Ever wonder what your email behavior looks like on a graph? Because if you have, we've good news for some of you -- well, those of you that use Gmail. Google coder Mihai Parparita just released a Python program called Mail Trends, which can show you various graphs of data extracted from your email account. You can examine your email behavior from various angles:
Distribution of messages by year, month, day, day of week and time of day
Distribution of messages by size and your top 40 largest messages
The top senders, recipients and mailing lists you're on.
Distributions of senders, recipients and mailing lists over time
The distribution of thread lengths and the lists and people that result in the longest threads
If you don't use Gmail, fear not. The plan is to eventually release a version that works with other email services, though it is unknown when that version will see the light of day.
If you spend a lot of time in front of the computer, you probably collect dozens of little snippets of information each day: Web sites to visit later, documents you want to review some other time, contact info of people you want to catch up with next week, reminders about what to pack for your next trip.
There are all kinds ways to track your stuff online (Del.ici.ous, Remember the Milk), but they leave your data segregated across several Web sites. There are also a few options for corralling and indexing all your stuff right on the computer (Google Desktop, Mac OS X Spotlight), but they don't help much when you're away from your desk.
The folks at iubo feel your pain and have designed a Web site where you can store online all the dribs, drabs, and what-nots you accumulate and then access them later, no matter where you are. Once you create an account, you can add and track information on pretty much anything you can think of: pictures, bookmarked Web sites, contact information, notes, documents, and so on. You can even add tags and color-code data for easier searching later.
As Facebook and Google join DataPortability.org for streamlining the technologies and standards used with social applications, online real estate listings are quick not to be left behind.
In an open letter to Yahoo, Google, Trulia and Zillow, the RETS community (Real Estate Transaction Standard) encouraged a data standard for real estate listings so that home sellers and others who list real estate online can easily take one listing and make it work for all the participating websites. So instead of having to rewrite the listings for each site's particular style of listings, it only has to be written once. How very, oh, web 2.0.
With the speed that data standards are sprinting along, it's only going to be a matter of time until everything (that is useful anyway) has been reduced to standards that allow for maximum compatibility across services. Data standards for other areas such as classifieds, documents, and online personals may be closer than we think. Or maybe that's just a usability lover's pipe dream.
As you may know, the New Hampshire primary for the US 2008 Presidential election is today. Although web 2.0 itself has not been positioned as a major campaign issue, the power of the web and social networks has played a large role in not only individual candidate campaigns, but in the debate process itself. Additionally, with his victory in the Iowa caucus, Democratic candidate Barack Obama has become the first candidate leading in Internet metrics to pull off a major victory. So this begs the question, are Obama's fans the most savvy and "connected" supporters? Well, in addition to having the most friends on MySpace and supporters on Facebook, Sen. Obama is also leading in the war of campaign widgets.
According to Widgetbox, a major distributed widget marketplace, Obama has nearly double the number of widget impressions as his nearest opponent. In fact, he has almost as many impressions as his two nearest competitors combined! These widgets are embedded on personal web pages, blogs and social networking sites. This certainly gives additional (if ancillary) credence to the idea that Obama is the most plugged-in candidate.
Widget Impressions from Widgetbox Widgets
What effect, if any will the candidates online popularity have on the polls? Keep checking the news, and DownloadSquad, to find out!
Yahoo! is getting ready to take the wrapper off TechTicker, an online program aimed at technology investors.
TechTicker specifically targets technology stocks in a portal type environment. The new program will offer streaming video, blog posts and breaking news targeting the technology investment sector. The portal and show which are said to be launching in January 2008, pick up where Yahoo! Finance Vision left off in 2002. Thankfully high speed connections are far more common in 2007 and better video compression tools are available to make internet based shows a feasible reality, rather than a pipe dream (no, we're not poking fun at Yahoo! Pipes, ok, maybe just a little). As for the other financial information that will be displayed, we assume it will resemble what Yahoo! Finance already does, but targeting technology specific companies.
With Yahoo! Finance high on the list of financial sites, TechTicker could be headed for great things. Of course, track records aside, we will have to wait for the roll out in order to really decide.
Check out what Yahoo! Finance Vision looked like back in the day.
Zoho is always up to something. The company that seems like it never stops to breath has released another update to their Zoho suite, Start.
The Start beta is a not another Zoho application, it is merely an integrated Start page for all of your other Zoho applications. Think of it as a desktop for all things Zoho. When logging in at zoho.com, users are forwarded to start.zoho.com which aggregates all Zoho data for the user account. The current version of Zoho Start integrates Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show, with all data having the ability to be tagged with keywords, shared, exported and organized all from this simple interface.
Thanks Zoho, for making it extra difficult to choose between Zoho's suite of applications, and Google's Docs/Apps.
Lost data, the words should make any user cringe at the thought. Hours of time spent creating documents, all gone in a matter of seconds. It's something that we never want to happen to us.
Of course there are ways to ensure that data can be recovered. Microsoft has been so kind as to build in a back up program on Windows XP and Vista operating systems. Wired has an outline of all the goodies users are going to need in order to achieve a proper backup of files. This includes a secondary external hard drive, the built in Windows XP or Vista backup options, 3rd party software options, and online backup options like Xdrive and Mozy.
Maybe we will be lucky enough to see system backups unnecessary in the upcoming years as operating systems evolve. After all, it would be a nice feature to build in.
Intel is getting ready to debut a closed beta this month of their new mashup tool accessible to non programmers.
The new MashMaker was spotted at the SIGMOD conference in June in a presentation that was prepared by Intel and Yahoo Research. The gist of it was the creation of a tool that made it easy to create mashups from many different sources.
Intel's MashMaker will be a web based tool that makes it easy for normal web users to create mashups from live online data. It will be able to query and combine data that uses an interface that has been inspired by both spreadsheets and web browser. The spreadsheet side will allow for the mixing up of data and editing, while the browser side will allow for navigation to interested content, bookmarking it, and molding it into new widgets.
Just picture simply pulling in information from Google Maps, with Facebook, ebay, Digg and Twitter and creating a complex, yet easy to develop mashup, this is what MashMaker could be like. If it is as easy as Intel and Yahoo made it sound, this has the potential to be a killer application that a lot of people are going to be using to create some crazy mashups.
New and improved, and ready to download today! Get ready to get your mobile application on because Yahoo just launched a new version of Go that brings users faster speeds, calendar and address books, better email, and more powerful maps.
Yahoo Go 2.0 has reduced data loading times which is not only good on your time, but also great on your data plan if you aren't on the unlimited. Some new tools to help in your day to day time management include the calendar and address book options. The address book even has 1 click to call functionality. As far as email is concerned, common attachments can now be viewed, including images, word, excel and pdf's. When you're on the go, mobile maps are a great feature. Yahoo had tied in GPS integration for select devices, which is going to be a great tool not only for local users, but for people who travel frequently.
We took a look at what Yahoo offered with Go Mobile when it first came out, and it still looks like Yahoo holds the top spot for universal mobile applications. We have also had the chance to use a version of Yahoo Go 2.0 just before they added all these goodies in, and it were extremely impressed with what it brought to the table. Look out for a full review on the new Yahoo Go 2.0 coming shortly.
Online applications are great, but what happens when you can't get a connection to the internet? Whether it is because you are on an airplane, or in the middle of nowhere camping, and have to get certain emails, calendar items, or files, you are quite possibly out of luck. Its sure a bummer, and one of the reasons why so many people are hesitant about using online applications for their most important information.
Now Imagine being able to take your online applications, offline, and store that data locally in a completely searchable database? Google is making this possible with Gears. Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide complete offline functionality. Google hopes that developers will use this new toolset to create offline web applications using JavaScript APIs to store and serve the applications resources locally, as well as store data in searchable databases. All of the syncing runs in the background without burning out the browsers memory usage, or slowing anything down.
The Google Gears Beta is currently available for installation on Windows XP,Vista, as well as on Mac and Linux machines. The plug-in works with Firefox 1.5+ and IE 6+. Google's first stop with Gears is Reader, with JavaScript APIs getting released shortly for data storage for use in applications like Docs and Spreadsheets.
The official Google Gears announcement will be made tomorrow to over 5,000 developers at Google's Developer Day gathering.
A large expense, and head scratching issue many businesses face is data backup. Should they pony up the cash to develop an internal solution, or do they hunt out external solutions. Symantec, the well known protection company, has opened a solution for small to mid-sized businesses.
Symantec has released its Online Backup Service for beta testing, with a full release later this year. The system is aimed at businesses that have been facing challenges with data protection, offering them an affordable solution with a name they can trust. Symantec's data recovery and backup system would sync critical data to Symantec's data centers under a high level of security and backup systems.
There is no word yet on the cost of the Online Backup Service, but with Symantec's track record at protecting users and businesses, we can guess its going to be a great (if pricey) offering.
It's great to read emails, short RSS headlines, and instant messages on your mobile device, but what about reading novels? Has that just pushed the line?
Wattpad has introduced a mobile client that gets novels, like proper novels, onto mobile devices in text form. When users have the client installed on their devices, it makes it possible to download additional stories and read them offline. They might be a little eye straining on smaller devices, but I would imagine that when viewed on Blackberry's or Windows Mobile device it could be tolerable.
The application is a free download, either through a mobile website, or through a download link that you can load onto your device. There is a huge list of books available on the site with user comments and number of people that have read it through Wattpad. The books are surprisingly free with full text versions available online. So if your mobile screen gets a little small you can always just read it online, or print it off.
Just when you thought the world of web analytics was a little bland, Basil arrives to spice things up a bit.
Basil takes out the pages of raw web traffic data that we once had to sift through and analyze, and does all the hard work for us. They provide easy to use clean interface design [reminding us of Mint] to make it easier for figuring out what the popular pages of your website are, and what search engine delivers the most traffic to your site.
Basil makes it easy to track the pages and data you want to check out by proving a dashboard of four major topic areas, visitors, pages, referrers, and search engines. Data is compiled in easy to read reports, you can check out a demo on the Basil website.
Basil web analytics is available for $25 U.S. which allows for installing the software on one domain.
Swivel is a data, number crunching, graph oriented, chart mecca for those who are so inclined. The site was launched in December 2006 as the brainchild of two physics majors. Swivel has now reached an important milestone with its one millionth graph. Swivel was designed for users to share data so you can upload your own and have others explore your findings.
If you are curious about say - Verizon's upload speeds compared to T-Mobile, or whether you are in the top 1% income bracket ($238,000 annually), or what the most educated cities are, then you will find a lot to love about Swivel. Another cool thing is you can compare all different kinds of data in a single graph and find correlations. I can see all kinds of arguments I lost in the past that would have been so much more in my favor, if only I had that readily accessible chart or graph or something. Now that data is well within reach - it's tagged, easily search-able, and I can have my data within a click or two.
At some time or another, we all upgrade our computers. And when the time comes, most people meticulously back up every bit of data they possibly can - often to load directly onto the new computer. But in many cases, for whatever reason it just doesn't get there.
This is the situation I found myself in about 9 months ago when I moved onto the current laptop I use. I have a ton of data that just never seemed to make it to this machine. And while I thought I'd really miss it, save for only two or three instances, I really haven't.
I asked around, and many of my friends report similar experiences.
So what does all of this mean? Are we all just digital packrats, carrying around way more data than we need to, even more than we can conceivably keep track of? Or is this one of the wonderful parts of this new digital world that we live in? Maybe we should treat all data like Google tells us to treat email - never deleting anything, simply archiving it so that it can be searched later if necessary. But I'm starting to wonder how valuable that old data really is.
Over the past number of years, I have at least 5 GB of PST files of my email archives. I haven't looked at them since I backed them up to make room on my hard drive. Okay, let's be honest; I haven't used them since I started using Gmail. I suppose there could be some interesting nuggets of information in them, but realistically my likelihood of finding anything useful in that haystack of useless data is next to nil. It's like keeping an archive of every personal conversation you've ever had - just trying to remember where the good stuff is would be impossible.
But I also can't subscribe to the extreme notion of treating email like voicemail. There's a contingent (this is particularly popular amongst the capital P Productivity crowd) that believes we should read an email once, determine whether it needs an action to be taken, and delete the email. I garner way too much value from being able to search my relevant old email, particularly in my daily business, to consider this drastic measure.
So how do we find the balance? What to keep, what to get rid of? Is anything over 3 years old even worth worrying about anymore? Give give us your thoughts.
If you spend a lot of time in front of the computer, you probably collect dozens of little snippets of information each day: Web sites to visit later, documents you want to review some other time, contact info of people you want to catch up with next week, reminders about what to pack for your next trip. 
As Facebook and Google join DataPortability.org for streamlining the technologies and standards used with social applications, online real estate listings are quick not to be left behind.
As you may know, the New Hampshire primary for the US 2008 Presidential election is today. Although web 2.0 itself has not been positioned as a major campaign issue, the power of the web and social networks has played a large role in not only individual candidate campaigns, but in the debate process itself. Additionally, with his victory in the Iowa caucus, Democratic candidate Barack Obama has become the first candidate leading in Internet metrics to pull off a major victory. So this begs the question, are Obama's fans the most savvy and "connected" supporters? Well, in addition to having the most friends on MySpace and supporters on Facebook, Sen. Obama is also leading in the war of campaign widgets. 
Yahoo! is getting ready to take the wrapper off TechTicker, an online program aimed at technology investors.
Zoho is always up to something. The company that seems like it never stops to breath has released another update to their Zoho suite, Start.
Lost data, the words should make any user cringe at the thought. Hours of time spent creating documents, all gone in a matter of seconds. It's something that we never want to happen to us.
Intel is getting ready to debut a closed beta this month of their new mashup tool accessible to non programmers.
New and improved, and ready to download today! Get ready to get your mobile application on because Yahoo just launched a new version of Go that brings users faster speeds, calendar and address books, better email, and more powerful maps. 
Online applications are great, but what happens when you can't get a connection to the internet? Whether it is because you are on an airplane, or in the middle of nowhere camping, and have to get certain emails, calendar items, or files, you are quite possibly out of luck. Its sure a bummer, and one of the reasons why so many people are hesitant about using online applications for their most important information.
A large expense, and head scratching issue many businesses face is data backup. Should they pony up the cash to develop an internal solution, or do they hunt out external solutions. Symantec, the well known protection company, has opened a solution for small to mid-sized businesses.
It's great to read emails, short RSS headlines, and instant messages on your mobile device, but what about reading novels? Has that just pushed the line?
Just when you thought the world of web analytics was a little bland, Basil arrives to spice things up a bit. 
At some time or another, we all upgrade our computers. And when the time comes, most people meticulously back up every bit of data they possibly can - often to load directly onto the new computer. But in many cases, for whatever reason it just doesn't get there. 
