Make yourself comfortable and watch this… What would e-mail look like when it was invented today?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

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Back in the days, there were two young students who were looking for a better way to search the internet. Today they are known as Google. But over the years, google is searching a little bit too good. Millions of personal websites, business websites, e-shops, videos, pictures… When you’re looking for academic information, it would be helpfull to eliminate these overload of information.

Say ‘hi’ to REFSEEK!

Refseek is Google for academic use. It looks even more simple than Google. It does not claim to find more than Google, au contraire my friends; it eliminates results not related to science, research and academia. It’s made for students and researchers.

Here’s the test:
I searched ‘Egypt’ in Google…

• 1st result: Wikipedia
• 2nd and 3rd: Travel to Egypt, Egypt tours
• 4th: Pictures of egypt
• 5th: Egyptian monuments
• Lot’s of ads about travelling to Egypt

Now I searched ‘Egypt’ in RefSeek

• No ads
• 1st result: wikipedia
• 2nd: ancient-egypt.org; an interactive book about Ancient Egypt
• 3rd: African Studies: Egypt
• 4th: National Geographic

Notice the difference?

Try it out: www.refseek.com
More info here, here and here

Thanks to Google’s Archive Search we’re able to read old newspapers. Funny timewaster is searching for old ads. This example comes from St. Petersburg Times on the date I was born: March 10, 1984!

Try Google Archive Search yourself

FYI: I’m currently using the brand new Google browser Chrome to write this blogpost. I’m not going to do a test or a review, you can read that here: ZDNet, Dutchcowboys, and almost everywhere else.

You can download the new browser here

I like:

• the speed
• the suggestions when you type in an URL
• the incognito modus
• ‘end proces’ option for every single tab
• The fact it’s open-source

I don’t like:

• yet another browser to test your webdesigns
• I don’t want to give up Firefox and all of his plugins (Especially Ubiquity)
• The google-colors; just like Google Docs and Gmail: it looks cheap to me.
• All the curious eyes on my laptop today, because there is not a Mac version yet.

Google chose the Borinage region near Charleroi as its base. Why? There are heavy stimulants in the sector which could make this unemplemployment struck poor region as a perfect soil for new enterpreneurship. It used to be an industrious hub for Europe. The inventions of creative self-made industrials such as Solvay made Belgium into what it is today. We’re are following it step by step now.

I’ve always been a fan of Google, especially Gmail. I used it to send emails from the web, via my mobile phone, and to store important messages. But I must say: Gmail looks like shit. That’s gonna change from now on, because here’s a solutions for pimping your Gmail look ‘n feel in Firefox!

Look at the old ‘ugly blue’ style:

Now check the new skin:

Gmail redesign link