FeedHub Launches – Individualized RSS Feed Service

FeedHub launches today at DEMOfall. It creates an “individualized RSS feed” that aims to filter relevant posts from a set of feed sources. FeedHub will discover new memes for you and learn “meme weights” by noticing which posts you click on and interact with.

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Americans Can Go Without Sex Longer Than The Internet, Study Finds

A survey of about 1,000 Americans showed that the Internet has become such an essential part of their every-day lives that 28% said they spend less time socializing with friends because of it. And 20% said they spend less time having sex because they’re too busy online, according to a study by advertising agency JWT.

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Social Networking: A Time Waster Or The Next Big Thing In Collaboration?

Facebook and other social networks in the workplace can suck up employees’ time and worse. But managed right, they may be the next breakthrough in business collaboration.

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Sketchcast.com, new tool for sketchcasting

“Sketchcasting” means to draw something (with or without voice over) and then let others play it back via their browser. It was invented by Rich Ziade and a couple of us got together to build a tool for it. It’s a bit like blogging from a napkin/ paper/ whiteboard!

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US cities’ Wi-Fi dreams fading fast

San Francisco and Chicago in recent weeks abruptly halted plans to set up municipal Wi-Fi networks while Internet giant Earthlink, a partner for a number of cities, has begun a reorganization that will limit new projects.

Wi-Fi, one of the most popular standards for wireless Internet access, had been seen as a means of connecting more people at a relatively low cost, and city leaders across the United States had been rushing to use the technology for “digital inclusion” programs for low-income residents.

But cities and companies are finding the economics more difficult, with many expensive access points needed and relatively small numbers of subscribers signing on.

“I think it’s a troubled market,” said Daryl Schoolar, senior analyst at the research firm In-Stat.

“Some thought a lot of people would rush out with laptops and would use it. But Wi-Fi doesn’t really penetrate buildings well. And people use Wi-fi mainly in hotels, airports and cafes.”

Although some privately operated Wi-Fi deployments in these high-density locations have become popular, analysts say the notion of a large municipal network blanketing cities is questionable.

MuniWireless, a website tracking municipal projects, counts over 400 cities in planning or development of Wi-Fi networks. But analysts say only a small percentage of these are operating, and many are primarily for police or public-safety access.

“The problem is finding a business model that really works,” said Stan Schatt, analyst with ABI Research.

“Originally the municipalities came into this by saying they would offer Wi-Fi and get a free ride for their internal networks, and it turns out it doesn’t work that way.”

In San Francisco, Google was preparing to back a citywide Wi-Fi program with Earthlink that would be free for users who agree to view online ads, with paying customers getting an ad-free version. But the city was unable to come to terms with Earthlink before the firm pulled out and announced a massive reorganization on August 28.

Chicago officials announced August 31 they would “re-evaluate” their plan after two potential partners failed to come up with a suitable plan because a network required “extraordinary financial support” from the city.

“In Chicago and in many other cities, a municipal Wi-Fi network was initially envisioned as a way to provide cheaper, high-speed access to consumers,” said Hardik Bhatt, the city’s chief information officer.

“But given the rapid pace of changing technology, in just two short years, the marketplace has altered significantly.”

Ahead of the other major cities, Philadelphia meanwhile is rolling out its Wi-Fi network, having covered more than half of the city’s 350 square kilometers (135 square miles).

The nonprofit Wireless Philadelphia organization has provided some 300 low-income residents with laptops and wireless “bundles” at a price of around 10 dollars per month. Free access is provided in many parks, and customers can sign up for citywide access for about 20 dollars monthly.

“Philadelphia remains the showcase city for municipal wireless networks,” said Wireless Philadelphia chief executive Greg Goldman, who indicated partner Earthlink’s reorganization would not affect the project.

Earthlink said it would keep its commitment to that city but would not take on any new projects using the “old business model.”

“We will not devote any new capital to the old municipal Wi-Fi model that has us taking all the risk by fronting all the capital, then paying to buy our customers one by one,” Rolla Huff, EarthLink president and chief executive, told a conference call with analysts. “That model is simply unworkable.”

“EarthLink’s reorganization may be the reality check that the municipal broadband market needs,” says analyst Joe Panettieri, writing on MuniWireless.

“Too many municipalities continue to focus on large, ambitious public wireless projects that have no clear path to profitability.”

Yet analysts say that despite the problems of municipal Wi-Fi programs, wireless Internet access is growing and more networks will be coming in some form.

Other technologies are promising including WIMAX, which has a longer range for each access point. Spint Nextel and Clearwire are planning big WIMAX rollouts in the United States and other countries, analysts say.

“There are many versions of this wireless technology, some will work and some won’t, and we’re in the early innings,” said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom industry analyst.

But Kagan said the idea of cities providing Internet access appears doubtful.

“This is a technology that is changing so quickly that you have to allow the industry to handle it on a competitive basis to keep the prices low and innovation high,” Kagan said.

“When government gets involved in these projects, no matter what government, it just trips over itself.”

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480+ Open Source Applications

Open source software: over 480 open source applications for you to use or build upon. Links from Mashable

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New version of Gmail being tested

Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004, and has revolutionized the way many of us use email. The interface has remained largely untouched since it launched, but get ready, it’s soon to undergo a change in what they describe as a “New Version”

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Create smaller CSS files

There are only advantages of making your CSS files some smaller. When your website uses a 5k CSS file, you might not see the difference in loading time, but when using bigger (25k) files, you can notice your website will load a bit faster when using some of the steps

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CSS Frameworks + CSS Reset

You don’t have to write the same CSS-code or (X)HTML-Markup over and over again. Whatever project you’re starting to work with, at some point you have to define classes and IDs you’ve already defined in your previous web-projects. To avoid unnecessary mistakes you might want to start not from a blank file, but from an almost “perfect” scratch. The latter might contain some basic definitions you’d write in your code anyway. However, once you’ve decided to create such a scratch, you need to make sure it is really bulletproof — besides, if the stylesheet also sets up optimal typographic rules and basic form styling you manage to kill two birds with one stone.

And this is where CSS Frameworks and CSS Reset are becoming important. Using them, you can get yourself a perfect default-stylesheet and markup, save your time and ensure the best quality of your code from the very beginning. But what are CSS Frameworks? And why do you need the Reset for?

Let’s take a look at the idea behind CSS Frameworks, their advantages and disadvantages, most popular CSS frameworks and dozens of default-stylesheets you can use designing a new web-site from scratch.

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Fedora’s new theme – Nodoka

Since the first Fedora releases, Clearlooks has been the default theme; in fact, Clearlooks has been the default theme in a number of distros for a long time now. Aiming to give Fedora its own distinct appearance is Nodoka: based on its own theme engine it’s extremely fast, and when seen in combination with the rest of the artwork F8 is beautiful.

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