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Filed under: Internet, Social Software

Swurl brings all of your social networking activity together

Swurl
Once upon a time, letting people know what you were up to online was simple. You'd just point your friends toward your blog, LiveJournal page, or MySpace where you posted all of your latest musing on life. But if you're an active netizen, odds are your social activity is spread out across a half dozen or more sites, ranging from YouTube to del.icio.us. Swurl is a new service that helps bring all of your status updates, bookmarks, watched videos and other activity together.

If Swurl sounds a bit like FriendFeed, it kind of is. Both services let you gather all of your social networking activity in one place. But Swurl is a lot prettier and more customizable. You can think of it almost as a meta-blog. If you have a blog on Blogger or WordPress, you can configure Swurl to display all of your latest posts in blog-like format. But it will also show your Twitter and Facebook status updates and other activity in chronological order. Or you can hit the search box to search all of your sites.

Anyone can comment on an item that shows up on your Swurl page just by hovering their mouse near the bottom of an update. And you can use Swurl as something of a start page by hitting the Friends tab to see what your contacts have been up to. There's also a nifty timeline view that shows your updates plotted out on a calendar.

Swurl was developed by Ryan Sit, the same guy who brought us Listpic, an awesome interface for browsing online classified sites.

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Listpic is back, and powered by Oodle

Listpic OodleYou just can't keep a good website down, no matter how hard you try. Less than a week after Craigslist essentially shut down Listpic by preventing the site from scraping classified ads, Listpic is back up and running.

Whereas Listpic has previously provided a graphical browsing experience to the largely text-based Craigslist, Listpic is now powered by Oodle. Unlike Craigslist, Oodle does show pictures next to listings, but there's something extraordinarily useful about being able to browse classifieds by photos alone.

And most importantly, Oodle has an open API, and Listpic founder Ryan Sit got permission from Oodle before re-launching his site. Which is good news, because in our interview with Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster last week, he kind of subtly hinted that there's no way in hell that Craigslist was going to let Listpic start scraping Craigslist ads again.

The new Listpic looks pretty much identical to the old listpic. The only changes are under the hood.

[via WebWare]

Filed under: Internet, Features, News, Web services, DLS Interviews

Jim Buckmaster Q&A: Why Craigslist banned listpic

Listpic
Yesterday Craigslist blocked listpic, a website that lets you browse classifieds on Craigslist through a graphical interface. In other words, you could browse by photos instead of text-based links -- a feature we've since learned Craiglist may be adding to its own site (read below).

While it was pretty clear that listpic was violating Craiglist's terms of service, the site was awfully useful, and many users said they found themselves spending a lot more time browsing classifieds because of it. Listpic founder Ryan Sit has been engaged in a back and forth with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in the user forums.

We wanted to get to the bottom of the issues, so we shot out an email to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster. Here are his responses:

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Craigslist blocks Listpic

Listpic
For the past few months, you could use a 3rd party website to browse Craigslist by looking at pictures rather than text-based titles. In a lot of ways, Listpic made perusing classified ads far more useful. In fact, some users say they started spending far more time looking at Craigslist ads once they discovered Listpic.

That's why many users are complaining about Craigslist's decision to block the service yesterday. In a brief forum post, Craig Newmark wrote that the site was causing "a major bandwidth drain, slowing the site down for everyone else," and that there's "also one other major issue still under investigation, where we have yet to determine who's responsible."

Interestingly, Newmark comments that he did like Listpic's visual aspect, so it'll be interesting to see if Craigslist eventually works out some sort of a deal with the site or implements its own graphical browsing element.

Looking at Craigslist's terms of use, it appears that the company has reserved the right to delete accounts, block email or IP addresses, or generally terminate service for pretty much any reason. That's not to say they didn't have a reason. The terms of use also forbid "creation of derivative works from or redistribution of the site or the collective work." No matter how useful Listpic was, it clearly falls under tha category of a derivative work, and it's remarkable that Craigslist didn't block the service sooner.

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Listpic: Browse Craigslist photos

Listpic
Ryan Sit has put together a nifty website that lets you browse Craigslist classifieds through photos. You select your city and search terms, and rather than a list of text links, Listpic presents you with a group of images.

Clicking on an image brings up a small window containing most of the information from the original listing, but with just one image. If you click permalink button you'll see the full add, including any additional photos. And if you click the title of your selected listing, you'll be redirected to the original Craigslist post.

Overall, it makes Craigslist just a little more useful when you're searching for something like an apartment, where looks matter.

[via Parent Hacks]

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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