SpeedDate.com and Meebo have teamed up to a launch a speed dating application within Meebo. As a way to market the service, they chose eight celebrity bloggers and had them engage in a speed dating session. The result is pretty comical, especially Wired’s Aaron Rowe, who in my opinion was the star of the show.

This is probably one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever come across in my 25 years on this planet. An 11th grader at Big Spring High School in Newville, PA was given detention for using the Firefox Web browser instead of Internet Explorer.

Here is a copy of the letter, note the red-boxed area:

(source)

Update: 12/18/2007 - Turns out it this was all a hoax. Oh well, it was fun to gather the troops in support of Firefox.

Google is currently in the first phase of testing for a new tool called Knol, which stands for a unit of knowledge. The goal for the project is “to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it.” They claim that one of they key ideas behind Knol is to highlight the authors, whose names they feel have been omitted from an evolving Web up to this point. Also, they believe that knowing who wrote the article will allow users to make better use of its content.

At the heart of it, a Knol is simply a Web page, with Google providing all the necessary tools for writing, editing, etc., and writers simply needing only to write. Additionally, Knol features community-like tools, such as comments, questions, edits, additional content, ratings and more. Finally, authors of Knols can include ads on their content, and Google will provide a significant revenue share from the proceeds with the author.

Here is a screen shot of Knol (click on image to view complete Knol) :

One can’t help but ponder the future of Wikipedia in the event of a successful Knol project from Google. While I don’t think Wikipedia is going anywhere anytime soon, Knol can certainly chip away at its market share. A large gripe regarding Wikipedia, particularly in the academic community (which is probably one of its largest user bases) , is the lack of any authoritative sources. Time after time my university professors would not allow Wikipedia as a source because they claimed it lacked any scholar validity. Knol would change that, as the articles are written by authoritative sources, and their names are plastered right across the page like a book. In my opinion this ought to be Google’s target niche if they want to enjoy some rapid success with Knol. Also, it will be interesting to see where Knol pages show up in Google SERPS, as typically Wikipedia pages do rather well and can be found on the first page.

In any event, it’s more information and knowledge for us as end-users, so it’s really a win-win no matter who is number one.

Don’t starting putting money away just yet, but Engadget is reporting a Dutch rumor that TomTom is working on a GPS module for the iPhone. No further details are available at this time, but from the picture it seems as though it would be an add-on device that plugs into the docking port on the bottom of the iPhone — the same place you plug in the charger.

Although there’s no hard evidence, Engadget does point out that the highway depicted on the photo is a favorite for internal TomTom test studies. Also, we know that Apple is opening up the iPhone to third party development in February, and we know that some companies have received an early copy of the SDK in order to get a jump start on development. Certainly TomTom, as one of the leading GPS companies, would have received a copy. So although there isn’t any indisputable evidence, this one is certainly a possibility.

In a report entitled “Recession Coming” released today, Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy. The report warns of a sharp slowdown in business investment and a “perfect storm” for consumers as the housing slump spreads. Additionally, the Morgan Stanley US team said that the credit crunch was starting to inflict serious damage on many US companies.

I can’t say I’m surprised at all by this report. If this takes you by surprise, then you my friend have either been living under a rock or in serious denial for the past six months or so. The value of the US dollar has plummeted, several countries have moved away from the dollar standard and even Jay-Z is storing his earnings in Euros now instead of the dollar.

And you KNOW it’s bad when rappers — who love flaunting around the benjamins — leave Franklin out in the cold.

Let’s hope the recession comes and goes quickly and doesn’t do too much damage to the economy, as my job kind of depends on business investment and spending.

This is a big 180 on the part of Facebook, and a very welcomed one at that. Now, whenever someone sends you a private message, you are no longer forced to go and login to the site to read it. Rather, the message itself will be contained within the notification email and you can then decide whether or not it’s important enough to go and answer. Yippee!

That was always one of the most annoying things for me about Facebook, having to login to see what someone sent me. It was especially annoying during work hours, when you are unable to use the Web for entertainment purposes as such, and you’re forced to sit and ponder all day about what the person might have written. Now imagine you’re waiting to hear back from someone about a potential date — not that you’re into asking people out through Facebook private messages, but you get my point.

This is definitely a welcomed move by Zuckerberg and Co. It’s surprising to see that they would sacrifice so many page views for the enjoyment of their users. Maybe yesterday’s apology from Zuckerberg really was genuine, and Facebook won’t be selling us out to large corporations. Only time will tell…

Yesterday Google released an updated version of it’s Gmail Chat client which now includes AIM support. All I can say is, finally! There have been rumors about AIM-Gtalk integration for some time, and although this isn’t true integration (to the point where someone logged in to AIM can chat with someone logged into Gtalk), it’s certainly a large step in the right direction.

To use AIM in Gmail, simply click on the upside-down triangle next to “Options” in the Chat section, and select “Sign into AIM”. A pop-up window will appear where you must enter your AIM screen name and password. Once you’ve entered your information and have been authenticated, all of your AIM contacts will appear amidst your Gtalk contacts and you can select any of them to chat with.

Here are some screen shots I captured:

1) Select option to Sign into AIM.

2) Enter AIM details.

3) Buddy list of both AIM and Gtalk contacts. (Notice the AIM and Gtalk contacts intermingled)

No need for any lead into this post, just go to www.google.com on your iPhone and check it out. The interface has the “slick look and feel” like many other iPhone apps such as Facebook, and also incorporates heavy use of Ajax across all of the features.

For those without an iPhone, sorry, you won’t be able to see it, but here are some details. The menu across the top includes: Home, Gmail, Calendar, Reader and More. Clicking on “More” will provide you with links to Docs, GOOG-411, SMS, News, Photos, Blogger and Notebook.

In my limited use so far it seems like a very useful iPhone app for someone that uses Google extensively. If you use Gmail in the iPhone native mail app and use iCal/Outlook for your calendar needs then you might not get THAT much use out of it, but nevertheless it’s fun to play with and can be useful in certain situations like search and GOOG-411.

Here are some screen shots (courtesy of TechCrunch):

The Net Applications quarterly browser market share report came out this past weekend, and the results are pretty staggering as far as the mobile space is concerned. The iPhone, which has only been on sale for a mere five months, represents 0.9% of the total browser market share. While at first glance this number may seem rather low, this figure represents all browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.

To put a little perspective on this, consider the Windows CE platform, which comprises all of the Windows Mobile platform devices. Windows CE garnered 0.6%, giving it 2/3 of iPhone’s reach in the mobile browser market. Still need more? Well, Windows Mobile devices have been for sale since 1996, and Microsoft shipped over three million of them in Q1 2007 alone. Apple, on the other hand, as mentioned earlier only released the iPhone about five months ago and has sold somewhere around 1.5 million to date.

In simple terms, the iPhone is responsible for almost one out of every 1,000 page views, and this figure will only go higher. I currently use both an iPhone and a Windows Mobile 6 device, the T-Mobile Dash, and without question the Internet experience on the iPhone is light years ahead.

Get your act together Microsoft. Make a mobile browser that actually shows Web pages how they’re supposed to look.