Archive for the 'links' Category

YouTube API

Published by Rytis Sileika on March 12, 2008 in links and news. 0 Comments

YouTube has announced their extended API to be available for 3rd party developers.

New API allows developers to use YouTube content in their online or offline applications more extensivelly. Here are some key features:

  • Create a web front end to let people view videos about specific topics.
  • Create a desktop application or plugin that plays videos in a customized environment.
  • Add related, dynamic video content to your website or application.
  • Customise the Flash player to fit the look and feel of your site, device or application
  • Add feeds of videos from each of YouTube’s 18 international domains

More technical details in Google code website.

Art of Data Mining

Published by Rytis Sileika on March 5, 2008 in links. 3 Comments

Just few examples of how you can turn meaningless (at the first glance) data into an art…

Spooky social network

Published by Rytis Sileika on March 4, 2008 in links. 0 Comments

Apparently Steven Spielberg is about to launch a social network for users interested in paranormal and extraterrestrial experiences…

How to integrate services in Facebook - example

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 29, 2007 in links. 3 Comments

What I’m going to do today, is to show how company can integrate their existing services with Facebook.

Company that I’ll take as example is Box.net. Company was founded in 2005, they are specialising in online storage solutions and they were the first company to provide this service. For those who don’t know, online storage means that you can store, retrieve and share you files on the web and access them from anywhere. All you need is a web browser. Box.net also provides an open API for accessing the data. Company has 1.2 million users with over a million files served each day.

To expand and get more users Box.net wrote an application for Facebook, which allows accessing and using Box.net services directly from your Facebook account.

All you have to do is to add their application (if you don’t have an account with Box.net, they allow you to create one immediately, registration process is very simple an literally takes 10 seconds).

There’s very subtle, but yet effective viral marketing item. If you invite your friend to Box.net application, you’ll get extra 20MB of storage for each friend you invite.

Using the service is pretty straightforward:

  • Add (remove) folders
  • Upload files
  • Share folders/files
  • View (access) you friend’s files

User interface is minimalistic and very intuitive:

Overall impression is very good, and the service is quite useful. If you want to share something between your friends this application is a must have. I may try to be picky here and note that 20MB for free these days isn’t the greatest deal, but the ease of use and convenience might overweight the limitation. If you need more storage, pricing is very attractive and is only 2$/month for extra 2GB.

It also serves as a good example on how easy is to expand your business into Facebook arena and start enjoying the growing user base. Box.net already attracted over 71,000 users with over 1,400 active daily users. Box.net themselves recognise the importance of this move and I’m happy that Facebook application pool has really useful applications, besides all the fun stuff.

Social portfolio… for reporters

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 27, 2007 in links. 0 Comments

In continuation on my previous post about social networking portfolios. Here’s an article describing why a reporter needs to use Facebook and more, why a reporter needs two Facebook profiles:

With a Facebook “page,” a journalist can collect followers or fans of his/her work. For example, here’s a page for ABC’s Sunlen Miller, who is covering the Barack Obama campaign. (Note: You’ll need to be logged in to your Facebook account to see that page.) Miller’s page features notes and photos from the campaign trail, links to ABC News coverage, and anyone can “Follow this reporter,” which is sort of a variation of becoming a “friend.” Followers of Miller’s work can send her a message, or write on her “wall.”

Developing your Facebook strategy

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 26, 2007 in links. 4 Comments

Since we’re in social networking, we have to use social networks to promote ourselves, right? I was reading about various strategies to promote a blog. And found an amazing article by Dave McClure.

In short, Dave recommends the following seven steps for promoting your business/organisation using Facebook:

  1. Set Up Your Graph: Profiles & Privacy
  2. Make Connections: Networks, Groups & Events
  3. The Need for Feed: Your [Shared] Social Activity Stream
  4. Share Your Content: Share & People-Tag Your Stories & Media
  5. App to the Future: The Facebook Platform, APIs, & Applications
  6. Pay to Play: Ad Networks, Sponsored Stories, & Paid Distribution
  7. Show Me The Bunny: Gifts, Points, & Virtual Currency

Interesting blend

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 24, 2007 in links. 0 Comments

What happens if you mix online social networking and biology? The answer is most popular family history site - Ancestry.

There are many things you can do on their web site, but people join Ancestry to start building their family tree. You start with yourself, then add you direct relatives, also you can search massive user database of already registered users. Regional websites allows searching public records, such at telephone and civic record books.

However the most interesting bit is the DNA based discovery. If you have your DNA sampled, you then can track your origins. Tracking includes geographical visualisation, so for example you could end up with something like this:

It also allows doing DNA matches, so you’ll locations of users that are close DNA matches to yourself.

Another interesting option is finding the distance to a common ancestor with any other registered user.

Read more on their

What your network is worth?

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 22, 2007 in links and news. 0 Comments

Very funny application. Lets you calculate your social network value. In fact it’s just a game, but concept is very interesting.

If only it gathered data from social networks and online search engines… Something similar to this service (or rather calculator) for blogs.

By the way, my network value is rather low comparing to “similar profiles”, yet it is valued £76′000. Any suggestions how to monetise at least a bit of it?? :)

News of the social networks

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 13, 2007 in links and news. 0 Comments

Some interesting links and news from social networking arena.

DanceJam is YouTube for Dance. People would post video clips where they dance and then can compete with other dances. Check out this interview for more details. Their web site is still closed, but stay tuned if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

UpDown proves once again that social networking is not only for fun. Project is built upon an idea that community of like minded people can perform better analysis and come up with better investing strategies. UpDown offers many different services, such as investing competitions and allows creating your personal investing profiles. So far this service is receiving very positive feedback.

BeliefNet is a social network dedicated to religious devotees, spiritual leaders, and faith-based group. This once again proves that social networks are no longer dating and band fan gathering places.

Befaft is a very interesting or rather unusual network. This social network is dedicated to plastic surgery patients. Users can ask for advise whether they need plastic surgery in the first place. The site also offers tools to simulate effects of the plastic surgery. Ex-patients can post their pre and post surgery pictures.

PetSugar is yet another social network, but not really for us, humans… It’s a social network for girlie dogs! Polls, votings, comments, suggestions, pet food selections, even pet celebrities. All you (sorry, your dog) can find on PetSugar.

Enemybook plays rather negative note. List your enemies, unite with enemies of your enemies. Tell others why your enemies are in the list. It’s not a social network site, it is a Facebook application however. There are more networks that represent the opposite side of social networks. Coming back to security in the social networks one should always keep in mind that socialising online can sometimes cause a lot of grief.

Hello social world!

Published by Alexey Gabsatarov on October 26, 2007 in links. 2 Comments

nice and social browser