Mapping a revolution with 'mashups' By Elinor Mills
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 17, 2005 4:00 AM PT Even before Google gave its blessing, Paul Rademacher was hacking away at the code behind its mapping application so he could mix it with outside real estate data and see exactly where homes listed for sale were located in the San Francisco area. Little did the computer graphics expert know that his HousingMaps.com, which combines a Google map with house listings from the popular Craigslist community, would be the start of an Internet phenomenon. Although Rademacher created his site about two months before Google publicly released its application programming interface--the secret sauce that allows developers to create their own recipes with its maps--the company wasn't angry.
Ynet Jerusalem's industrial sector is seeking 1,000 additional employees, including 600 workers for the hi-tech industry, Chairman of the Manufacturers Association's Jerusalem district and Tuttnauer company CEO Ran Tuttnauer said Thursday. Tuttnauer estimated that about 500 new employees were hired by companies in the capital in 2005, with 70 percent going to hi-tech firms. Twenty Jerusalem plants are currently looking for software and hardware engineers, programmers, welders, turners, CNC operators, locksmiths, sales people and pharmacists, Tuttnauer said. An employment fair will be held in Jerusalem next Wednesday in a bid to help the 20 participating plants man the proposed jobs. The companies expected to attend the fair include Intel, NDS, Bioline, Servision, Gamatronic and many others. Organizers of the event said that in the previous fair, held in June of this year, 550 positions were on offer and 40 percent of them were filled.
Hack Google Reader: Unofficial API docs released Posted Dec 28th 2005 5:00PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Developer, Blogging, Google Here's a bit of trivia: Google built an RSS API first and then built Google Reader on top of it to show what could be done with the API. Though Google claim to be working on releasing their own API docs soon, developer Niall Kennedy got a head-start on them and released his own Google Reader API docs. Kennedy describes how to use the simple REST API to retrieve any feed in Atom format, get a user's subscription list (you need the correct password, of course), and read and tag items. Google Reader's project manager Jason Shellen wrote in to Niall to confirm the accuracy of docs and provide the above bit of trivia and suggest that Google's official docs might be available inside of a month. Either way, I hope we see some cool Google Reader hacks as a result.
Geek to Live: Top underrated apps of 2005 Last week I pointed out 2005’s best apps - and most of my choices were pretty obvious. (Flickr and Gmail, anyone?) Today I’d like to shout out a few great desktop and webapps that you may not have heard of or taken the time to try out.
Without further ado here are my picks for the best underhyped applications of 2005. In no particular order:
Habits of wildly successful del.icio.us users Posted Dec 28th 2005 2:20PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Web services, Yahoo! I've pimped del.icio.us to a lot of people and one thing I've found is that, for one reason or another, it doesn't really work for some people. If you're one of those people, you might check out Slacker Manager's The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users. Even if you feel you use del.icio.us pretty effectively, it's worth a read; I've racked up thousands of bookmarks but this article has made me consider updating my practices a bit.
Human networks have arrived Forget wires, just plug yourself in. Pftt! By Nick Farrell: Thursday 29 December 2005, 07:50 BOFFINS at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have worked out a way of using the human body as a high-speed network and connect people to electronic devices.
XOVI: A streaming graph visualization framework, for realtime graphs of network traffic and the like:
2005: The year in environment Natural disaster was a running theme in 2005 - a year marked by more North Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes since records began, and a string of massive earthquakes. Scientists also warned that the planet is edging closer to irreversible global warming, as ice melts across the planet. The environmental year began with devastation in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which struck on 26 December 2004. The tsunami claimed 300,000 lives, crippled economies, and wiped out coastal communities from Sri Lanka to Somalia. But it also caused considerable environmental damage, carrying salt water far inland and smashing coral reefs across south-east Asia. Seismologists warned that the earthquake would be the first of many, and confirmation came first in March when a huge related quake struck Sumatra. Then in October, another gargantuan quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale levelled swathes of Pakistan and Kashmir. The death toll is 80,000 so far, but winter may take the lives of many more people lacking adequate shelter.
THE FOODLOOP: a new kitchen tool, kinda cool and useful...
Ecocarat breathing walls from INAX Corporation Writing about a Japanese company which sells primarily in Japan is always a challenge. One such company we recently found out about, INAX, is so intriguing that we wish we could see the products first hand. INAX Corp. reportedly started up with sintering clay tiles and has "persistently tried to take advantage of natural materials to achieve comfortable living environments,..." "In 1998, the ceramics maker launched the "Ecocarat" clay-based building material for "breathing walls" that can keep indoor humidity in a comfortable range between 40 to 70 percent with ventilation through micro holes". Their "Eco soil ceramics" is a building material that has characteristics of both the breathing "Ecocarat" and their new material "Soil ceramics", a tile as close to soil as it can get. "It is manufactured by solidifying, not firing, so that the feel of soil and straw is therein its original form. The processing autoclave consumes less energy and releases less CO2, and soil waste from stone is used as 60% of raw material...". INAX describes itself as a "recirculation based company". Recirculating end of life products makes no sense across the ocean but would be perfect for "homesourced" architectural elements. If only US companies could catch the hint. If only we could walk that path.
Essential List on Firefox Extensions for Webmaster: The Essential List and Resources on Firefox Extensions is a popular post here, due to one reason - Firefox has too many extensions and it is difficult and time consuming for a user who just wanted to install some cool extensions to get started on their Firefox journey. Because our original list was more toward normal and daily usage - and being a part time webmaster and blogger, I want introduce some of the extension I use to assist my webmaster responsibilities and tasks. Oh yes, I will only display extensions that save my web developing time for other tasks and projects in my life. Same drill here - I am going to list some must have, should have and good to have extensions, based on my experience and usage:
"With all the time you spend watching TV," he tells me, "you could have written a novel by now." It's hard to disagree with the sentiment -- writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV -- but what about the hidden assumption? Such comments imply that time is "fungible" -- that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel. And sadly, that's just not the case. Time has various levels of quality. If I'm walking to the subway station and I've forgotten my notebook, then it's pretty hard for me to write more than a couple paragraphs. And it's tough to focus when you keep getting interrupted. There's also a mental component: sometimes I feel happy and motivated and ready to work on something, but other times I feel so sad and tired I can only watch TV. If you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it. First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have try to make your time higher-quality.
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