There's an entire universe of fascinating content being passed around on blogs and in message boards in China. The rest of the world isn't privy to this parallel Internet because we don't speak Mandarin. But an amazing blog called chinaSMACK gathers together the most compelling blog posts, articles, pictures and commentary in China and translates it into English. This is literally like discovering another Internet.

Mary Kathleen Flynn / Tech Confidential:
EXCLUSIVE: FriendFeed readying RSS accelerator  --  Technorati  --  Facebook  --  Update, 7:30 p.m.: FriendFeed Inc. co-founder Paul Buchheit has published a detailed explanation of the social networking aggregator's planned Simple Update Protocol.  In a nutshell, he describes it as a ...

Impress your friends with insider's tips on exclusive locations handpicked for Plazes by Unlike, the definitive city guide for the mobile generation.

Conveniently located near Plazes headquarters in Berlin, our friends at Unlike have the finest scouts screening the coolest locations in the world's trendiest cities. They like to say about themselves:

unlike.net conveys the city's most treasured locations, events and urban themes, capturing the spirit of life on the go: through the intricate architecture of clubs, shops, restaurants, galleries, parks, museums... helping you feel at home wherever you are.

Check out the exclusive directory on unlike.net, select the most interesting venue for you and click on the Plaze me here button to start coordinating with your friends.

While currently the selective content is only for the city of Berlin, expect to see more coverage from other cities soon.

Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
Yahoo Buzz opens to everyone  --  Yahoo's Digg-a-like Buzz is opening up to the world tonight.  Until now, while anyone could see stories that had been Buzzed and vote them up or down, only about 400 publishers could contribute new links to the service.  --  A Yahoo spokesperson confirmed ...

The popular social bookmarking service Del.icio.us launched a complete redesign of its service today. Ever since it was bought by Yahoo in 2005, the company added very few new features and the redesign had been rumored to be in the works for almost a year now. The new design and features are mostly focused on enhancing the speed of the service and improving its search capabilities. Del.icio.us can also now be reached at delicious.com and will start using this as its standard URL.

New Features

The new features include selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks. Delicious also says that it has made strides in improving its speed and making the site more responsive. Based on our short tests here, we would definitely have to agree with that.

Delicious has also worked an enhancing its search. Users can now search within their own tags, another user's bookmarks, and, maybe most interestingly, within their own social network on Delicious.

In our short tests of the new design so far, we have come away quite impressed. The new interface, which highlights the tags a lot more, feels a lot cleaner and snappier. It's also now a lot easier to edit items you have already bookmarked.

More Social

Delicious now also puts a lot more emphasis on the social aspects of its service - a trend we already noted back in 2006. We especially noticed that it now prompts its users to fill out their profile information more persistently. Before, few users ever bothered to do so. While before, the focus was on subscriptions and 'your network,' the new interface emphasizes more of 'friending' paradigm.

No Recommendations Yet

One area where Delicious can still improve is in giving its users recommendation based on their bookmarking behavior. Currently, Delicious neither recommends potentially interesting links, nor does it highlight users who bookmark similar items.

Easier, Prettier, Faster

Overall, while some of its competitors soared past Delicious in the last few months in terms of features, this update puts Delicious at the top of the pack again. We have come away highly impressed with the new interface and while all the new and enhanced features are definitely a boon to the service, the real advantage of this new design is that it makes using a lot of the old features a lot easier, especially for novice users.

VIE_unlike: @Phreak20: deployed http://tinyurl.com/5v4chl

We're pleased to announce today that Unlike just got a bit smarter to where you are, when you are, if you'll forgive our pigeon English.

Why? We've teamed up with our friends over Berlin-based Plazes, which allows you to map out where you're going--and have your friends meet you there. In their own words, "Plazes is a location-aware service, connecting you with the people and places in your vicinity and all over the world." So kindred spirits, if you will: Even our headquarters are just 'round the block from each other in Berlin-Mitte.



So how does this work, exactly? It's pretty simple to use - sign up for a Plazes account, and when browsing through berlin.unlike.net, click on the "Plaze me here" icon on the right hand side of the description.
All of your contacts on Plazes will be automatically informed as to your whereabouts, saving you from sending pricey text messages or dealing with the "the-music-is-too-loud-whaaat??"-conversations that are bound to happen when late-night reveling.

Are you using a Firefox 3 release candidate but you miss the Google Toolbar? Well, it's now working and available. [Thanks Hebbet!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Toolbar Available for Firefox 3 | Comments]

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