Kevin Krejci's Scrapbook

Jun 26

“Powerset never quite managed to launch with their natural language parsing search product. But they did give everyone a glimpse with a preview of search for Wikipedia. Not quite game-changing enough for Yahoo to buy or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to invest in, but just enough to get Microsoft to pay $100 million. Which is considerably less what Team Redmond would have paid for Yahoo’s search business. Not bad for a company running on borrowed hopes and dreams. (By Intern Alaska, photo from Powerset)” Acquisitions: Microsoft buys Powerset search for 90 percent off Yahoo search list price

Xobni, the email startup that we’ve described as “The Superplugin for Outlook”, has partnered with LinkedIn to automatically pull contact information from the popular professional network. Xobni will now draw from public profiles on the LinkedIn network, displaying information about contacts’ employers, job titles, and pictures as part of the plugin’s sidebar. (via Xobni Gets Even Better With LinkedIn Data For Your Contacts)

Jun 25

Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos predicted that by the beginning of 2010 the majority of systems sold would be for Web, high performance computing and software-as-a-service applications. “We are going through this phase change in computing in a big way,” he said. Papadopoulos also advocated a free market in which all interfaces and formats are based on open standards; customers own their data, relationships, and metadata; and customers can extract, synchronize or purge their data unilaterally. This echoes recent efforts to promote openness and data portability. (via Cloud computing on the horizon | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com)

# When you watch a video on TV, you can’t do much with it… # But when you watch a video on Omnisio… the possibilities are endless (via Learn More | Omnisio)

Jun 24

“Animoto, the web application that allows users to quickly and easily create personalized, professional-quality videos from their own photos and music, is announcing their first commercial-use service called Animoto for Business.” Animoto Now Available For Commercial Use

$Jaxtr, the online VoIP service that also offers a social network, has launched out-of-network calling that will allow users to call phone lines around the world. The new service will allow users to call family and friends (even non-members) from their own phones for a fraction of the costs associated with traditional long distance calling. The company has also raised a $10 million Series B funding round led by Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. (via Jaxtr Finally Enables Out-of-Network Calling, Raises $10 Million)$ Jaxtr, the online VoIP service that also offers a social network, has launched out-of-network calling that will allow users to call phone lines around the world. The new service will allow users to call family and friends (even non-members) from their own phones for a fraction of the costs associated with traditional long distance calling. The company has also raised a $10 million Series B funding round led by Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. (via Jaxtr Finally Enables Out-of-Network Calling, Raises $10 Million)

Jun 19

Want to create your own semantic search engine, but just don’t have the PhDs? Semantic search engine Hakia is opening up APIs to let anyone build their own semantic search application on top of its technology. Hakia looks at the meaning of Web pages and matches search queries using its own quality index of trusted, relevant sites. (via Build Your Own Semantic Search Engine With Hakia’s APIs)

Jun 12

“It makes you wonder if Viacom is so blinded by its hatred of YouTube that it missed the point of a viral video being that it be allowed to be… you know… viral.” Techdirt: Viacom Demands YouTube Take Down Viral Video Made By Viacom

Six Apart has introduced an iPhone version of their BlogIt software, which allows users to quickly post updates to their blogs, Twitter, Pownce, FriendFeed, Jaiku, and Facebook. The current version of BlogIt is a traditional iPhone web-based app, though we can probably expect a native version on the way (via Six Apart Introduces BlogIt For iPhone)

Jun 6

Home | Greenopolis

Find the best Green Products and Services in your zip code.

May 27

A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed to us that the social networking company is planning to announce an open-source initiative around its platform (via The fbOpen Initiative: Facebook Confirms Plans to Open-Source Its Platform)

May 25

Feel the Math: 10 Reasons to Oppose the LBAM Spray - San Francisco - Ten Reasons to Stop the Spray for Light Brown Apple Moth in the Bay Area

May 21

“Aerial spraying with a pesticide which has never been tested for human or environmental safety is planned starting this summer, month after month, year after yeas, in an area stretching from Carmel to Marin County, San Francisco to Berkeley, in pursuit of the eradication of the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM), a rather wimpy exotic pest originally from Australia.” Paulina Borsook: Bush Administration to Blue-State California: Drop Dead! - Politics on The Huffington Post

Meet SmallWorlds, a free browser-based 3D virtual world that integrates YouTube, Flickr, and a number of other Web 2.0 services. The site is aimed at the teen market, and is designed to be more casual than Second Life. (via SmallWorlds Brings a Third Dimension to Web 2.0)

May 16

FeelTheMath: There Ain't No LBAM Moths on Me

A video I created using ANIMOTO, a cool new startup that processes videos from images that synchs to your music. Amazon is touting them as a great example of how their Web Services enable startups like this to get off the ground without worrying about “undifferentiated heavy lifting”.

Kevin Krejci's Scrapbook

A collection of artifacts I've found on the Web, about the Web.

Feel the Math: 10 Reasons to Oppose the LBAM Spray - San Francisco - Ten Reasons to Stop the Spray for Light Brown Apple Moth in the Bay Area

FeelTheMath: There Ain't No LBAM Moths on Me