Random Culture

eBay Pop!

eBay Pop is a buying "buzz" and trend watching site for all things eBay. It tracks "movers and shakers" in a number of different product categories, but also has games, a blog and an online community. This is how you use the eBay API, folks. Definitely worth a look.

Link via The Brilliance.

Google Maps: Not Just for Maps

Markus Dressen puts the Google Maps API to use for something a little different... to display a collection of design books. Beautiful.

Miami Vice & Google Maps

The official site for the upcoming Miami Vice movie has created a Google Maps mashup that educates visitors on the history of the city, as well as the history of crime in Miami.

Link via Google Maps Mania.

Firefox Flicks

Firefox is continuing it's tradition of letting their fanatic user base do the marketing for them. At the end of last year, they launched "Firefox Flicks", an open submission for fans of the browser to send in testimonials. Well know, it's a full blown ad creation contest.

They've got a blog for the contest, as well as a creative brief for the ads. The judges include people from TV, film and advertising, including the founder of Strawberry Frog, Scott Goodson.

This is definitely consumer generated content at its finest.

Link via AdFreak.

Identity 2.0 Keynote

Dick Hardt, founder and CEO of Sxip Identity gives an amazing presentation as the keynote for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention on the idea of Identity 2.0. I can't stress enough how great this presentation is...

Here's the Identity 2.0 presentation
And here's Dick's blog for more information.

Bookcasting????

LibriVox is volunteer project where people record readings of books that are in the public domain, and those recordings are distributed via podcast. According to the site, it works like this: "a book is chosen, then *you*, the volunteers, read and record one or more chapters. We liberate the audio files through this webblog/podcast every week (day ?)."

It's an interesting idea... yet another way to distribute public domain works.

Link via BoingBoing.

Vanilla: Open Source Forum

Vanilla is a new 100% open-source and free online forum that looks promising. It includes the ability for developer written extensions.

You can learn more and download Vanilla at: getvanilla.com.

Open Source Radio

Open Source is an hour-long radio show that launched yesterday on select PRI radio stations, including WGBH in Boston, as well as a handful of others. The idea of Open Source, according to their blog, is "to capture the sound of conversation on the web, share it with a radio audience and then invite that audience back to the web to contribute." Sounds like an interesting idea...

Here's the thread on the Open Source blog to contribute ideas.

Link via Joi Ito.

BBC "Backstage" Beta

What exactly is BBC Backstage? Here's a description from their site that sums it up:

"You can participate in BBC Backstage by either building an application or web-based prototype that uses BBC content or, if you have an idea to use BBC content in new ways, then  write it up, preferably with some designs as to how it could 'work' and  share it."

This is a great opportunity for people to communicate new ideas to the BBC about how they could be using technology to better serve their readers... Check out the page for viewing prototypes, and the page to view ideas.

Link via Ad Innovator.

Red Hat is Blogging

Red Hat has entered the blogging arena by launching blogs for several different divisions within the company...

The Red Hat Executives Blog
The Red Hat People Blog
The Red Hat Intern Blog
The Red Hat Magazine Editor Blog

While they've done some things right, such as making sure they have XML feeds and allowing comments, I can't get past the fact that I see some buggy interface issues in Firefox...

What's more... Photo Matt, who made us aware of the Red Hat Blogs, points out that this is a part of their "open source" initiative, but they aren't using an "open source" blogging tool. They're using an old version of Movable Type.

Frontline Embraces the Web

Kottke posts today that Frontline has a ton of content available on their site. Not too long ago I posted here about "The Persuaders"... and maybe I didn't notice it then, but it seems that Frontline has made many more of their full programs available to view online.

This is a refreshing attitude towards the web, when most shows and networks seem to afraid or uninformed to see the benefits. Obviously Frontline sees this as an important way to increase the longevity of their content, and to make themselves a resource. It's a smart move.

Bravo, PBS! Bravo Frontline!

Firefox Over 10 million

Firefox has surpassed their 10 million download goal and then some. According to OneStat.com,  their market share is now at about 7.4 percent... And rising.

Firefox Nearing 10 Million

Looks like Firefox is getting close to it's goal of 10 million downloads. Over 9 million as of this post, and all that since November 9th. Visit SpreadFirefox.com to keep track of the progress.

Publicly Funded Ad for Firefox

Via CNET: Firefox fans promote browser in Europe

Wow... I'm truly impressed by this, and there has to be a lesson or two about how to build brand loyalty. To elaborate, it seems that Firefox fans in Europe started collecting donations and raised about $93,000 dollars. They used this money to place an advertisement in the business section of the  "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung." The rest went to Mozilla Europe.

There's no doubt that Firefox has been a prime example of turning users into advocates. There was a previous call for donations to help place a NY Times ad. You can check out that story here.

Mozilla Momentum

So you've switched to Firefox, but what about all those other pesky Microsoft applications on your desktop? Well, Mozilla has launched a release candidate for their email program, Thunderbird. CNET has got a great article about this Thunderbird release.

The CNET article posted a link to download the release candidate of Thunderbird 1.0, and the official release is slated for December 7.

Open Source: Beyond Your Desktop

CNET news has a great article on the growth of the open source movement from personal applications such as desktop software, to larger infrastructure applications.

Read: Open source's next frontier