Facebook just launched a new feature called People You May Know, which suggests -- get ready for the surprise -- people that you may now. Wow.
It finds these people based on "your existing connections", but we don't know how it decides the order of the list. Our guess: the more people you both know, the higher on the list the person gets placed.
We didn't recognize any of our first four suggestions (pictured above), but the profile we used to test the feature is not heavily used. In contrast, Harrison Hoffman at CNet seems to know or have met most of his suggestions. It would make sense that Facebook profiles used more heavily will produce better results.
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.
Since Google Reader began reporting actual numbers of subscribers, we have since found out that it's actually one of the most popular web-based readers. That said, one of its least popular features has been its ability to email a feed item you're looking at. Reader would typically pop up a Gmail window, which in itself wasn't such a bad thing, but the message being sent was mostly mashed together gobbly-gook containing a 'This item was sent to you by a Google Reader...' message, along with the entire text of the post you were reading. Nearly anyone who's used the feature would likely agree that this was not the prettiest way to share something via email with your friends and colleagues. Adding insult to injury, it seemed like a trivial thing for Google to fix this feature; they simply could have tweaked the template that creates the Gmail message to contain maybe just a link to the feed item. Easy enough, right?
Well Google, staying true to their form, finally wound up doing much more than making a few changes to a template; they have completely revamped Google Reader's email feature to offer a vastly improved experience. Clicking 'Email' on an item now displays an in-line email compose window, complete with the ability to pull names and addresses out of your Gmail account. As for what the message actually sends, Google also went above and beyond by including the news item in its entirety; headline, pictures, links - the whole nine yards. While this might not be such great news to those who use plain-text email clients and services, Google is probably betting that most recipients of Reader-shared messages are using Gmail or some other form of capable client.
The new email features should be live and kicking for all Google Reader users, as we noticed them already enabled on our accounts.
Digg just unleashed a major update, cranking out a number of new features geared towards more powerful management and customization of the user experience, as well as incorporating multimedia in a big way. Kevin Rose posted an overview of the new features at Digg the Blog, complete with a short video and narration of all the cool new stuff.
The first big new feature is an upgraded UI with a focus on customizing how you use the site, what topics you see headlines for and a flexible width for the 30-inch display owners in the audience. Users can now toggle entire topics in their user profile, so if sports and politics are the last thing on your digg agenda, they can now be entirely removed from it.
Next up is a new Top 10 Stories/Videos section (pictured above to the right of headlines) for each top-level category (Technology, Science, etc.), which aggregates the top stories of those categories in real time.
OSNews writer Adam Scheinberg has written a review of two popular photo sharing services, Flickr and Picasa Web Albums, on his blog. Apparently, enough of the OSNews readers liked the review so much that they pressured him into posting it to OSNews, which made me think there just might be something to it.
To be honest, I think he does a good job of reviewing both services objectively, so I don't want to ruin his conclusion. I personally am an iPhoto and Flickr user since I'm on Mac OS X, but I've heard great things about Google's Picasa, and I've poked around with Web Albums since Google released an uploader app and iPhoto plugin for Mac OS X.
Check out Adam's review of the two big-hitters and see what you think. You might even learn something new about these services.
Google has added a 'Saved Locations' feature to Google Maps, complete with labels and auto-completion. Once signed into Google Maps, the service will begin auto-saving all addresses you type in (this is toggle-able from preferences). Clicking the Saved Locations option in the upper right of Google Maps takes you to your list of addresses where you can begin entering your own, including a label for each such as 'work', 'home', etc. Once a label has been applied to a location, Google Maps can recognize and auto-complete the label as well, saving you from having to re-type all those addresses. Auto-completing even works when searching for businesses, as in the example provides in their blog's announcement post: typing a business search like 'pizza near work' can expand the label 'work', provided you've entered one.
This is a really slick and time-saving feature, and it'll be great to see if Google takes it a few steps further some day. I would love it if Google Maps could tie into my Gmail account and offer the ability to auto-complete addresses from my contacts. So if I begin to type 'beer near John Doe', Google Maps can be the facilitator for even speedier alcohol consumption. Ah, the wonders of technology.
Thunderbird has gone alpha, boys and girls, with quite a few major new features and updates, including:
Message Tags
Folder Views including favorite folders
Improved New Mail Notification Alerts
New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
Find As You Type in the message pane
New combined and improved Add-ons manager for extensions and themes
Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
If you're familiar with the term 'alpha' then you probably know your way around playing around with this latest build. However, Mozilla does have one specific warning for Mac OS X users (they even wrote it in bold in the release notes!): do not run it from the disk image. Apparently doing so will lock Thunderbird into an infinite restart loop which you'll need a Terminal command to stop.
With that out of the way, go get your hands on the first major update to Mozilla's flagship email client.
Rejoice, fellow Backpack users, for 37Signals today added a much-requested new feature for paid users: a calendar. As you may come to expect from the traditional KISS approach of 37Signals, the calendar is incredibly easy to use and enter appointments into. It's also 'smart', as it can figure out what events like "January 7 Catherine's birthday" and "6:30pm Dinner" mean, and it will place them where they need to go. Users can also create multiple calendars and assign unique colors to each, and events are pleasantly drag-and-drop-able between days. Unlike Google Calendar, this Backpack Calendar can remind you of events no matter which calendar they are entered into, however the reminders (at least for now) are set at a static 30 minutes before the event. Calendars are also shareable and subscribe-able via the iCal format, and just as with Backpack pages, calendar addresses are able to be reset, should you find a need to stop sharing one down the road. The one thing I haven't tested yet is whether this calendar has any kind of accessibility via Backpack mobile. If you try this out, sound off.
As a paid Backpack user (just the Basic $5 plan), I have to say: I am pleased. I retreated from using Google Calendar a little while ago, in part because of the silly limit of only being able to receive reminders for events in the Personal calendar, and no others. Plus, this is another great reason to start using my Backpack account even more, especially since I've found a killer offline Backpack client by the name of Packrat, which I've blogged on TUAW. One downer that I can see from this new calendar being a paid-only feature, however, is that (as far as I know) free account users don't have any way of testing it out. I guess freeloaders (just kidding) could spend the $5 to 'temporarily' upgrade and test it out, then simply downgrade if they aren't happy. Ultimately, I think this calendar feature is almost worth the $5 alone for any Backpack user looking for a little more organization in their lives.
Here's an odd little feature I never knew was in Notepad, Microsoft's otherwise featureless text editor: It can be used to make log files. Give it a shot: Open Notepad and type .LOG on the first line, then save the file as whatever you want. Now every time you open the file the current date and time will be appended to it, which make it super-quick to create simple texty log files for whatever you want. Of course, every word processor and many text editors have shortcut keys for inserting the date, but simplicity does have its appeal. The Microsoft knowledgebase says this feature only applies to Windows 98 and ME, but it seems to work fine in XP as well.
Mike Sego posted on the Google Blog yesterday that a slick new 'reply by chat' feature has been added to Gmail. Now, if you want to reply to a message and the original sender is online, a 'reply by chat' button will be right next to the now old 'n busted regular reply button. To top things off, the chat history will be saved right in line with the conversation. Awesome.
It looks like Google is testing new features
in their search results age. As you can see in the screenshot, there is a blue arrow that appears next to results now
that, when twirled down, can reveal new information such as images, related links and even the ability to search the
site - all before you actually click to visit it (could this possibly be a result of those Ask.com commercials with the
monkeys?).
CyberNet, where I
found these screenshots, welcomes these new features and I have to agree. It looks like a great, unobtrusive way to
boost the power of their search without cluttering up the page with all sorts of buttons and do-dads. The one thing I'd
like to see with this new results page is the ability to navigate results the same way one can navigate Gmail messages -
shortcuts like j/k to move up and down the link results list and enter to open the link would be great.
Obviously, I don't know if these are real, or if they are - how CyberNet came across them, or even whether
Google is offering some kind of sign-up list to get in on the beta action. But one thing's for sure: if this new search
results UI is real, it will likely be one of the first new Google products/features of late to not debut as a
beta.
Since Google Reader began 
Thunderbird has gone alpha, boys and girls, with quite a few major 
Mike Sego posted on the Google Blog yesterday that a slick new 'reply by chat' feature has been added to Gmail. Now, if you want to reply to a message and the original sender is online, a 'reply by chat' button will be right next to the now old 'n busted regular reply button. To top things off, the chat history will be saved right in line with the conversation. Awesome.
