Daily Bits

Internet

10.5 Million Blogs Go Real-Time with Pubsubhubbub

by

All WordPress.com hosted blogs just beaten others in becoming a really real-time online content property. Thanks to Pubsubhubbub or PuSh as what some people have shortened it to, each and every posts you published on your WordPress.com blog will now be pushed automatically, in real time to the web. This means, real-time feed push to RSS aggregators such as Google Reader, Bloglines, Friendfeed, Netvibes and others.

Basically, what PuSH does is to let your feed aggregators  to register automatically to receive updates from your blogs each time you publish new posts. These updates are sent out within a second or two after you publish a content. Previously, the process is a bit tedious since your blog is periodically being asked by these aggregators if there are any updates before notifying those who are using the service.

The service was automatically activated  for all WordPress.com blogs, so there’s nothing that you need to do to get it going. If you’re blog is not hosted on WordPress.com, you can still have this feature by installing a new plugin which you can download from  here.

And if you want some more information about PubSubHubBub, you can may want to check out project site or the Google groups. If you don’t have any idea what PubSubHubbub is – TheNextWeb describes it as:

An open protocol for distributed Publish/subscribe communication on the internet. The main purpose is to provide near-instant notifications of change updates, which would improve on the typical situation where a client periodically polls the feed server at some arbitrary interval.

Google Gets Patent for Location-Based Advertising

by

So last week Facebook won a rather “vague” patent for news feeds. Now, it’s Google’s turn. This time it’s a patent for location based-advertising which if compared with Facebook’s patent is very clear as to what intention Google will use this patent for.

Actually, Google may have set the pattern already when it acquired mobile ad company – AdMob. It is clear that Google wants to dominate the mobile advertising market, what with the recent launch of its Google branded phone, the Nexus One. AdSense on the other hand have implemented mobile ad serving a long time ago.

And now this patent for location in an advertising system, which is actually the emerging business model for most consumer-facing location startups today.

We must also consider Google’s long-standing  priority over location-enabled search. In fact, just last week a location filtering option for search was rolled out by Google.

Interestingly, this development has to come amidst the proliferation of location-based mobile applications such FourSquare, Gowalla, Yelp and even Google’s own Buzz in its mobile version. [Read more…] about Google Gets Patent for Location-Based Advertising

Opera 10.50 Browser for Mac Makes You Want to Forget About Safari

by

Alright Mac users, if  you’re tired of using the stock Safari browser on your machine but you don’t feel like using Google Chrome for Mac or Firefox, how about Opera 10.50 for Mac which is now available for download?  This new version of Opera for Mac is said to be using a new Javascript engine and boasts of key features like HTML5 support and multi-touch gestures.

Honestly, I’ve never used the Opera Browser on a laptop or desktop before. The only time I used it was on my old Sony Ericsson P990i mobile phone. But that was a long time ago. For all I know, both the Opera Mini browser for mobile phones and the Opera desktop browser have probably gone through several revisions already.

Anyway, here are the new things that you should expect in the latest iteration of Opera browser for Mac:

  • More stable than the pre-alpha build
  • A whole new polished UI
  • Supports Opera Unite allowing you to download unite apps from the Unite Apps Repository
  • Supports HTML5 tag
  • Supports widgets as stand-alone apps
  • New menu for Developer Tools

Now, why did we say that Opera 10.50 for Mac might make you forget about the Safari browser that comes preloaded in your Mac? Well, blame it on the guys from 9 to 5 Mac who’ve tested the browser and found that it beats Safari in a WebKit Javascript benchmarking test.

You may want to give Opera a try on your Mac, get it from here.

We Are Now Posting 50 Million Tweets Daily

by

Funny how a short post on the Twitter blog could spark an online discussion that even led to the long-standing Twitter vs. Facebook war.  Yesterday, a post on the Twitter blog announced that we, Twitter users are now sending 50 million tweets into the Twitter-sphere everyday. Now, how’s that for another issues that says Twitter is not growing?

But anyway, yes Twitter has just grown to 50 million tweets a day. Up from 5,000 times a day in 2007, 300,000 in 2008 and 2.5 million in 2009. Right now, it’s at a 50 million per day or 600 tweets per second. If you won’t call that exponential growth, I have no idea what else you can call this phenomenon.

And that doesn’t include spammy tweets. Twitter has removed tweets from accounts that were identified as spam.

Now, the issue that were raised by some analyst is whether Facebook has all the reason to be afraid of Twitter’s growth. Facebook updates were last reported at 60 million per day.  That means that Twitter is fast catching up. But that is in terms of daily updates. When it comes to total number of users and even monthly page views – Twitter is still far inferior to Facebook.

I really think that there is no point of comparison here and we should all try to pause for awhile and rethink how we view Twitter vis-a-vis Facebook. I’m more inclined to think that Twitter compliments Facebook. Facebook is more of a social networking site while Twitter is more of a real-time online communication tool.

But then, who am I to change this predominant mindset, anyway?

Profiling Americans Who Are Least Likely to Go Online

by

Hot on the heels of carrying out its plans of providing high-speed Internet access to Americans, the FCC has just released an interesting report providing the profile of users who are least likely to adopt broadband subscriptions.

The report categorizes these users as either digitally distant, digital hopefuls, digitally uncomfortable and new converts. According to the report 20% of Americans are digitally distant and digitally uncomfortable.

Digitally distant users are described as those who are retired and say that they don’t subscribe to broadband either because they don’t know how to use a PC or don’t see a need to use the Internet at home or anywhere else. Around 10% of the American population falls into this category, and include those whose ages ranges from 63 and older.

Digitally uncomfortable Americans on the other hand are those who can afford high-speed Internet service but would rather not subscribe to because they lack the skills to use it. Around 7% of  Americans fall into this category.

The other two categories of U.S. population are the so called digital hopefuls and the Near Converts. Digital hopefuls are those who like to subscribe to broadband Internet but don’t have the money to pay for fees. They make up around 8% of the American population.

And then you have the Near Converts comprised of Americans  who are mostly dial-up users who are still thinking whether they would pay $40 for broadband Internet access. They make up 10% of the American population.

So, to which category do you see yourself belonging to? Are you currently subscribe to a broadband Internet access or if not, are you planning to subscribe to in the near future?

You can check out the full FCC report here.

Online Image Editor Aviary Joins the Free App Crowd

by

I first learned about Aviary a couple of months ago, back then  I could only try out some of its features and wished that its other advanced features were free that time. A couple of months after, here’s Aviary finally setting its powerful suite of browser-based design tools free for anyone to use.

To set things straight this early, Aviary is not just online image editor. Like I said it’s a suite of web applications made specifically for creative people who want to create stuff and do more with their photos and creations.

Three key features of Aviary which has been added since it is now a free online app include:

  • saving private files
  • automatic addition of watermark
  • access to all the tutorials on how to effectively use Aviary’s suite of creation tools

If you’ve used Aviary before and actually  signed up for a paid  subscription in the alst 30 days, here’s a good news – Aviary will refund your payments.

As a creation tool, Aviary offers you six editing tools represented by various bird species. These include:

Phonenix – the main image editing tools such as layers, masks, effects, undo history and more.

Peacock – Aviary’s visual laboratory or the effects editing tools.

Raven – the vector editor.

Falcon – the image markup tool which you can use to capture images and web pages from your browser or desktop and crop, resize or mark them up.

Myna – audio editor which you can use to remix music tracks and audio clips as well as for applying sound effects and record your own voice or instruments.

Toucan – Aviary’s color palette that you can use in conjunction with other creation tools. It also lets you inject color into your creation.

Ready to exercise your creative talents? Check out the free Aviary tools now.