Google Image Labeler
Google has released a new service called Google Image Labeler. The new service serves users more as a game then a useful tool, but in the end, the service helps Google to organize and label images much more efficiently.
How does Google Image Labeler work?
Google Image Labeler pairs two users together then shows both users an image. Both users are expected to then add a label(s) to the image. The twist to the service is that it is set up as a game. When you apply a label to an image that matches your partner, you receive a point. Points are then added up and if you scored a high enough score, then your name will appear on the Google Image Labeler website. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Google account, users who don’t have an account, or would like to stay anonymous, can still use the service as a guest.
Ultimately, Google Image Labeler is a new technique that Google is trying out to better categorize and label images. By making the whole processes into a sort of game, many people, especially those board at work, will participate in the service.
AllPeers - Share Files with Your Friends
AllPeers has been described by its creators as, “The best thing that has happened to Firefox since Firefox.” The service was in private beta testing for many months but yesterday AllPeers was released for public beta testing. Now you can it for your self and see if AllPeers is really the best thing that has happened to Firefox since Firefox.
So what’s all the hype behind AllPeers?
AllPeers is a Firefox extension that provides Bittorent capabilities straight to your Firefox web browser with a little twist. AllPeers is not your average Bittorent client, AllPeers has been designed for sharing files within a private network. That is, you only share and download files with friends in your AllPeer’s contact list. AllPeers is thus a great atternative and replacement of file attachments in emails and since it is based on the Bittorent protocol, your files is downloaded by your friends more quickly and with fewer problems. It doesn’t matter size of the file either. You can send files that are a few bytes to files that are a few Gigabytes big. But AllPeers is not only limited to files. Users can also share weblinks and images found on the Internet over AllPeers. To learn more about the service make sure to watch the movie located at the AllPeers’ website.
Give AllPeers a try today and if you have any comments on the service please do share them with us here at Rumboard.com
Google’s Music Trend
Google has a new project in Google Labs called Google Music Trend. Google Music Trend presents music that is popular among Google Talk client users. The top 20 list is a “snap shot” of the music being played by users around the world. The way it works is that the user opts in to Music Trend. Then while they are using Google Talk, the chat client records the ID3 information of the song being played. The information is then sent back to Google where the information is further processed and made anonymous. Popular music is then tallied every week and displayed on the Music Trend page.
Along with the top 20 songs being played every week, information about the particular song and artist is also provided. For example, this week’s number one song being played is Dani California. When I click on the Dani California link, I am presented by the album. When the album is clicked, all the tracks are displayed. Among the album’s information, related web pages are also shown such as the official website of the band, latest news on the band, the artist’s photos, etc. Links to the song’s lyrics are also provided. To learn more about Google Music Trend click here.
As of this writing, Google Music Trend doesn’t seem to have a way of selling albums other then by sponsored link ads but I am sure this is soon to change. I expect that Google will soon show stores that offer to sell albums using Google’s new Check Out service. You can read more about Google Check Out here.
Writely - Reopens
It seems as if Writely.com has reopened for public registration since Aug. 17th. Writely is a web service that allows users to type in a web based word processor environment. You can read more about Writely here.
Mytago - Tag your World
Mytago is an excellent new idea. With Mytago, users can create a link between the real word and cyberspace by means of a barcode like image.
Mytago is very simple to use. Just as barcode links products with data, Mytago links products with web links. The processes is quite simple. First the user creates a unique image, which I will call a tag, then the tag is linked to a URL. The tag can then be distributed through pamphlets, signs, flyers, just about any medium. A person who sees your flyer for example, will be invited to take a photo of the tag with a cell phone and upload the tag to Mytago.com. Mytago in turn will analyze the tag and forward the person to the proper web link you specified when creating the tag.
The application of Mytago is wide. Here is a real world scenario: You plan to sell a car. You create a flyer with all the needed information such as the car’s year, mileage, a photo, car’s condition and so on. You create a tag at Mytago.com and point the tag to a website where you have additional information along with additional photographs of the car that penitential buyers may view without needed to remember a long URL.
Along with a unique image tag, Mytago also creates a unique 12 digit serial number for those folks that don’t have a phone with photograph capabilities.
Visit Mytago today and give it a shot. If you have any comments or thoughts, please post them. We love to hear form our readers.
Quick Muse - Who is the Cleverest Poet on the Internet?
Quickmuse.com is an exciting web service where two well known poets battle it out for composition glory. It works this way, two well known poets are given a subject. The subject can be an image for example. With the subject at hand, the two poets have 15 minutes to compose a poem. No very exciting, is it? Well it gets better because for the whole 15 minutes you watch both poets battle it out. That’s right, you get to watch as each poet type letter by letter. Some times they misspell words, sometimes they backtrack. Other times you watch in amazement as the poet bursts out with a verse of total brilliance. You never know what to expect in this live battle for muse supremacy.
As stated on the about page of Quickmuse, “QuickMuse is a cutting contest, a linguistic jam session, a series of on-the-fly compositions in which some great poets riff away on a randomly picked subject. It’s an experiment, QuickMuse, to see if first thoughts are indeed the best ones. We’re not entirely sure about this, but we suspect QuickMuse will bring readers closer to the moment of composition than they have ever been before.” [1]
Battles are scheduled every couple of weeks. If you miss a battle, don’t worry, you can watch a recording of the live battle.
RateMyProfessors - Grade Your Professors
Curious about the professor you have chosen for this term? Wish you had known more about past college or university professors? RateMyProfessors.com is a friendly web service that invites students to grade their teachers.Currently schools can be found in nine different countries: United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and New Zealand. Once the country is selected, the user is prompted to select their State/Province.
I selected United States Florida and was quickly provided with a long list of schools. The school ID is also listed along with the school’s name and city in which it is located. As soon as I select a school, I am presented with a huge list of professors that have been rated by other students. I quickly taped CTRL+F in my Firefox web browser and threw in my favorite professor’s name.
Each professor has his/her own page. The page consists of:
- Total number of ratings
- Average Easiness
- Average Helpfulness
- Average Clarity
- Hotness Total
- Overall Quality
Along with this information, students are also given a soap box to explain in their own words their experience with the professor in question.
RateMyProfessors.com is a great service for those of us who are still in school. Registration is not needed to view professor’s ratings so head on over and give it a try. Once you have experienced the service, feel free to leave your comments with us.
A Look Into the Linkie Winkie Project Part I
A couple of days ago I posted an article entitled What is Linkie Winkie? The article has generated much more attention then I thought it would in the past three days. Apparently many people out there, including my self, are interested in the Linkie Winkie project. With this in mind, I decided to interview Denise R., or as she is better known in cyberspace, Gurtie.
Gurtie and Chris Ridings are the two personalities involved with the creation and management of the Linkie Winkie project without any aid from out side sources. The project was conceived, created, and published very quickly, in one evening, due to the fact that some of the components currently used in Linkie Winkie were already being used, “in other ways on other projects.”
Many of the blogs following Linkie Winkie have speculated on the idea that the site’s ultimate goal is revenue. In fact, in my original article, I speculated on the idea that Linkie Winkie was out to gain a better Alexa ranking in order to become valuable to marketers. When asked about this issue, Gurtie made it very clear that the Linkie Winkie page will not make a profit for either her self or Chris.
Once the study ends, what will happen to Linkiewinkie.com? “We don’t know. We will not make money from it personally, is all I can promise. There has been speculation the site will be valuable but that may not necessarily be the case, depending on how the site develops. The uncertainty is a part of the experiment and we won’t be trying to influence that unduly.”
So what is Linkie Winkie studying? No one is sure of this yet but rest assured that one day you will know. When asked about the due date for the study, Gurtie replied that the study will end, “when we feel its run its useful course.” Of course, once the study ends, information about the study and possibly also information about the Linkie Winkie crawler will be published. “Either Chris or I may write a paper if we find the results especially interesting, but we don’t expect to draw formal scientific ‘findings’ from the project and make them public. We do expect to make information which will help anyone who’s been watching the project available, things like info from log files. Other people including those who were linked to, may also have interesting data to share but it will be up to them to either provide that information to us or to make it available in some way.”
Who will be interested in the data collected by Linkie Winkie? Gurtie feels that the information is interesting in both a SEO’s viewpoint and also a sociological viewpoint. “Personally I find the information interesting from both an SEO viewpoint (lots of linkage data and spidering data for anyone who’s looking at it) and a sociological viewpoint (how people consider Linkie Winkie, the way they react and interact with it) but I’m sure that other people are also finding it interesting for different reasons.”
This concludes Part I of the interview with Linkie Winkie. More is to come in the coming days so stay tuned and visit often for more. Please leave your comments and thoughts, we all would like to know your thoughts.
Lycos Beta Mail
Lycos has open its doors to its new beta Email service. Lycos is providing 3 Gigs of storage and unlimited upload and download. For $20 a year, Lycos will provide 5 Gigs of storage. Currently Gmail is providing about 2.8 Gig of storage with a 10 megabytes limitation on attachments. Clearly the incentive for using Lycos Mail is the unlimited size of attachments.
HostSearch.com - Helping You Find a New Home for Your Site
Looking for a new web hosting company? Well the search has been simplified with HostSearch.com. HostSearch is a web service that lists dozens of web hosting companies by a large array of useful features. For example, a user can search for a hosting company based on:
- Monthly Fee
- Total Disk Space
- Monthly Bandwidth
- Platform
- Mailboxes
- Programing language
- Platform
- Setup Fee
- Database
- Account Accessibility
- General Features
- Server Location
I decided to give HostSearch a quick test drive. I quickly punched in a couple of parameters. I searched for a web hosting company within $1 to $5 monthly price range, no setup fee, Linux platform, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, and located in the USA. With in seconds I am provided with five hosting companies that match my preferred parameters. The results can be listed in ascending or descending order based on price, setup fee, space, transfer bandwidth, platform or user rating.
Overall HostSearcht is a great way to find a new web hosting company based on specification that matter to you.
