WAX in the Wild: Flickr Export

Connected Flow makes a Flickr Export plug-in that allows you to export directly from your photo application to your Flickr account. This let's Flickr be the provider of photo sharing services, and allows you to access it directly from your photo management application. They build plugins for both iPhoto and Aperture.

The New Application Developers

The dirty secret of social networking website development so far - how do you actually get people on the site? In the past the path has been treacherous at best, consisting of a fair amount of traditional-style promotion and PR.

Now, major social networking sites such as FaceBook are presenting APIs. More than just surface integration, these APIs allow you to treat the social networking sites as platforms, meaning you can become a third-party application developer. Suddenly a lot of opportunity appears.

As is detailed here, anyone can write an application for Facebook that pulls information from a user's profile, including preferences, his network, friends etc. Users are, by default, encouraged to spread applications virally, and the better applications take advantage of the user's network.

Suddenly there is a viable alternative strategy to bootstrapping your own social network. You can simply build applications for Facebook, or other established social networks, and use their critical mass to hook into whatever you offer as a unique value. Of course the more of a purple cow you are, the more traction you'll gain.

Its amazing how full-circle this is. Suddenly web developers become like desktop application developers in the 80s and 90s, looking at their apps and deciding which platforms they want to target. Should we make a version for Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace? Well, which is our target market? Hm....

Stupid or Malicious?

We'd like to keep you informed via email about product updates, upgrades, special offers and pricing. We will not pass your details onto third parties. If you do not wish to be contacted via email, please ensure that the box is not checked.

Is it just a horrendous mutilation of the english language? (It could have just said "Contact me with product updates, upgrades and special offers"). Or an intentional manipulation by an unscrupulous marketer? Do you think I'll be pre-disposed to buy stuff from you after you've jerked me around on this, Logitech?

Spam Art

I can't imagine someone hasn't already run with this idea, but it strikes me that the random text that spammers put in their email to get around Beysian filters constitutes some pretty fine (simulated) stream of consciousness poetry. Check out this gem I received this morning (actual spam payload deleted):

With my foot the supple ball, for perhaps
The high whites spread over the buried earth.
Allowing me to let your picture form and wake
Of tree-dividing sky finally comes down to
Out of the road into a way across
X. The British Attack on the Arctic
II. List of Franklin Search Parties
will come, blighting our harbingers of spring,
Of the matter of snow here. Both of us have grasped
Palladio who beckons from the other shore,
That squareOh, 56 x 56
They move against, or through, or by, or toward.
The winged winds, captives of that age-old foe
to restaurants for Early Bird Specials.
Of observation lying on the ground
then takes a step back, to be safe as she reaches.
Empty streets I come upon by chance,
Pierced by the mist that fades away,
XI. Franklin's Last Voyage

Rhyme on, oh random word generator poet. I think it should be titled Early Bird Specials.

Update: Fixed formatting.

WAX in the Wild: Ebay Desktop

The new Ebay Desktop is built with Adobe Air and presumably communicates with Ebay via web services or some similar mechanism.