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Man Forgot That He Owns Facebook

Who owns Facebook? Well, according to NYC wood-pellet entrepreneur Paul Ceglia, he is the rightful owner. Only he had forgot about it until recently.

As described by Techcrunch, the claim is pretty silly.

Chrome To Drop http://

Chrome is by far my preferred browser these days. I have practically stopped using other browsers unless my job requires me to do so.  

I have many reasons for preferring Chrome. The main one being, that Chrome simply seems to be faster loading and more responsive than any others browser out there.

Today Mashable reports that the Chrome developers are about to remove the annoying "hhtp.//" from the URL-field in the browser:

When you see some text prefixed by “Http://”, you automatically assume that what follows is a web address, as defined by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The question is, since most web addresses are easily recognizable anyway, do you really need it? The developers of Google Chrome don’t think you do, so they simply chose to hide it in a developer version of Chrome.

It would appear that the solution is a bit tricky to carry out in real life. But I like the sentiment behind it: Namely that web browsing should be as user friendly an activity as possible. No geeks required for that ;-)

Get the full story at Mashable

The Complicated Matter Of User Experience

Working with web communication can be a task containing many disciplines. But take a good look at The Spectrum of User Experience.

This little sucker of a model shows you just how complex and interwoven matters can be.

Via Adpative Path

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Get Paid For Your Job Interview

NotchUp, a California startup launching later this month, is based on a novel idea. The company will try to lure talented but satisfied workers and managers into its recruitment pool by letting companies pay them for employment interviews. Writes Techcrunch:

"Instead of desperate out-of-work employees going hat-in-hand to companies begging for a job interview, on NotchUp, the companies have to pay to interview you. This is supposed to bring out those passive job seekers every company really wants to find (...)

Setting up a profile is easy, especially if you already use LinkedIn. NotchUp just imports your LinkedIn profile, you set your price, and you are ready to go. Any friend you refer to the site who gets an interview earns you a 10 percent referral fee. As employers search the site, they can make offers to interview you, which you see in your inbox."

New York Times Begins Sharing

The New York Times times today unveiled a service that allows readers to quickly post stories that they find on the newspaper's site to Digg, Facebook and Newsvine. Thus allowing readers to develop conversations about specific stories.

Newsvine Chief Executive Mike Davidson said the partnership is a tremendous boost for the small Seattle startup:
- It is one of the world's most established newspapers and we have a great amount of respect for them, so the prospect of helping their audience get more out of their news and helping The Times doing some of the new things that they are looking at doing is very good for us, Davidson tells Seatllepi.com

It makes good sense that the third largest newspaper in America implements such tools. The Web site is the most frequently visited newspaper site in the U.S., with about 10 million unique visitors per month. Let the sharing begin!

Designing for Web 2.0 - Branding Via Simplicity

If you're into design and branding on the web, you may be interested in reading my synopsis from the IT University of Copenhagen.

It's called "Design 2.0" and focuses on the trend among an increasing number of web sites to incorporate a simplistic design that typically originates from collaborative -- or so called web 2.0 -- sites.

Web 2.0 seems to have found it's own distinct minimalistic style under the credo: Less is more. Interestingly the design often contrasts the complex and thoroughly interactive functionality of most web 2.0 sites (a task that must have cost more than a few headaches for the web designers involved).

But why minimalism in an age where Flash-plug-ins are widespread and DSL-connections keep getting faster. Shouldn't we be using a lot more graphics?

Well, aside from the obvious usability benefits of simplistic design, I think web 2.0 site owners also need to communicate that their sites are different from web 1.0 where the Internet is primarily seen as just another marketing channel, sites are graphically bloated and heavily remediate print media...

Get the full story. Download the synopsis here (pdf 543 kb)

Please note that the whole thing is in Danish, though ;-)

The Queen of Denmark and Howard Stern

Knover is a new search engine that attempts to outline relationships between noted personalities and organizations or concepts.

The site works like this: You type in a name, and the search engine will turn up a picture of the person, a small biography, and a list of people connected with the individual. The relations are based on a web search of sites that mention your query and other names.

At times this results in crazy, but quite entertaining, results:

I tried typing "Queen of Denmark" and Knover made a connection to both "Howard Stern" and lead singer in Metallica "James Hetfield".!!??

Not all connections are this far fetched, though!

The company has 16,000 personalities on file at the moment and hopes to expand it to 100,000 in a year or so.

Prosper With Web 2.0

If you need a quick cash infusion the bank may not be the best place to go. Now you can borrow money via Prosper - a Web site which lets you make your case to a community of lenders.

The site runs a financial check on you but unlike a bank loan, you can also make a personal appeal to Prosper users. 

Here's the site's own take:

»Borrowers are Prosper members who want to borrow money from other people and get a better deal than the credit card or loan rates offered by banks. Rates are low because Prosper lenders are people—like you—who want a fair shake from honest borrowers without all the fees and hassles of doing business with big banks.«

If you're in a lending mood, the site offers you a chance to select the stories and credit risks that appeal to you and it's possible to spread your lending among lots of borrowers thus reducing your risk.

Peer-to-peer lending! Why not?.

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