Media Blog

When the Winter Olympics roll into Vancouver early next year, you’ll be able to chat and share videos with all of your Facebook friends more easily than ever.

NBC Universal has announced it will launch the Facebook Connect sign-on technology across several of its TV websites within the next few months. NBC.com is the first to implement Facebook Connect, starting Wednesday. NBCSports.com, Syfy.com and Oxygen.com, among others, will come next. NBCOlympics.com will be Facebook-enabled in time for February’s opening ceremonies.

The emphasis is on video content, NBC Universal says in a press statement. The company wants to enable Facebook users to post highlight clips from “Saturday Night Live,” “30 Rock” and other shows that already have heavy viral mojo.

Facebook Connect is the social networking company’s technology for logging in to third party sites using one’s Facebook login and password. Once you log in to a site using Facebook Connect, any comments or media you share on that site will also appear in your Facebook stream. It’s a win for Facebook users, because it makes engaging with a new site easy (you don’t have to create yet another user profile just to leave a comment) and it helps you find your friends on the new site. The third-party sites get free links back to their content from within Facebook, and it also gets a trusted commenter — when you login with Facebook Connect, the website knows you are who you say you are, and can even pull your name, profile photo to put next to your posts.

It’s the same sort of functionality promised by OpenID and OAuth, the two leading open-source technologies for signing in to third-party sites. Facebook Connect is proprietary and requires a separate implementation. However, Facebook is also supporting OpenID for logins, so you can log in to the social network using an OpenID from Google, MySpace or wherever.

See also:

• Facebook Announces Support for OpenID Logins
• Facebook Throws its Weight Behind OpenID
• Facebook Connect Is Now Generally Available. Let the Identity Wars Begin

When the Winter Olympics roll into Vancouver early next year, you’ll be able to chat and share videos with all of your Facebook friends more easily than ever.

NBC Universal has announced it will launch the Facebook Connect sign-on technology across several of its TV websites within the next few months. NBC.com is the first to implement Facebook Connect, starting Wednesday. NBCSports.com, Syfy.com and Oxygen.com, among others, will come next. NBCOlympics.com will be Facebook-enabled in time for February’s opening ceremonies.

The emphasis is on video content, NBC Universal says in a press statement. The company wants to enable Facebook users to post highlight clips from “Saturday Night Live,” “30 Rock” and other shows that already have heavy viral mojo.

Facebook Connect is the social networking company’s technology for logging in to third party sites using one’s Facebook login and password. Once you log in to a site using Facebook Connect, any comments or media you share on that site will also appear in your Facebook stream. It’s a win for Facebook users, because it makes engaging with a new site easy (you don’t have to create yet another user profile just to leave a comment) and it helps you find your friends on the new site. The third-party sites get free links back to their content from within Facebook, and it also gets a trusted commenter — when you login with Facebook Connect, the website knows you are who you say you are, and can even pull your name, profile photo to put next to your posts.

It’s the same sort of functionality promised by OpenID and OAuth, the two leading open-source technologies for signing in to third-party sites. Facebook Connect is proprietary and requires a separate implementation. However, Facebook is also supporting OpenID for logins, so you can log in to the social network using an OpenID from Google, MySpace or wherever.

See also:

• Facebook Announces Support for OpenID Logins
• Facebook Throws its Weight Behind OpenID
• Facebook Connect Is Now Generally Available. Let the Identity Wars Begin

Which web development framework is de rigueur for today’s hottest startups?

If you posed that question to the audience at Hacker News, a subsidiary of the prolific venture capital firm Y Combinator, the answer would be Django by a wide margin.

The poll is very informal, so we wouldn’t suggest putting too much stock in the results. But right now, Django is the top choice with 133 respondents saying they’ve chosen the Python-based framework for their projects.

While Django might top this particular set of numbers, what’s far more revealing is the wide variety of frameworks and tools being used to build today’s web. Long gone are the days when everything seemed to be “ASP or the high road.”

After Django, Ruby on Rails had 83 adherents and PHP (not a framework, but never mind that) comes next with 75. It’s worth noting that in PHP’s case several people cite the Cake framework, but most seem to rolling their own custom solutions.

Perhaps the most interesting responses though are in the “Other” category, which accounts for 56 people calling out a wide variety of frameworks and tools. In the Other column is everything from Catalyst (a Perl-based framework) to custom Erlang backends, as well as some old favorites like Pylons, Cherrypy, ASP .NET and others.

We love Django, but what we really like is a wide variety of options. Today’s web developers have a huge array of choices at their disposal. Whether you want to use a popular framework or roll your own in the language of your choice, there’s something out there to fit just about every project.

See Also:

• Cool Tutorial: Django in the Real World
• Where Do You Stand In The Framework Holy War?
• Get Started with Web Frameworks

Which web development framework is de rigueur for today’s hottest startups?

If you posed that question to the audience at Hacker News, a subsidiary of the prolific venture capital firm Y Combinator, the answer would be Django by a wide margin.

The poll is very informal, so we wouldn’t suggest putting too much stock in the results. But right now, Django is the top choice with 133 respondents saying they’ve chosen the Python-based framework for their projects.

While Django might top this particular set of numbers, what’s far more revealing is the wide variety of frameworks and tools being used to build today’s web. Long gone are the days when everything seemed to be “ASP or the high road.”

After Django, Ruby on Rails had 83 adherents and PHP (not a framework, but never mind that) comes next with 75. It’s worth noting that in PHP’s case several people cite the Cake framework, but most seem to rolling their own custom solutions.

Perhaps the most interesting responses though are in the “Other” category, which accounts for 56 people calling out a wide variety of frameworks and tools. In the Other column is everything from Catalyst (a Perl-based framework) to custom Erlang backends, as well as some old favorites like Pylons, Cherrypy, ASP .NET and others.

We love Django, but what we really like is a wide variety of options. Today’s web developers have a huge array of choices at their disposal. Whether you want to use a popular framework or roll your own in the language of your choice, there’s something out there to fit just about every project.

See Also:

• Cool Tutorial: Django in the Real World
• Where Do You Stand In The Framework Holy War?
• Get Started with Web Frameworks

One of Firefox’s main selling points is its add-on infrastructure, which lets people customize their browsers and add extra features. The generally accepted logic is that “advanced” users can trick out their browser with all sort of add-ons while “average” users aren’t overburdened with (for them) useless feature bloat.

But just how many of these “advanced” users are there? That’s a question Mozilla has been trying to answer for some time. And thanks to a new set of statistics, the company says it now knows the answer.

One third of all Firefox users have installed at least one add-on.

That’s considerably more than we would have predicted. And, bear in mind that number doesn’t take into account multiple computers residing behind a single IP address. If you take into account homes with more than one computer, the number jumps to over half of all users.

As Mozilla notes in its post on the Add-on blog, these numbers also come only from active, daily users of Firefox, meaning that more casual users — say, developers who rely on Firefox add-ons like Web Developer or Firebug for testing their sites, but do their daily web browsing in another browser — aren’t included.

It would be interesting to know how the users who’ve installed add-ons get them — recommendations from friends, browsing the Mozilla Add-ons website, using the new “Collections” feature or some other source — but sadly that isn’t part of the data.

Still, there is one thing these numbers make clear: add-ons are popular and more users than you might expect are taking advantage of them to customize their browser how they see fit.

See Also:

• Finding the Best Firefox Add-ons Gets Easier With New ‘Collections’
• How to Supercharge Firefox Without Add-ons
• Google Gears Returns to Firefox
• Slim Firefox’s Memory Use By Disabling Problematic Add-ons

One of Firefox’s main selling points is its add-on infrastructure, which lets people customize their browsers and add extra features. The generally accepted logic is that “advanced” users can trick out their browser with all sort of add-ons while “average” users aren’t overburdened with (for them) useless feature bloat.

But just how many of these “advanced” users are there? That’s a question Mozilla has been trying to answer for some time. And thanks to a new set of statistics, the company says it now knows the answer.

One third of all Firefox users have installed at least one add-on.

That’s considerably more than we would have predicted. And, bear in mind that number doesn’t take into account multiple computers residing behind a single IP address. If you take into account homes with more than one computer, the number jumps to over half of all users.

As Mozilla notes in its post on the Add-on blog, these numbers also come only from active, daily users of Firefox, meaning that more casual users — say, developers who rely on Firefox add-ons like Web Developer or Firebug for testing their sites, but do their daily web browsing in another browser — aren’t included.

It would be interesting to know how the users who’ve installed add-ons get them — recommendations from friends, browsing the Mozilla Add-ons website, using the new “Collections” feature or some other source — but sadly that isn’t part of the data.

Still, there is one thing these numbers make clear: add-ons are popular and more users than you might expect are taking advantage of them to customize their browser how they see fit.

See Also:

• Finding the Best Firefox Add-ons Gets Easier With New ‘Collections’
• How to Supercharge Firefox Without Add-ons
• Google Gears Returns to Firefox
• Slim Firefox’s Memory Use By Disabling Problematic Add-ons

Google has released a test version of its main search engine that the company claims is faster and more accurate than its current search page.

Unlike some previous experiments and changes that tweaked the user interface for Google Search, this release is focused on the backend, with changes that are designed to improve results. According to a post on Google’s Webmaster Central blog, the charges are part of a larger effort to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

With Microsoft riding a new wave of popularity in the search world, thanks to the popularity of its new Bing search engine and the company’s coming collaboration with Yahoo, Google is clearly feeling some pressure to improve its own search offerings. Not to mention the growing focus on real-time search, fueled by the popularity of Twitter and Facebook, both of whom recently rolled out new search features emphasizing the visibility and accuracy of real-time results on their services — Facebook on Monday and Twitter last month.

You can play with a sandboxed version of the new search engine — dubbed “caffeine” — at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ (there’s also a Firefox search plugin available). The results, while similar, are also clearly different, and, in our testing, considerably improved over the current incarnation of Google Search.

For example, a search for “Webmonkey” yields a slightly different set of results, with our Twitter account one spot higher and several more suspicious, spam-like sites gone altogether.

Indeed, killing spam results seems to be one of the strong points of the new search infrastructure, with some searches — like for example, “search engine optimization” — offering quite different and, in some cases, far fewer results.

Of course the new, presumably smarter, backend means that it could be time to rewrite the SEO rules slightly. Thus far Google hasn’t altered its suggestions for web developers who want to optimize their search, but clearly the differences between new and old will mean some tweaks in way you optimize your sites.

But it’s still a bit early to start worrying about. For now, Caffeine is still very experimental and, according to the Google’s blog post, incomplete.

Google is currently looking for feedback from web developers. There’s a “Dissatisfied? Help us improve” link at the bottom of the new page which allows you to send the engineering team your thoughts on the differences between the new and old infrastructure (be sure to use the word Caffeine somewhere in the body of your message).

See Also:

• Customize Your Search Results Using Google’s New ‘SearchWiki’
• Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ Search Engine Debuts, But It’s No Google
• Google Experimental Search Adds Personalized Page Ranking
• Google Makes It Easier to Search for ‘Me’

Google has released a test version of its main search engine that the company claims is faster and more accurate than its current search page.

Unlike some previous experiments and changes that tweaked the user interface for Google Search, this release is focused on the backend, with changes that are designed to improve results. According to a post on Google’s Webmaster Central blog, the charges are part of a larger effort to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

With Microsoft riding a new wave of popularity in the search world, thanks to the popularity of its new Bing search engine and the company’s coming collaboration with Yahoo, Google is clearly feeling some pressure to improve its own search offerings. Not to mention the growing focus on real-time search, fueled by the popularity of Twitter and Facebook, both of whom recently rolled out new search features emphasizing the visibility and accuracy of real-time results on their services — Facebook on Monday and Twitter last month.

You can play with a sandboxed version of the new search engine — dubbed “caffeine” — at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ (there’s also a Firefox search plugin available). The results, while similar, are also clearly different, and, in our testing, considerably improved over the current incarnation of Google Search.

For example, a search for “Webmonkey” yields a slightly different set of results, with our Twitter account one spot higher and several more suspicious, spam-like sites gone altogether.

Indeed, killing spam results seems to be one of the strong points of the new search infrastructure, with some searches — like for example, “search engine optimization” — offering quite different and, in some cases, far fewer results.

Of course the new, presumably smarter, backend means that it could be time to rewrite the SEO rules slightly. Thus far Google hasn’t altered its suggestions for web developers who want to optimize their search, but clearly the differences between new and old will mean some tweaks in way you optimize your sites.

But it’s still a bit early to start worrying about. For now, Caffeine is still very experimental and, according to the Google’s blog post, incomplete.

Google is currently looking for feedback from web developers. There’s a “Dissatisfied? Help us improve” link at the bottom of the new page which allows you to send the engineering team your thoughts on the differences between the new and old infrastructure (be sure to use the word Caffeine somewhere in the body of your message).

See Also:

• Customize Your Search Results Using Google’s New ‘SearchWiki’
• Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ Search Engine Debuts, But It’s No Google
• Google Experimental Search Adds Personalized Page Ranking
• Google Makes It Easier to Search for ‘Me’