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Ubuntu , the open source operating system, is ditching the system tray, the bar at the bottom of most browsers that is supposed to act as a notification area. The rationale for the change, according to Matthew Paul Thomas , an Ubuntu contributor, was "its ineffectiveness at notifying people of things, and its inconsistent behavior." The proliferation of notification icons, that are not really associated with the delivery of any kind of notification, has added to the ineffectiveness, junking up the tray and making it harder to read at a glance. Sponsor The move away from what they believe is an over-use of this feature has been a development through several iterations. It's replacement idea is that of the menu. "In Ubuntu 10.10, we plan to introduce a power menu, which replaces the Gnome Power Manager applet; a network menu, which replaces the Network Manager applet (nm-applet); and a clock menu, or time and date menu, that replaces the Gnome clock applet. We'll also be extending the sound menu, to replace the notification area items for music players...The pattern here is that everything is becoming a menu...Our roadmap is that in Ubuntu 11.04, one year from now, there will be no notification area." Discuss
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Ubuntu Discards System Tray
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delivery,
feature,
gnome,
gnome-power,
matthew-paul,
most-browsers,
network,
notification,
through-several,
ubuntu
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Facebook appears to be preparing to launch a recommendation service that will be used on sites around the web. On the day before the F8 developers' conference, independent developer Jesse Stay has posted code found on Facebook's GitHub open source code repository account. Facebook is already very practiced at offering recommendations on-site: its News Feed technology pulls the items out of its Live Feed based on who and what you've shown is most important to you among all your friends and their activities. Facebook knows more about you than probably any other consumer service online, probably more even than Google. Recommendation could in fact become bigger than search, and so this feature could become one of Facebook's biggest moves. Sponsor Stay believes the feature will function like Google SideWiki , the sidebar of running commentary about a page that website owners have no control over but that hasn't really caught on with users, either. Two things you can be sure of: Facebook recommendations will make use of a website visitor's Facebook friend connections and the feature will almost definitely make publishers happier than the uncontrollable Google SideWiki did. recommendations site="abc.com" height="300" width="400" /> should be replaced by an iframe showing recommendations for the abc website (pending checkin on the server side). Recommendation would be huge for Facebook. Beyond just being cool for users, recommendation is compelling for site publishers because it's like pre-emptive search. The language in that code implies to me that the feature will display content recommended to a user because of interest by friends in certain content on the site. Presumably if any of your friends have shared links to the site you're visiting, you'll be encouraged to visit those pages in particular. Perhaps recommendation will go further than that. It's really hard to know, but we'll probably find out tomorrow. That's the question: is this a way for you to recommend content or to have content recommended to you? If it's primarily one, I'm guessing it's the latter. Make no mistake: recommendation could be a huge addition to Facebook's arsenal. Recommendation technologies are something we've covered for years here at ReadWriteWeb . We asked a year ago if Facebook was secretly working on a recommendation technology , though the feature we saw then turned out to be something else. Beyond just being cool for users, recommendation is compelling for site publishers because it's like pre-emptive search. Everyone wants to give their site owners an opportunity to search for the content they want to find, but even better is prompting them with what's effectively personalized search results as soon as they land on a page. Opt-out/opt-in? This essential question of privacy will be put to the test in many ways, as Facebook continues to extend its system of identity across the web. Facebook knows enough about you, your interests, your friends, their interests, their friends and their interests too that it should be able to nail recommendations fairly well. Discuss
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Facebook May Launch Recommendation Service For Other Websites
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consumer,
facebook,
facebook-beyond,
feature,
friends,
google-side,
interests,
news,
open-source,
pulls-the-items,
results-as-soon,
uncontrollable
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YouTube has launched a new feature that allows channel owners to send text messages and links to videos to the front page of their subscribers' YouTube accounts. It's a cool, if logical, feature to offer and one that could make visiting YouTube a lot more fun. Called Channel Bulletins, the feature is pretty simple. But am I looking forward to seeing little updates sent out between videos from the people I'm subscribed to? Yes, I am. Sponsor It would be nice if YouTube allowed channel owners to pipe in RSS feeds, maybe Twitter messages. The personal touch should be nice too, though. If you aren't subscribed to any channels on YouTube, you're missing out on one of the best ways to experience the site. I'm subscribed to Steve Gillmor , Breaking the News , Social Data Revolution and Brown Man Thinking Hard , among others. (Would love to get your suggestions for video channels to subscribe to, RWW readers.) Blippy co-founder Phil Kaplan brought this feature to our attention and framed it as YouTube's version of Twitter. It may play out that way for hard-core YouTube users, but I hope more casual publishers will regularly send out bulletins as well. I wouldn't mind getting them as emails, even. It would be nice for subscribers to be able to reply easily to Channel Bulletins, too. There are lots of ways this could go, but getting it started, offering messaging other than videos and comments, is a good move. Channels have long been a part of YouTube, Paris Hilton got the first branded one in 2006 , and it's pretty far-out to think that text message communication between channel owners and subscribers has taken this long to arrive. Perhaps when you're coming from a video-centric perspective, these things don't always come to mind. There are many other social features that could be added to make YouTube a more compelling site. Could I please be shown the YouTube channels and favorites of my friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google Accounts, for example? That would be great. Discuss
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YouTube Launches Twitter-Like Channel Bulletins
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attention,
facebook,
feature,
friends,
from-the-people,
google-accounts,
news,
nice-if-youtube,
Paris,
paris-hilton,
people,
social,
Steve Gillmor,
suggestions,
YouTube
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About a year ago, Google launched real-time search suggestions that were tailored towards users in different countries. Today, Google is taking this one step further and is l aunching an improved version of Google Suggest that also takes larger metro areas into account. Now, Google Suggest will offer different suggestions for users in New York City and Portland, OR, for example. For the time being, this feature is only available in the U.S. Sponsor Smarter Spelling Correction for Names In addition, Google is also rolling out smarter corrected spellings for names. As Google notes, people often search for names, but don't know the exact spelling. Now, whenever you add a person's profession, affiliation or other related keywords to an approximation of this person's name, Google will offer better suggestions and more useful spelling corrections. This feature, too, is currently only available in the U.S., though Google plans to roll it out in other parts of the world within the next few months. Auto-Correction for 31 Additional Languages Google is also rolling out auto-corrected spellings for 31 additional languages. These auto-corrections kick in whenever a user misspells a common word. For uncommon misspellings, Google will still give you a link to the corrected search results behind a link that says " Did you mean: ReadWriteWeb ." Whenever Google feels confidents that the auto-corrected version is what you were really looking for, the search engine bypasses the link and just drops you off on a search results page that is based on the correct spelling. Discuss
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Google Introduces Localized Google Suggest and Smarter Auto-Corrections
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auto,
corrected,
exact spelling,
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Google,
google-suggest,
know-the-exact,
metro areas,
New York City,
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Portland,
related,
search,
search-results,
spelling,
spelling corrections,
time,
U.S.,
U.S. Sponsor,
useful-spelling
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As Google has worked to add more and more real-time search capabilities by adding content from sites like Facebook, MySpace, Buzz and Twitter, we've been able to see more and more what people are talking about online. Google's latest feature that it is announcing today takes real-time data and puts it into a perspective we can work with - the past. Sponsor Rather than letting all of this real-time data simply stream past and evaporate into thin air, Google is rolling out a "replay" feature, that lets you look at real-time data, in this case tweets, at any specific time in the past. The feature offers a timeline of tweets, showing the volume of tweets containing relevant search terms, broken down according to scale. After playing with it for a few minutes, we were able to see that it even gets as narrow as a minute by minute breakdown of tweets on a topic. It will be available by clicking on "Show Options" on the left side of your screen and then "Updates". For now, Google says that it will offer tweets going back to February 11, 2010 but will soon extend back to March 21, 2006. The company says that the feature is currently rolling out and should be available globally in English within the next few days, but you can give it a whirl before then. As Google points out, the "replay" feature may be a great way to explore " how the news broke about health care legislation in Congress, what people were saying about Justice Paul Stevens' retirement or what people were tweeting during your own marathon run? These are the kinds of things you can explore with the new updates mode." We're looking forward to seeing what this sort of interaction with real-time data, in the aggregate, will bring to the table. It might not only be an invaluable reporting tool, but a great way to find out when a local restaurant is at its busiest. Discuss
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Google's Twitter Timeline Lets You Explore the Past
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aggregate,
congress,
facebook,
feature,
feature-offers,
gets-as-narrow,
Google,
health care legislation,
Justice Paul Stevens,
news,
past,
real time data,
relevant search terms,
relevant-search,
search