Some examples:

• getting a map of craigslist rentals
• dropping restaurant reviews into an email
• forward the translation of a web page to a colleague

Ubiquity is about working with information rather than being a passive recipient.  Building on microformats, semantic markup and natural language processing ubiquity is still in its early stages, but in the long term will become integrated into Firefox.

Today we’re announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.The overall goals of Ubiquity are to explore how best to: * Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.) * Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.) * Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility. * Extend the browser functionality easily.

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Ubiquity

You can now embed a “chatback” badge in your site that lets visitors see whether you’re available for a chat session.  A simple wizard lets you choose between different badge formats, including a version that can be sent by email. When clicked, the badge launches a simplified web based Google Talk client.

The full version of the client now features group chat and media embedding.

Tags: GoogleTalk, chatback, chat

Adobe Edge: June 2008 via kwout

The Sproutbuilder web application makes it easy to build and distribute interactive Flash widgets like this:

Julia describes the some of the key architecuural components of the application as:

• Flex 3 - to create the rich client interface.
• Drupal, PHP and Apache on the server side.
• Amazon S3 for content delivery.

To get a feel for the powerful simplicity of the application take a look at this demonstration featuring the new Ribbit, Seismic Video, Google Forms and Twitter integration.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: SproutBuilder, Flex, Drupal, Flash, PHP

writepermission.png (PNG Image, 1041×613 pixels) - Scaled (96%) via kwout

Users can now share access to Blists with a permission structure that controls whether the blist is public or private, and who is able to change the data. It’s even possible for several users to edit a shared Blist simultaneously.

todoresults.png (PNG Image, 1041×613 pixels) - Scaled (96%) via kwout

The structure of Blists can also be shared and used as templates when creating new databases. For example, instead of starting from scratch when designing a todo list you can search Blist for other people’s designs and pick the one best suited to your needs.

The available maps are at continental or world scale, with the exception of the USA where geographical data for each state can be displayed.

Developer’s Guide - Google Chart API - Google Code via kwout

Data for the charts is included as url parameters using ISO Country Codes, RGB color values and simple numeric or string encoding of data values.

Developer’s Guide - Google Chart API - Google Code via kwout

The URL’s are simple enough to construct by (a careful) hand, but are more suited to scripting and code generation.

Designed for team based site building and collaboration, the application can be used to build intranets, projects spaces, on-line classrooms and generic web sites.

Welcome to Google Sites via kwout

Sites are built from combinations of:

• Web pages with WYSIWYG editing and version control.
• Dashboards composed of collections of gadgets.
• Dated announcements that act as internal blogs.
• File Cabinets used for storing and describing binary files.
• Sortable Lists.

Pages can be enhanced with gadgets that integrate with other Google services:

• Calendars
• Documents
• Picassa web slideshows
• Spreadsheets
• Spreadsheet Forms
• Presentations
• YouTube
• Google Video

Specialised gadgets help with navigation

• Table of Contents
• Recent Posts
• Recent Uploaded Files
• Text Blocks

Any standard gadget from the iGoogle directory can be embedded in a page, as can Google Mashups and bespoke gadgets built on top of the Google Gadget API.

Sites has a small collection of themes. Additional options give a more refined control over backgrounds, logos, color schemes and fonts. The visual appearance will be adequate for many applications, but will not be sufficiently distinctive for sites that require strong branding and highly distinctive visuals.

While Sites is best suited to intranet/workgroup use, the easy integration with other feeds and services makes it a platform worth considering for public facing content driven applications, particularly those that integrate data from a variety of sources.

Official Google Blog: Bringing it all together via kwout

Integrating well with Google Apps for Teams, Google Sites is in direct competition with Microsoft Sharepoint. It again uses a bottom up marketing strategy, allowing workgroups to introduce technical solutions linked via company email addresses.

LinkBunch - Put multiple links into one - http://linkbun.ch via kwout

Feed LinkBunch a list of long urls and it will give you one very short one in return.

E.g. Holiday reading: http://linkbun.ch/3sr

The short url can be scribbled down, sent as a text message, written in a handout etc. When viewed in a browser the short url is expanded up into a full list again.

LinkBunch is extremely simple to use and even has an API, though understandably not a very complex one.

LinkBunch - API - http://linkbun.ch via kwout

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News via kwout

The draft design uses a tabbed layout for the wide column with the initial set of tabs for a Wall, an About page and Photos. Applications can also be set up in custom tabs, but these are configured and controlled by the user.

The design changes are intended to “align the goals of application developers with the principles of the Platform ecosystem”. This, combined with the earlier introduction of “allocations” to ration the features available to unruly applications illustrate Facebook’s strategy of ecological platform development; changing an environment in which desirable behaviours are easier and more profitable than undesirable ones.

blist blog » Blog Archive » New Features - Excel Import, Sharing, Charts & Search via kwout

These are fairly basic at the moment

• the charts can be viewed, but not exported

• importing of csv files has a manual step for specifying the field type

• sharing is read only

but with only three weeks elapsed since the launch of the private beta it’s nice to see the feature set filling up, without compromising the style and simplicity of the initial vision.

Having just secured a $6.5 million investment from Frazier Technology Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures Blist is set for rapid development and refinement.

Tapestry | A Drupal Theme via kwout

Tapestry comes with 20 pre-built styles that can be used as is, or used to provide a starting point for a custom style sheet. It also comes with a very flexible set of layouts for 2, 3 and 4 column displays.

2.2. Using Tapestry Sidebars | Tapestry via kwout

Even greater flexibility is given by the Block Theme module that site administrators can use to apply a custom themes to any block on the site.

2.3. Using the Block Theme Module | Tapestry via kwout

While the template itself gives an easy mix and match approach to site design, it also acts as a solid starting point for additional CSS development, inspiration for which can be taken from some of RoopleTheme’s designs for dooce and 43 folders.

Services | RoopleTheme via kwout

(CLARIFICATION: The 43 folders theme was created by RoopleTheme based on a design by Chris Glass.) 

Tapestry is open source, released under the GNU General Public License it is compatible with Drupal 5 and 6.