Welcome the “widget”. A piece of html (with css, javascript..) to be included in another page, often to socially spread content (Facebook Like, Google +1, LinkedIN share, etc), or other added value (Analytics, sharing, etc) will tell many “providers” what content you are accessing.

It is difficult now to find a popular page without any widgets. Pages pack “like” buttons, “share this” widgets or tweet options to give you a instant way of sharing their content in your social network – banking on good ‘ole word of mouth marketing. If your friends like something, you might be interested also, even if it was only for peer pressure.

The problem that when something (such as the widget) is requested, browser data (such as your session’s information and the referer) also flow to the widget provider’s webserver. This provider will know what page you’re on and usually who you are (assuming you stay logged in into google, twitter, facebook, etc)

Thinking “but if I like a page, facebook will know it anyways“. This is true; the problem lies in the fact that providers know you’re accessing a page, regardless of performing any action (liking, sharing, etc). If you read X number of pages on a new model smartphone, chances are big you want to buy another one – and targeted ads become more… targeted.

From that advertising point of view, it creates mixed feelings. It’s like somebody overlooking your shoulder while you’re reading a magazine and changes the ads accordingly to which article you were staring at longer.

From a website owner point of view, this does create added value. If you can convince to have websites publish your widget code, you can track people’s interests, even before they ever came to your website. This (unidentifiable) user eventually ends up on your web app, identifies him/her self and you have great information. I’m just not sure how ethical this is, and even though Facebook’s outdated law enforcement guidelines don’t hold “webpages visited” in particular, they would have access to it.

Is this such a bad thing? Perhaps. “Widget providers” offer added value to website owners, who in turn decide what goes into their webpages. Vague idea, but maybe a browser extension could prevent the loading of these widgets, replacing them with a pseudo equivalent (fake buttons, etc) and only dynamically load the target script upon a click?

Food for thought. Now, look at the buttons below, they know you’ve been here already.

A great, nifty tool from the guys at builtBackwards.

Love it!

It would take several days to be repaired…

I forgot already what 14400 felt like..

It uses JQuery heavily, and I’m loving it. It does one simple thing, making HTML pages, but does it very well.

Linked in feels the threat of Facebook, especially combined with applications such as Kuhnektid to increase your professional “visibility” across the work. Most of linked-in users, are on facebook too.

A set of examples are there in their application directory. Tools such as file sharing, project collaboration, or being notified when one of your “contacts” is in the same city as you are there. No sight of a SDK yet, and no superpokes either.
yet.

Let’s see how users adapt to this.

Thanks,
Michael

We just implemented a new service desk solution, and even though with the world using buzzwords such as Ajax and web 2.0, most of our enterprise solutions are horrible in terms of the UI’s usability and simplicity.

Overloaded menus, pages with dozen links, and basically, so much controls that one cannot see the forest through the trees. Or vice versa.

Is it that hard for enterprise applications to have a simple, easy to understand interface? None of us had to take a “training” to learn how facebook operates, or blip.fm or youtube.

</rant>
Michael

Some of you might have been aware already about (and alpha testing) the Windows Mobile client for places.ae, which will allow you to find out the closest restaurants, petrol stations and such (pretty much the same functionality as the blackberry mini site). These searches happen using triangulation of celltower ID’s on a mobile phone.

Now, in the backend, we were utilizing google’s API for mapping these cell towers to a location, which in return gives us the ability to locate you. This services was moved to another URL silently, which kinda slows down the Windows Mobile development. I guess too many users were using it, using non-google programs.

If anyone is working on more-or-less the same, please get in contact with me. For the others, the windows client will be delayed for a little while then.

Thanks,
Michael

It’s feeling the ppressure from easy to use, browser only, applications such as Gmail, google docs and the like.

I wish Microsoft (or anyone) would come out with an enterprise cloud platform, not on the Internet. I am sure there are more users who wish to make a storage cloud on their network. Or am I the only one?

Thanks,
Michael

A simple web application. I wish more web apps were like this, simple and straight to the point.

See it as a firefox with your necesarry plugins, in a new jacket.

Very interesting product. And it seems that places.ae renders correctly in it, which is probably due to the borrowed Firefox code.

I am afraid that IE(8)’s days are counted.

Thank you,
Michael