Tech Week in Review 1-28-2009

The iPad Becomes Reality

It’s not the iSlate or the iTablet, it’s the iPad and it’s actually a real and tangible device. I’m so glad it was finally released as we can now enter a downward spiral of incessant “news” about an actual piece of technology instead of the escalating barrage of posts filled with rumor and speculation. The iPad has got a lot of people talking. Some think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, others feel completely underwhelmed. On the one hand, you have people who have been looking for just such a device to fill the space between their laptop and their iPhone. On the other, you have people who just see this new device as an oversized iPod/iPhone/iPod Touch with less capabilities. Whichever side you might be on, we all have to agree that it is kinda cute. Are you impressed?

Twitter Launches Local Trends

It’s evident that location is going to be one of the big things in the coming year with services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and Yelp all gaining traction in that area. Twitter just launched Local Trends to a small percentage of users. It lets you pick your location and, presumably, shows you trends based on that location. Setting my location to Atlanta did appear to give me different results. According to Twitter:

“We’re rolling out local trends to 1 percent of users today, but we’ll share more information when it reaches a larger audience hopefully sometime next week. We’ll keep you posted when that happens.”

- Local Trends allows you to set a specific location, so that you can see the trends around you. Most of the time, this would be your home. However, it looks like you can change it on-the-fly if you’re traveling, for example.

- Clicking on Local Trends gives you a list of different cities and countries in which you can view trends. It’s a limited list so far — only 15 U.S. cities are supported.

- You can access these trending topics from Twitter.com, on the right-hand column.

- A full rollout should occur sometime next week, if testing goes smoothly.

via Mashable

Foursquare Comes Out On Top

Speaking of location-based services, Mashable conducted a poll as part of their Faceoff series that pitted them all against each other. Yelp, being the newcomer, came in 2nd. I think this is only because they have the largest user base, having their start as a hugely popular review site. Foursquare, of course, comes out on top. This is probably because they were first, they make things interesting, and they’re the most flexible for check-ins. Gowalla follows in third and I think this may always be the case because you’re required to have an iPhone to even use it.

Google Wants to Extend DNS Protocol

Google has proposed an extension to the current DNS protocol that is aimed at making our browsing faster. You may remember that they just provided access to their own DNS servers in seeking that same goal.

To be perfectly explicit, Google is proposing “to allow Authoritative Nameservers to return varying replies based upon the network address of the client that initiated the query rather than of the client’s Recursive Resolver.”

If that felt like reading another language, don’t feel bad. I had to read it over a few times to get it. What they are basically trying to do is make sure your DNS requests return the shortest possible path to the actual site you’re trying to get to. This is done by the client, you, sending some information about your actual location along with your request.

Wilmer van der Gaast and Carlo Contavalli wrote on behalf of the Google Public DNS team, “Our proposed DNS protocol extension lets recursive DNS resolvers include part of your IP address in the request sent to authoritative nameservers. Only the first three octets, or top 24 bits, are sent providing enough information to the authoritative nameserver to determine your network location, without affecting your privacy.”

Will this make things faster? Probably. Will it agitate those who think Google is trying to take over the world? Most definitely. (via RWW)

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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