I love the service that Deep Quote are offering. You highlight some text in a page, and click a button and they generate a URL for you with the text highlighted, and with the start location of the page set right at where your quote text is. Check this link for an example highlighting “this text here” on this page. You can get it in various levels. There is their website where you can manually enter your text, and URL, there is the bookmarklet for which they make the following amusing comment:

And there is an extension which unfortunately doesn’t work in Flock at the moment but I have sent them an email to ask for this. But even without the extension it is useable with the bookmarklet. No word on how they make money out of this. Although they have got step one right, making a useful service.

Update: Email back from Ron of Deep Quote. He will work on the extension

And Again: Flock fans can get the extension here.

And we all move forth. With Flock.

It has just been released as a public beta. It has been kicking around as an alpha for a long while, but this is their first step towards making a disciplined and stable release. And I have downloaded and installed it and I am very impressed. Flickr has never been so accessible. And it adds (or in fact removes) a whole step of the del.icio.us posting model that I use to get things to the links log. This is definately something to check out, I am even blogging direct from Flock for this post.

Today Philipp Lenssen releases his first book, 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google.

For those who don’t know Philipp has been tracking Google for some years now as it has evolved into the huge global company it is now. He documents everything on the Google Blogoscoped blog and discussions continue in the forum. From this huge stock of information he has selected 55 fun things related to Google. Philipp is one of these people who does everything by hand. His blog is super popular, is it WordPress? No. His own build. His forum is super popular. Another own build. For this book he built a wiki too (one chapter is edited by the public I believe). There is no doubt it will be a brilliant read.

Buy from Lulu.com, or spread the word at Digg.com.

I just got invited into Otavo “the intention engine”. I read about it a while back on Mashable and then TechCrunch. I think that Pete Cashmore’s analysis was pretty spot on. It is a very interesting product. It is easy to think that it is another del.icio.us social bookmarking clone. But it is not. Not at all. Otavo wants to arrange websites in terms of tasks (or “quests”) that people want to achieve. So at the moment it is pretty useless. There are not enough people circulating its walls but if it grows into a full fledged database complete with useful links for most people’s intentions then I cant think of a better way to search. I can use the research of someone else and someone else can use mine. And the beauty is the way it is organised in these “quest” things so every link is precisely what you need.

Just for one example if it becomes popular enough this could be the ultimate resource in technical help. Just search for the error that you are having and find out how other people got their errors resolved. Or on another extreme it would be the ultimate restaurant review. Just search for restaurants in wherever and find where other people went. Anyway I am going to start using it for a few things and I will let you know how successful it is at fulfilling my quests.

… and I think that is all I need to say.

I recently added four further levels top bring the total up on the web riddle to eight. But much more significantly come the end of Google’s Da Vinci Quest the puzzle hungry people over at Google Blogosocoped have started playing the riddle. This is providing me with a lot of feedback about the riddle (just by some of the URLs being tried, emails I am receiving, comments etc) and increasing the riddle’s exposure greatly.

In terms of progress many of the testers were worried that the whole thing was a little too hard. And perhaps it is. But I think it is good that way. The more challenging the more rewarding. Most people do not get past level 1. But many people show no signs of stopping trying. Guessing is not required, but it sometimes is a fun way to let your agression out. The image shows what they are all up against.

Most notably Tony Ruscoe (blog) has managed to complete all eight of the levels. This is absolutely exceptional. The testers (who were supplied with much more guidance) took longer than this. Hats of to him, seriously. He may help write some later levels. In the meantime Ribrob is doing levels 9 to 12, and I am writing he following set (which is almost done).

Happy Riddling!

I have written a bit about web riddles before. They typically consist of a single page. The aim is simple. Get to the next page. And that is it, you use clues that you pick up from around the page to determine the URL of the next page. There are quite a few of these things out there already. Some with 100 and more levels.

I have had great fun playing them, and thought it might be even more fun to make one. The Web Riddle is the result of my effort. It is not 100 levels long. It is new for heavens sake! At the moment there are just four levels. However they are all fairly tough. At the end of the fourth level there is a stop off, with a list of people who made it. If you get there make sure you leave your name so we can see who are the best riddlers.

So far I have tested the riddle on a few friends. None of them made it through completely unaided. So there’s a challenge — you could be the first. As we are still in the early stages if you are interested in designing levels in the future then do get in touch. Also if you think a particular level is too hard, is plain rubbish, or has misleading clues then the same applies. Let me know and I’ll get it changed.

There are a few more levels already in the planning stages so there will be more soon but the main development is expected over the summer. I hope you enjoy The Web Riddle.

There is a lot of buzz about online calendars right now. TechCrunch can’t review them quick enough. I have briefly played with a few of them. The best in my opinion is 30 Boxes. It is so smooth. It is so clever. It is so quick. It is so nice to look at. It is so custom. It is so broad. And it is just so good. Google are just about to enter into this space… There is much talk about this all over the blogosphere. Will it be integrated with Gmail? Will it be good? It better bloody be. It will have to be very good to compete with 30 Boxes.

Mysteriously addictive. This is one of many web riddles. Enjoy.

Track my progress on ma.gnolia, at the time of writing Level 8 is bugging me. Live updates in the sidebar of course.

Need I say more! The best site for neat, well-made games with a lovable character involved in each game is YetiSports.org. Hands down. Every time. I thought it on March 22nd 2005, and I thought it in a review in late August 2005. It is simply the best. My favourite game is the 8th in the series, “The World Tour”. It is called Jungle Swing and has the yeti swinging from the trees in attempt to reach the top of the jungle canopy. Where are the penguins in this adventure? Only hours of practice will answer that.

Apart from YetiSports there is the classic Slime Games which (when complemented with YetiSports) show quite clearly that good design is simply not required for ejoyable gameplay. Slime Games are proud of their crude nature. And great fun. Although now their are loads of variations (almost 100 I think), the classic game is One Slime with its 5 levels for 1 player against computer controlled Slimes. I simplu can’t make it past level 4.

On a completely different note. A very different style of game is Fastr. As the name might give away this is a Flickr game. In it you are asked to guess the common tag for a series of photos pulled from Flickr against other people online (and the clock). It is quite fun until the same tags keep coming round. New rounds of the game run every five minutes.