keep your friends close...

I try not to make enemies, but this is so hilarious it makes me wish someone would offend me just so I can use it.

ambient findability and targeted advertising

We all know that $ makes the web go round, and the great big pot of gold everyone is trying to find is targeted advertising - the ability to deliver custom ads to a very narrowly defined base. Advertisers have figured out that most people don't care about what they have to say - which means that traditional media that are supported by advertising are in trouble. The key is to get your message to the few who might reasonably care. Facebook recently announced it would sell ads to be delivered to users based on their interests.

Email providers have been trying this for a while. For example, I recently got an email from my mom regarding her recent treatment for kidney stones. At the top of my gmail page, very unobtrusively, was a small ad for an anti-kidney stones diet cookbook or some such. Google, whose stock goes for $600 even though most of their products are free and who may soon be the target of an EU anti-trust investigation over their acquisition of Double-Click, is widely recognized as the leader in targeted web advertising.

The next big thing for Google, of course, is their anticipated entry into the mobile phone market next year. In preparation, Google recently acquired Jaiku, a strange little service combining elements of blogging and IM. The key for Google, however (suggests Google Operating System), is Jaiku's ability to identify the location of its users when they post (by triangulating with the nearest cell towers).

So when you get your gphone next year, look for messages directing you to nearby restaurants and other attractions wherever you happen to be. Now that's ambient findability...

if you aren't fed up yet

I personally am going to unsubscribe from at least 3 of 4 of my current feeds when I get out of school, keeping only the "really important ones." I have whined since the inception of this blog about too much information. However, if you just can't get enough of that RSS goodness, try FeedCrier, which sends your feeds right to the IM client of your choice. Find a great website with no feeds? Page2RSS monitors any URL for changes and sends the updates to your feed reader. Count me out for now, but I did bookmark them.

create a custom browser plugin for your library

Over 220 public and academic libraries have already used Libx to create a custom Firefox plugin that users can install to give them direct access to catalogs and any number of web resources. Building a plugin for my library system would have been a great project for my class in Web-based Information Services, if I had learned about this a couple of months ago.

i'm a sucker for smoothness, ok

Try these three impressive new web services. What do they have in common? Super-smooth Flash-based applications. Yeah, I know, Flash isn't exactly open source, but it looks great!

NPR Music - The site has something for everyone. Click "add to playlist" to activate the fast loading player.

Buzzword - Virtual Ubiquity's online word processor recently acquired by Adobe. Head and shoulders above any other web-based word processor I have tried.

SearchMash - Google's next user interface? Displays large thumbnail of results for web pages, play videos right from video results page.

and some people think technology is making them go away

Fiction has made its first appearance on my reading list in a great while, one of the best signs that I am almost finished with school. Yes, I know I still have two classes to pass before it is official, but things are clearly winding down, and I feel I can read for fun again. This is not to say I don't read non-fiction for fun, I do! But I could always rationalize a little extra-curricular reading if it was "educational."

Wouldn't an online book club for librarians be a great idea? Or how about a social network for book lovers? I know: A web 2.0 readers advisory service!

I first noticed Library Intersections (the book club) on Blog Junction, but it appears that I missed it almost a month earlier on Tame the Web. goodreads and What Should I Read Next via Lifehacker.