pulse

Contact management site Plaxo, which has begun dabbling in social networking with its new-ish Pulse service, has announced that it has opened up a piece of its source code to developers and anyone else who might want to play around with it. The company has released the code for its new "Online Identity Consolidator," which can automatically discover a user's social-networking accounts across the Web and embed their related RSS feeds on a Plaxo Pulse profile.

It's only a small piece of Plaxo's overall architecture, but considering the service's vocal mission of openness and … Read more

This evening I received my first e-mail from Plaxo's new Pulse social networking service, which it launched today. What had surprised me the most about Plaxo initially was how it was far more different from social networking's queen bee, Facebook, than I'd expected it would be--in fact, it reminded me much more of fellow nascent service Pownce.

But then I got that friend, er, business contact request in my Gmail inbox. Here's a screenshot:

It looked pretty darn familiar--it looked just like the equivalent e-mails that Facebook sends when other members have requested to add you … Read more

As expected, address and calendar organizer Plaxo unveiled on Monday its Pulse social-networking site.

Rumors about Plaxo expanding into social networking have been floating about recently; the company confirmed them to a number of press outlets last week and made some screenshots available in advance.

Now you can play with the beta service yourself. But don't call it a social-networking site; Pulse is really one part microblogging platform and one part RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader. And despite the fact that such a description sounds nauseatingly Web 2.0 pitchy, this is a service that Plaxo hopes will appeal … Read more

MySpace is set to launch a voting platform for the presidential primaries early next year, allowing MySpace users to submit a mock vote for their favorite candidate. While the results won't actually count as real votes for election into office, candidates will no doubt try to win the coveted title of MySpace's people's choice winner. There's already a list up on MySpace's Impact page, where 11 of the candidates have thumbnail links to their MySpace profiles.

MySpace has more than 100 million registered users, with around 230,000 new ones each day. The prospect of … Read more

It may look like a medieval torture device, but the headgear pictured here is designed for gaming, of all things. And if you're paranoid about EMFs eating away at your brain, avert your eyes from this item now.

Called "Project Epoc," this neuro-technology apparatus includes "sensors that tune into your brain's natural electric signals, detecting player thoughts, feelings and expression," according to Ubergizmo. It also connects to consoles and computers, supposedly allowing your thought pulses to influence if not control the game at hand. (We're not making this up.)

But if you're … Read more