Entries from July 2007 ↓

The gadget: Speedfreek, an add-on from Kontrolfreek for the Xbox 360’s left analog stick to make racing games easier to play by making the cars more precise to control.

The verdict: Pretty comfortable for racing games, because it allows you to use just the sides of your thumb to gently nudge the car left or right.

The catch:

It’s not great for anything but racing games, because the plastic attachment on the bottom makes pressing down hard on the stick slightly more uncomfortable. Kontrolfreek is working on an adapter for other genres.

The performance: Good. I don’t know if it made me any better at PGR, but it did make turns more comfortable since the grooved sides fit my thumb quite nicely.

The price: Pack of 2 for $9.95, or pack of 4 for $17.50.

The recommendation: If you’re a racing fan who doesn’t want to pony up for a racing wheel, this is a very cheap alternative.

[kontrolfreek]

We have written here extensively
about the rise of web services and the transformation of the web into a platform. In our post
When Web Sites Become Web Services
we argued that more and more web sites will open their information via an interface. In our post about Yahoo! Pipes
we wrote about viewing the web as a massive, and in essence relational, database. And finally in the post about
the Future of RSS we looked at the past, present and future uses of the really simple syndication protocol.

Today we will look at an example of putting all of these elements together. Wine.com has
launched an innovative way to expose their catalog - via RSS with the API on top.

Evolving the Typical Online Catalog

Until recently, Wine.com was just a basic wine catalog. It was well designed and easy to navigate,
but it was definitely a web 1.0 kind of site. As the winds of the new web started to blow, the company
realized that it needed to stay on top of the wave. With competitors like Corkd,
Snooth and the wildly entertaining WineLibrary.tv innovating
in the wine space, the Wine.com team knew that they would have to compete for wine lover’s attention and dollars.

As it turns out, the wine insdustry is highly regulated,
and users may not be able purchase a particular vintage depending on where they live.
Wine.com’s catalog maps the vast number of wineries to geographies and ensures that the law is followed.
When the company looked to leverage their assets against the competition, they realized that exposing
the catalog by state to users, partners and third-party developers can help drive more traffic to the site.

Wine.com’s RSS API

Not only did Wine.com open up its catalog, the company did it with elegance worthy of modern APIs like del.icio.us and Flickr.
The API is implemented via RSS, where each query returns a feed. Here’s a sample query (this is not exact query, it’s just meant
to just give you the feel for the API):

http://www.wine.com/v6/rss/rss.aspx?Ntt=+Kendall%2DJackson&State=CA

When you view the results in the browser you get this:

So to the end user the results look like a regular RSS feed. This means that the user can
add the feed to his or her favorite reader and get updates when the new Kendal Jackson wine comes out in California.
But if you look inside the source code of the feed, you will find that each item is augmented with
complete metadata about each wine.

The included metadata contains a description of the wine, price, winery, year as well as tags done as categories.
Note that it would probably be better to use a custom tag instead of overloading the meaning of the category tag.
For example, <year> would be better than having year listed as a category. Nevertheless, this feed
is essentially equivalent to a results of a query against the Wine.com catalog. Each item represents the matching
wine and contains all of the attributes of this wine.

The interface is stateless or REST, since the entire resulting feed is returned at once. There is
flexibility in the query, since the query text can be any attribute of the wine, such as name, winery or grape.
That means that the query is performed against the entire catalog and is based on text matching. This makes
it really easy for the end users, but may present scalability challenges for larger databases. Putting it
all together, we get this diagram:

When an RSS API Makes Sense

What Wine.com has done is simple and powerful. They leveraged existing technology — RSS — to deliver value
to both end users and developers. The reason this strategy worked for the wine retailer is because they needed to provide
a read-only interface to their catalog. Essentially, all the interface does is expose a way to search Wine.com’s database.
Because this is the only requirement and there is no need to expose a way to manipulate the catalog by adding
or updating information, the RSS API works great.

The only downside of using RSS is that all results must be returned at once. If the query is
broad, for example, get me all merlot wines, returning all results is too expensive.
In the case of Wine.com, the solution is to just return the most recent wines that match the results.
A more generic approach found in relational databases and in services like Amazon S3 is to page through
the results using a result set iterator.

It is clear that the RSS API approach would work for any catalog. It would not work for del.icio.us or Flickr
because these services offer a way to modify the information, not just query it. But coming back to the concept
of the Web as a database, if every retailer would offer this kind of RSS API, the web would be much more semantic,
interconnected and query-friendly.

Conclusion

What Wine.com has done is both simple and interesting and it certainly deserves consideration.
One might argue that there is nothing special about augmenting RSS with metadata, but there is nothing
special about any format. What is special is leveraging existing technologies and making things
compatible and interoperable.

The fact that RSS feed can channel metadata can lead to a lot of interesting applications
including, for example, richer widgets. We hope that these early iterations of web services and APIs will
give rise to a new, more connected and richer web where web sites are also web services.

AjaxRain is a resourceful site that provides you with a catalog of sorts, full of Ajax, javascript and Dhtml examples.

These examples and demos can be downloaded for your own personal use. You can submit items to be included in the AjaxRain directory as well. Provide a title, description and the script, and it will be sent along to be added into the site. There’s really only two ways to search AjaxRain–peruse through the pages of resources, or check out the tag cloud, which indicates the number of resources for each term.

Adding a search bar would probably make browsing easier on the site. Each resource will take you to the original source page for the particular example or demo; there’s no “profile” or informational page for a particular resource. Having the ability to comment or rate resources could be helpful as well.

In other Ajax news, Tibco is holding a World’s biggest mashup contest.

Recommended: MySpace MP3 Player at Mashcodes!

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If you’re thinking about dropping more than $1000 on a fancy new receiver just because it has four HDMI inputs, wait a doggone minute. This IOGear Automatic HDMI Switch has four HDMI ports going in and one going to your TV, and it’s pretty smart, too, automatically figuring out which component is on and then sending that (up to 1080p) signal directly to your HDMI-equipped TV set.

If you want to control things yourself, there’s also a remote that lets you select the source manually, and then you can also teach that remote’s commands to your universal learning (cough! Harmony! cough!) remote, too. IOGear was even nice enough to include a six-foot HDMI cable, but was a little bashful about pricing thus far. We’ll update this post with the price as soon as their reps get over their shyness attack.

UPDATE: Whoa, it’s $189. That’s a lot of cheddar.
UPDATE 2: Here’s the IOGear]

As rewarding as web development is, it can also be a pain sometimes, especially if you spend half your time looking for the right tools and resources. Well, we’ve done the work for you with this one, and have compiled a list of over 120 web development resources to make your life easier. (more…)

Recommended: MySpace MP3 Player at Mashcodes!

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Social networking startup Trusted Opinion has added Netflix Queuing to their recommendations focused offering.

The feature allows Trusted Opinion members to read a review of a movie then instantly add it to their Netflix queue without leaving the page.

Although it sounds simple, Netflix does not offer a public API and hence the feature had to be created the old fashioned way, by creative programming.

NetFlix does not currently offer a social networking service; Trusted Opinion sees the feature as being a draw card for Netflix members seeking new movies.

We last wrote about Trusted Opinion in February. The site has had mixed results in terms of traffic since then in what is a hyper-competitive social networking market. Marrying an all you can eat movie hire service like Netflix to a service such as Trusted Opinion provides something that creates a point of differentiation. The feature will appeal to movie fans looking to find then hire great movies from a sea of Hollywood mediocrity.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

With Kameraflage, now you’ll be able to plant subliminal messages on T-shirts, movies and billboards that can only be seen with digital cameras. This context-sensitive display technology, developed by Sarah Logie and Connor Dickie, works by using colors that are invisible to us but easily picked up by the silicon chips in digital cameras. As you can see, the lovely model above is wearing a shirt that only reveals that cloud’s lightning bolt when seen through an iPhone’s digital camera, although any ordinary unmodified digital camera would get the same result. She just as easily could have placed her phone number in that cloud. Hmm. Let’s think of some other uses for this cool tech.

Another use for the technology would be to watermark video and filmed content, so when pirates try to videotape movies by taking a camcorder into the theater, there could be a big bunch of funky-looking text all over it. Enabling this is a clever trick using a patented invisible light projector developed by Logie and Dickie. More Kameraflage clothing will be demonstrated at the ACM SIGGRAPH Unravel fashion show on August 6 in San Diego. [Kameraflage]

The world of webtop publishing (WTP) has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years, with plenty of services feeling as good, if not better, than many standard desktop packages. This is particularly true in the case of Microsoft Word-alikes such as Google Docs (née Writely), ThinkFree and Zoho Writer, which were featured in Josh Catone's excellent Self-Publishing Toolkit post earlier this week. In this post we’ll take a look at one stand-out service on the more visual end of the market - an online tool aimed at those who are familiar with the ‘print’ world’s standards such as Quark Express or Adobe InDesign. The service is FormatPixel, a Flash-based app that mimics the functionality of a desktop publishing app for the purpose of creating a visually stunning brochure web site without the need to break the bank.

FormatPixel has a thankfully simple registration process to endure before you can start playing around with your first project. You’ll need to choose which payment scheme to use. We chose the ‘Vanilla’ - or entry-level - scheme. This is free, but limits your account to just one project, and doesn’t allow you to export your projects as Flash files. On the plus side, whereas the starter version of other popular “freemium” apps, such as Basecamp, limit functionality on the entry level plan,the Vanilla level of this service includes access to every feature apart from the aforementioned export. There are three other packages to choose from, with the priciest (’Chocolate’) allowing the user to make 20 projects for $US80 a year.

We also opted to use the Beta version of the publishing application for this review, rather than the supposedly more stable version, because it included some extra animation features along with the standard feature set detailed below. We didn’t run into any issues with stability or flakiness in the Beta version, however, so we’d expect the standard, non-animating version to be just as slick.

Because it’s not pretending to be a whistles-and-bells publishing tool, it’s easier to create content right away with FormatPixel than learning the intricacies of a traditional layout program like Quark. Each of your projects is organized with thumbnails of the pages below the main editor frame, so navigation from one page to the next is straightforward. Once you’ve started drawing shapes on your pages, outlines of those shapes appear in the thumbnails, to aid your memory of what’s where (see picture below). You can select the dimensions of your backdrop too, should you want your project to look more like a widget or a blog than a standard magazine spread. Tracking guides have been added to help you keep consistent layouts from page to page, but unfortunately, the shapes and other object don’t ’snap’ to the guides as you would expect in a full-featured app.

Creating new shapes and text blocks is a one-click affair; editing those elements requires a double-click. Once you’re in edit mode, you can adjust colors with a handy RGB slider, and set some text and shape preferences such as outline and blend options. If you’re using the Beta version, those shapes (and other media) can have basic animation behaviors assigned to them, such as fades and slides. The animation is ‘playable’ via a timeline at the foot of the canvas that shows the actions in frames, a la Flash’s own timeline. Don’t expect Photoshop-like finesse of shapes and images, but for the purpose of presenting a decent online scrapbook, it’s more than adequate. One serious drawback though is the inability of the text blocks to accept images or other media themselves (meaning text would flow around the media). Also, forget about applying two or more columns of text to a block; you’ll have to settle with appending one block next to another. That said, we were impressed with just how streamlined and intuitive the interface was; it’s just a shame that for a layout tool, more thought didn’t go in to some of the quirks surrounding text blocks.

Probably FormatPixel’s most useful service is the ability to add links from shapes to either external URLs or different pages in your project. This makes creating clickable wireframes a snap. Anyone thinking that this tool could be used for early-stage prototyping, you’re right. (For the purposes of this review, I played around with the tool with exactly this intention - rapid development of a simple site design - and found it easier and quicker at the task than my typical wireframing tool, Microsoft Visio.) Finally, there’s your personal library of photo or Flash video media. You can import, crop and tag your photos and vids, or paste in a YouTube URL for FormatPixel to add the video to your library. Then it’s simply a matter of dragging your media to the right place on the canvas.

Once you’re happy with your project, you can publish it (or keep it private) to the growing directory of current galleries, comment on other folks’ work, and find out how many people have viewed your projects. You’re assigned a profile page too which lists your work and stats. And, as we mentioned earlier, paid users can export their projects as Flash files that they could insert in any site or presentation as Flash objects.

Conclusion

None of FormatPixel’s features will take your breath away (for that, we’re waiting to see what birds of paradise emerge from the Aviary); but what FormatPixel does, it does well, and does simply. The community is young, and in need of some sharp projects to act as showcases, but we can already see this starting to bloom, especially if FormatPixel offers a few more carrots to the most creative users, as well as beefs up the app’s feature set a bit. Photographers or graphic artists looking to publish their wares online in a stylish and interactive format will need to search hard to find a better alternative to FormatPixel.

What are your thoughts about FormatPixel? Know of a WTP product that blows this one out the water? Let us know in the comments.

Helio is announcing Activesync support for the Ocean. The phone will then be able to sync calendars, email and contacts from an Exchange server. They’re also doing a file viewer app that will view PDF, Word, Powerpoint and Excel docs. $10 a month for Helions with All-In service plans.

HELIO LAUNCHES MAIL FOR MICROSOFT EXCHANGE

Wirelessly Sync Ocean with Microsoft® Office Outlook® Email, Calendar and Contacts

LOS ANGELES, CA - July 25, 2007 - Helio Ocean’s expansive messaging capabilities just got more versatile with the launch of Mail for Microsoft Exchange. Adding to Ocean’s already comprehensive messaging line-up including a single hub for all text messages, picture messages, Instant Messages and emails from the major portals and ISPs, Helio members can now mix business with pleasure through Mail for Microsoft Exchange. This new application lets users wirelessly synchronize Microsoft® Office Outlook® email, calendar and contacts from their companies’ Microsoft® Exchange Server so they can use Ocean to keep in touch with friends and family, as well as staying on top of business.
“Ocean has already made staying in touch with friends easier than ever with the ultimate messaging dashboard for all email, IM, picture and text messages, something nobody has ever done before,” said Doug Britt, Sr. Director of Content and Messaging Services at Helio. “Now we’re bringing the business user into the fold with the addition of corporate email, calendar and contacts, all from the same great messaging interface. Combined, this solidifies Ocean as an ideal device for keeping in touch with friends, family and business associates.”

Business + Pleasure
Mail for Microsoft Exchange is Helio’s new downloadable client that uses the Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync® protocol to let users remotely synchronize and access business email, contacts and calendar data from their corporate Exchange Server. Ocean users can wirelessly download Mail for Microsoft Exchange to their device and after a brief set up, send and receive email, create and send calendar appointments and access corporate contact lists. Once Mail for Microsoft Exchange is downloaded, it is also easily accessible through Ocean’s messaging home screen aside the full suite of Ocean’s messaging capabilities.

Helio will also soon launch Helio File Viewer in conjunction with Mail for Microsoft Exchange. When available, Helio File Viewer will allow users to view documents including .doc, .ppt, .xls, and .pdf files.

Elgato improves on their USB High Def solution for Macs by introducing the HDHomeRun, a network-connected device that can actually service multiple machines at once. There are two ATSC (over the air or unencrypted cable but not standard cable) tuners, which means two people can watch 24 and Heroes at the same time. The whole setup runs you $199, which is kind of steep if you compare it to the $299 TiVo HD. [Elgato]