I am not a great fan of regurgitating other peoples information but David Sag over at Carbon Planet had some interesting news over at his blog today:

Social network sites have traditionally been seen as either playthings for bored office workers, dating site equivalents for lusty students, helper kits internet-stalkers or fronts for the CIA, but today I think I actually found something useful in facebook. Carpooling.

Previously, online ride-sharing was a risky and difficult endeavour for any user. Finding a ride on a website like Craigslist (currently the most popular ride-sharing site) would be fraught with uncertainty and hazard. There was simply no way to find out about a potential ride-sharing partner - your driver could be your real-estate agent or a newly released axe-murderer. He (or she?) could come pick you up on time, or leave you hanging. There was no accountability, no trust and consequently no real step-change in the culture of ride-sharing in the real world. Car owners still prefer to drive empty cars over long distances, paying hefty gas costs, and passengers still have to desperately beg for rides, rent cars or suffer a long, expensive bus/train ride. Everyone still loses.

Social-networking has changed the game. This disruptive technology has made it possible for people to establish trust in an online environment, thereby shattering the bottleneck for online-ridesharing. And Facebook Carpool, the new ride-sharing application that is embedded into the Facebook interface, is the first sophisticated utility to take advantage.

Resource use optimisation is the name of the game here. If I can find someone already going past my house to the airport (tomorrow afternoon say) then, by sharing a ride with them I will save both money and CO2, and, to be honest, might even make a new friend to play facebook scrabble with too. — DS

Thanks David. Cool post; cool find.

This is more of an enquiry than claim: is Soundbuzz the backbone of BigPond Music? I just read a post over at TechCrunch claiming that Motorola has acquired Soundbuzz. It mentions that Soundbuzz has partnerships with Hutchison 3, Motorola, Airtel, SingTel, M1, Optus Zoo, Telstra/ BigPond Music and Microsoft.

I believe copy protection on audio CDs is pointless. Here is my rationale:

I don’t think for a moment that music should just be given away, not at all. But I also don’t believe that consumers should be restricted in their behaviours because of the bad guys. I feel that by not allowing people to upload the albums they pay money for to their MP3 device of choice, encourages illegal behaviour.

When does everyone think the Apple iPhone will available in Australia, or more accurately, Asia Pacific? I have my bets on late 2008/early 2009.

As most technophiles will already know, Steve Jobs - Apple’s CEO - is reluctant of a 3G model at this point due to problems with the battery-life. He doesn’t want to sacrifice any of the iPhone functionality by supplying a limited battery-life. Well, I don’t think they will release the iPhone to Asia Pacific unless it is a 3G model. What’s the point?

It has been said that people place too much importance on the ‘term’ - 3G. Most really don’t get the most out of what it offers to what can it possibly matter? Well, truth is, Asia Pacific hosts some of the worlds largest 3G networks. I believe 2.5 (GSM or EDGE) would be taking a step backward.

Who will win?

Next question, who will win the contract for the iPhone here in Australia? I have my money - not literally - on Vodafone. I believe, from a branding/marketing perspective the two companies align better than the anticipated Telstra/Apple partnership. After all, Telstra has always been rather Apple-unfriendly.

We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.

Ok, the comment function of Pajago.com is now back online. Thanks very much to Code Meister Paul Holmes.

I have noticed that the comment thing on this site isn’t working properly. I have been getting plenty of spam but no legitimate comments. I am sure people are trying to leave them, since I get almost 100 visitors per day, but no cigar. If you have something you would like to say, please feel free to email suggestions@pajago.com. Thanks!

I just realised there is another ‘competitor’ to Google that is worth a mention. The site is called Mahalo. It’s a human-powered search engine that looks oh so nice. I just had a play with it for a couple of minutes, to develop a first impression and I like it. I like it a lot. The reason I like it so much - if first impressions are anything to go by - is that it works like an expansion of Wikipedia. I tend to search for most things - like iPod Touch - by typing ‘iPod Touch wiki’ into Google. This ensures Wikipedia is the top search result and I go in from there. I guess I could search directly through Wikipedia but it’s not so friendly toward typos.

Mahalo has a touch of this. It is a Google-esque search engine that is loaded with good stuff. Stuff that has been vetted by humans and not tricked by algorithms written by inhumanly clever geeks. First thing I like is the Guide Note at the top-right which gives you a a brief definition/explanation of the search topic. Below this is some Fast Facts - 2-10 short facts about the topic-, again, a very intuitive, helpful feature.

The meat of the result page begins with a Top 7 section which generally starts with an official website of the topic searched. If you were to search, say, Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo, next you will find a section called Professional Profile - very Linkedin. I won’t go on an explain all the other features as it takes all the fun out of it for you. But I will paste what Mahalo has listed as the key features of Mahalo:

* Edited By Humans: Every search result you see was painstakingly handcrafted by a Guide in our workshop in sunny Santa Monica, California.

* Spam-free: Humans detect spam. Computers don’t. Our Guides keep your search results free of spam.

* Warnings: Tired of clicking on links full of pop-ups, information in a language you don’t speak, full of Flash animation and auto-starting music, or other problems? Mahalo Warnings tell you in advance. Just hover your cursor over the Warning Symbol Warning symbol to know before you click.

* Guides Choice: This symbol ( Nicole Gustas: It’s a shaka, used in Hawaii as a greeting) tells you which sites our guides especially liked. Hover your cursor over it to find out why.

* Fast Facts: We provide 2-10 quick facts about most search terms.

* Email This Search Result: If you’ve found a search result useful, you can email it to yourself, or someone else. See the sidebar.

* Recommend a Link: Think the search results page you’re looking at is missing an important resource? Click on the “Recommend a Link” in the Top Submitted Links section of the right-hand sidebar to tell us about it.

* Message Board: Discuss our search results with other people interested in the topic by clicking on the Message Board link to the right.

* Today’s Top 20 Searches: Look in the “Today’s Top 20 Searches” in the right-hand sidebar to find out what’s hot right now!

I read today that Co-founder of Topix, Rich Skrenta is looking at taking on Google with new search engine, Blekko. I discussed this with a few people at work today and the response seems to be very negative. The responses I got: “Sif!”…”As if anyone can compete with Google”. To be critical of yet another so-called competitor of Google, I believe, is rational. It’s been tried before and giants like Yahoo! and Live haven’t even managed it. So what is so good about Blekko?

Well, one of the problems I think Skrenta and his team are trying to fix is when you type in a word like “Kylie Minogue” you get many pages of results: images, news, scholar, books, et al. Not to mention the hundreds of pages of search results. I feel, Blekko is trying to achieve a more integrated Google. One page and summaries of what you actually need (want) to know. And apparently no PageRank algorithm.

I’m really excited to see what Blekko has in-store. I am, admittedly a Google-aholic but I am also open to better ways of doing things. For example, I am looking at making the move from iGoogle as my home page to PageFlakes as the latter looks and moves a lot better, whilst still being integrated with the likes of Gmail.

Apparently, Blekko will not be live until 2009. At the moment by going to the domain you get a picture of some cute, puppet-looking creature. I wonder how cute and fun Blekko is going to be…

San Franciscan Pacific Gas and Electric, California, has just installed the first solar powered billboard in the world.

The billboard actually draws power from the grid, but the power output of its 20 PV panels is higher than what the billboard demands from the grid, keeping the balance positive. This is also possible due to the high efficiency LEDs the billboard uses for lighting.

Ranging from 2.5 to 3.4 kWh electricity produced during the day are actually close to what is necessary to power one family house.

Is this another great idea or is it just not worth the investment?

Here is some exciting news for those that are anticipating the GooglePhone (GP). Believe it or not, but I am not one of them - I know little of the up-and-coming GP.

WhatsOpen.com is to be the first app for the GP. The WhatsOpen.com app - and the website which can be accessed here - allows you to search for ‘what’s open’ at a given time of day. It combines Google Maps and a directory tool to display the results. So, if you would like to know where you can get a pizza at 4am, give it a shot. Very handy for home or mobile.