Automation Adventures

I just got my invite to join in the alpha preview of Digg version 4. The new Digg is a huge improvement over the old version, in that you can now concentrate on what your friends digg, instead of what everybody in the world diggs. This is reflected in the new home page, which focuses much more on the social aspect of Digg.

The center of the page is taken up by the stories being dugg by your friends. The right side bar is showing the top stories as dugg by your friends. And your friends can also be people you have interest in or whose opinion you respect (think of for example the old Screen Savers cast – Leo LaPorte, Patrick Norton, Martin Sargent, and oh yes, Kevin Rose…).

It looks great, and hopefully I’m not breaking any non-disclosure agreements by posting about it. If you want to sign up for the new Digg, head over to new.digg.com and put your name on the list.

Tags: alpha, digg, links, social, v4

I came across this video the other day, and in the middle part it has some interesting concepts about Home Automation. For example, if it was freezing overnight, the alarm clock would automatically go off 5 minutes earlier to give you time to scrape off the car.

Tags: alarm, automation, home, ibm, intelligence, routine

I just entered a search query for Notepad++ in Google Chrome, and the results page looked slightly different from what I’m used to:

Most notably, the left hand side is much cleaner. Clicking on the drop-down below “Everything” will show you the different categories (Images, Videos, etc.). The Search tools option lets you choose between “Any Time” and “Last 3 months”, and expanding it will show you a new list of options:

• Limit to a time period
• Social graph results
• Visited or not
• Display of results
• Standard results

I’m still trying to get used to it, but it looks like the result page is in line with Google’s minimalistic philosophy.

Tags: google, search

Image via Wikipedia

An early release of the Scribefire extension for Chrome is now available here on Google Code. It’s pretty basic at this point, but the version number is listed as 0.1, indicating that improvements are on the way!

Also, the extension is labeled as Alpha, so it’s very early day. BTW, this post is published from the extension.

Tags: alpha, chrome, extension, google, scribefire

Today is the official release of Firefox 3.6, at 9:30AM Pacific Time (12:30PM Eastern). There are some early bird links available around the web, amongst which the Kabatology blog.

If you’d rather wait for the official release, don’t just twiddle your thumbs: watch this 2 minute video about the new features in 3.6:

Tags: browser, firefox, web