Trap!t

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Trap.it is a site presently in closed beta that attempts to give a highly visual dimension to news discovery. A simple search gives a scrollable page of relevant links which can be collected in ‘Traps’ and then shared.

The idea is that successive searches together with the ability to thumbs up or thumbs down the results that are served up will help the system learn you preferences.

An open beta will be available in the future. For now you can submit your email and hope for an invite. Whether Trap!t becomes a standalone service or a technology that gets purchased by an existing content provider it’s a welcome alternative to existing content discovery alternatives.

BBC Launches Democracy Live

The BBC has launched a new web site dedicated to live and on demand coverage of the UK’s national political institutions and the European parliament. Interesting to launch at a time when our faith in political institutions is being sorely tested. Who knows maybe such sites are a flag stone on the road to a greater interaction between voters and the institutions that claim to act on their behalf.

BBC Democracy Live

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• BBC launches Democracy Live with ‘speech-to-text’ search (blogs.journalism.co.uk)

Pinnacle Internet Player Price Fall

I keep my eye on the falling price of Internet radios and the Pinnacle soundbridge now seems to be the UK’s most affordable option allowing you to access music files on your Mac or PC or directly tune into Internet radio via a wireless Internet connection. It supports WEP encryption and AAC, AIFF, MP3, WAV and WMA audio files and accepts SD memory cards.

Now available from Dabs at £39.99 which is competitive with many DAB radios.

Related blog post (Tevion Internet Radio)

 

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Memory Share

The BBC has a fledgling memory sharing application called..er…Memoryshare which lets people share their memories of common or individual events from their life. Worrying the full title is:

Memoryshare-The days of your life

Which sadly triggers the tacky tagline from the ‘days of our lives‘ US soap opening titles – “Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives” (there wasn’t a lot to watch on Australian TV and ‘days’ was gloriously kitsch in an over the top and funny way, what can I say).

Lots of people have predictably left their memories of the UK storm of 1997, 20 years ago today (though I doubt that  Michael Fish has left an entry). It needs fleshing out a bit and is a bit basic in terms of interactivity and navigation but it’s a good idea especially laid out in a timeline format though I have worries about certain dates being overwhelmed with multiple overlayered personal entries.

I made a quick  video of how it looks and navigation.

 

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Recognition Is An End In Itself

I was reading a short piece on The First Post about the niche trend for lifecasting , the broadcasting of a person’s life usually via the internet and some kind of permanent web cam where individuals create their own self inflicted Truman show and Big Brother combined. I know that Microsoft had an idea for a personal camera device that would record your whole life which I doubt I’ll be in line to purchase if it ever sees the light of day. I was struck by the brief comment by sociologist Frank Furedi who stated:

”In the past you achieved recognition through achieving great things. Now recognition is an end in itself”

 

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Le Gourmet TV

I had a quick watch of le gourmet TV, a new web based premium lifestyle Internet TV channel mostly of Canadian origin it seems. It’s pleasant enough if you like to indulge your lifestyle gourmet fantasies. Lot’s of cheese and wine content (there’s cheese, there’s wine, what more do you want?) at the moment though there’s a good basic two part video item on bread making which I would hope will see follow up programs soon (there’s more to home made bread than the white variety). My only criticism is that the title layout renders incorrectly in my browser of choice but que sera, flaky web standards and all that.

Le Gourmet TV

 

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oSkope Visual Search

oSkope visual search

Low-res movie demonstration here

Hi-Res Quicktime movie demonstration here (6.6Mb)

Visual search seems to be popping up a lot lately as web technologies and Internet speeds increase. Microsoft’s Tafiti was another recent attempt at visual search and oSkope is another though is restricted to a small number of predefined sites such as eBay, Amazon, Flickr and YouTube at present with further localisation refinements possible. No doubt other sites will be added in future. There are several options available relating to how you can view the results with the ability to choose from grid, stack, pile, list or graph options on the left of the screen and adjustments to the icon size available on the right.

oSkope.com

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