Daily Bits

Web 2.0

Foursquare is on a Roll! To Launch Free Analytics Tool

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Foursquare is really gearing up to go big time in the next couple of months perhaps. The location-based social network is all over the news the past few days.  Well, what can you expect? It’s closest rival, Gowalla is also up on its feet with new features and new platforms lately.

So, for Foursquare’s latest arsenal NYT’s Bits Blog is reporting that Foursquare is about to roll out a free analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks. This tool will allows business establishment owners to get a grasp of information about people who are visiting their business establishments. It will also help store owners in knowing certain demographics about their reglar customers as well as learn how they could make new customers become regular ones.

In addition, the new Foursquare tool will also allow business owners gather a range of real-time data about usage, the number of Foursquare users who have  “checked in”, when these people arrived, male-to-female customer ratio as well as data about the times of day where there were more visitors in their establishments.  If you’re running a business establishment, this information will be very useful for decision making.

Finally, the new feature will also include a staff page for each establishments wherein employees would be able to “socialize” with customers.

Of course, to protect user privacy, such feature will be in an opt-in, opt-out feature.

Delicious is Alive, Goes to Chrome as an Extension

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Delicious, the social bookmarking site  has been pretty quiet for the past couple of months.  While the site is still alive and kicking nothing much has been heard from it for a long time now. No news, no updates and no new features, until now. And guess what’s keeping the Delicious folks busy? A Delicious Extension that sits right on your Google Chrome’s toolbar.

Yes folks, you read it right, Delicious a Yahoo property just got a new iteration as a Chrome extension.  Don’t get me wrong here, there’s nothing utterly incorrect about this. It’s just don’t I don’ t really expect Delicious to make its presence felt anew by way of Google Chrome extension.

Anyway, what does this early beta of  Delicious Chrome Extension has to offer? Pretty much actually. It lets you sync your Delicious bookmarks, get all your bookmarks right on the Chrome Omnibar,  bookmark a current page in just a click of the Delicious button and search your bookmarks right on the current Chrome tab you are viewing.

The Delicious Chrome Extension works pretty much the same way as other Chrome Extensions. But to guide you in using it properly, the Delicious team has prepared this guided tour.

And to install the Delicious Chrome Extension, just click this link. After installing you just need to register your Delicious account and you’re all set to go.

Google Turns Email Notifications for Wave

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I know for a fact that Google Buzz and Google Wave are two different services. But we can’t discount the fact that their functions are almost similar.  So let me ask you this question, since Google Buzz was released, are you still using Google Wave? If yes, then you’d be glad to know that Google has just activated email notification for Google Wave.

Google Wave’s notification works just like all the other Google notification systems – Buzz, Email Alerts for specific search results and others. It sends you email alerts whenever a wave that you are participating in gets an update or whenever a new Wave has been created by your Google Wave contacts. The notification contains a short summary of text and links that will lead you straight to the updated waves. Once you’ve checked out a wave, Google will stop sending the notifications related to that wave.

The feature also lets you select the frequency of email updates that will be sent to you. It could be as often as “immediately,” and you can select which of your friends you will like to receive notifications from, whenever they create a new wave or update an existing one.

Now, should you decide to use this feature, expect to encounter the following known issues so far, which Google is currently resolving. But don’t let this stop you from trying out the new Google Wave notification feature.

  • Sometimes the email snippet does not show all participants on the wave
  • Under certain conditions you may get an update about a wave even if you were the last person to change it
  • To change the notifications setting you have to go back to the menu where you turned it on. (The link at the bottom of the notification emails is not working yet.)

10.5 Million Blogs Go Real-Time with Pubsubhubbub

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All WordPress.com hosted blogs just beaten others in becoming a really real-time online content property. Thanks to Pubsubhubbub or PuSh as what some people have shortened it to, each and every posts you published on your WordPress.com blog will now be pushed automatically, in real time to the web. This means, real-time feed push to RSS aggregators such as Google Reader, Bloglines, Friendfeed, Netvibes and others.

Basically, what PuSH does is to let your feed aggregators  to register automatically to receive updates from your blogs each time you publish new posts. These updates are sent out within a second or two after you publish a content. Previously, the process is a bit tedious since your blog is periodically being asked by these aggregators if there are any updates before notifying those who are using the service.

The service was automatically activated  for all WordPress.com blogs, so there’s nothing that you need to do to get it going. If you’re blog is not hosted on WordPress.com, you can still have this feature by installing a new plugin which you can download from  here.

And if you want some more information about PubSubHubBub, you can may want to check out project site or the Google groups. If you don’t have any idea what PubSubHubbub is – TheNextWeb describes it as:

An open protocol for distributed Publish/subscribe communication on the internet. The main purpose is to provide near-instant notifications of change updates, which would improve on the typical situation where a client periodically polls the feed server at some arbitrary interval.

Sugarsync Now Lets You Upload Docs as Email Attachments

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Isn’t it funny that even up to now, despite the many advances in cloud computing, file sharing and uploading which can be accessible on various platforms, many people still prefer to share files through email? So to remedy this and offer its customers a convenient way of sharing files, SugarSync, a file syncing solution is offering a subscription service which would only cost you $4.99 a month.

The new SugarSync feature will let you email files to your friends and business contacts easily from any computer terminal and other mobile devices such as your smartphones.  After emailing the file attachment, SugarSync syncs them with your other SugarSync interface.

The new service is being offered as an opt-in feature which will allow you to disable and enable it anytime you want to. Upon signing up for the service, SugarSync will provide you with an email address where you can send your files. This email address are spam-free since it is composed of randomly generated numbers.

If you want to try the feature, you need to enable it from your SugarSync account settings. Once you’ve enabled the feature, the unique email address will be given to you. And to make it easier for you to use that email address, you can instruct SugarSync to send you an email containing the email address so that you can easily add it to your email contacts.

Once you’ve uploaded files, these will be stored in your Magic Briefcase, specifically in a folder labelled “Uploaded by email.”  This folder will be automatically synced to your SugarSync account so that you can access it from anywhere.

eBay Seeks Your Help to Make its Services Better via its Garden of New Features

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eBay has planted some seeds on its new garden to hoping to reap some valuable fruits later on, so to speak.  I’m talking about Garden by eBay which was just announced and is describe as an area on eBay that will allow eBay members to test new features and offer input on suggested improvements and changes on the eBay site.  Garden by eBay hopes to gather user inputs on initial concepts or seeds that it hopes to fully grow into a full product or feature. All for the glory of finding the best deals online, folks!

Alright, in other words, it’s Gmail Labs for eBay. But since, Labs is already an overused term, eBay decided to use Garden instead. Hence putting some environmental relevance to the project.

So, what does Garden by eBay actually offers? Or what is really, officially?  Garden by eBay is a new experimental space where eBay users can test, interact with, and offer input on existing or new ideas for eBay.com’s products and features. Member inputs will provided directly to the eBay team in-charge of new, proposed or existing eBay features. Hence, bringing sellers and buyers directly into the innovation process and letting eBay to introduce, test and roll out new features faster.

To kick off this project, there are currently two available seeds in the Garden. First is the new “Streamlined Search” which is intended to make browsing and viewing search results on eBay easier and streamlined. It presents a cleaner view of eBay inventory and a more efficient way of browsing items. It also lets users compare auction and Buy it Now listings side-by-side, refine seaches and other useful information.

The other available feature for testing is Diamond Ring Designer which has been under testing for quite some time now but eBay wants to get some more feedback from eBay users.

To access Garden by eBay, click here.