Foursquare, a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones and Ipads, has temporarily ended a controversy about an app designed to stalk women. The New York-based company terminated access to its technology for the app – non-euphemistically called “Girls Around Me” – which allowed men to locate women around them and access their personal information via platforms like Facebook. Asked for an explanation, Foursquare told cultofmac.com: “We have a policy against aggregating information across venues using our API, to prevent situations like this where someone would present an inappropriate overview of a series of locations.”
Apr
04
Stalking App Controversy Ends
Feb
22
ePages – Easy Solutions for Your Online Business
Great news if you’re about to open your first online shop – or if your old provider is beginning to really annoy you: ePages. Sounds simple and simple it is. And yet sophisticated. And functional. And cheap. Yes, we could go on and on. Instead, come join us for a peek into the world of carefree online selling.
First, let it be said that ePages offers many options. In fact, its large portfolio includes solutions for everyone, from large-scale, global companies to the local one-man (or woman) show. More than 50,000 customers are already trusting ePages (how could we miss it for so long?). Today, we just want to focus on the base model that is available for just 10 Euros (about 13 USD) a month. It is, we believe, the perfect solution for every small business.
Feb
08
Xbox 720 – Next Generation Gaming Console to Use Windows 8?
The next generation gaming console from Microsoft has been lovingly dubbed “Xbox 720” by those eagerly awaiting it’s announcement but how does Xbox 8 sound? Having announced the features of the new Windows 8 Phone operating system such as greater internet connectivity control and the ability to connect to wireless networks in under a second, industry observes are now looking towards what the new operating system means for the next console.
Xbox Live, the network by which gamers already access digital content and manage their gaming statistics will become an integral part of Windows 8 according to an anonymous Microsoft source. Games, applications, movies, music, and television programmes will be available through the console and sync with Windows 8 for PC and the Windows 8 phone. Sony have yet to comment on the operating system for it’s next generation console the PS4. But it goes without saying that they will probably be looking towards the Microsoft model of sharing data across all of their platforms in one, single network.
Dec
12
IE10 Platform Preview
Exciting news for all web developers and mashup freaks: Microsoft just released its fourth overall preview of their Internet Explorer 10. Especially aimed at you, new features and better HTML5 functionalities improve possibilities for the creation of Web applications. However, there is one caveat: The new release only works on the Windows 8 preview release which Microsoft released in September.

Dec
02
Bibliogo – Mashup for Scientific Research
I recently came across this fine piece of programming after weeding through the IT blogosphere. And since activity on this site has all but stopped for a while, I thought it was high time to get back on track and once more let you know about some of the exciting stuff out there. Bibliogo is a journal article web app that will help you keep track of what is happening in your respective line of work. Bibliogo alerts you to the newest publications, it gives you access to them, it facilitates collaboration and sharing – in short: it makes the web a whole lot more efficient for you.
Photo: Jack Amick
Aug
17
Create Your Own Mashup
First, you should think about the subject that you want to address with your mashup. Lets say you plan on making a mashup with the best pizza places in town, something that you and your friends can share and pass on among everyone living in the community. The rule is to keep it simple in the beginning and to expand afterwards. Keeping it simple and focusing on the subject will help you figure out what APIs and tools to use. A good place to start looking for APIs is here.
Jul
29
Real Time 3D – Delivered to Your Screen

The World on Your Screen
Jul
22
Kodu – An Alternative for Game Developers
For those that used to work with Popfly, Microsofts Game Lab “Kodu” (speak: Code-ooh) might be an adequate replacement. For the longest time it was only available for XBox 360, but since 2010 a PC-version exists as well. Simple but fun games are quickly created and without source code or compilers its a simple way to program games – no programming knowledge required. The way it works is fairly straightforward: Per mouse click you pick and place objects in your “world” and assign them properties and behaviors. “Kodu” provides you with the graphical development environment and in several tutorials your first steps are adequately explained. Additionally, some games that have been developed with “Kudo” are included in the “Kodu Game Lab” package which can be downloaded at fuse.microsoft.com/page/kodu.aspx. Of course, the source code is never more than the stroke of a key away if you want to make changes directly in the code.

Jul
12
All About Mashups
Since Popfly was mainly a Mashup tool, we should devote some time to the concept before starting off: A mashup (a term borrowed from the musical blending of two or more songs) is essentially an online application that lends services from third party applications and uses these services for its own purposes. The benefits are apparent: if someone else has done the work, you don’t need to do it anymore, so you save time and money. Even advanced mashups might only take an hour to create if you are experienced. Mashups are a classical feature of the Web 2.0 world: The content comes from multiple sources, such as public interfaces or web feeds (like RSS or Atom), JavaScript may be included, screen scraping (extracting data from human-readable output originating elsewhere) a frequent technique. A popular source for data are eBay, Amazon, Google and Yahoo APIs.

