Nerd time - Issue 6

Hey all,

Hope you had a good July 4th. It's more nerd time--bringing the curiosities of the net at your doorstep. This time is more techcrunchy stuff. So if you read that, you can skip it.

Video's taken off ever since Youtube, facilitated by the ability of flash to play video. Slap Vid is notable because it's the bittorrent of flash video clients. It's a P2P client for video. This is a ycombinator company.
http://www.slapvid.com

The idea to make a clickable world has been around for a while. The idea is to be able to print up URLs as 2D barcodes, so people with camera phones can take a picture of it, and it takes them to the URL. If you're old enough to remember the CueCat, you remember what a spectacular failure that was. But the market was different back then.
http://www.smartpox.com

This is an article on mapping. Google Maps is old news, but the implications of being able to overlay virtual information on top of the real world while you're in it is pretty exciting. The ability to create your own maps has been available for a while now, but discovery of those maps hasn't been easy. And there currently is no mobile earth browser, like there is for the desktop. This in conjunction with the clickable world is worth a thought. Smells like market opportunity to me. Mobile platforms aren't quite mature yet, but they're getting there.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/ff_maps

This is a talk on the implications of OpenID. OpenID is a distributed authentication mechanism, aimed to eliminate the need for multiple logins for multiple websites. OpenID in combination with semantic technologies like microformats seems like a neat idea. It's gaining some momentum, as both Sun and AOL have implemented it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2288395847791059857

And just for emacs fans:
http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/
Emacs-like editor on the web!