Marcel Neuhausler's World

JavaScript™-Flash® API Getting Started Guide: "The Yahoo! Maps JS-Flash API lets developers add embedded Yahoo! Maps to their web sites. In the JavaScript version, maps are generated by Yahoo! servers and placed into a generic Flash SWF (ShockWave® Format) container that developers can manipulate using the JavaScript programming language."

Flex™ API Getting Started Guide: "Macromedia Flex is an application server and framework that addresses the requirements of enterprise programmers who want to develop rich Internet applications. Developers can use Flex to create data-driven applications that harness the power of both XML and Flash. The Yahoo! Maps Flex API is a component that lets developers add customizable Yahoo! Maps to their Flex applications."

.. again a cool idea of Yahoo .. I definitely like their JavaScript to Flash approach! ..

Posted by mneuhaus at 06:18 PM | Permalink

I just came across some nice / interesting services:

• Protopage = personalized news + sticky notes + bookmarks, all on one page.
• Writely = powerful Word Processor + Collaboration + Export/Import + Blog Editor.
• Blinksale = easiest + nicest way to send invoices online.

.. pretty impressive ..

Posted by mneuhaus at 04:04 PM | Permalink

Are you a Minipreneur?: "According to Trendwatching.com, a minipreneur is a consumer-turned-entrepreneur, taking advantage of resources that were, just a short time ago, available only to large multinational organizations, including cheap hardware and software, access to global design, production, and manufacturing skills, payment systems, online marketplaces, and more."

(Via Amazon Web Services Blog.)

Posted by mneuhaus at 10:43 PM | Permalink

"10 Apps every new Mac user should download."

.. not just for new users ..

Posted by mneuhaus at 10:35 PM | Permalink

Jon Udell: Predictions for 2006: "Although punditry seems to require year-end assessments and predictions, I usually resist the urge. But this year I came up with an angle."

.. contains some interesting numbers, like time between "first mention" and "acquisition" of some Web 2.0 services ..

Posted by mneuhaus at 09:35 PM | Permalink

Google offers a new search, a music search. Just enter an artist name and Google delivers albums including tracks, lyrics (too bad, those sites will need some good lawyers, thanks to Google search), direct link into the iTunes music store and other information of the artist.

I gave it a try and searched for "Madonna". Everything looked reasonable until I clicked on the "Latest News" link on the artist's result page .. e voila, same problem as with Froogle-Local and some Google Map services, the results are just bad. The first entries point to art pages including the "Munch art theft" .. Madonna an art thief?

Of course an obvious shortcoming of Google, all the "linkage" between those different areas is based on a pure software solution, no human-involved; a potential lethal weakness for Google, and the World Wide Web in general.

Thanks to Google we already get flooded by tons of miss-leading aggregation and "review" sites; sites that obviously try to use Google's "logic" for their own purposes ... Google kills the World Wide Web??

Posted by mneuhaus at 09:26 PM | Permalink

Yahoo and JSON: "JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data format based on the object notation of the JavaScript language. It does not require JavaScript to read or write; it is easy to parse by any language and libraries and tools exist in many languages to handle JSON. Many of the Yahoo! Web Services provide JSON as an alternate output format to XML."

.. don't know where to put this .. it reminds me a lot of good old "Anythings" .. therefor it could be an interesting alternative to XML ..

Posted by mneuhaus at 12:28 AM | Permalink

"SSE: The objective of Simple Sharing Extensions is to define the minimum extensions necessary to enable loosely-cooperating apps

• to use RSS as the basis for item sharing – that is, the bi-directional, asynchronous replication of new and changed items amongst two or more cross-subscribed feeds.
• to use OPML as the basis for outline sharing – that is, the bi-directional, asynchronous replication of outlines, such as RSS aggregators subscription lists"

.. interesting .. but probably a little bit too open source for Microsoft ..

Posted by mneuhaus at 09:41 PM | Permalink

"Here are places Ajax should now be required in a web application"

.. it just makes sense .. a must read for overly motivated AJAX-freaks ..

Posted by mneuhaus at 09:28 PM | Permalink