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.

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.

Internet mammoth Google, perhaps one of the Web’s most trusted companies, has voluntarily given an Israeli court the IP address of an anonymous blogger. The prosecutor of the case, which centers on allegations that were posted on Blogger about three members of the Shaarei Tikva council, asked the court to demand that Google hand over the IP address of the anonymous blogger, but the court did not order Google to do so. Rather, Google handed over the anonymous blogger’s IP address to the court and plaintiffs without any legal requirement!

If this were just another shady Internet company then fine, what else is to be expected, but this is Google! The Google! The same Google who at the onset of this case said that “disclosing the blogger’s identity violated rulings on the balance between freedom of expression and a person’s right to his reputation.” Hypocrites!

The reason this upsets me so much, and why you as well should be outraged, is consider how much private information Google has collected about you. Do you use Google Adsense, Analytics, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Groups, iGoogle, Maps, Picasa, Reader, Talk, Web History, or Webmaster Tools like I do? Or perhaps, Google Desktop, Earth, Finance, Notebook, Orkut, Toolbar or Blogger? If you can answer yes to using any of those then sorry to be the bearer of bad news folks but Google has private information about you on file.

I’m extremely disappointed in Google’s behavior on this one. They are one of the few Internet behemoths able to (I think) live up to the high standards placed upon it by the Internet populace. Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for everyone’s favorite search engine.

Placely, a social networking Web site tailored toward frequent travelers, launched into public beta two weeks ago. The social travel space, to my knowledge, is one that has yet to become overly saturated, and Placely looks geared up to snag a chunk of the market share.

When you first log in you are taken to a dashboard page, where you can see who is traveling today, who you can meet today (i.e. who is in your area today), and who is traveling soon; all within your own network. At the time of this writing all members are inserted into a Placely Beta network in order to facilitate user interaction and assist users in discovering the features of the site.

The user profiles found on Placely are pretty standard in terms of social networking, although the Ajax functionality on many of the features certainly makes usability a pleasure. Of particular interest, however, is the ability to set privacy levels on different features such as your travel schedule, home location, network, career profile, personal profile, photos and age.

The MyNetwork section shows all of your Placely friends, and can be filtered by various categories. Additionally, you can monitor friend requests and search for/invite other friends. My favorite thing in this section, however, is the “Where Are They Today?” Google Map, where your friends appear as pegs and you can click them to see where they are currently.

The groups section is similar to something you would find on other social networking sites, however Placely throws in the same Google Map feature from the MyNetwork section to allow you to see where the members of the group are today.

Placely’s TravelCal is really the lifeblood of the site. It’s where you go to add trips — single or multiple destination — manage your entire travel schedule, and arrange meetups with friends based upon where you’re traveling on a given day. When you click on one of your trips a search is pre-populated with your location and dates, and Placely will tell you if anyone in your network will be at that location on that date. The search also features a distance drop down, so you can expand your query as desired.

The MeetUp section is basically the search from the TravelCal, but expanded to allow you to enter whatever you like for query criteria. It also adds a Category option so you can search for a particular group of friends.

I am pretty impressed with how easy Placely has made it to manage your friends with your travel calendar. It’s certainly a useful tool for the frequent traveler who spends a lot of time in different places and wants to visit friends. The site states that it is in constant development and improving daily, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see enhancements to the current feature set or even deployment of additional capabilities.

My only concern with Placely is the user base. It’s a great tool targeted at a great niche, but can it get a large enough user base to be successful? The majority of Internet users already belong to a social network and aren’t looking to try something new, especially if their friends aren’t on it. This will be the major challenge for Placely. If it can overcome this obstacle, then I believe that with the features available it can be successful.

Alternatively, as some final food for thought, perhaps they could develop a Placely Facebook App or some sort of Open Social integration, as this would indirectly allow millions of users on other social networking sites to interact with and use the site. Maybe even some sort of widget that bloggers like myself can embed into their sidebars; or, and this is a real stretch, packaging their software for resale to large corporations with thousands of weekly travelers.

If you’re a frequent traveler with friends who travel frequently as well, I would definitely encourage you to check out Placely. Here are some screen shots I captured while using the site:

1) Home Page

2) Dashboard

3) Profile (owner)

4) Profile (visitor)

5) MyNetwork

6) Groups

7) TravelCal

8 ) MeetUp

9) Upload Photo (cool Ajax functionality)

We are painfully reminded every day when we venture out of our homes that the iPhone does not have 3G technology. The EDGE network is brutally slow and painful and there simply is no way to sugarcoat that harsh reality. But wait! All hope is not lost my fellow iPhoners, as we do have a little feature called Wireless Fidelity, better known as WiFi (and no, I didn’t need to Wikipedia that ).

Many features on the iPhone, most notably Safari and Mail, operate such that the greater the available bandwidth the greater the experience of using the application. So it becomes important to know how much you got coming down the pipe back and forth between your iPhone and wireless router. Enter iNetwork Test.

The Web site iNetwork Test exists to perform exactly this function, to tell you how fast your WiFi network speed is currently operating. The site is a piece of cake to use, simply navigate to inetworktest.com and click the “Start Test” button. Then just wait. The quicker your connection the quicker the test will complete. Once the test completes, you select whether you’re operating via WiFi or EDGE, and the Web site records your score.

My WiFi network speeds were as follows:

1st attempt - 925 kbps
2nd attempt - 940 kbps
3rd attempt - 841 kbps
4th attempt - 894 kbps
5th attempt - 910 kbps

Once your score has been recorded you can click on the “Results” button to see how your score relates to the average EDGE and/or WiFi speeds. At the time of this writing, the average EDGE speed is 208 kbps, and the average WiFi speed is 798 kbps, putting me a bit above the average — gotta love that fiber optic pipe.

And to the wise guys out there, yes, it can detect if you’re not using an iPhone:

iNetwork Test for iPhone

2659.3 kbps
Not an iPhone