I overlayed significant events of the Watergate scandal to the Gallop national approval ratings with JQuery and a plug-in called ToolTip.  Check it out.
http://jimenglandweb.com/projects/impeachment/nixon.html

There is also a page for President Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but the data did not show much of a story because public opinion did not rise or fall significantly.

It seems that Facebook profiles are becoming exploited in order to post spam on the walls and in the inboxes of their friends.

Obnoxious spam was a main reason why users left in droves from MySpace to Facebook. While I doubt this spam will significantly affect Facebook (where else would users turn to?), it does put a damper on all the advances Facebook has been making in the past year.

Introducing:

CorkShare will be a visual way to share your favorite web content online.  More details will be coming soon, but our poker hand will be close to the vest for the next couple of months.  Stay tuned.

So we are here in Columbus, and Startup Weekend has begun! For the next three days, we will be working at TechColumbus literally starting a company from the ground up. We pitched an idea for CorkShare, an online cork board and virtual space for sharing media and info with your friends. After two rounds of voting, CorkShare had enough support to squeeze into the development phase. This is what we are thinking:

A user has a web page that serves as their cork board. The creator can post anything from links, to videos, to photos, to notes, and these objects get pinned up onto the board.

The key thing that makes this special is the ability to share your board with your friends or colleagues. Not only can they view it, but if you allow them, they can change what is on the board as well! That means that you can create a community board for your circle of friends or your circle of co-workers, and they can post up the stuff they like and take down the stuff they don’t.

Eventually, we’d like there to be widgets that you can pin up on your board. They could be photo album viewers, RSS feeds, twitter updates, weather, etc. CorkShare is essentially a visual, online dashboard that you and your friends can see, edit, and experience together.

We are super excited about this, and are finding many more possibilities as we delve into the development. Stay tuned for updates all weekend long!

Without being logged in, Last.fm gives us a pretty unappealing introduction page:

The idea here isn’t bad, and I like how it demonstrates the different parts to Last.fm and how many people are doing them. It just has a very disjointed design and doesn’t showcase the users and social networking aspects of the site well enough. The home page could also confuse new users to the site. What exactly is Last.fm? How do I use its features?

When you actually log into Last.fm, however, my opinion completely changes.

Boom! Everything you would ever want to do is included right there on the page, and Last.fm displays any messages, friend requests, and recommendations you have received. The only thing I would change would be to make it easier to get to your public profile; the link seems to get lost a bit on the right sidebar. Overall, though, a solid job.

Now then, how about that profile? The new profile looks great, with a lot of small graphical touches that really bring the page together. Check out my full profile to see the overall look. My favorite addition is the “User’s Library” section that shows the top eight artists alongside their image. Very classy.

And yes, I know, I do have great taste in music, thanks for noticing.

Besides a visual overhaul, the Last.fm team also added some new features to their system that improves the functionality of archiving songs you’ve listened to (scrobbling). To begin with, all scrobbled songs are instantly updated on your profile; no more waiting until Sunday night to see your top artists for the week. Additionally, a feature has been included that lets you add songs into a personal library and listen to them at any time. iPod syncing, instant recommendations, and a soon-to-be-added recent activity list round out the new features.

Overall, I would say that the Last.fm redesign is a success. I just wish that they had included more ways to find new friends and interact with other users on the site, and they really need to fix up that home page. But as far as Web 2.0 music sites go, Last.fm is still my favorite.

As an entry into the Weatherbug API Contest, I have built a MLB Gametime Weather Forecast web page and widget. This small app displays the game information and start time weather forecast for all MLB games.

I have also submitted a modified version on Widgetbox which includes a small widget for all the MLB teams, not just the user’s favorite team.

Entering into an API contest is a great exercise, and I would highly recommend it. In fact, I might be entering Presdo’s API contest in the near future.

Android works not by creating a singular “iPhone killer”, but by allowing the market to have access to an excellent open-source OS that will run on all kinds of cell phones. Companies can then write programs to take advantage of the unique features of an internet-connected smart phone, such as GPS social-networking app Commandro.

Android cuts into the current walled garden cell phone model, where the wireless companies try to keep you locked in based on their own unique features. They limit what applications can run on their networks, and force customers into buying crappy two minute videos and ringtones on their network’s proprietary systems.

The cell phone companies will have to change this model, though, because customers are beginning to get fed up. Expensive plans, obnoxious customer service, and cumbersome features plague the cell phone market. The industry has one of the lowest customer satisfaction rates and is one of the most complained-about industries according to the Better Business Bureau.

Customers want to be able to read web pages, check email, watch video clips, and listen to music, but they don’t want to have to go through Verizon’s or AT&T’s watered-down access points. Sure, they will put up with these inferior versions for a while as a means to an end, but once an open-access alternative is available, the customers will flock towards it. The smaller wireless providers, such as T-Mobile and Sprint, are already moving in this direction. Verizon and AT&T need to see the benefits to Android before it is too late.

If the cell phone market should be opened up as I am suggesting, how should the wireless companies compete? By what they advertise: their networks. This is referred to as dumb pipe, where the operator’s network does not add value beyond bandwidth and network speed. However, I believe that this is an opportunity, for a wireless provider could worry about the two most important features to the customer - wireless network and physical handset - and let the market worry about the rest.

There is plenty room for differentiation in terms of creating a great cell phone design and coupling it with greater access reliability. And even with Android, the companies could still design their own applications for downloading content. These apps would even improve, because they would actually have to compete with the open market. In addition, the wireless providers could strike deals with Google to receive percentages of Google’s advertising dollars for allowing Android onto their networks.

Android is poised to shake up the cell phone market in a very positive way for the consumer. We shall see if Verizon or AT&T jump on board before it becomes too late.

For his blog, Mike wanted to have a widget that displayed the standings of the Cleveland Indians as well as their opponents in the Central Division. Naturally, I assumed that this information would be readily available on MLB.com as an RSS feed that I could then quickly integrate into a widget. After a thorough search, however, I found that an RSS feed would be unavailable. This wasn’t that surprising considering the fact that Major League Baseball thinks that they own its player’s statistics and are very strict about their information.

In order to get the standings, I used Snoopy to grab a daily copy of ESPN.com’s MLB standings page, scrape out the information I wanted, place the information into a JavaScript file, and embed the widget onto BlogSpot. You can see the results on Tribe Opinion as well as on the right sidebar of my blog.

“Shoot the Runner” by Kasabian. The coolest music video I’ve seen in a while.

MIMvista, a biomedical imaging company from Cleveland Ohio, just demonstrated their iPhone Application at WWDC 2008. Their application is a touch screen-enabled version of their 3D modeling software, combining X-ray, MRI, and other medical images into a complete view of the patient.

With an obscure company from Cleveland demonstrating a new technology at WWDC, MIMvista’s web page naturally was hammered with traffic and is currently displaying the following:

Due to the high level of traffic we are currently receiving, our normal website is temporarily unavailable.

Still, it is pretty cool to see Cleveland be represented to a large audience and demonstrate the area’s advancement in biomedical technologies.