of career development, I coached many IT professionals, from systems developers to executives. In that role, I had the opportunity to try out what would become my new career as a professional coach. Since I wasn't ready to leave my corporate job at the time, I worked with a mentor/coach to develop and implement a business plan that enabled me to remain with my company while I earned my credentials and began to build my coaching and consulting practice. I have been on my own since 2006. I have found great joy and success in my new career, and I wish you the same in your "Life Beyond IT," wherever it may take you.

Joanne Dustin is a certified professional coach and the author of Life Beyond IT: Open the Door...Your Future is Waiting.

Customizable Websites - The Definitive Guide

Several popular websites have let their homepages be customized by users. New web technologies have made it possible to add slicker customization interfaces so more sites are allowing users to customize their pages. But, should you do the same?

Making a Seamless Parchment Paper Background

Making a seamless tiling background is not as hard as it may seem � especially when you make use of Photoshop�s offset filter. In this example, I�ll use a stock image of some old-looking textured paper to make a seamless background appropriate for the content area of a web page.

Kosovo Serbs burn border points - BBC News

Javno.hr

Kosovo Serbs burn border points
BBC News - 2 hours ago
Kosovo Serbs have set fire to two border crossings to protest against Kosovo's declaration of independence. The attacks took place at the northern Jarinje and Banja crossings, manned by United Nations and Kosovo police.
Violence as Kosovo Serbs protest Aljazeera.net
NATO closes Kosovo border points to Serbia amid violence (Roundup) Monsters and Critics.com
Times of India - Makfax - Reuters - ABS CBN News
all 201 news articles

Report: NBA to hold outdoor game in preseason

Taking a page out of the NHL's playbook, the NBA is heading to the great outdoors when the Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets square off in an October exhibition game, according to a published report.

LG KF700 Touch Screen Phone Competes with iPhone

LG Electronics today announced the launch of the KF700, a new multimedia phone that combines three input methods. As the world's first phone with three separate input methods, the KF700 integrates a 3-inch touch screen, alpha-numeric keypad and Shortcut Dial. With its user-optimized navigation, all of the phone's functions and features are instantly accessible. The KF700's 3-inch full touch screen provides access to features and its wide aspect ratio makes it ideal for watching movies or browsin...

Photo: LG KF700 Touch Screen Phone Competes with iPhone Photo 1

The KF700's 3-inch full touch screen provides access to features and its wide aspect ratio makes it ideal for watching movies or browsing the internet. From the main screen users can flip through several handy widgets, including a calendar, scheduler, and memo pad, with the swipe of a finger. The large touch screen also means that the phone can provide an adaptable on-screen interface, rather than tying users to a fixed, preset button layout.

The Shortcut Dial on the back of the phone scrolls through six user-selected features by controlling a virtual dial on screen, rather than digging through menus. The Shortcut Dial can also be used to scroll through web pages or emails, adjust volume and perform other functions for which a wheel is naturally better.

"Our consumers told us that they wanted a phone that had plenty of multimedia features, but doesn't take a long time fiddling with menus to figure out. We created the LG KF700 based their insight," said Dr. Skott Ahn, CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. "Internal research showed that a phone's multimedia features often lay dormant if they are hard to access. On many phones these features are hidden deep in menus, requiring too much time and effort to find them. The LG KF700 eliminates these endless menus with its intuitive interface and multiple input methods."

Most of the new touch screen phones currently available eliminate some formerly universal features like the alpha-numeric keypad. LG incorporated a slide-down alpha-numeric keypad to simplify the process of making calls and typing text messages.

When browsing the internet on the wide touch screen, the shortcut dial zooms in and out on websites. When sending text messages, the alpha-numeric keypad provides the letters, while frequently used symbols are readily available on the touch screen. These symbols change based on users text messaging habits.

One of the KF700's multimedia features is a web browser that provides access to Google Search, Blogs, Gmail, Maps and Youtube. Support for HSDPA 3G networks makes web browsing fast and other features like video telephony possible. Other features include an MP3 player, MPEG4 video player, 3.0-megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity and more.

The LG KF700 will be available in Europe in mid March and will become available in other markets in the months following.

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Sony Ericsson Z770i Designed for the Internet

Sony Ericsson today announced the launch of the Z770i, an elegant clamshell optimized for the web using HSDPA data speeds. The Z770i is designed to surf the web or receive the latest news, and the 'email set-up wizard' makes it simple to access the inbox. With Exchange ActiveSync, users can configure the Z770i to have work emails pushed straight to the phone. Surf the web or retrieve email directly on the phone or connect the Z770i to a laptop (via USB Cable) and use it as a modem. Once online, ...

Sony Ericsson Z770i

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- View Specs

Sony Ericsson today announced the launch of the Z770i, an elegant clamshell optimized for the web using HSDPA data speeds.

The Z770i is designed to surf the web or receive the latest news, and the 'email set-up wizard' makes it simple to access the inbox. With Exchange ActiveSync, users can configure the Z770i to have work emails pushed straight to the phone.

Surf the web or retrieve email directly on the phone or connect the Z770i to a laptop (via USB Cable) and use it as a modem. Once online, web browsing is easy through the Magnetic Mouse Pointer that is controlled by the navigation key. The key changes the icon depending on its position on the Web page (i.e. from text input to pointer or to link). Pan and zoom into an area for easy reading on the good-sized (2.2-inch) screen.

Receive RSS feeds from news or entertainment as the action happens or click on the RSS tile, or 'widget,' for instant access to favorite web pages from the phone's desktop (or standby screen). In addition, the Z770i has a built-in weather forecast application, allowing users to receive regular weather updates. Consumers can also snap a photo on the Z770i and upload it instantly to their own blog site.

The Z770i will be available in Vogue Red, Graphite Black and Exquisite Gold in selected markets from Q2 2008.

- Sony Ericsson Z770i Specs

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FlyClear Discount Code Benefits Everyone!

While I'm not happy with how well the FlyClear airport security program works, I can't fault its affiliate program. Since I wrote about it and posted my discount code of SCA49148, the referrals have been rolling in at an amazing pace.

I posted about the program at the end of September. Since then, I've had 13 "refer-a-friend" referrals come in. That's given me an extra 13 months of CLEAR service for free.

I was pretty surprised so wondered what was going on. Why were people bothering using my code? Some top terms used to reach my CLEAR pages explained why:

Click to continue reading...

Up Next for Beta: Search, Flickr View, Add Page

We’ve been a little quiet of late, mostly because we’re busy working on our next release. We still have a bit of QA to do, but we’d like to share some details.

Search

As you can see, we’re actively integrating blog search into beta.bloglines.com. We’ve incorporated some Ask 3D's popular features into Bloglines blog search. For example, related searches in the right-hand column in the screenshot below. In case you’re wondering, we’ve retained the filtering allowing you to search based on feed subscriber popularity. You also might notice an advertisement on that mockup. Keep an eye-out for CPC oriented ads in future releases.

Search Results

Flickr View

We continue to expand our views for photo-feeds with a new preview mode for Flickr photo-feeds.

Flickr View

Add Feeds

Many of you noticed that Beta's add page was pretty basic. Essentially, it was a stub for future development. We’ve finished off the next iteration on the page, so you can easily track packages, monitor weather, or see recommended packs.

Add Page

Blogliners, we're here working for you. Enjoy!

- Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team

Keeping in Touch with Friends via Bloglines

At Bloglines, we experiment with feeds all the time. We wanted to point out 3 easy ways you can keep in touch with your friends on Facebook, Flickr and Upcoming.org via Bloglines.

Facebook
Need to have your Facebook Friends' Status Updates at all times? You can import your Status Update feed into your Bloglines account. Here's how you can get your Status Updates in Bloglines. Go to your home page. Look for your "Status Updates" section on the right side of the page near your photo. Click on "See All" and go to your Status Updates Page. On the right side of the page, you'll see a blue RSS Icon under the header "Subscribe."

Flickr
Get a photo feed from a friend, family member or other Flickr-ino. Enter the user name in the Flickr Search. Look at the bottom of the user's profile page. Look way to the bottom and you'll find an RSS icon. Subscribe to it like any other feed.

Upcoming.org
See what events your friends aretracking. Be sure to sign-in to Upcoming.org. Look for the area on your home page with the title, "My Friends' Events." (Be sure to have added friends before-hand.) Click on the link "My Friends' Events." Look for the RSS subscribe button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

Keep us posted on other ways you use Bloglines. If you do post on your blog, be sure to send us an email, so we can highlight your post for other Blogliners.

Enjoy!

- Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team

Bloglines Beta Debuts Photo Widget

We have another treat for you Blogliners who have been patiently awaiting our redesign. Today's special surprise is the Photo Widget View available within Bloglines Beta.We've been experimenting with different views in the Bloglines Start Page. In this case, we display photos from Flickr inside a Photo Widget. Sure beats a text description. We currently only do this for Flickr, but in future releases you will be able to apply the photo view for other photo-oriented feeds.

Here's a little before and after.

Before

After

As a reminder, you can go to Flickr or other photos sites and create a feed tracking a specific topic or tag. In the example above our topic we tracked was "Europe." Or you can track a specific user on the site. So in other words, anytime a friend posts a picture on Flickr, you would see that picture on your Bloglines.

Have Fun!

- Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team

Bloglines for the iPhone and Mobile Phones - Reminder

Last week, I met a big name blogger who is also a dedicated user of Bloglines. I couldn't help but notice his iPhone typing skills. He was clearly pounding out at 40 words per minute which is super-fast on the iPhone. I was really excited to hear his impressions on iBloglines, our iPhone optimized version of Bloglines. Unfortunately, he hadn't heard of iBloglines. I was crestfallen. I realized I needed to do a better job telling Blogliners about our great products.

No better time than the present to remind everyone of the great Bloglines mobile products. We have 2 major product sets: iBloglines for iPhones and Bloglines for mobile phones.

iBloglines for iPhones - located at i.bloglines.com

	Pin - Save the story for when you get back to your Mac or PC.
	Email Articles - Sharing is fun.
	Search - Find the latest buzz with our blog and feed search.
	Auto Refresh of "My Library" - No need to hit refresh to get the latest updates.
	Hide Images - We know EDGE is slow, and your time is valuable.
	Preferences - Personalizing is essential. Our Blogliners love to personalize their experience so they can optimize their feed reading flow.

Bloglines for Mobile - located at m.bloglines.com and m.beta.bloglines.com

Why two different versions of Bloglines for mobile phones? One is Bloglines Classic (m.bloglines.com) which has been around for years. The other is our new beta product (m.beta.bloglines.com) which has the latest set of enhancements.

Bloglines has had a leading mobile feed reader for the last couple of years. It's always been one of our key product strengths. So we were really excited to make our mobile product even better. We were busy over the summer re-writing the mobile code from the ground up. A new version of mobile is available as part of the Bloglines Beta Releases. Go to m.beta.bloglines.com on your cell phone. When we feel it's ready, we'll make it available on Bloglines Classic. Key Features

Start Page - Your Bloglines Start Page is displayed at the top of the screen. This way you can pull your favorite feeds to the top.
Pin (formerly known as Keep New) - Sometimes you want to save that special post to read later when you're not on the go.
Pagination - Instead of loading all of your posts, we parse out the posts into smaller bundles to fit into the memory constraints of cell phone browser. This has numerous benefits including improved speed, better reliability and safer "mark read" behavior.

Enjoy

Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team

Bloglines Beta - Even Faster!

Earlier this week, we released another round of improvements for Bloglines Beta:

It's Faster

Most people have commented on how fast the Bloglines Beta is, much faster than the classic site. However, a web site can never be too fast! Will, Bjorn and Ben have been reviewing the front-end code looking for ways to shave time off common actions. Hold onto your seats, you'll definitely feel the speed improvements especially in QuickView and 3-Pane View. We hope you relish the time saved not waiting to download. We are.

Back-button Support

Because sometimes in life, you do need to go backwards to go forwards. Now you can use the browser's back button like on standard web sites. Hitting the back button will take you to the previously loaded screen.

Expandable Start Page Modules

Some feeds just demand more space on your start page. Now you can change the size of the start page modules with a simple drag-and-expand of the lower right-hand corner of the module.

Better Support for Smaller Screens

We've noticed a number of Blogliners complaining that they were not able to see the "Mark All Read" and "Edit" buttons in the feed header. We've modified the header to better support smaller screen sizes and those who use a narrower browser window.

Enjoy!

- Eric Engleman & The Bloglines Team

Talking about Gadget devs, come out and play!

I know it has been awhile since I posted. Tonight we have big news! MSN Spaces is now Windows Live Spaces. The Windows Live vision is taking shape! In addition to tons of cool improvements (themes, social networking, and more), now Gadgets can be built for Spaces as well as Live.com. Stay on top of developing for Spaces at the Spaces Platform blog.

One of the best aspects of Gadgets on Spaces is their viral nature. See a cool gadget on someones space - just click on the + sign and you can quickly add it to your Space. Let the fun begin!

Quote

Gadget devs, come out and play!

Admit it.

You've always thought MSN Spaces was pretty cool -- that we did some things right and would work hard to smooth out any rough edges over time. But, you weren't sure if the Spaces team would ever let developers outside the company party in someone else's space. Well, a big part of joining the Windows Live family today is support for web gadgets written by anyone including YOU! Thanks to the great work done on Gadgets to date, you can now write a gadget that works both in Live.com (personalized portal) and Spaces (online expression/identity). And, it only takes one person adding it to their space for your gadget to become popular -- visitors to that space can choose "Add to your space" or "Add to Live.com" right from the header of the gadget, then visitors to that space can add to their spaces, and it's off to the races!

What kind of gadget makes sense in a space?

Remember that the Live.com portal is about YOU catching up on the world.   Spaces is about the world (however big or small you define it with the permissions you set) catching up on YOU. Users will decide which gadgets are worthy of adding to their space or not, and given our experience with Spaces features to date, the ones that will be the most successfull will be:

Customizable -- let the space author personalize the gadget so their instance of it is different than another Spaces user's instance. This could be as simple as letting the space author select the city they want to show weather for OR as complicated as pulling the user's account data in from another service (ie, his/her Netflix queue).

Reflective of the author's personality -- a gadget that helps the author to be creative with little or no work is more relevant than one that lets a visitor come to a space and check their mail account or convert their currency. All of those gadgets are killer apps; it's just the ones that are more like sharing your photos or music tastes will probably be more popular.

Adaptive to our rich themes/layouts -- after adding your gadget to your own space for testing, try selecting a bunch of dark and light themes AND moving the gadget between our narrowest and widest columns to make sure it works well in all scenarios. You want that puppy to shine!

How do I get started?

1. Build a Windows Live web gadget according to the SDK available at the Windows Live Dev site.

2. If your gadget has any settings/edit UI that visitors shouldn't see, then use the following code to detect whether Spaces is running the gadget in author mode and show/hide the UI accordingly. There is a p_args argument outlined in the gadgets SDK and we've added a new method off of that called getMode(). You can do a simple comparison of the value returned from that method call to determine author vs. visitor mode.

Something like the following:



         foo = function(p_elSource, p_args, p_namespace)

         p_args.module.getMode() == Web.Gadget.Mode.author

3. Add the gadget to your own space using the following Spaces API:

http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=URLEncodedPathToYourH ostedGadgetManifestURL

Switch between "Edit your space" and "View your space" to see how it behaves in both author and visitor modes. If your manifest file, Javascript, and CSS are hosted anywhere but Windows Live Gallery (gallery.live.com), the gadget can only be added for editing/viewing by the space owner. It will be hidden to visitors.

4. Zip up your manifest file and supporting Javascript/CSS files and submit that gadget package to the Windows Live Gallery so other visitors can add it to their space by going to Customize --> Modules --> "Add gadgets from Windows Live Gallery". Once it has been verified to work in each service, it will appear in the Gallery for users to add to Live.com or Spaces. Make sure you use relative URLs (mygadget.css instead of http://foogadgetdeveloper.com/mygadget.css) in your manifest XML to point to the scripts/CSS or the gadget will be rejected during verification.

5. If you upload a cool gadget to Gallery that you think will be a hit with Spaces users, comment on this post or send mail to spgadget@microsoft.com.   Same thing applies if you have feedback or feature requests for making gadget development for Spaces better.

We'll be updating the Gadgets SDK and sample code on dev.live.com very soon to reflect the additional Spaces items. In the meantime, you have everything you need above.

Good luck stormin' the castle!

-- Jay Fluegel

Watch my Engineering Great AJAX Experiences Talk...

My presentation from the Mix06 Conference, Lessons from the Trenches: Engineering Great AJAX Experiences is now online:

NGW020 - Lessons from the Trenches: Engineering Great AJAX Experiences

Description:
Explore the challenges and lessons learned developing the Windows Live and Gadgets Web client frameworks powering Windows Live, Hotmail (Kahuna beta), Spaces, and more. This technical talk presents design and architectural considerations for building interactive AJAX-like sites. See how componentization, network management, accessibility, page composition, and more impact the design and engineering of your Web application.

(To find other talks, go to the main Mix06 Sessions Page).

Gadgets and Cross-Browser Development

We are working hard to improve the Gadget framework documentation. In the meantime (and as we improve documentation), I am working on a series of short tutorials, tips, and highlights introducing how to use the Gadget framework and the underlying APIs.

I am going to start with our compatibility layer. After exploring various third-party gadgets being developed for Live.com, I discovered that many developers are still struggling with the API differences between Firefox and Internet Explorer. Most common, I see various tricks to handle the event model differences where IE uses a global event object and Firefox passes the event object as an argument to your handler.

This is not necessary when you build Gadgets. Instead, you should be leveraging the underlying compatibility layer that is part of the overall Gadget framework.

As I posted last September, as we develop our properties, almost none of our application logic contains browser specific code. Instead, we develop once to the Internet Explorer API and our code runs without modification in Firefox. This occurs because we download a special script that emulates the most useful IE’isms inside of Firefox and in a few cases, Firefox/W3C’isms in Internet Explorer. In this article I highlight the most useful methods and properties of this layer (I promise we will develop a full reference in the near future).

Event Model

This is easy – always attach events using attachEvent and detachEvent. Do not assign event handlers using function references (e.g., myElement.onclick = doThis) nor use the addEventListener approach.

In your event handlers, don’t worry – you will always get the global event object. For example:

function doClick()
{
  alert("You clicked on a " + event.srcElement.tagName + 
     " element");
}
document.body.attachEvent(“onclick”,doClick);

Also, as a general practice (I will cover this more in later articles but this is extremely important), when writing Gadgets, be sure to detach any event handlers in your dispose handler. Otherwise, your Gadget will leak memory due to known browser issues.

What can you do with this event object? You can check out the MSDN reference as most properties are exposed. In addition to the standard properties, below are the list of properties we added to Firefox:

srcElement
cancelBubble
offsetX
offsetY
x
y
returnValue
button (few issues as Firefox does not properly distinguish between the left button and no button)
fromElement
toElement

We have also gone further and extended Firefox with the very useful mouseenter and mouseleave events. As long as you attach these events using the attachEvent and detachEvent methods, these events fire just as they do in Internet Explorer. These events are very useful for quickly and easily detecting when a mouse enters or leaves a specific element. Again, check out the MSDN reference for more details.

We even have a reasonable emulation of mouse capturing. However, this is most useful in the context of an entire web-page not within a simple gadget. This is because mouse capturing in Firefox only fires within the context of the browser client area. Regardless, when using mouse capturing (setCapture and releaseCapture methods), the mouse events fire properly on the correct elements.

We also fixed the Firefox onclick event to only fire for the left mouse button (Firefox fired for all mouse buttons). This little difference could cause you grief in your application. (For those of you who noticed that we also accidentally prevented the ability to open pages in new tabs via the middle button, that will be fixed real soon).

Useful Element Methods

Internet Explorer also supports a number of very helpful methods and properties on every element. These APIs simplify day-to-day programming and are very useful for building your application. Below are the list of element functions we added to Firefox. Again, check out MSDN for the details (linked for each item below) on how they work.

The currentStyle property returns the value actually being applied to the element. We currently support a subset of CSS attributes that we have found useful: border, margin, padding for Top, Left, Right, and Bottom; position; height; width; zIndex; color; and direction. We will most likely extend this list over time.

Useful style properties

We also extended the properties available on the style object with the extremely useful pixel* properties. These allow you to easily manipulate the dimensions of the element (assuming you are working with pixels). We also added the cssText property which gi