Blumer.com.ar

Some of them work with information you supply, letting you manipulate, track and share data, such as your schedule or your to-do list. Others, so-called mashups, draw data from different sites and reassemble it to make something new. They're all part of how the Web is evolving beyond just a bunch of point sources for information. Here are 11 examples that show what the new Web can do, from helping you organize your life to adding some personalized fun to it.

Personal assistants

GrandCentral

Ever wish you could exercise the same control over incoming phone calls as you do over e-mail? GrandCentral — now a Google operation — gives you a new phone number and forwards incoming calls to any other number or numbers you specify. More...

Live coverage of the Google App Engine launch event is here.

Google isn’t just talking about hosting applications in the cloud any more. Tonight at 9pm PT they’re launching Google App Engine (Update: The site is live), an ambitious new project that offers a full-stack, hosted, automatically scalable web application platform. It consists of Python application servers, BigTable database access (anticipated here and here) and GFS data store services.

At first blush this is a full on competitor to the suite of web services offered by Amazon, including S3 (storage), EC2 (virtual servers) and SimpleDB (database).

Unlike Amazon Web Services’ loosely coupled architecture, which consists of several essentially independent services that can optionally be tied together by developers, Google’s architecture is more unified but less flexible. For example, it is possible with Amazon to use their storage service S3 independently of any other services, while with Google using their BigTable service will require writing and deploying a Python script to their app servers, one that creates a web-accessible interface to BigTable.

What this all means: Google App Engine is designed for developers who want to run their entire application stack, soup to nuts, on Google resources. Amazon, by contrast, offers more of an a la carte offering with which developers can pick and choose what resources they want to use.

Google Product Manager Tom Stocky described the new service to me in an interview today. Developers simply upload their Python code to Google, launch the application, and can monitor usage and other metrics via a multi-platform desktop application.

More details from Google: More...

How do I contact the owner of a website? How popular is my site on Digg or Delicious? What other websites are hosted on my web server ? Is my competitor using WordPress or Drupal? xyz.com is loading fast, what is the name of their web hosting company ? Is my blog accessible from China or Japan ?

If you got questions like these in your mind, here are some of the most useful online tools to help you know each and every detail of any website on the planet.

Just-Ping.com - Just Ping help you know whether your website or blog is accessible from different cities of the world. Unlike other online ping services that run from one location, Just-Ping.com runs the ping command on your website from 26 different locations spread across the globe so you have a better idea about your site availability in different regions.

They even have a checkpoint in Shanghai so you can easily find out if some particular website is blocked in China or not. More...

Adobe today launched a basic version of Adobe Photoshop available for free online. Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. According to Yahoo! News, Adobe says providing Photoshop Express for free is part marketing and part a strategy to create up-sell opportunities. It hopes some customers will move from it to boxed software like its $99 Photoshop Elements or to a subscription-based version of Express that's in the works.

http://www.photoshop.com/express

Productivity

AbiWord (download)
Tired of expensive, slow, bloated word processors? Download this surprisingly powerful freebie, which includes sophisticated features such as mail merge and advanced layouts. The program handles a wide variety of document formats, including those of Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, OpenOffice.org, and other programs.More...

SOMEONE upset with the growing size of the popular "Nero" cd and dvd-burning application decided to take matters into his or her own hands, and released unofficial "Nero Lite" and "Nero Micro" versions.

I remember the time when Nero -which seemed to come bundled with almost every decent CD-writer at some point- was a small and efficient application. It basically "got the job done", with a solid engine and decent interface. In the last few years, however, the size of the beast grew considerably, with the latest build 7.7.5.1 -released last month- being a 190MB download that does not include help files and which in addition lists "1 GB hard disk space" for a full install among its requirements. What used to be a small CD and DVD burning application now is a huge suite composed of the original "Burning Rom" plus: "Nero Express", "Nero CoverDesigner", "Nero WaveEditor", "Nero Toolkit", "Nero Vision", "Nero Recode", "Nero PhotoSnap", "Nero BackItUp", "Nero ImageDrive" and a few others I'm probably leaving out.

The "Nero Micro" installer

More...

(PCWORLD.com) Web apps that transcend the Web. PCs that redefine what a PC can do. And oh yeah, a certain cell phone you may have heard of. We pick 25 breakthroughs that you can get your hands on right now.
Make no mistake, the Web is taking over. Applications are moving to browsers en masse, and technology to take Web apps offline promises to smooth the road ahead. And let's not forget breakthrough devices advancing the Web-anywhere world: Apple has redefined the phone, and One Laptop per Child's sub-$200 laptop is delivering Internet-style collaboration to kids in developing nations. But innovation isn't all on the Web; the PC is evolving as well. Apple has reenvisioned backup, HP has created the first useful touch-screen PC, hybrid hard drives boost speed and battery life, and ultraportables have become even more useful. Chosen from the hundreds of products we reviewed in 2007, here are 25 that will change the way you work, communicate, and play this year--and beyond.

More...

Perl is a dynamic scripting language widely used in everything from Linux system utilities to Web servers to full-blown graphical enterprise applications.
Just in time for Christmas, there's a new version of perl, the first in over five years. The first update since 2002 to the "practical extraction and report language," perl 5.10 adds both new language features and an improved perl interpreter, according to community site Perl Buzz.
Perl is a dynamic scripting language widely used in everything from Linux system utilities to Web servers to full-blown graphical enterprise applications.
During its 20-year history, it gained massive popularity by assimilating the syntax from many predecessors, making it really easy to use for anyone already versed in sed, awk, grep, csh, C/C++, Lisp, and so on.
Perl's syntactical flexibility sometimes makes perl scripts challenging to read, however, and languages like python with rigid syntax structure have arguably gained ground in recent times over perl, for applications that are developed collaboratively.
Additionally, scripting languages specially-made for use on the Web, like PHP and Ruby, have eroded some of perl's once formidable share of the dynamic Web server scripting scene.

Read the full story on LinuxDevices.com: First Release of Perl in Five Years Arrives 
 

Microsoft recently purchased a company called Jellyfish.com, based in Madison, Wisconsin.  Jellyfish has done some really innovative work in comparative shopping engines.

http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2007/10/01/microsoft-acquires-jellyfish-com.aspx