Software

Mirco-blogging is a great way to let people know what you’re up to that very instant. But what if you could let your followers know where your post originated from. That may have been the very thing running through the minds of the people behind byNotes.

On the surface byNotes operates like any other micro-blogging site but in addition to sending messages you can also specify where in the world you are via Google Maps.

Now we know what you’re thinking, stalker tool right? Post a message of “I’m at this really nice cafe posted at 123 Anystreet, Anytown” could lead to a lot of unwanted attention. Thankfully byNotes has put into place restriction levels so that based on the access level you have established, people can either know the exact location, a general location like the country or some where in between.

The only downside to this service is that you must be in front of a computer to use it as byNotes doesn’t appear to have a mobile version available.

Have you ever heard a public figure make a claim that seems a bit preposterous? In the year of a U.S. presidential election, more people are going to be scrutinizing candidates — and political bloggers — and wondering if what they’re saying is true, exaggerated, or just completely made up. That’s where Ameritocracy comes in. You can add a quote, and Ameritocracy users will rate its accuracy and its relevance.

We think this is great fun, because it takes a step toward realizing our fantasy of siccing Slashdot commenters on all of our nation’s politicians. Sure, the accuracy ratings might be questionable, but they should continue to improve as the site gains additional users. Ameritocracy is full of diverse issues and opinions, so if you can’t get worked up over the election, maybe you have an opinion on propositions like, “The mobile phone may be the most potent tool ever invented for the elimination of poverty.”

With all the social networking sites out there it’s hard to keep track of who’s on what site and what are they doing. Whoisi is attempting to bring everything together so that keeping track of your friends doesn’t feel like a second job.

Just enter their user name and have it added to the whoisi database. From there add them to your “follow” list and every time you visit the site it will display their latest activities. Keep in mind that once added, anyone can follow them from the whoisi site.

An interesting feature of whoisi is the ability for anyone to edit information about any user. You can add additional sites that this person is a member of or delete the site. Currently whoisi supports information from Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, LinkdIn and rss feeds.

Once you get over that whole privacy thing of anyone can add you to the site, the convenience of being able to follow all your friends on a simple website is quite appealing.

The only thing Facebook messages have ever been good for is getting a friend’s real contact info so you can talk outside of Facebook. But what happens when you lose that critical message with your buddy’s new address or screenname? Facebook fails you, and you have to scroll back through all your messages to find the right one. Not anymore! The ‘Book has introduced a search bar for your inbox.

Rejoice! A new feature that should have been there all along! We think this is a step in the right direction, even though it’s not exactly the highly-touted data portability we’re still waiting for. At least this gives us something better to do on Facebook than tend to our very impressive L’il Green Patch.

Fav.or.it is a new kind of RSS aggregator, somewhere in between a pre-set collection of feeds like Alltop and a full-on Google Reader-style service. It had been in closed beta, but now’s it’s opening to everyone. It includes a set of 2000 of the most popular and interesting feeds, and provides recommended stories based on what you’re reading, how long you spend on it, and how you rate it. Basically, Fav.or.it tries to pay attention to what you’re paying attention to. Also, as we reported earlier, your comments show up in Fav.or.it and on the original story.

It’s no reason to abandon Google Reader, but if you’re not already reading RSS feeds, this is a good introduction to managing them. With it’s Top-Story-focused, categorized startpage, it reminds us more of Google News than Google Reader in some ways. Whether Fav.or.it gets a good user base is going to be depend on how happy people are with its recommendation algorithm. Even if you just think of it as site that exposes newbies to a couple thousand top blogs, it’s doing a useful service for the Internet.

Tired of getting email notifications letting you know that someone wants to be your friend, poke, or wink at you? Webmail provider Orgoo wants to bridge the gap between email and social networking. That means you’d be able to receive all of your email notifications without leaving the social networking site. TechCrunch reports that Orgoo hopes to convince social networks like MySpace and Facebook to integrate the Orgoo email interface, which will also encourage users to spend more time on the web page.

While most social networking sites have some sort of private messaging feature, they tend to lack the features you’d find in a full fledged email service like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. Orgoo supports POP and IMAP, which means you wouldn’t necessarily be stuck with an @orgoo.com or @myspace.com email address. You could link any POP or IMAP-enabled account to the service.

Last year Yahoo! made some waves by claiming that email itself could be the basis for the next generation social networking. The implication is that Yahoo! may add social features to its email and IM services to make Yahoo! Mail a bit more Facebook-like. Orgoo’s solution seems to achieve the same goal by taking the exact opposite approach.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has relaunched Wikia Search. And this time, the site actually might be worth using.

When Wales announced that he was working on a human powered search engine to compliment his human powered encyclopedia, we were skeptical but curious. When the public alpha launched earlier this year, we were disappointed. Up until this week, Wikia Search was basically just like any other search engine. A computer scanned the web for pages and decided which were the closest match to your search query. The only thing setting Wikia Search apart was the ability to create user profiles.

Now Wikia Search has added a slew of editing tools that could actually help improve (or utterly screw up) search results. Here’s how it works. Wikia Search has a computer-created index of about 30 million sites. But you can edit any page. For example, when we searched for “download squad” this site came up as the second listing. We gave it a five star rating which moved it to the top of the page. And then for good measure, we hit the edit button and wrote a new site description. You can do this for any site. you can also add comments, annotations, or “spotlights,” which highlights the entire entry so that it looks a bit like a sponsored result you would get from Google.

[via WebWare]

Another nice Wikia Search feature is the fact that you never have to hit a “next page” button. Just scroll to the bottom of your search results and Wikia Search will find a few more and lengthen your page. Since the search engine is not advertising-funded, there’s no incentive to get you to click on additional pages.

Now let’s take a moment to point out the obvious: You can edit your own search rankings! A lot of web publishers are going to be tempted to use this editing power to give their sites top rankings even when other web sites might be a better match.

If Wikia Search takes off the way that Wikipedia has, the community of editors should be able to automatically correct this by removing inaccurate edits. For example, while we felt it was entirely appropriate for Download Squad to get the top ranking for “download squad,” we kind of hope someone would call us out for moving the site to the number one position for “Paris Hilton.” But it’s not at all clear at this point that anybody would.

Ever wonder how many clicks it takes to get from the Wikipedia page for Bill Gates to the page for Mark Shuttleworth? The answer is three. How about from “ice cream” to “cone?” Surprisingly, the answer is four. We know this not because we’ve been wasting hours clicking on every possible Wikipedia link and tabulating the results, but because somebody’s done all the hard work for us by creating a Six Degrees of Wikipedia page.

Just type in any two items, and the web service will dig through a database of Wikipedia articles and figure out how long it would take to get from one to the other. The Wikipedia page for “2007″ is apparently the closest to the “center” of Wikipedia, meaning that you can get to any other page from 2007 with an average of 3.45 clicks. When you take out Wikipedia pages for dates or long lists of items, the page for “United Kingdom,” is the closest to the center, since it’s an average of 3.67 clicks away from any other page.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Does coolhunting have to be done by a handful of trendsetters and influencers, or can it be crowdsourced? p0pulist is one site that’s betting on the wisdom of crowds to turn up the next big thing. Sign up for an account, tell p0pulist what you like, and check out what others are saying to build your own personal coolhunting directory.

What interests us about p0pulist is the different directions it could take. The site has been covered by the bleeding-edge trend-watching site JoshSpear.com, focusing on its potential to call attention to exciting new products; it’s also been covered by web 2.0 news site Profy.com, who pointed to the potential for a FriendFeed-like conversation to take place on p0pulist.

We also like it for the pretty interface, the Facebook integration, and the mobile posting feature. p0pulist is on the right track by eliminating as many barriers to entry as possible, and designing a site that would be really easy to start using habitually. Whether you’re a trend junkie or a devourer of all things social on the web, p0pulist looks like a good place to jump in early.

As cliché as it sounds, breaking up really is hard to do. Well, maybe it’s not theoretically difficult, but telling someone you’ve cared about in any capacity that it’s over and it’s time to move on isn’t fun. Actually, being told is probably even less fun, especially if there’s the element of surprise involved.

Technology complicates things. Aside from the potential for devastation that comes from a significant other texting you a “Let’s just be friends” message, or finding a picture of your sweetie online in a compromising position, there is the whole social networking issue.

ABC News takes a hard-hitting look at Facebook relationship statuses. A girlfriend is devastated when her ex- changes his status to “Single.” Was she more devastated over the break up, or the fact that several Facebook contacts gave her a ring? ABC doesn’t say for sure, but their use of the phrase “barraged with phone calls” and the statement that it was an “uncomfortable experience” for the former couple leads us to believe that, er, maybe some calls were made for less altruistic reasons than the offer of a shoulder to cry on.

The love doctors here at DLS Most of us here at Download Squad would say there are a few issues to consider when you decide to make your relationship public on a site like Facebook. Why are you using the social networking site? Is it work or career related? Are you keeping in touch with friends? It’s ultimately up to you, and how comfortable you feel about the fact that some friends on social networks might not actually be friends (unless you really do know Tom at MySpace personally).

The sad fact is that on the ‘net as well as in real life, there are people who will gossip and ask for way too many details over a break up that they aren’t directly involved in. The interwebs makes it easier for them to poke and prod for the juicy bits, sure, but that’s less technology related and more human nature related.

And guys/girls… Seriously, don’t ever break up with anyone via text. You’ll never have a relationship in this town again with that sort of behavior.