By David Coursey
December 15, 2009

Maybe it started as a joke, “What the world needs is another URL shortening service!” said as though we didn’t have enough already. Then, someone at Google heard the joke, took it seriously, committed $$$, and out popped Goo.gl.

Yes, another URL shortener, just what the world needs! Put another way: What won’t Google do to a) put its name on something and b) gather more information about users?

For now, Goo.gl works only with Google applications, where it shortens URLs for Google’s Feedburner and from the Google browser toolbar. The service cannot be accessed directly by users from a browser.

Entering the goo.gl address calls up the following:
“Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share, tweet, or email to friends.”

Actually, whether the service really is at goo.gl is hard to say, since there is no public user interface–all we see is a Web page that also states the Mom-and-Apple-Pie goals for the service:

“Stability, ensuring that the service has very good uptime; security, protecting users from malware and phishing pages; and speed, fast resolution of short URLs.”

The Google Official Blog post that announced the service Monday afternoon offers a tad more detail.

“People share a lot of links online,” wrote Googlers Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Ben D’Angelo, and Devin Mullins. “This is particularly true as microblogging services such as Twitter have grown in popularity.

“If you’re not familiar with them, URL shorteners basically squeeze a long URL into fewer characters to make it easier to share with others. With character limits in tweets, status updates and other modes of short form publishing, a shorter URL leaves more room to say what’s on your mind – and that’s why people use them.”

The Google URL Shortener immediately competes with services including TinyURL, Bit.ly, and a host of others. Each generates a unique shortened URL, such as http://bit.ly/5jTKbh when I submitted http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/making-urls-shorter-for-google-toolbar.html (the address for the Google blog post) to the bit.ly service for shortening.

When the user clicks on the shortened URL, the shortening server must resolve the URL, match it to the original and longer URL, and then redirect the browser to that site.

I am not aware of any huge problems with the existing shortening services, but letting Google handle URL shortening for some of its customers’ needs probably makes sense.

(Google recently got into the public DNS business as well, another necessary Internet service).

So, while the world doesn’t need a new URL shortener, we may someday be happy Google started offering one as the need for such services continues to grow. If nothing else, the goo.gl URLs will be a constant reminder of the company gives us goodies.

BTW–If you are wondering about the domain name: GL is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Greenland, that patch of glaciers (and a little soil) up past Canada on the way to Iceland, which is less icy and more green than Greenland. (The .ly in Bit.ly is the ccTLD for Libya).

By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service
December 11, 2009

Plurk, a microblogging rival to Twitter, is winning over markets in Asia by offering service in local languages, something global leader Twitter has struggled to do even in European languages.

Plurk’s user interface and microblog posts are available in a range of tongues, from English to the languages of some of the fastest growing countries in the world, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Hindi (India) and Chinese.

“When Plurk first launched, we had a translation system where the whole system was translated into 25 different languages in two weeks, and it’s all done by our users,” said Alvin Woon, a cofounder of Plurk, in an interview.

Plurk sends out an e-mail with a new string of English to volunteer translators and they localize it then send it back. Head translators lead teams of users, and they vote for the best language usage when they run into unusual English slang or a new phrase. Many translators come from the open-source community and are willing to work without pay, Woon said. They also have a strong desire to localize a microblogging site into their own language.

So far, Plurk is offered in 33 languages, but a total of 45 different languages are being translated as of this writing. The list of writing systems is as impressive for its range as it is for difficulty. Arabic, for one, is available on Plurk, as well as Hebrew, Greek, Japanese and both forms of Chinese characters, traditional and simplified. The more obscure offerings include Irish (Gaeilge) and Catalan for people in Spain.

Twitter is available in five languages currently: English, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. And although it’s behind in the language race, the pace Twitter is adding new ones appears to have sped up. Twitter opened for Italian Dec. 10, just a few weeks after adding French on Nov. 19 and Spanish on Nov. 2, according to the company’s blog.

Twitter did not return requests for comment on its language strategy.

One of the cofounders of Twitter, Biz Stone, told reporters in Japan last month that it’s very hard to localize in Asian languages, which is the reason his company is focusing only on Japanese now.

Plurk hasn’t found localization such a challenge. The Canadian company employs only nine people, including three cofounders, without a single translator, says Woon.

“I’ve been surprised at how many people want to translate Plurk into their own language,” Woon said. Their only reward, aside from Plurk in their own language, is a virtual Rosetta Stone badge they can put on their Plurk user profile.

The importance of localization can be seen in parts of Asia where English is not commonly used. Plurk is already the number one microblogging site in Taiwan, according to market researcher InsightXplorer, and is popular in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Malaysia, because people are able to use local languages.

Twitter continues to dominate markets in Asia where English is common. The microblogging service ranks first in Hong Kong and Singapore, with Plurk trailing in both places, according to data provided by Internet researcher Hitwise.

Globally, Plurk remains far behind Twitter, according to data ranking Web sites by traffic from Alexa.com. Twitter is number 14 globally, behind giants such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Plurk comes in at 1,073 on the list.

Plurk’s largest audience is in Taiwan, according to Internet research firm Alexa.com, followed by Indonesia and the US Twitter’s main audience is from the US, followed by India, Germany and the UK.

By David Coursey
December 10, 2009

As promised, Facebook has begun rolling out new privacy options to its 350 million users.Watch out for the “Everyone” setting.

On Wednesday morning, users began seeing a message offering a new, simplified privacy settings page and the ability to set specific options for every post made to Facebook.

The changes, first announced this summer, again promised last week, and available today, give users much tighter control of who sees what, down to the individual reader, if desired.
Especially important is the new “everyone” setting that determines whether a Facebook post will be seen on other services, such as in Google search results.

Other settings include “only friends” and “friends of friends.” A “customize” option allows users to show or hide a post from specific individuals or user-created lists.

The options are available by clicking on a new “lock” icon that appears next to the “share” button when a Facebook user updates their status. Any setting may be chosen as a default and the default option may be changed as desired.

Facebook also today updated its privacy policy to reflect the changes.
Here is how the “Everyone” setting is described (this may be important to you):

“Information set to ‘everyone’ is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations.

“The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to ‘everyone.’ You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete ‘everyone’ content that you posted on Facebook, we will remove it from your Facebook profile, but have no control over its use outside of Facebook.”

As of 8 a.m. Pacific Time today, not all users have been upgraded to the new privacy options. Others were upgraded months ago when Facebook began testing the new options.

My take: Facebook should add even more granularity to the “everyone” option, giving users the ability to opt-in or out of their posts being shared with specific services. It should also include links making it easier to for users to learn what the settings mean.

The description quoted above is complete and reasonably understandable, but is not easy to find. Not difficult, but it requires some looking.

I strongly encourage all Facebook users to visit all the privacy settings pages, especially those for applications and advertising, and make desired changes.

Facebook seems candid about what it does, provides privacy options for users, but it is still up to the individual to make the changes they desire. Not surprisingly, some Facebook defaults are more “open” than many users might desire.

By Tony Bradley
December 8, 2009

Google announced that it is acquiring AppJet, a small startup with a focus on real-time online document collaboration. The AppJet team will be relocating “down under” to join the Google Wave team in Australia and help redefine “real-time” collaboration.

Many of the AppJet team formerly worked for Google according to the AppJet Web site. Chief executive officer Aaron Iba used to write algorithms for improving search quality, chief operating officer Daniel Clemens was an associate product manager, and chief technology officer JD Zamfirescu left Google as well.

Really Real-Time
AppJet has developed a unique approach to updating the shared display as different contributors type with its EtherPad tool. According to the EtherPad site “EtherPad is the only Web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time.”

AppJet’s EtherPad product has been compared with Google Docs. Both provide online, collaborative document editing. The EtherPad FAQ illustrates the distinctions between the two, though. “Google Docs is a suite of products that do many things, from word processing to spreadsheets to document management. One thing that Google Docs does not do is real-time collaborative text editing.”

It goes on to explain that “with Google Docs it takes about 5 to 15 seconds for a change to make its way from your keyboard to other people’s screens. Imagine if whiteboards or telephones had this kind of delay! In contrast, the EtherPad infrastructure is built to carry your every keystroke at the speed of light, limited only by the time it takes electrons to travel over a wire (such as an “Ethernet” cable).”

I use the Google Docs spreadsheet and I can attest to the fact that the delay can sometimes cause conflict and confusion. While each of us sharing the spreadsheet have our own unique color that highlights the field we are currently working in, those 5 seconds are enough to allow for multiple contributors to write in the same filed–overwriting each other. He who types last wins.

Raising the Bar
The speed at which real-time changes are reflected on the shared page is arguably the most important technology that AppJet brings to Google, but there are other aspects of online collaboration that AppJet does better than Google as well.

EtherPad ‘pads’ can be shared by simply sending a link. Google Docs requires that all collaborators have Google Docs accounts and involves sending an email to invite users to join in sharing a doc.

EtherPad clearly highlights each user’s contributions with a unique background color which makes it much less confusing to determine who wrote what. Google Docs has an “undo” feature, but the ability to undo an action lasts only until someone else changes something. EtherPad provides limitless “undo” capabilities.

Adding a Ripple to Google Wave
AppJet has a lot to offer for the ongoing development of Google Wave. The initial demo of Google Wave was very impressive and resulted in a lot of speculation and anticipation of what Google Wave may deliver.

Google Wave merges e-mail, instant messaging, online collaboration, and document sharing in one. If it can live up to the hype and expectations, Google Wave threatens to be a game changer for online collaboration, and possibly for unified communications as well.

The beta of Google Wave has had a fairly tepid reception, though. Users begged and pleaded for invites to join the Google Wave beta only to receive them and sign up and say “is this it?”

Combining the technology behind EtherPad’s “pads” with Google Wave’s “waves” will help boost Wave’s functionality and move Google a step closer to delivering a robust platform capable of revolutionizing online communication.

By Juan Carlos Perez
IDG News Service
December 4, 2009

In order to boost its Wave product, Google has acquired AppJet, which makes the EtherPad real-time workgroup collaboration application.

“AppJet is a team of highly-talented entrepreneurs with deep expertise in real-time web collaboration. Google and AppJet have a shared vision of how web collaboration can benefit users, and we’re excited to have the AppJet team contribute to the success of Google Wave,” a Google spokesman said via e-mail on Friday.

The AppJet team will join the group developing Wave, an ambitious hosted collaboration application Google unveiled in May and that is still in limited availability by invitation only.

Wave boldly consolidates e-mail, instant messaging and document sharing, and is considered a potential game-changer both in the consumer online services market and in the enterprise collaboration space.

EtherPad, described by AppJet as a “Web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time,” will keep operating until the end of March 2010, at which point all existing hosted accounts will be deleted, AppJet said on Friday in its official blog.

Existing users are already complaining about these plans in comments to the AppJet blog posting. “This is the worst news ever. Google Wave is NOT an alternative to EtherPad. The clean design and, above all, the task specificity of EtherPad makes it vastly superior. I’ve been using Google Wave for over a month now and it just doesn’t compare to the months of wonderful service and growth from EtherPad. Boo,” wrote one disenchanted EtherPad user.

Users of the EtherPad “professional” edition will be able to export their “pads” as a ZIP file archive. This edition used to cost US$8 per user per month, but became free on Friday. Users of the starter edition, which has been free since the beginning, can export their “pads” to various formats. Both the starter and “professional” editions are hosted by AppJet.

The company also provides a Private Network Edition, which can be downloaded to customer servers and run on-premise for $99 per user. Users of that edition will be able to continue using the product beyond March. AppJet will honor existing support and maintenance contracts, but will not renew them when they expire.

As of today, people won’t be able to create any new free public “pads” nor any new EtherPad accounts.

Looking for a photo editor? The usual choices include Adobe Photoshop Elements (starting at about $85 online), which I use to demonstrate techniques here in Digital Focus, and Corel Paint Shop Pro (available for around $70 and up). There are free options as well, like Paint.Net and GIMP. For serious RAW shooters, I recommend Adobe Lightroom (available for about $220 and up).

But these days there’s a whole new way to edit your digital photos: using online photo editors that run from within a Web browser, like a photo equivalent to Google Docs or Zoho. On the upside, you don’t have to install anything, and you can edit your photos anywhere you have an Internet connection. The downside? Just what you’d expect: these programs generally offer only a fraction of the features found in stand-alone image editors like Photoshop, and you can’t work without an Internet connection. This week, let’s look at a few of these online photo editors.

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer shows that you don’t need to sacrifice all of the photo editing features you know from programs like Photoshop Elements to use an online photo editor.

Once you upload a photo to the site, you’ll see an interface that looks like a simplified photo editing program, complete with automatic exposure correction, red eye removal, and cropping control. But there’s a ton of extra stuff here as well, including support for layers–you can load multiple images and control the opacity of each layer, just like in a commercial photo editor. The program also includes effects like blurred edges, grayscale and sepia conversion, and the ability to “cartoonify” your photos. There’s even a Photoshop-like Curves tool for adjusting exposure, and a full-screen mode so you don’t need to feel like you’re working in a Web browser.

Picnik

Though it’s not the most powerful option out there, I also like Picnik. You can use the simple, tabbed interface to grab photos from your hard drive or photo sharing sites like Flickr, Facebook, and Myspace. All the basics are here. You can rotate, crop, resize, and tweak the colors and exposure. Like Corel Paint Shop Pro, the red eye removal tool can handle both humans and pets. The Create tab is home to special effects filters, like black and white, sepia, color boost, and soft focus.

Splashup

Of all the Web tools I mention here, my favorite is Splashup. It has the most traditional interface I’ve seen in an online photo editor, complete with a menu bar across the top of the page and a toolbar on the left side packed with all the usual tools. Like FotoFlexer, it includes support for layers, so you can combine photos or perform fine adjustments to your photos. Splashup even has its own file format, which preserves layer information, so you can open a project and continue editing later–just like Photoshop. You can load photos for editing from your computer or popular photo sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and SmugMug.

Photoshop Express

As nice as Splashup is, it isn’t as refined as Adobe Photoshop Express, which is an online version of the familiar Photoshop Elements. You get the same basics as in FotoFlexer–crop, rotate, red-eye removal, exposure correction, for example–but there’s no layer support or any of the more powerful editing and correction tools in Photoshop Elements. You will find some cool stuff like a fill light (which lets you adjust the foreground separately from the background), filters, and image distortion. And like the desktop version of Photoshop, you can choose from among several thumbnail variations of the same effect.

Like the other Web tools, you can upload photos from your own PC or from sites like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa. Adobe offers a generous 2GB of online storage, and there are subscribe options for additional photo storage as well.