AdesBlog.com

AdesBlog is now mobile device compatible, thanks to AlexKing’s WordPress Mobile Edition plugin.

Once installed, this plugin will redirect all mobile devices’ browsers to a mobile friendly version of your blog.

As you can see from the screenshot (i am not sure you can see or not, sorry for the bad shot ;), only the content of the blog will be displayed in the mobile version. All the graphics and other excessive things will be removed.

Unlike in RSS readers, in mobile version you can view/make comments too.

Mobile RSS Reader

As for RSS readers for mobile devices, I have found NewsGator’s RSS reader for mobiles particularly useful. SonyEricsson’s built in RSS reader was not so good, it truncates the posts. And when you click on “more” it loads the blog itself.

But one disadvantage with NewsGator’s RSS readers is that, you need to manage all your RSS’s through your account on NewsGator’s site. That means, you cannot add any new RSS’s through your mobile phone, you need to add it online to your NewsGator account first and then it appears in your mobile phone automatically. I have no idea why they have done it this way.

Do you know of any other good RSS reader for mobile devices?

Gmail for Mobile

And what is mobile device without your favorite email service - gmail, right? Gmail has developed a mobile version of its Gmail. It’s very neat application. I have been enjoying it very much. To install, point your mobile device browser to www.gmail.com/app

Do you have any interesting internet related mobile apps? (not games) I would be

Note: Maxis users type *100# and press “Send/Call” to setup your internet connection on your mobile. When you receive a message, press reply and type “5″ and send. (5 should be “Phone Settings”). Then reply again and choose “1″ and send (1 is “GPRS WAP Settings”), after which just follow the instructions.

Do you find reading news boring? How about adding some flare to it? Well, MSNBC is trying exactly that.

MSNBC has launched new visual news reader called Spectra that makes reading news a lot more entertaining.

It’s a flash based reader that shows news in a 3D fashion. You can choose different channels (e.g top news, international, US, Iraq..etc) and add to your reading queue.

Spectra

Alexa announced that it has modified its ranking system. Apparently, it’s now tracking from multiple sources (what are these sources, it’s not mentioned) to rank the sites. Previously it used to rely only on its Alexa Toolbar statistics to rank the sites. And the system was hugely flawed. I guess now we can expect more realistic stats from Alexa.

Due to this new ranking system, more people are now reporting that their sites have dropped in Alexa rankings. This holds true with my blog too. Now my blog’s weekly rank is at 88,172 and three months average is 133,396. So goodbye Top50K with the new system ;) How is your blog’s stats doing with the new system?

Do you use Google Maps to give out your home address? Well, soon you will be able to send your house photos, better yet, you will be able to send it in 3 dimensional panoramic view. And it’s not limited to your house only, you can actually navigate along the street and view the surroundings.

Google’s StreetView is currently available to cities like New York, San Fransisco, Las Vegas, Denver, and Miami. But should be coming to your cities very soon.

Since Google take these digital images of the streets by hand, there are concerns that some people might be captured in the photos, especially in compromising situations. (eg. throwing your rubbish in your pajamas, or worse without pajamas ;) Therefore, Google provides people to report inappropriate images on the StreetView pages.

Report Inappropriate Image
Google takes concerns about its services very seriously. Please use the link below to report concerns about an inappropriate street view.

If the location that you are browsing has photos, the StreetView button will be enabled on Google Maps, as shown in the screenshot to the right. You can see YouTube video about StreetView and how to use it here.

P.S I hope Google won’t come up with HouseRank next ;)

Is this the beginning of the end for Google PageRank system? Maybe.

TechCrunch reports that Google is experimenting on social marketing style voting system. This is an experiment that is still on individual level, not yet public. In this experiment Google allows you to manage your personal search results. You can promote some websites, and you can also remove some websites from the search results page (see screenshot to the left).

How you use it?

In order to use this feature, first you need to be signed in to your Google account. And I think not everybody will see this feature, even after you sign in to your Google account. But for those who can see this feature, here is how you use it.

I like it! If you like particular result (website) you can promote it by clicking on the arrow-up icon beside the result.

I don’t like it! If you don’t like particular result, you can press on “x” icon beside the result. This will remove the result, and it will remain hidden when you search for the same keyword(s) in the future.

The changes you make are not permanent. There’s a link at the bottom of the search results that lets you view the results in their original ordering.

In addition to these features, you can also add some websites that are not included in the search results. This will allow Google to include the websites that it had missed. But this feature can be misused easily. I think that’s why Google wants users to sign in to their Google accounts first. So that Google can track their activities.

Will it replace PageRank?

In my personal opinion, this is directly related to the latest PageRank crisis. It’s the product that resulted from this very problem. Google now is trying to find a long term solution for its PageRank algorithm (which is open to manipulation), which is responsible for defining search engine results.

Since social marketing and collective collaborative projects are becoming the norm in this age. It’s no surprise that Google is moving in that direction too. Millions of people use Google everyday, so this experiment can actually be proven successful. Because the people who are manipulating the system will be very small, and there will be thousands of other people who will help to improve the search (by removing spam from the SERPs).

What do you think of this? What is your opinion? Is it a good move by Google?

Source: JohnChow, TechCrunch

Browsing Yaro Starak’s blog, I noticed that he started using audio comments widget (see screenshot left) on his blog. When you select the person’s name in the widget, it will play that particular individual’s audio comment. What a great idea!

Clicking the footer link of the widget “MobaTalk Audio Comment System“, I signed up for the service. However upon logging in to my account, I saw no such service being offered by MobaTalk.

Doing a little research on Google, I found out that this service is actually offered by www.mychingo.com and it’s not a free service. It costs $3.95/month. Also the site says that the service is being taken over by MobaTalk soon. Aha, no wonder the footer link takes me MobaTalk website I told to myself ;) So they are in the process of integrating it to MobaTalk then.

I was quite tempted to subscribe for the service, but then I realized how you guys (my readers) are not so talkative type, so I decided not to. I hardly get text comments on my posts, I don’t think it will be worth to purchase an audio comment service just yet (i thought to myself).

Audio comments in the future

Nevertheless I think, it’s a great idea to have audio comments on the blog. I hope there will be some free services in the future. If it could be integrated to WordPress as a default commenting service, it would be even better. Readers could leave text comments, as well as audio comments on specific posts. It would also make the discussion a lot easier - replying to each other by text would be a thing of the past. Blogs would save space too, especially the ones that receive hundreds of comments per post (e.g JohnChow). Instead there would be only one widget at the bottom of the post.

Free idea for entrepreneurs

I believe there is no such audio commenting service for blogs yet. So if you are an entrepreneur, you can bank on this idea and make it a reality. I am 90% positive that it would be a success.

I wish I had the capacity to produce such a system. If I had, I definitely would. To give you some visualization of what I think the widget could look like, here is an illustration I have created:

So what do you think? Do you think one day we will be “audio commenting” in the blogosphere? It would be interesting to know what you guys think.

Ping: blog.guykawasaki.com (Let me ping Guy, he can make it reality. Afterall, it’s a better idea than truemors ;)