Aardvark Media’s Director of Technology, Vidar Hokstad brings to us possibly the first Google Wave Gadget Emulator ever. As Vidar states on his website he added a “tiny little bit of JavaScript to re-implement just barely enough of the gadget API to allow some of the demo gadgets to run side by side in two iFrames”.

You can run some of the Google Wave Sample Gadgets (Bidder, Button Counter and Fridge) live in a hosted version of the emulator if you want to play with it right away.

If you want to get a hold of the code and contribute to it, the Github repository is available at http://github.com/vidarh/wave-gadget-emulator/tree/master.

Thirty two years ago, Apple was a very different company and Steve Jobs was a very different entrepreneur. Young, inexperienced and with a big ego to boot (ok, maybe some things never change).

Thanks to the Computer History Museum and Apple, we are given an insight into those early days at Apple via two very unique documents; Apple’s first business plan and Apple’s first IPO plan.

The 30-page Preliminary Macintosh Business Plan, released internally within Apple Computer in 1982, describes the market position the Apple Macintosh could fill and the plans they envisaged for themselves.

The original Business Plan and the Preliminary Confidential Offering Memorandum were donated to the Museum’s collection by Apple’s First Employee Dan Kottke and by original Apple Investor and Former Chairman Mike Markkula, respectively.

Apple’s early strategy was to encourage businesses to move up market to the expensive Lisa and Apple III computers, costing between $3,000 and $5,000.

About 63 people were working on the Mac project in December 1981, and according to the plan Apple considered education to be its primary market:

“As Word Processors are replacing typewriters in the real world, students need to learn word processing, not just typing. MAC will help the student of the 80’s learn the tools of the 80’s.”

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We’ve covered online sharing startup Tarpipe before and they were one of the finalists in the Rising Sun Start-up Presentations at this year’s The Next Web conference. Now the company, which has turned cross-posting of web content into an artform via its powerful workflow-based approach, has launched a Bookmarklet tool for simple browser-based sharing to multiple web services.

Sitting in your browser’s Bookmarks Toolbar, the Bookmarklet allows you to easily share a link and any text you like from a website to a number of services including Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Tumblr, Delicious and Evernote. While the Tarpipe bookmarklet works well it does lag behind its competitors by some distance. It cross-posts links and text quickly and efficiently but it comes across as very much a work-in-progress.

The number of services supported is dwarfed by those of the competing Ping.fm Bookmarklet which offers a similar service but can cross-post to over forty services. As yet the Bookmarklet does not support the picture sharing which is a central part of the Tarpipe API.

As a stand-alone end-user product Tarpipe’s Bookmarklet needs work in order to match its rivals. This is a shame as it could be a great advertisement for the powerful API the startup has developed. The complex workflows that can be created for sending data between web services are impressive. Different elements of posts to services (their titles or the tags, for example) can be chained together with a patchbay-like approach to build powerful applications. Just look at this Beer Tasting one for example.

For now Tarpipe is definitely a company making products for developers and ‘tinkerers’. Most users will find Ping.fm’s solution simpler and easier to use.

UPDATE: The day after this post was published, Tarpipe launched the ability for their API to talk to Calais Yahoo Pipes Web Service.

There is a famous story about a meeting between Yahoo and Microsoft which took place when Yahoo was still a small start-up. Yahoo was growing at neck-breaking speed and David Filo and Jerry Yang were invited to Redmond to talk about working together.

The meeting turned into a disappointment when Steve Ballmer joined the conversation and gave his opinion on the future of search engines. According to Ballmer Search Engines were a temporary solution to a temporary problem. Ballmer claimed that “within a few years there will only be a handful of websites left. People will use their Favorites to navigate to those destination sites and nobody will need a Search engine except for a few students and professors.”

Looking back at how history unfolded you could say that Microsoft started missing the boat right there and then and has been struggling to get back to the front of the line ever since.

Amusing as it might sound Ballmer’s prediction might not be that insane after all. He might have been wrong then, is wrong now and might be wrong tomorrow but he might be right eventually.

Bing was launched, or perceived, as a potential Google killer. I don’t think any new search engine could kill Google. So what could?

To answer that question we first have to find out what Search actually is. What solution does Search offer and when do you need Search?

The question: When exactly do you need search?
The answer: When you don’t know where to find something

So what if you did actually know where to find everything?

There are billions of webpages and knowing where they all are is simply impossible. But what if Ballmer is right? What if one day we would simply stick to a few sites and spend all our time there?

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With less than a week until Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, rumours about the third generation iPhone are kicking into overdrive. This image compiles them all into one handy graphic, with a colour code for just how likely each rumour is.

More details and sources of the rumours can be found over at The Green Room.

An entirely separate site, Google, has managed to get a Dutch community news site successfully sued.

Klup.nl, a network of user-edited news portals, has been sued by a local BMW dealer, Zwartepoorte, because a Google search for “Zwartepoorte + bankrupt” returned a page description, or “snippet”, that supposedly gave the impression that the local BMW dealer has gone bankrupt.

What’s most surprising is that no-one at Klup.nl had ever even written a story about Zwartepoorte and bankruptcy, Google’s algorithm had joined together two unrelated sentences from the site for its index abstract.

Google had summarized it with the following snippet (translated into English):

“Complete name: Zwartepoorte Specialiteit: BMW…This company has been declared bankrupt, it has been acquired by the motordealer I have worked for Boat Rialto…”

Klup.nl owner Miljoenhuizen.nl told De Telegraaf :

“If the search result were to imply or insinuate that Zwartepoorte has gone bust, it would be Google’s responsibility, not ours.”

Nevertheless, a judge has ruled that the website Miljoenhuizen.nl is liable and the site was ordered to fix its own site in such a way that Google couldn’t make the same mistake again – failure to comply would mean a €500-a-day fine.

**UPDATE**

Klup.nl founder Nico Schoonderwoerd has been in touch with us and shared his letter to Google requesting assistance (pasted below). If you’re reading this and you are able to give any assistance or provide evidence of a comparable case internationally – please leave your contact details in comments or be in touch with me via email at zee@thenextweb.com.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Last Wednesday the Dutch court for urgent affairs (voorzieningenrechter) ordered me to do the following:

veroordeelt Schoonderwoerd om binnen twee dagen na betekening van dit vonnis de inrichting van de website www.klup.nl zodanig aan te passen en aangepast te houden, dat niet langer via deze website, door middel van de zoekmachine van Google, een zoekresultaat wordt weergegeven waarin de onjuist indruk wordt gewekt dat Zwartep00rte fai11iet is

which says that I have to change klup.nl such that no longer a search result is displayed which gives the wrong impression that Zwartep00rte is bankrupt.

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After surprising the world by launching four days early, it seems Bing’s first day may not have gone as smoothly as it could. Despite Microsoft claiming they wouldn’t be forcing Bing on anyone, it appears some users are stuck with it anyway.

We’re getting word that a number of Internet Explorer 6 users are loading up their browsers to discover that the default search engine, which they had set as Google, has been changed to Bing. What’s more, when they try to change it back they’re being blocked from doing so thanks to a Microsoft Live Search message that reads: “Oops This isn’t the page that you wanted”.

We can’t recreate the problem ourselves but the evidence coming in includes tweets saying:

really hating the new MS Bing which continues to make itself my default search provider despite being removed from the list!!! #fail

Is mad that IE6 default search engine is changed and now stuck on bing… I want my google back!

Meanwhile over on the Google Support forum more complaints about this problem are coming in. One user claims the problem is down to the way IE6 handles non-URL formatted text entered into the address bar.

The only fix at present would appear to upgrading your browser, something the web design community would cetainly thank you for. IE6 is a notoriously quirky browser that mishandles lots of modern web code. This latest problem, which does not seem to affect those with Google Toolbar installed, is one more argument for replacing that out-of-date browser.

Microsoft may be trying to improve its image but this bug is reminding people of their poor history with web software. That’s not a good first impression for their latest attempt to steal Google’s search crown.

It’s been confirmed, Microsoft are slowly but surely catching up, and in some respects, advancing, on the competition. Today, they announce that Facebook and Twitter  integration will be coming to Xbox Live.

Designed to match the typical Xbox Experience interface, with individual sidescrolling windows, the system with also support Facebook Connect, letting you potentially upload data and images to your Facebook profile as you play.

Xbox Live will also get Twitter integration, but in this case its presented in feed format as opposed to Facebook’s scrolling windows.

*Updated*:Videos from E3

Facebook and Twitter Integration:

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Soy Tu Aire (I’m Your Air) is a song by french Spanish band Labuat.

At a very a basic level is an interactive music video. On a much deeper level its a visual journey of a music video which reacts to your manipulation and lets the voice paint it onto the “air” of the screen with a brush that “listens” to the music.

The elements to play with are very simple, yet this is an incredibly engaging piece that keeps the viewer fixed for the entire song. The loading time is a minute or so, but trust me, it has its rewards.

Watch it here (keep an eye on the percentage at the bottom of the screen for loading time)

via

The UK has the dubious honour of being one of the most watched places in the world thanks to the vast number of CCTV cameras that keep an eye on public spaces 24 hours a day. In 2002 it was estimated that there were 4.2 million of these cameras nationwide and a member of the public could expect to be recorded up to 300 times in one day.

While many of these cameras are privately owned, some offer public online feeds. Now the BBC is crowdsourcing a directory of publicly viewable CCTV.

The producers of current BBC2 series Who’s Watching You? have created a map that aims to link to every CCTV camera in the country with an online feed. The public is being encouraged to submit details of any that are currently missing.

The map is still quite sparsely populated at present, with the BBC’s own webcams making up the bulk of submissions. As an almost-live view of everyday British life there are a few gems though. One camera is trained on the famous zebra crossing on London’s Abbey Road, updating every second. It’s frequent enough to get flavour for life in an upmarket part of the capital. Mountaintop views and the Brighton seafront are also just a click away.

What’s clear from the map as it stands though is that public camera feeds are generally useless as a surveilance tool. Most of them refesh every few minutes and aren’t close enough to street level to identify individuals. It’s the ones that don’t have online feeds that the British public should be concerned about.

As Mike Rubin, Series Producer for Who’s Watching You? says “The official figures suggest that there are around 30,000 CCTV cameras operated by public authorities. Beyond that, there are hundreds of thousands – and almost certainly millions – of private CCTV cameras”.