Web Crawler

Facebook's "like" feature has been around since February, but the massive social network never provided users with a way to quickly voice their opinions going the other way. French developer Thomas Moquet took matters into his own hands by creating a cute (albeit useless) Firefox extension that adds a dislike button to Facebook, letting users who have it installed mark things they don't like.

In order to make the tool work, Moquet had to use his own servers, which keep track of every item that's disliked as well as who clicked it. Any other Facebook users who have the extension installed can then see who disliked it right next to the usual like list.

Feeling grumpy? Add a "dislike" button to Facebook.

(Credit: CNET)

There are a few very clear downsides to this system, one being that if the dislike servers ever go down, you won't be able to see what you or others have marked as not liking. It also cannot be seen by other users who don't have the extension installed. Nonetheless, it fits in quite well with the rest of the Facebook interface, peacefully coexisting alongside the likes while adding a bit of snark.

It's worth noting Facebook's exclusion of a dislike button was under the pretense that likes were added as a quick way to replace simple one-word comments. By adding a like button the hope was both to better surface content in its news feeds, as well as cut down on throwaway comments like "this is great!" or "cool."

Facebook dislike is an experimental add-on, meaning you'll have to grab it from Mozilla's add-ons site. See also the competing Facebook Dislike Button add-on, which goes one step further and will actually send the person who's news item it is a Facebook note saying that you didn't like what they posted. Ouch.

Social news site Digg is experimenting with a new way to give upcoming stories a chance at the limelight with an experiment the company is calling Digg Trends.

Stories that begin to experience a heightened amount of user interest in the form of off-site sharing, user discussion, and of course Diggs, will be presented up at the very top of Digg's home page, as well as being spouted in a special RSS and Twitter news feed. Once at the top of the page, those stories have 10 minutes to get voted onto the front page as a normally dugg story, otherwise they're buried into Digg's dead pool. All the while a giant counter ticks down how much time the story has left.

Along with the countdown timer, Digg is also putting forward some of its outgoing traffic numbers. Users can see how many clicks a trending story has gotten from the front page. Normally, the only other traffic numbers you see on a Digg story is when you're on the source site itself, though users must have the DiggBar enabled.

Trending stories get just 10 minutes to prove their worth like any other front-page story. The company is also making available how many users have clicked to view the source content.

(Credit: Digg)

This new system is a stark difference from the somewhat nebulous promotion algorithm that exists for regular stories. Under the current system, stories have to earn their way onto the front page which involves standing out among an ever-growing pool of other upcoming stories. The company made this process a little more custom-tailored with the introduction of its recommendation engine, but it still requires that users actively visit that part of the site to see what's new. The new trending idea puts some of those stories up for everyone--and right on the front page.

In a company blog post about the new process, Digg's senior software engineer Kurt Wilms called it an "experiment," and said that it could change based on user feedback. Some Digg users have already voiced their opinions in the posting's comment section, citing that "bury brigades" (groups of highly opinionated users) could keep some stories from ever making it past their 10-minute window. The end result being that a story that could have legitimately made the front page on its own gets shut down before ever having a chance under the normal algorithm.

As with other new features, Digg seems to be rolling out Trends slowly, and to a small group of users. I'd expect it to show up for everyone in the next day or two.

Moodspin, a very eccentric social-networking add-on service has just had its app (link opens in iTunes) approved on the App Store. In case you're unfamiliar with the site, it currently works only on Twitter, and lets you very quickly broadcast how you're feeling to the people who follow you.

But here's the catch: it's not just text, the service goes in and makes small changes to your profile icon, adding that same mood-related emoticon to your photo, which in turn lets others see what you're feeling no matter what you just tweeted.

Is this useful? In the grand scheme of things, not at all. What's interesting though, is how it tracks that data back on Moodspin.com. Each time you update your mood status it's charted on a timeline, which if you're actively using the site, will show others what you were up to at various parts of the day. Each mood selection is also represented on your daily mood graph which you can compare to just your friends, or everyone else on the Moodspin service.

As an iPhone app Moodspin's initial offering is relatively simple, letting you select your mood in three taps, which can be fired off as a personalized update to Twitter. If there's enough room, it also (annoyingly) tacks on a URL to your Moodspin profile so that others can see what you've been brooding about posted as moods during the past 24 hours. There is however, no way to track your past moods from the app itself, something I'm told is coming in the next big update.

In the meantime, a version of the service which is due later this month will be implementing Facebook status messages and mood changes to user's Facebook profile photos which tend to be quite a bit bigger than Twitter's. However, there it will compete with a myriad of other mood apps that have existed since the launch of the Facebook apps platform.

Moodspin's iPhone app lets you set your mood in a couple of taps, the result of which is a new tweet and Twitter profile picture.

(Credit: CNET)

It seems like everyone has an application directory these days, and now Flickr is no exception. While not offering up paid third-party services (yet), Flickr on Tuesday unveiled a reworked services section dubbed the "App Garden" that better showcases photo tools, and the people who have created them.

The new apps directory page manages to squeeze just about as many applications into a smaller space than the old one did. It also gives each app its own page where users can add descriptive tags and leave feedback in the form of comments. In fact, these new pages act just like Flickr photo pages, including giving registered users a way to favorite certain apps, which goes towards promoting up-and-coming apps higher up in the showcase. They also double as a shortcut to viewing other apps made by that same developer.

Flickr's new "App Garden" as the company calls it, is much more compact than the services directory that came before it. It also adds user interaction to the mix with comments and favoriting.

(Credit: CNET)

One area where the new app system has not permeated just yet is in letting users see what apps their friends and contacts are using. For instance, Flickr's activity feed--which gives Flickr users a bird's eye view of what their friends are up to, does not show when a user has favorited one of these tools. Users will only be able to see what apps they themselves have favorited from within the App Garden, and not alongside their photo favorites. There is also no way to create collections of apps you like to share with others, as you can do with the recently-released gallery feature.

These things may come in time, but for now it's already a much better system than the previous API services page. Developers have more of a chance to try to convince users to give their app a spin before they ever leave the site, and other Flickr users are now able to chime in and recommend it, either through the new favoriting system, or in the comments. Whether Flickr decides to make some of this user activity a little more public is unclear.

After the jump: The before and after of the API services menu, and what's now the App Garden.

If you're a regular user of the revision comparison feature in Google Docs, you'll likely enjoy new service Compare My Docs. It comes from the same folks who created TextFlow, the Adobe AIR-based app that spot differences across multiple copies of a Word document or rich text file.

Compare My Docs does many of the same things as TextFlow, including being able to compare up to six versions of the same document to see what's been changed. The big difference though, is that it runs right in your browser and requires no sign-up whatsoever.

Just like TextFlow, Compare My Docs color codes any changes it finds between the different revisions of a document and gives you a quick and easy way to accept, reject, or set aside a change. This means you can cruise through a document and keep the changes or revisions you like, while keeping an active log of what you don't.

When finished, you'll have a new version that has all of those changes, which can be saved either as a Word doc or rich text file back on your hard drive. Although unlike what you can do in TextFlow, with Compare My Docs there's no way to publish the finished product to the Web or save it in parent company Nordic River's servers for safe keeping; something that seems meant to entice users to try out TextFlow instead.

Compare My Docs looks a lot like TextFlow, in fact it basically is, but runs in your browser instead of as an Adobe AIR app.

(Credit: CNET)

The service does manage to suffer from some of the limitations in the core technology behind both it and TextFlow, including having photos and charts being stripped out. This means you'll have to add them back in after you've run a few documents through its editor.

Along with Compare My Docs, Nordic River is also finally releasing an API for TextFlow, which will let developers make use of the service's comparison technology in their apps or Web services. This could help make up for some of the service's shortcomings, while augmenting the versioning tools currently offered by some online services. File hosting in particular comes to mind, since places like DropBox and Box.net offer versioning, and version rollback, but in order to see the differences you have to save, then open up each file and look for differences. Those places could now very quickly build tools that let users compare multiple versions of a saved Word or text file from right within the app.

Nordic River says that TextFlow in its Adobe AIR form will remain, but that the site is closing up to new users in a few weeks until it readies a new interface. In the meantime the company will continue its free and paid services to those who have already signed up.

Correction 8:57 a.m. on November 3: This story initially misstated that users could not make edits to the text within the tool. This was due to the functionality not being present in the pre-release version of the site used for review.

Apple has provided plenty of ways for users to discover new applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but on the sharing side the company has come up a bit short. Third-party blogs and social networks have done well to seize this opportunity, creating tools that help filter and sort apps old and new in ways Apple itself has not implemented.

One of those tools is Chorus, which is going live on the App Store early Tuesday. It's basically its own App Store meets social network, where users can share apps they've purchased with others, keep track of what their friends are buying, and discover new apps to buy either through the people they've befriended or from Chorus' hand-picked editors.

Chorus does one big thing the App Store doesn't, which is to allow each user to share their purchase history. Unlike the faceless reviews you see overflowing Apple's marketplace, reviews within Chorus' network are all attached to users you can befriend and follow to see what they've recently rated, reviewed, installed, or uninstalled.

As a new user, you can very quickly populate the service with all this information using a tool the company calls the Gobbler, an Adobe AIR-based application that scans your iTunes library and finds app purchases. You can then go through to check which apps you want to make public with your friends and the service's recommendation engine (note: by default, the Gobbler and Chorus apps are both smart enough to know that you probably don't want to share something that's rated 17 or over).

Chorus' content Gobbler scans your iTunes purchases so you can add them in bulk.

(Credit: CNET)

Once you've shared your application history with Chorus, it helps fuel what the service recommends to you--just like Apple does with its own Genius service. This is where the app goes one step further though; it lets you see which of those apps your friends have used, if they've rated it, and whether they ended up removing it from their device. It also weights its recommendations higher if your friends have it installed.

To befriend other users you can cull your Facebook or Twitter contact list to find those who may already be using the service, or search by whatever username they've using on Chorus. The app also comes installed with a handful of subscriptions to the service's "AppMavens" who are bloggers that seed the network with their picks and reviews. Frankly, I found these the AppMaven's reviews less useful than the App Store's user review section, which--major faults aside, can shed light on things a single review can't, like how well it works on various devices, if there are any bugs, and what version the app was reviewed on.

Chorus recommends apps your friends have used and downloaded, as well as showing you how they reviewed them.

(Credit: CNET)

The saving grace with the Chorus reviews system is that like other third-party app directories, all purchases still go through in the App Store app itself, which means you can still scope out those user reviews before making a purchase. On the downside, when it comes time to buy, you get kicked out of the Chorus app and sent into the App Store. This can be jarring but is made slightly less irritating by the fact that the app is smart enough to remember what you were doing the last time you were using it and bringing you back upon a relaunch.

All in all Chorus is a useful tool for discovering apps that should become increasingly useful if more people seed it with recommendations. Though there are a few things I'd like to see in future versions, the first of which is a way to manage purchases and do app discovery from the Web and not just on the device--something the company says will be coming at a later date. Another is a way to queue up apps you want to purchase, then e-mail yourself that list in the form of iTunes links. This would let you continue to use the tool without interruption, and facilitate batch purchasing.

I'd also like to see recommendations of people to follow based on my download and/or usage history since that would help me whittle down who I'd actually spend time paying attention to. This, or some sort of visual relevancy indicator about how much of a match any given app is to my buying habits would go a long way towards making me, and likely others feel better about clicking through to see more about that app.

See also: App Gems, App Connect and AppVee (all of which open up in iTunes), as well as site AppShopper.com.

Bing's touch-friendly mobile interface lets you browse movies with your finger.

(Credit: CNET)

Microsoft on Friday released a refreshed version of its mobile search site (m.bing.com) that's optimized for touch-screen devices. The new page includes finger-friendly buttons that are easier to both identify and to press, as well as a movie finder that lets users browse by what's near them by time and theater.

So far, the only devices that work with it are the iPhone/iPod Touch, T-Mobile G1, Samsung Omnia, Verizon Imagio, and the Zune HD. Microsoft says support for other phones and portables is coming. In the meantime, phones that can't access the touch-friendly interface get defaulted to a simpler version.

Also worth noting is that the touch interface is only available to users in the U.S. for the time being.

Along with touch, Microsoft also added two new search query types that pull from near real-time data sources. This includes a way for users to check on NFL football scores and flight status. Users looking to get an updated score or player stats just need type in the team or player name. As for flights, you'll need the airline and flight number and it will cull the most recent information about arrivals, departures, or delays.

Now how about fitting some of that neato visual search action on the mobile site too?

Despite increasingly better software, blogging on phones is still a real pain compared with doing it on a regular computer. However, credit is due to WordPress, which has gone to great lengths to make the latest version of its iPhone app much better for users to both create and manage their blogs on a small screen (and without a keyboard).

Besides a new look, one of the biggest changes is that the app remembers exactly what you were doing between sessions, so that if you quit it, or get a phone call, it will take you right back to the page or menu you were looking at. This also keeps you from losing anything you hadn't saved if you're interrupted--even if you were in the middle of a writing a sentence when your phone rang. This should change the beginning of such a conversation from "I am so mad at you right now" to a simple "hello."

In addition to remembering what you were doing, the app does a much better job at letting you manage user comments. The approval screen itself looks almost identical, but the app now lets you quickly switch between the ones that have been approved and the ones that still need to be looked at. It also displays each users' Gravatar (user icon) next to their username and URL, which ends up taking up a little more space than it did in the previous iteration of the app but adds a sense of familiarity with its desktop sibling.

Other small changes include the app remembering which order you uploaded the photos in so that they display in that same order in your post. Although the app still hasn't been updated to include videos, which means 3GS owners will have to add whatever video they shot through WordPress' Web interface instead. The app also now stores passwords in a user's keychain, which means those credentials could be accessed by other applications you may want to give access to later on down the line--like, say an app that lets you post videos to a WordPress blog.

Oddly enough, the new WordPress app is completely different from the original, which still exists but will no longer be updated. The company attributes this to having switched between having an outside contractor make the first version, whereas this new one was built in-house.

The new look makes it simply to hop between comments, posts and pages. User Gravatars are now visible too.

(Credit: WordPress)

Watching ice cubes melt is much more fun when you speed it up. iPhone app Timelapser lets you do it right on your phone.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Time-lapse movies can be a complicated affair, and quite often involve either a lot of special equipment, and/or post-processing skills. For just a buck though, you can use the recently released Timelapser app (link opens in iTunes) to turn your iPhone into a tool that can do this time-bending filming technique using nothing more than the onboard camera.

Timelapser's interface tells you how long your movie will be, and how many shots it's taken.

(Credit: CNET)

Depending on what model of phone you have you can use the app to take a picture anywhere from every three seconds to once per half hour. All the while it grabs each frame and stitches it into a movie that's saved on the phone, and that can also be e-mailed to friends.

Of course if you really want to cook with gas, you'll need an iPhone 3GS, which lets you speed up how fast the phone can take shots. Alas, with my lowly 3G I was limited to taking a shot every six seconds. Owners of the original iPhone have to step it down to eight seconds.

The app has a wealth of settings that let you pick things like how large the video's resolution is, how many frames per second it should be, and how long you want the delay to be before it starts shooting. This can be useful if you're propping up your phone somewhere and need time to set up your scene. Users can also use the app just to take a series of photos one after another which get saved in your phone's camera roll.

As I noted when I checked out the IP Camera app, which can turn your iPhone into a networked security camera, the very best way to use this app is with one of Apple's fancy docks. You can also just prop it up with whatever you may have laying about the house, but with the dock you get the benefit of... Read more