xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/677/

apod

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091217.html

Monstrously bright, this

readwriteweb

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/Fhi7brj3Eb4/five_features_from_third-party_apps_twitter_should.php

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_features_from_third-party_apps_twitter_should.php

When I called Twitter out on my post of the top 10 failures of 2009 for "failing to innovate," what I probably should have said was this: Twitter has done a decent job of implementing features that we first saw being used by third-party apps.

The concept of user lists? Sawhorse Media introduced those. Retweet functions? That was a user idea that had already been implemented formally by many mobile and desktop applications. And the hot Contributor API is something that CoTweet has been doing for a while. The geotagging API is hardly new, either. But instead of saying that Twitter failed to innovate, let's instead name a few features we love from third-party apps that we think they should integrate themselves - maybe with a key acquisition or two.

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Autocompleting Usernames

Third-Party Apps That Do This: Twitdroid, DestroyTwitter

It's a rather simple feature, but it would make our lives a lot easier. When typing an @ reply or cc'ing a user, it helps to have a cheat sheet in the form of an autocompletion feature that remembers all your friends.

\Multimedia Uploading & Embedding

Third-Party Apps That Do This: PowerTwitter, Twitpic

The convoluted process of uploading media to a third party and getting your content synced up to your Twitter account can be frustrating, especially when bugs arise. And not being able to preview images or videos before clicking through is a pressure point, as well.

Threaded Views for Conversations

Third-Party Apps That Do This: Twitdroid, TwiToaster

Being able to see what an @ reply is all about can turn into a trail of digital breadcrumbs ten tabs long. Seeing a threaded conversation in a single click would be much more convenient.

Management & Analytics

Third-Party Apps That Do This: Bit.ly, TwitterCounter, Tweetmeme, DoesFollow, Twitter Karma

I'm obsessed, you're obsessed, we're all obsessed with follower counts! Not to mention clickthroughs, reciprocity, retweets, and all the metrics that make up the statistical side of Internet fame. Real-time measurement of Twitter activity would be worth paying for.

Official Mobile & Desktop Applications

Third-Party Apps That Do This: Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Tweetie, Twitdroid, TwitterBerry

The single greatest opportunity for Twitter innovation (and yes, we're resisting the very strong urge to make a portmanteau from those two words) is perhaps in the desktop and mobile app space. It's one of the most clearly monetizable avenues for Twitter to pursue, and the "official" stamp of approval on an application would guarantee that app's success. Moreover, there would probably be clear opportunities for an official app to come pre-loaded on laptops and mobile devices.

Clearly, there's a universe of features for Twitter to choose from. From social gaming to DM schedule reminders, oneforty is like a catalog of what Twitter could - and perhaps should - be doing next.

What do you think - what Twitter features would you like to see launched in 2010? Give us your opinion in the comments.

mosca

Welcome to our second evening of skating costume awards. Last year, kindkit asked me what a good figure skating costume looked like, and the Classy Costume Awards were born, to honor the unsung minority of skaters who manage to wear costumes that are visually appealing, well fitted, and fashion-conscious. I'm pleased to note that there was a tie for tenth place, so I'm featuring eleven costumes this year.

Skaters from all disciplines are eligible for this one, and this year, all four disciplines are represented.

annaalamode helped me narrow down my short list and reassured me that I'd used the word "ruching" correctly.

readwriteweb

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/qALiGoEkYVM/android_developers_heres_some_sample_code_tutorial.php

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/android_developers_heres_some_sample_code_tutorial.php

Ever since finding myself the happy owner of a Droid (+1 for early Christmas presents), I've found myself increasingly interested in the app market for Android-powered devices.

As has been noted in many iPhone/Droid sudden-death-round comparisons, the latter languishes in quality and quantity of available applications. Perhaps in an effort to increase Droid's competitiveness in the market, the powers that be have created a new section of resources for Android developers. Let the games (and other apps) begin!

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In the new Resources tab of the online Android SDK documentation, devs can now access technical articles, some pretty detailed tutorials, a breakdown of platform versions, common tasks, troubleshooting tips, a community across groups/IRC/Twitter channels and a library of code for sample apps - just what a mobile/smartphone dev would need to get started.

The list of sample code now includes:

• API Demos
• Bluetooth Chat
• Contact Manager
• Home
• JetBoy
• Lunar Lander
• Multiple Resolutions
• Note Pad
• Searchable Dictionary
• Snake
• Soft Keyboard
• Wiktionary
• Wiktionary (Simplified)

The Android dev team has also taken their most popular developer blog posts and turned them into a series of technical articles ranging in scope from backward compatibility issues and future-proofing apps to layout tricks and text-to-speech uses.

Currently, around 10,000 applications exist in the Android Market as compared to the (roughly) eleventy bajillion apps in the Apple App Store. Hopefully, these resources will help this open-source mobile development platform take off, allowing Android's available applications to become a selling point for Android-powered devices rather than a point ceded to Apple in the smartphone wars.

readwriteweb

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/oj3OQDlpeY8/turn_right_at_the_gas_station_google_maps_gets_mor.php

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/turn_right_at_the_gas_station_google_maps_gets_mor.php

You'd think it was odd if you called me for directions and I told you to go 0.2 miles southeast and make a slight right onto Old Route 17.

You'd expect me to say something more like, "Start driving away from the library and take the second right just after the McDonald's." Google Maps India has just launched a hybridized version of directions that give geographically accurate distances and directions as well as landmarks most humans would also recognize. We can imagine this coming to the rural U.S. and Google telling us to "follow that-there little jog in the road where the big oak tree used to be before Jimmy Ray hit it with his daddy's combine, bless his heart, for 2.3 miles."

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Although most urban Americans are comfortable navigating by street signs, in other parts of our country and the rest of the world, landmarks are a necessity in successfully reaching one's destination. Other times, it's simply reassuring to know that you haven't actually missed a turn or your destination because you haven't yet passed a given landmark.

How many times has someone told you on the phone to "keep going straight until you pass the shopping center" or something of that sort, and it saved you a missed turn as well as a general sense of anxiety? In the words of UX Googler Olga Khroustaleva, "We found that using landmarks in directions helps for two simple reasons: they are easier to see than street signs and they are easier to remember than street names... Sometimes there are simply too many signs to look at, and the street sign drowns in the visual noise. A good landmark always stands out."

The point of the whole experiment was to give drivers a sense of confidence when exploring new territory. Ultimately, the Google team found that a combination of street names and distances as well as landmarks gave the best results and best satisfied users.

Sree Unnikrishnan and Manik Gupta wrote on the Google India blog, "This effort was possible thanks to the large amount of landmark data that users like you contributed through Google Map Maker. Our new algorithm determines from available signals, which of these landmarks are most useful for navigation, based on importance and closeness to the turns that you're making."

Here's a look at the Google Maps directions design we all know:

And here's a version Google Maps India tried that added landmarks to other data to confirm directions:

Finally, here's what Indian travellers will see moving forward:

Looks pretty sweet to us! What do you folks think? Would you like to see more Map Maker landmark data for driving directions all over the world, too? Let us know in the comments.

inalasahl
metafandom

• ladyoneill: sometimes it's like I'm thirty two all over again - So, please write what you want the way you want it! Don't change your stories because someone doesn't like it. Use constructive criticism if you must, but don't let it outweigh your own desires. -
  
  (tags: fanfic)



• kaigou | contemplating the leap: fanfiction and original fiction - The reviewer goes on to suggest that fanfiction works on a basis of potential plausibility, that is, giving the reader a situation or behavior not seen in canon that, when argued/presented by a skillful fanfic writer, become plausible (believable) extrapolations of the original character. But this also means paying more attention to the character's actions, mindsets, mannerisms, whatever, both to reinforce the character's shared story-origins -- eg speaking patterns, or facial expressions -- and then to overlay the subtle changes introduced by the fanfic's author. -
  
  (tags: fanfic creativity reading writing)


• synecdochic: wow. just .... wow. - Gender will be a mandatory field at account creation...LiveJournal is removing the Unspecified option for the gender field. That's right: you get to be male or female. Period. That's it. -
  
  (tags: LJ gender)



• skuf: Where's all the meta? - What do you think has influenced the seeming decline in general fandom meta as indicated by the fewer links in metafandom issues as compared to a couple of years ago -
  
  (tags: fandom poll meta newsletters)



• flourish: Fans, cultists, and enthusiasts - But it does help me see that we need greater granularity in our discussions of fandom. And yet, as was made crystal clear in my last post, it's always most appropriate to call people what they want to be called - and that's probably why I have such a knee-jerk negative reaction to the idea of being called an 'enthusiast.' I'm not a Harry Potter enthusiast, dammit! I'm a fan! -
  
  (tags: fandom terminology)


• thete1: "I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!" - The simple fact of the matter is that every dollar you spend on these films (and TV shows, and books, and everything else) is a dollar telling Them -- yes, Them -- that it's just fine to piss all over me and other people of color for the sake of 'entertainment.' You're part of the problem. -
  
  (tags: media race)



• sheafrotherdon: The Stories We Tell - Yesterday I read...an AU set in the American Midwest after the War of 1812, and follows the fortunes of Sheppard, McKay, Weir, and Lorne as they travel west to lands granted to them, or bought, in northern Illinois. There they meet Teyla and the Athosian people who are, in this story, Native American.
  
  The story modifies the real historical record in several key ways, the most troubling of which was, to me, the erasure of the region's actual Native communities from the narrative....
  The author has, however, given me permission to post my thoughts here, and to reference our email conversation, in the hopes of promoting a larger discussion about historical AUs and the challenges and responsibilities inherent in writing about diverse cultures.
  
  (tags: sga mammothfail culture race privilege au history)

widdy26
passion_perfect

Author: Widdy Disclaimer:  I don't own Star Trek or Seven and B’Elanna unfortunately; Paramount does so I'm just borrowing them I will return them after I'm done. Feedback: Yes feel free to feed me. Pairing: B’Elanna/Seven

A/N: I would first like to say that I am in no way a psychologist, and I have never been to one so I have no experience with that, so this story purely comes for research and what I have read about the subject. So if there are any discrepancies or any glaring mistakes upon how this situation would be handled then know that I am exercising my artistic licence. However, if you have any problems with anything contained within this series of fiction then please feel free to inform me. This story will be a little dark in parts, and it will hopefully be uplifting in others.

This part contains some rather choice language, and mention of character death.

icanhaschzbrgr

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/cyPNS_pAamU/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=219885

….Ahem…

u mite need teh halp of a nice stranger.

Picture by: dunno source Caption by: Jimtherotundartist via Advanced Lol Builder

» Recaption This!

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io9_rss

http://io9.com/5429240/the-inexplicable-adventures-of-zombie-vs-ninja

So schlockmeister Godfrey Ho got these white guys together, tied scarves on their heads that say "ninja," and made them exchange scintillating dialog after fighting with swords. And it only gets better in Zombie vs. Ninja.

The tender tale of a guy who becomes a ninja after being apprenticed to a funeral director (???), the story meanders between strange white guys fighting - often in gold foil tops - and our main character learning ninja skills so that he can save a town. Here's a great moment where his master teaches him to fight a zombie.

I love that the scene starts in winter and ends in spring. Also, I have no idea if the original dialog was that awesome - "I've never seen anybody shit like that before!" - or it's all the fault of some snarky dubbing. Somehow, having heard the English-language dialog in the first clip, I don't think it's a bad translation. Director Ho is sometimes called Hong Kong's answer to Ed Wood.

Zombie vs. Ninja via IMDB (Thanks Gregor and Lorena!)

readwriteweb

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/aCasqc8wL4c/open-messaging-here-we-come-tumblr-releases-twitter-client-api.php

http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/12/open-messaging-here-we-come-tumblr-releases-twitter-client-api.php

Twitter client developers will be pleased to note that popular light blogging platform Tumblr now supports a Tweetie and Twitterific compatible API. In a recent blog post, the company explains how the API will help Twitter clients support Tumblr. While the release allows for similar posting and reading capabilities to last week's WordPress API announcement, it's a coup for those looking to Twitter to become the open messaging standard.

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In response to today's Tumblr announcement, RSS pioneer and blogger Dave Winer writes, "Conventional wisdom says that open standards are created by endless deliberations among experts and big tech companies, and those sometimes gain traction, but this is how it usually happens. Someone goes first. No one thinks of it as an open standard. Then someone clones it. All of a sudden people get ideas. Inspired, someone goes third. At this point it's inevitable that there will be a fourth and fifth and so on."

Last week ReadWriteWeb suggested that a publish/subscribe standard was already beginning to take shape with both the WordPress API and Twitter/Feedburner integration. As of today, we may be one step closer to a web where content feeds are standardized and portable across a variety of platforms and services.