web 2.0 news

Jump Start Websites With Jumpchart

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:15:14 GMT

Diagrams play a very important role in planning and communicating a site’s architecture. They help you visualize a project before developing and piecing things together, leading to smarter design decisions. Unfortunately, for a client, Information Architecture and diagrams can be very intimidating, not to mention appear impractical. Because of this, many web teams end up [...]

RSS Management

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:34:51 GMT

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7 Spectacular Fireworks Shows on YouTube

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:48:01 GMT

They sparkle, they shimmer, they explode, and they come out every 4th of July: fireworks! It’s the Independence Day holiday weekend here in the U.S., and the celebrations are about to begin.

But if you can’t wait for the fireworks spectacular, or if you just love fireworks and aren’t from the U.S., then lucky for you, there’s everybody’s favorite social media video website, YouTube, to help fill in the gaps. Partially because it’s a holiday weekend but mostly because we’re attracted to sparklers and pretty lights, we’ve gathered seven of our favorite July 4th YouTube fireworks videos. Enjoy!

1. Walt Disney World, Florida, 2005

Disneyworld and Disneyland have great fireworks, but they go over-the-top for the 4th of July.

2. New York City, 2008

The video news and Internet culture vlog Rocketboom put up this popular fireworks display from the 2008 NYC festivities. They claim it’s the largest fireworks display in America, and from what we see, it’s tough to argue.

3. Cabazon, CA, 2007

According to the video, this is the last 24 inch Fireworks shell to ever be launched int he U.S. If you think that’s big, take a look at this 48 inch shell explosion.

4. Boston, 2006

Why does the east coast seem to have the best fireworks?

5. Port Richey, Florida, 2007

Lesson: Don’t leave all of your fireworks in one tent. Even if it is really, really, really awesome to behold.

6. World of Warcraft, 2006

Is it real? No. Is it unique? Yes. Is it nerdy? Absolutely.

7. Disneyland, California, 2007

We started with Disney, so it’s only appropriate we end with the same. The iconic castle reminds me of every classic Disney movie I’ve ever seen. The music and voiceovers are bonuses.

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: fireworks, youtube

Task.fm Adds Smart Reminders via Twitter

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:11:13 GMT

A few months ago, we reviewed a unique reminder app: Task.fm. In our assessment, we noted its Twitter-like approach to reminders and its ability to decipher human language – you can tell it Task.fm “I need to call mom at noon tomorrow” and expect a reminder the next day. We did note though that you couldn’t set reminders via email, SMS, or Twitter, which decreased its utility.

Since then, Task.fm has been busy adding new features to its app, culminating in the release of Task.fm 1.0 earlier today. Now not only is the interface much more elegant, but you can set and receive reminders via Twitter, SMS, and email.

The big feature in this release is Twitter integration. You can direct message @taskfm with your task and you can then set the reminder. This is on top of the recent additions of setting reminders via SMS and email.

In addition to Twitter integration, Task.fm sports a sleeker, curved design (look at their previous blocky design to see the difference), offers new pro accounts that replace the old credits system, and adds more natural language support. Task.fm 1.0 also improves its To-Do list functionality.

Three months ago, Task.fm was unique for its language parsing ability, but didn’t have the tools necessary to be truly useful. Today, the story is different – with the ability to set and receive reminders nearly everywhere, it can compete with the likes of RememberTheMilk, although there’s still plenty it can do.

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: task.fm

Happy Internet Dependence Day!

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:01:57 GMT

With the 4th of July weekend just hours away, it’s time to wish our US readers a Happy Independence Day!

Hopefully you’ll be spending at least some of your weekend away from your computer and enjoying the festivities, but for those who have difficulty leaving the laptop at home, here’s a quick list of resources to help you spend less time online while getting more done.

1. A Guide to Better Web-Working From Your iPhone – One way to spend less time in front of a computer screen is to get more efficient at working from your phone. Elliott Kosmicki looks at applications to do more work on your phone, so you can do less when you get home.

2. HOW TO: Live Inside Twitter and Still Stay Productive – Addicted to Twitter? While the service is often thought of as a timewaster, this post explains numerous ways to get more done while you Tweet.

3. HOW TO: Make Firefox Your Productivity Machine – Firefox users have access to a wealth of add-ons that help you get more done during your time online. This article recommends the best picks.

4. 7 Productivity Tips, Plus Tools for Freelancers and Web Workers – So you want to get more work done on the web? You’ve come to the right place! This post provides top tips for freelancers and those who have made the web their workplace.

5. Top 30 iPhone Apps for Organization and Productivity – In this one-stop shop for iPhone productivity, Jennifer Van Grove tests 30 of the top iPhone apps to help you get more done on the go.

6. 9 Must-Try Adobe AIR Apps for Better Productivity – Adobe Air is known for running some of the most visually appealing apps on your desktop, but did you know some of these apps can make you more productive? We look into the unlikely candidates.

Have a great weekend!

[Image from Bitstrips via CenterNetworks]

Reviews: Firefox, Twitter

Outsource Your Beta Testing To Prefinery (Invites)

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:48:37 GMT

The beta testing stage can be the cornerstone to the successful development of a new site. And many startups have to conduct and implement beta testing of sites, surveys and analytics internally, which can be an daunting task when you are launching a site. Prefinery lets startups outsource the whole beta invite process, from start to finish. Prefinery is offering 100 TechCrunch readers with beta invites to test the site. You can sign up here. Use the invitation code "TECHCRUNCH" when signing up for the service. Prefinery's ambition is to create a valuable first experience for beta testers and to help startups in collecting and organizing information that will result in a better product. Prefinery will do anything and everything when it comes to the beta testing process. The service will create a splash page for your product, generate an HTML sign-up form with fields and survey questions, create an automatic welcome e-mail/message, take signups into a queue, approve users, and trigger invite e-mail. The service will also generate invite codes and assign quantities.

CallWave Delists From NASDAQ; Fuze Meeting Rises From The Ashes

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:01:35 GMT

It's not easy to launch a successful WebEx competitor. Most businesses have long since established their "system" for dealing with web meetings, using old standbys like WebEx or GoToMeeting. And those businesses that are willing to venture into the unknown have had plenty of cheaper alternatives to choose from, like DimDim, for quite a while. But that isn't keeping CallWave from launching one of its own, dubbed Fuze Meeting. And while it's not going to be an easy space to compete in, Fuze Meeting doesn't disappoint. As far as startups go, the history of the company is pretty unique. CallWave was founded in 1998 and went public in 2004, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CALL. After reaching a peak soon thereafter of over $15 per share, the stock dropped steadily, dipping as low as 50 cents early this year. Deciding to cut its losses, the company delisted itself from NASDAQ on Monday after buying back shares from public shareholders at a 44% premium over the current market value and paying out a total of $10 million. CMO Patrick Moran says that the company did this on its own accord, and that its hand wasn't pushed by any banks or VCs. CallWave will soon change its name to Fuze Box to reflect its new position as a startup.

TechCrunch50: You Want Advertising? We?ll Give You Advertising

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:08:23 GMT

Despite our best intentions, it looks like the DEMO v. TechCrunch50 war will continue, even with DEMO under new management. In 2007 we launched the first TechCrunch50 event - a place where companies can launch to rabid fans and tech press. These launching companies are the stars of the show, and they don't pay a cent to attend. We thought DEMO's longstanding policy of forcing launching companies to pay a $20,000 fee was ridiculous, and led the conference organizers to make decisions based not on the merits of the startups but simply on who was willing and able to pay. Not only do we let startups launch for free, we give the top one a $50,000 prize. Our conference has grown rapidly - nearly 2,000 people attended TechCrunch50 last year while DEMO languished in San Diego with a paltry few hundred. To be fair, our events were on the exact same dates, so they were hit doubly hard. This year we moved our dates to give them some breathing room. We thought we were done battling DEMO. But today DEMO announced that they're giving away a "massive" prize - $2 million in advertising credits - to the top two startups at the event. The press is eating it up, saying that TechCrunch50 looks paltry in comparison. Of course, there's a catch. The "advertising" is remnant stuff on IDG properties (IDG owns DEMO) and will certainly be priced at rate card. They'll also charge for creative and other expenses. Meaning there is very little actual value. I'm guessing that the amount of advertising actually delivered would be in the tens of thousands of dollars of value, at best. And, of course, every startup launching still needs to pay to launch. But whatever. You want adverting? We'll give you advertising.

Michael Jackson?s Memorial: The Biggest Web Event in History?

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:17:17 GMT

The web’s response to the passing of music legend Michael Jackson has been staggering. Social media was pounded with tributes last Thursday after the news broke, but next Tuesday could be a huge test for the entire infrastructure of the web, when the memorial for Michael Jackson will take place.

The tribute and remembrance of the late King of Pop occurs next Tuesday (July 7th) at 10:00 AM PT at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Beyond the 17,500 tickets that will be given away to fans and the millions more that will converge on downtown L.A., the memorial will be live streamed free via the web and media outlets across the world.

This event will almost certainly shatter records for the biggest single live stream ever, and could be one of the biggest worldwide media events in history. Will the web be able to handle it?

The details

The splash page of the Staples Center

Although details are sparse, CBS News does a good job of breaking down the information currently available. Here are the key points:

- The memorial will occur at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. 17,500 tickets will be randomly drawn in an online lottery available until 6 PM PT July 4th. Only U.S. residents qualify

- 8750 names will be selected Sunday, each of which will receive 2 tickets to the memorial

- There will be a simulcast in the Nokia Theater

- There will be a free live stream on the Internet available to all. Details on how the stream will be distributed are currently unavailable

- However, we suspect that thousands of stream will be available from media companies and live stream services around the world

The demand was so high for these tickets that the Staples Center website has had trouble staying up, and in fact took down almost every non-essential image and menu to keep the website up. This could be a prelude to the worldwide response we’ll see next Tuesday.

What will Jackson’s memorial mean for the web?

If you remember back in January, there was another historic event that blew us away: the Obama inauguration. Here are some of the staggering numbers from CNN and Facebook.

- 200,000+ status updates through the Facebook integration on CNN.com

- 3,000 people commented on the Facebook CNN feed per minute

- CNN served 13.9 million live video streams globally in about 6 hours

- Don’t forget about the millions of other live streams and TV viewers that watched worldwide.

Now, throw all those numbers out the window, because Michael Jackson’s memorial is almost certain to utterly overshadow Obama. Not even Obama consumed 30% of Twitter and set traffic records at Yahoo.

With the world mourning and a specific time and place set for the memorial, we may very well see the entire web converge on this one event. There will likely be thousands of streams worldwide via platforms such as Justin.tv and Ustream (the latter of which has a deal with CBS to stream events like this one). It’s also certain that Twitter, Facebook, and the social web will be booming with commentary on the event.

How many people will watch Jackson’s memorial? Can the web’s biggest players handle the massive traffic that will ensue? Will there be enough bandwidth? Could this event be the single media event in history? The answers to these questions will not only be a testament to Jackson’s impact on the world, but may very well set records that will last in history.

Perhaps most of all, the web will allow people to come together to celebrate Jackson’s life, no matter who they are or where they live.

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, ustream

Tags: jackson memorial, justin.tv, michael jackson, ustream

Geocaching Down, Too

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:45:56 GMT

Today a fire hit a major datacenter in Seattle, taking money processor Authorize.Net down. This has caused many web-based financial transactions to grind to a halt, but Authorize.Net isn’t the only website that’s gone offline today.

Another popular website has fallen, Geocaching.com, a worldwide GPS-based treasure hunting game, leaving thousands of people trying to figure out just what’s going on and why it went down. Wikipedia explains the game’s worldwide reach:

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. There are over 820,000 active geocaches in the world right now.

While the fire may or may not be responsible for this specific outage (we cannot confirm), it’s clearly had an effect on the entire web. Even Microsoft’s search engine Bing was affected, specifically Bing Travel.

We will provide updates on Geocaching and Authorize.Net as we receive the information.

Reviews: Wikipedia, bing

Tags: geocaching

The Inevitable Anti-U.S. Backlash Has Started On Kiva

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:31:32 GMT

When we reported on Kiva.org's decision to open up its micro-lending platform to U.S. entrepreneurs, Kiva CEO Premal Shah told us he was concerned about backlash in the community. Shah acknowledged that the decision to open lending to U.S. recipients may draw criticism because it goes against the idea on which Kiva was founded?lending to help development in third world countries where credit options are limited. It looks like Shah's prediction was correct. There is now a lending team on Kiva's community platform titled "Unhappy Kiva Lenders." The members, which total 375 lenders from around the world, are angry that Kiva is extending loans to U.S. entrepreneurs. The team's page states that "including borrowers from the USA has undermined the very core of what made [Kiva] so unique and special; small, impactful contributions to entrepreneurs in impoverished situations in developing countries."

Want The Obama ?Hope? Artwork On Your iPhone? Nope, Says Apple.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:48:19 GMT

Start Mobile has managed to get 18 separate iPhone applications approved by Apple. So you'll imagine their surprise when one of them was recently rejected. But you may be even more surprised to find out why. Apparently, Apple doesn't like the way one piece of art in the app depicts President Obama. Is it out of line or tasteless? Well, you can determine for yourself, because you've undoubtedly seen the art in question before: It's Shepard Fairey's famous "HOPE" image of Obama that was everywhere during his Presidential campaign. So why on Earth would this be rejected? Well, here's the wording in the rejection:

It contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states: "Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."

"Ridicules public figures"? This image is hanging in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian ? yet, Apple apparently finds it inappropriate.

Tweetmeme Wants To Be The King Of Retweets

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:36:22 GMT

One of the most effective ways to amplify your message on Twitter is to get your followers to retweet it to their followers. Retweeting is also becoming a popular way to pass links around Twitter. They are becoming the new currency of the Web because of the power of passed links. One service in particular, Tweetmeme, is cornering the market on retweets by making it easy for blogs and other sites to add a retweet button to every page. You can see one at the bottom of this post. Just click on it, and it will take you to your Twitter account and populate a message with a "RT," the headline, and a short link. Go ahead, do it now. Do it again. Okay, thanks. Lots of sites use Tweetmeme's retweet button, and it drives a lot of its overall traffic. Nick Halstead, the CEO of Fav.or.it (Tweetmeme's parent company) says that the buttons are so widespread right now that they are generating 196 million impressions a week ~~month~~. In other words, that is how many pages load with the buttons every ~~month~~ week, and some portion of those result in actual retweets. Halstead is making some improvements to the retweet buttons. Before each retweet generated by the button would include a promotional "via @tweetmeme." That has now removed to make more room for the actual headline and link. Next week he is going to introduce an image button which can be included in RSS feeds and emails to spread the retweet love even further. And sites will be able to embed a retweet counter to show how many overall retweets they get every week.

Why the Mobile Web Won?t Save Sirius XM

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:00:25 GMT

Things may finally be turning around for troubled satellite radio venture Sirius XM. Following a long and costly merger, the company became desperate for new financing just as credit dried up, and managed to avert bankruptcy only by selling 40 percent of itself to John Malone in exchange for a loan paying 15 percent interest. [...]
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VentureBeat Presents MobileBeat 2009

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:59:18 GMT

Join the most influential investors, mobile industry executives, entrepreneurs, press and analysts at MobileBeat 2009 for one day of in-depth discussion, debate and power networking, held on July 16 at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco. MobileBeat will focus on apps: the people who use them, the people who make them, and the people [...]
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AT&T: Simply Addicted to the iPhone

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:10:04 GMT

The launch of Apple’s new iPhone 3GS was the best sales day ever for AT&T’s retail stores, while the number of orders taken at its online store also hit an all-time high, according to an internal memo obtained by MacDailyNews, a blog devoted to all things Apple. While the memo doesn’t outline the precise number [...]
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MJ Fans Flock to eBay for Memorabilia

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:02:26 GMT

Millions of people logged onto the web when the news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death broke last week, and they’re continuing to flock to eBay to get their hands on the pop king’s memorabilia. The online auction site said it’s since seen the percentages of daily searches, listings and sales of Michael Jackson [...]
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Thanks to Our GigaOM Sponsors!

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:40 GMT

We’d like to say thanks to this week’s GigaOM sponsors: PEER 1: Fully Scalable Hosting Solutions RackSpace: Experience fanatical support StrataScale: It’s your infrastructure – On Demand Fuze Meeting: HD Meetings – From Fuze Meeting Mozy: Back up your photos, music, and files with Mozy for as low as $4.34 per month. Juniper Networks: Demand more security and performance OSI Hardware: Quality, [...]
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HOW TO: Discover and Get Feedback On New Web Apps

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:54:12 GMT

This post is part of Mashable?s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Launchly

Quick Pitch: Launchly showcases new websites to an audience to help site owners get the attention and feedback necessary to succeed.

Genius Idea: It’s hard to stand out and get attention for web applications and new websites. You can build a Twitter app over a weekend and get no traction because you don’t know where to promote it. Or maybe you need some feedback and advice on your newly launched website. Launchly does this, but instead of just showcasing a startup and letting it fall by the wayside, Launchly allows apps to resubmit new iterations and build on their ideas.

Essentially, Launchly is a Digg for startups. You submit your site to Launchly and include a short sentence description, a long description, the type of feedback you’re seeking, screenshots, related tags, and you can be up and running on the Launchly homepage. After that, it works a lot like Digg, in that users can rate your website up or down, comment on it, and share the webpage via Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. This can really affect how visible your web app is on the site.

The key to Launchly though is the iterations feature, which allows you to take the feedback you receive and submit a new version of your website to the service. This allows for a new round of feedback once you’ve made upgrades. You also receive some analytics on Launchly user engagement and social media buzz.

The catch, of course, is that this service isn’t free – the lowest-priced plan costs $40, with more expensive and feature-rich plans coming soon. The price is understandable, when you consider that valuable feedback can make or break a website. However, Launchly is very new itself and thus hasn’t hit the critical mass necessary to really get the community needed to justify the cost yet.

Launchly’s value is directly correlated with its community. As it grows, the value of a launch on the website will grow, but this also means that in its early stages, it is tough to shell out $40 for such little visibility. Launchly would do well to focus on building a strong community and offering promotions or discounts to startups to get the ball rolling. If it can gain enough momentum, there could be some real value.

Microsoft And Linux Hold Peace Tweets

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:21:23 GMT

Okay, it's not exactly the Camp David Summit that took place in 2000 between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but sometimes the littlest gestures can go a long way. A couple of days ago, upon hearing that Microsoft had officially joined Twitter, the official Linux account sent out a tweet welcoming them. "Welcome to Twitter, @Microsoft!," they said. The tweet sat unanswered for over a day, and it seemed like Microsoft may never answer. But about a few hours ago, they did. "@Linux thanks, nice to be here," they replied.

Video: 50 Cent Confronts Sexman

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:53:22 GMT

I don't recall how the YouTube user Pruane2Forever, aka "Sexman", came on my radar, but I definitely remember a few of his videos from a couple years ago. (Here's a old favorite ? Not Safe For Work.) Basically, it's this kid who does movie and new media reviews that are (or at least used to be) unintentionally hilarious. These days, he apparently has quite the following on YouTube, as he has over 150 videos that range in popularity from tens of thousands of views to over a million. One of his most popular ones was a video from 4 months ago in which he calls out rapper 50 Cent. Sexman wonders how 50 still has "street cred" after doing endorsements for Vitamin Water, makeup and dildos (I'm not kidding). "What else is he gonna do? 50 Cent diapers for your little gangsta?," Sexman wonders at one point. He concludes that 50 Cent is "just a media whore!" Well, 50 Cent has responded. Yesterday, the rapper posted a video alongside Sexman, who apparently flew from Canada to New York to meet up at the rapper's request.

A Special Summer of Social Good Thank You

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:49:33 GMT

This week we ran a special Summer of Social Good charity promotion and many of you got involved. Mashable and the whole Summer of Social Good team would like to thank everyone who donated, tweeted, retweeted and showed their support. While the promotion might be over now, because of the great response we will be doing this every week rolled into our Monday announcement posts for donors over $20 and $100. Just make sure to read the rules and forward your receipt to SocialGood at Mashable.

On Monday we have a special fun week planned involving video and prizes, so make sure to stay tuned to @Mashable and @SocialGood for details.

Our $100+ Donors:

Shannon Raybold

Twitter: @skraybold

Facebook Causes: United Against Malaria

Facebook Causes: Nothing But Nets

Twitter: @uamalaria

Chris Bennett

Twitter: @chrisbennett

97th Floor: www.97thfloor.com

BlvdStatus: www.blvdstatus.com

Firefox Add-on: Social Media for Firefox

Steve Haweeli

Twitter: @SteveHaweeli

WordHampton: www.WordHampton.com

DishingOnDining: www.DishingOnDining.com

Chris Brogan: Shoutout to Chris Brogan

BuzzEdition

Twitter: @BuzzEdition

Twitter: @BCCF

Facebook Fan Page: BuzzEdition

Facebook Causes: Black Card Circle Foundation

Jeff Elder

Twitter: @JeffElder

About: Biz and Tech columnist at The Charlotte Observer

The Broprah Show: Broprahshow.com

Skafish

Twitter: @Skafish

Blog: Skafish Blog

Facebook: Facebook Profile

CollaborateMD

Twitter: @CollaborateMD

Facebook Fan Page: CollaborateMD

Blog: CollaborateMD Blog

Susan’s Soaps

Twitter: @SusanSoaps

Store: SusanSoaps.com

Blog: Susan’s Soaps Blog

Facebook Fan Page: Susan’s Soaps & More

B. Johansen Newman

Twitter: @JohansenNewman

Barbara Johansen Newman: johansennewman.com

“Thinking Out Loud” Blog: Cats and Jammers Studio

Design Blog: Design Rocket

Frank Barry

Twitter: @franswaa

Blog: NetWits Think Tank

Blog Post: Social Media For Nonprofits

Blog Post: Social Media Strategy: LIVESTRONG and the Summer of Social Good

Our $20+ Donors:

Michelle Farabough (Google Profile)

Thanks to the Summer of Social Good Sponsors

Thanks to Zappos and MailChimp for sponsoring the Summer of Social Good. Their generous sponsorship covers the campaign and event costs, so that 100% of your donations and ticket sales go to the fund.

“Visit Zappos.com and outfit your life with a new head-to-toe wardrobe for men, women, and kids! Step into all the clothes, bags, shoes and more from all your favorite brand names! Plus, enjoy our 365-day return policy, fast & free shipping, free return shipping & 24-hour customer service!”

“MailChimp is a powerful, easy-to-use email marketing service. You design, me deliver.

We make it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Unlike some of our competitors, we don’t ‘dumb things down.’ We take extremely powerful tools that sophisticated marketers use (like segmentation, a/b testing, and ROI tracking), and we make them accessible to anyone.”

Thanks to our Summer of Social Good Partners

Thanks to the following partners for lending their generous support to the Summer of Social Good.

Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter

Maybe ?Paid? Is the Future of Online Business

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:00:13 GMT

Despite a knee-deep recession, the idea of giving away something for free and charging for something else later is bigger than ever. But is ?free? selling? Or does ?paid? have an online future?
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Akamai to Make iPhone Video Streaming Smooth

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:29:16 GMT

Akamai today said it would provide adaptive bit-rate streaming to deliver video content from web sites to the Apple iPhone 3G and devices running the iPhone OS 3.0 operating system. Basically, using adaptive bit-rate streaming means folks can watch streaming video on their iPhones or iPod Touches with fewer stops and starts. Adaptive streaming adjusts [...]
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What to read on the GigaOM network

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:00:28 GMT

Will Michael Jackson’s funeral be live-streamed? (NewTeeVee) Is Obama building new energy policy council with cleantech leaders? (Earth2Tech) Must-have iPhone apps for air travel (WebWorkerDaily) 14 free iTunes visualizers (TheAppleBlog) With the rollout of Symbian’s OS platform, expect a shakeout (OStatic) MIA: One of the few apps in Palm Pre App Catalog (jkOnTheRun)
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Intuitive Organization And Sharing With SnapPages

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:27:21 GMT

Released awhile ago, SnapPages is a flash powered interface that allows you to share your hobbies/interests, organize schedules, and socialize with friends. They have three applications currently, including: Friend’s Manager, Calendar Manager, and Photo Manager. Each one of these applications has their own specific uses and functions nicely. The first, and probably most in depth section [...]

Taking MyMileMarker For A Spin

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:21:26 GMT

Still tracking your car mileage with spreadsheets and scrambling to gather old gas receipts? Try MyMileMarker, a new service by Sidebar Creative that allows you to track and analyze your car mileage online through a browser or mobile phone. It’s extremely easy to use and unlike some services which require you to record every mile [...]

Pownce on Your Friends

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:15:44 GMT

Kevin Rose’s new company, Megatechtronium, launched Pownce yesterday. It was rumored to be a new instant messaging client, but I’m not too sure if that’s a good term for it. I see it more as a combination of Twitter and Tumblr. Pownce allows you to communicate with friends much like you would with Twitter, but [...]

L8r is Future Mail with a Business Model

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:58:51 GMT

L8r is a new service that lets users create an email and have it delivered at a specific time in the future. It’s similar to the popular site FutureMe where anyone can write a simple letter to themselves or a friend and have that letter sent by email sometime in the future, for you know, [...]

Reinventing the Wiki with OpenTeams

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:55 GMT

OpenTeams offers an interesting service that wants to reinvent the wiki. It’s designed to strengthen team collaboration and innovation while working on group projects, or as OpenTeams puts it, “initiatives”. Its interface is organized much like an email client so non-technical users immediately become familiar with the system and collaborate. But OpenTeams isn’t just limited [...]

Track Your Expenses with BudgetPulse

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 04:27:48 GMT

BudgetPulse is a new financial management service in closed beta that aims to simplify the way you manage your money and track budgets. It allows you to manage multiple accounts and track income, expenses, assets, bills, and more. Additionally, BudgetPulse lets you set goals which assists you in tracking and recording how much money you [...]

Hulu, News Corp, and the Web (2.0?)

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:58:24 GMT

I know this is behind the game, and that the bleeding edge of blog reviews has moved well beyond online streaming service Hulu (even though it's not yet out to the public). But I received my beta invite last week and have had all this time to play around with it.

My initial thoughts: none.

No, not one initial thought. Hulu doesn't work in the UK. They don't tell you: "Hey, if you live in the UK, you will be able to access and begin your Hulu experience, but when you choose a show to stream, you'll be disappointed. Have a nice day." You have to jump through all the Beta hoops to get there first.

Now, I know I should have known better, being a generally web-savvy chap. But after a few pre-reviews of the Hulu service, I decided not to read any more blogs about it until after I'd tried it out myself. I knew not to expect too much, after reading the last review over at Between the Lines , but I wanted my own experience.

Since then, I've found dozens of blogs about how bad it is that Hulu doesn't work in Europe . Aside from whingeing about the lack of support, I can't really think of anything more to write about Hulu (apart from its ridiculous, trying-too-hard-for-the-Web-2.0-market name).

But, doesn't this kind of go against point of the web? The idea that we can make connections, share content, stream and connect?

The principle of the internet is broken by this experiment, and I don't think a platform intended to be a YouTube killer should ever have been trialled in a geographically-limited network. Sure, I understand private Betas, but why limit this to the States? I don't think News Corp really gets the Web 2.0 thing. In fact, I wonder if they really get the internet?

It reminds me of LaunchCast (now Yahoo Music). When I first launched the player, all the content was free, and there was absolutely loads of it. I was thrilled! Over months, however, content became harder to find due to advertisement interruptions and restrictions on skipping tracks. Suddenly, Launch re-directed to Yahoo, and I could no longer skip any content without upgrading to a premium service which hadn't existed before. Then, when I moved to Britain, all the content was unavailable apart from a limited selection which I can only presume was intended for a British audience. (Don't think my mates here would have agreed in a focus group!)

I haven't used a yahoo service since. No, seriously, I haven't used Yahoo. As soon as Konfabulator was purchased by Yahoo, I uninstalled it. I was all set to set up a Flickr account, when I found out it was Yahoo. (I might go back on that one, once I get a decent digital camera.)

This wasn't really a boycott so much as a pre-emptive decision. I know that as soon as Yahoo gets a hold of a service, its user-friendliness will dissolve into advertisements and 'premium services' (a contradiction in terms!) This is what Hulu reminds me of. An attempt at grabbing a market instead of a well-thought-out startup trying to sell a genuinely good service and make a profit on its quality.

What is Web 2.0? Hulu doesn't know, and it makes me think that News Corp hasn't really got its head round it at all. I shudder to think what's going to happen with LinkedIn.

-Zach (http://www.zachbeauvais.com)

Amazon's latest web service? A database

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:22:20 GMT

Amazon Web Services Evangelist Jeff Barr has been at it again, using Twitter to announce the release of his employer's latest offering.

Amazon has come a long way since its days as a big book shop, and is increasingly making a name for itself as an exemplar of commodity computation.

First we had the Simple Storage Service, S3. Little more than a big disk in the Cloud, it offered an affordable means by which anyone could make large amounts of data available for download by large numbers of people. Second Life client downloads come from S3, as do Talis podcasts. Several of my colleagues use S3 for backing up their laptops (I use Mozy myself, but that's another story).

Then we got the Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2. This commoditised availability of virtual computers, making it relatively straightforward for those experiencing rapid growth - or needing short-term access to additional computing power for some other reason - to call upon additional computers as required, configure them as needed, use them for as long as necessary, and then throw them back into the pool when done.

Unsurprisingly, given Amazon's e-Commerce heritage, a payment service came next. This essentially opened Amazon's own e-Commerce capabilities to third party developers, and allowed them to build it into their own applications. Although we knew that this would come, I should admit here that the pundits at Talis (including myself) were sure that Amazon's third web service would be the one they actually only announced today. Given our interest in data and their interest in e-Commerce, it's perhaps not surprising that we prioritised them differently.

Next in the path, a Service Level Agreement. Essential, if Amazon are to move beyond the early adopters and actually see mass market numbers of mainstream enterprises rely upon their web services.

Which brings us to today, and the unveiling of Amazon SimpleDB. It had to come, and now it has, offering;

“a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud.”

It's great to see, and in some ways the conceptual use of Cloud-based 'content' and 'metadata' is similar to our own ideas around the Talis Platform... although with very different emphasis and realisation.

And yes, I know I missed SQS and Mechanical Turk, and various other Amazon web services from my story...

Story originally posted on the Nodalities blog

Technorati Tags: Amazon Web Services, AWS, EC2, Jeff Barr, web services, S3, SimpleDB, Talis, Talis Platform

Who is afraid of the GGG?

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:30:00 GMT

Dan Farber was one of the first to cover the Giant Global Graph, here on ZDNet. A few days on, though, there's value in taking a look at how these ideas are being discussed across the blogosphere.

The GGG, or Giant Global Graph. It sounds like something with which you might terrify a child at bed time, but this is no Gruffalo, no Jabberwock, no Smaug. Rather it's father-of-the-web Tim Berners-Lee's label for his latest attempt to express the power of the Semantic Web's core technologies in ways that will resonate beyond the established SemWeb literati. In the post he writes;

“So, if only we could express these relationships, such as my social graph, in a way that is above the level of documents, then we would get re-use. That's just what the graph does for us. We have the technology -- it is Semantic Web technology, starting with RDF OWL and SPARQL. Not magic bullets, but the tools which allow us to break free of the document layer. If a social network site uses a common format for expressing that I know Dan Brickley, then any other site or program (when access is allowed) can use that information to give me a better service. Un-manacled to specific documents”

As we might expect when someone like Berners-Lee posts, his thoughts sparked the usual flurry of interest, picked up by The Guardian, Read/Write Web, ZD Net, Nova Spivack, GigaOM, Nick Carr, and a host of other bloggers. The compulsory Wikipedia stub is already in place, and anticipating (at the time of writing) that

“it may become a common expression.”

So what is this Giant Global Graph, how's it related to the Semantic Web, and what does it all mean?

In his post, Tim clarifies the distinction between the Net(work of computers) and the (World Wide) Web offered up over that network;

“So the Net and the Web may both be shaped as something mathematicians call a Graph, but they are at different levels. The Net links computers, the Web links documents.

Now, people are making another mental move. There is realization now, 'It's not the documents, it is the things they are about which are important'. Obvious, really.”

He then goes to the next level, to connect the statements in that web of documents to form a graph;

“We are all interested in friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. There is a lot of blogging about the strain, and total frustration that, while you have a set of friends, the Web is providing you with separate documents about your friends. One in facebook, one on linkedin, one in livejournal, one on advogato, and so on. The frustration that, when you join a photo site or a movie site or a travel site, you name it, you have to tell it who your friends are all over again. The separate Web sites, separate documents, are in fact about the same thing -- but the system doesn't know it.

There are cries from the heart (e.g The Open Social Web Bill of Rights) for my friendship, that relationship to another person, to transcend documents and sites. There is a ”Social Network Portability“ community. Its not the Social Network Sites that are interesting -- it is the Social Network itself. The Social Graph. The way I am connected, not the way my Web pages are connected.

We can use the word Graph, now, to distinguish from Web.

I called this graph the Semantic Web, but maybe it should have been Giant Global Graph!”

Tim concludes;

“In the long term vision, thinking in terms of the graph rather than the web is critical to us making best use of the mobile web, the zoo of wildy differing devices which will give us access to the system. Then, when I book a flight it is the flight that interests me. Not the flight page on the travel site, or the flight page on the airline site, but the URI (issued by the airlines) of the flight itself. That's what I will bookmark. And whichever device I use to look up the bookmark, phone or office wall, it will access a situation-appropriate view of an integration of everything I know about that flight from different sources. The task of booking and taking the flight will involve many interactions. And all throughout them, that task and the flight will be primary things in my awareness, the websites involved will be secondary things, and the network and the devices tertiary.

I'll be thinking in the graph. My flights. My friends. Things in my life. My breakfast. What was that? Oh, yogourt, granola, nuts, and fresh fruit, since you ask.”

So not, then, anything radically new. This is the long-held promise of the Semantic Web, but it is valuable to see that promise rearticulated in something akin to the language of the social network. Those involved in the Semantic Web probably 'knew' all of this at some level, but had perhaps become too caught up in the mechanics and the model, too distant from the point. This is why the Semantic Web matters; the graphing of relationships between resources on the open Web. Not ontology wars. Not RDF-is-better-than-microformats. Not demonstrations of concept in the laboratory and behind the firewall. Not the creation of a shadow web. This. So thank you, Tim, for reminding us. That said, might Nova's 'semantic graph' not be a better label for this important restating of the point than the rather obtuse GGG? 'Giant' and 'Global' set too many alarm bells ringing for me, and hint way too much about all-encompassing-ness and top-down-ness... even if that's (probably) not what Berners-Lee intends. We got waylaid by misconceptions of ontologies as all-encompassing and all-pervasive. Rubbing everyone's noses in 'Giant' and 'Global' just sets us up for yet another round of that particular debate, and I for one have better things to do...

Let's turn to look at some of the commentary that Berners-Lee's post received.

Journalist and author Nick Carr, for example, remarks;

“Sir Tim suggests that the Semantic Web (recently dubbed 'Web 3.0') was really the Social Graph all along, and that the graph represents the third great conceptual leap for the network - from net to web to graph”

and concludes;

“But while it's true that technologists and theoreticians desire to abstract the graph from the sites - and see only the benefits of doing so - it's not yet clear that that's what ordinary users want or even care about. That'll be the real test to whether the graph makes the leap from mathematician to mainstream - and it will also tell us whether a social network like Facebook has a chance to become a true platform or is fated to remain a mere site.”

Nick's concluding point is certainly well made, but probably in the early mobile phone camp (who knew they wanted one?) rather than presenting any insurmountable unwillingness to adopt and adapt. The onus is clearly on us to move beyond the talk, and to demonstrate compelling and desirable benefits to being in (on?) the Graph. Tim O'Reilly's damning criticism of Open Social offers a lesson that we would do well to learn;

“If all OpenSocial does is allow developers to port their applications more easily from one social network to another, that's a big win for the developer, as they get to shop their application to users of every participating social network. But it provides little incremental value to the user, the real target. We don't want to have the same application on multiple social networks. We want applications that can use data from multiple social networks.”

“Set the data free! Allow social data mashups. That's what will be the trump card in building the winning social networking platform.”

Surely we can all agree with those sentiments?

The scepticism is in evidence elsewhere, perhaps most noticeably when Pete Cashmore writes;

“Much like 'Web 2.0', 'ajax', 'crowdsourcing', the 'wisdom of crowds', 'UGC' (user generated content) and other catchy terms before them, the social graph looks set to become a bullet point on every web startup’s VC pitch in 2008. The blessings this week from Tim Berners-Lee make that inevitable.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the 'graph' isn’t a graph in the sense that most people think of it (most would describe it as a 'network') or that the phrase 'social network' could already serve this purpose: there’s a sense that we need a new word for the concept now that these networks are becoming portable, and the term can ride a wave of Facebook hype to become the de facto nomenclature for this latest piece of the portable identity puzzle. Beyond that, the Webfather’s latest blog post gives us a meandering introduction to the social graph’s role in the development of the web.

For the record, I’m not bothered by the phrase: it’s nice to have new labels for specific parts of the solution. I am, however, adopting a new lexicon for my day-to-day life in keeping with the trend: making a landline phone call will now be 'unSkyping', Post-It notes will henceforth be called 'retro-Twitters', going outside will now be 'outdoorsing', a paperback book will be known as a 'Kindle Alpha' and Wednesdays will be Day 3.0. No need to remember any of these, of course: I’ll rename them all next month.”

Recent podcast subject Yihong Ding offers a thoughtful consideration of Tim's post, opening with;

“Sir Tim Berners-Lee blogged again. This time he invented another new term---Giant Global Graph. Sir Tim uses GGG to describe [the] Internet in a new abstraction layer that is different from either the Net layer abstraction or the Web layer abstraction. Quite a few technique blogs immediately reported this news in this Thanksgiving weekend. I am afraid, however, that few of them really told readers the deeper meaning of this new GGG. To me, this is a signal from the father of World Wide Web: the Web (or the information on [the] Internet) has started to be reorganized from the traditional publisher-oriented structure to the new viewer-oriented structure”

and continuing,

“Both Brad Fitzpatrick and Alex Iskold presented the same observation: every individual web user expects to have an organized social graph of web information in which they are interested. Independently, I had another presentation but about the same meaning. The term I had used was web space. Due to current status of web evolution, web users are going to look for integrating their explored web information of interest into a personal cyberspace---web space. Inside each web space, information is organized as a social graph based on the perspective of the owner of the web space. This is thus the connection between the web spaces under my interpretation and the social graphs under the interpretation of Brad and Alex. Note that this web-space interpretation reveals another implicit but important aspect: the major role of an web-space owner is a web viewer instead of a web publisher”

before concluding that;

“The emergence of this new Graph abstraction of Internet tells that the Web (or information on Internet) is now evolving from a publisher-oriented structure to a viewer-oriented structure. At the Web layer, every web page shows an information organization based on the view of its publishers. Web viewers generally have no control on how web information should be organized. So the Web layer is upon a publisher-oriented structure. At the new proposed Graph layer, every social graph shows an information organization based on the view of graph owners, who are primarily the web viewers. In general, web publishers have little impact on how these social graphs should be composed. 'It's not the documents, it is the things they are about which are important.' Who are going to answer what are 'the things they are about'? It is the viewers instead of the publishers who will answer. This is why information organization at the Graph layer becomes viewer-oriented. The composition of all viewer-oriented social graphs becomes a giant graph at the global scale that is equivalent to the World Wide Web (but based on a varied view); this giant composition is thus the Giant Global Graph (GGG).”

Writing for GigaOM, Anne Zelenka worries that the GGG is not best-suited to the modelling of inter-personal relationships;

“But the Giant Global Graph itself is like Dustin Hoffman’s autistic savant character Raymond Babbitt in the 1988 movie Rain Man. Raymond knew all about plane trips but couldn’t make sense of human relationships.”

“...though Berners-Lee borrows social graph talk, he’s not really concerned with human relationships, but more about things that computers can understand, things like plane trips”

“The semantic web has always been about computers taking on more processing for us, not about computers allowing us to be more human, which is where the social graph might more naturally aim.

Semantic web fans would like to suggest otherwise. Nova Spivack, founder of semantic web startup Radar Networks, as well wants to make everything into a semantic graph story. 'The social graph is a subset of the semantic graph,' he told me.”

Whilst Tim's examples might support Anne's point, I'm unconvinced. The semantic technologies behind the GGG are all about expressing relationships between things, and those relationships might as easily be human or social as a manifestation of the airline timetable. Those social relationships, though, are about far more than the zombification of your 'friends' on Facebook. Rather, we can reach through to the implicit and explicit pattern of relationships between professional peers, students in a class, or citations of an author. We can map the shape of those relationships, and we can leverage existing capabilities to expose them back to participants in the relationship in order to allow them to see it, understand it, and use it in new and beneficial ways.

Richard MacManus also covers the story for Read/Write Web, concluding;

“I'm very pleased Tim Berners-Lee has appropriated the concept of the Social Graph and married it to his own vision of the Semantic Web. What Berners-Lee wrote today goes way beyond Facebook, OpenSocial, or social networking in general. It is about how we interact with data on the Web (whether it be mobile or PC or a device like the Amazon Kindle) and the connections that we can take advantage of using the network. This is also why Semantic Apps are so interesting right now, as they take data connection to the next level on the Web.

Overall, unlike Nick Carr, I'm not concerned whether mainstream people accept the term 'Graph' or 'Social Graph'. It really doesn't matter, so long as the web apps that people use enable them to participate in this 'next level' of the Web. That's what Google, Facebook, and a lot of other companies are trying to achieve.”

I'm not sure that Nick's concern was with acceptance of the term, so much as acceptance of the concept that their data become (potentially) more portable than they understand or wish. And Google, Facebook and the rest have a very long way to go in achieving (or even, in some cases, recognising) an open and actionable graph.

“Incidentally, it's great to see Tim Berners-Lee 're-using' concepts like the Social Graph, or simply taking inspiration from them. He never really took to the Web 2.0 concept, perhaps because it became too hyped and commercialized, but the fact is that the Consumer Web has given us many innovations over the past few years. Everything from Google to YouTube to MySpace to Facebook. So even though Sir Tim has always been about graphs (as he noted in his post, the Graph is essentially the same as the Semantic Web), it's fantastic he is reaching out to the 'web 2.0' community and citing people like Brad Fitzpatrick and Alex Iskold.”

On the Web 3.0 blog, we learn that;

“We sometimes forget the real use of data - that of providing value to humanity in various forms, and providing true functionality as the humans need it. Connections are good, but functionality is paramount. The fact that a company can store ticket information on the web is not sufficient, but the user being able to buy it is significant. A company storing data is not sufficient, it being able to sieve out information from it, transforming it into knowledge, and converting to action is paramount. Someone along this, functionality becomes the significant aspect.

URLs are becoming more potent with XML wrappers (RDF/OWL/SPARQL) around it. The new generation of applications will be playing on these enhancers to achieve seamlessness that we have sorely been lacking in the last 25 years.

The WebTop is becoming more significant than the desktop. Browsers that were a mere window to the world may become a real wide entrance to the world itself. In a very short time, local resources on a computer may have no significance in how users achieve functionality.”

Nova Spivack also offers a long and considered response, picking up on some of Anne's concerns;

“But if the GGG emerges it may or may not be semantic. For example social networks are NOT semantic today, even though they contain various kinds of links between people and other things.

So what makes a graph 'semantic?' How is the semantic graph different from social networks like Facebook for example?”

He continues,

“A semantic graph is far more reusable than a non-semantic graph -- it's a graph that carries its own meaning.

The semantic graph is not merely a graph with links to more kinds of things than the social graph. It's a graph of interconnected things that is machine-understandable -- it's meaning or 'semantics' is explicitly represented on the Web, just like its data. This is the real way to make social networks open. Merely opening up their API's is just the first step”

and concludes with;

“The Giant Global Graph may or may not be a semantic graph. That depends on whether it is implemented with, or at least connected to, W3C standards for the Semantic Web.

I believe that because the Semantic Web makes data-integration easier, it will ultimately be widely adopted. Simply put, applications that wish to access or integrate data in the Age of the Web can more easily do so using RDF and OWL. That alone is reason enough to use these standards.

Of course there are many other benefits as well, such as the ability to do more sophisticated reasoning across the data, but that is less important. Simply making data more accessible, connectable, and reusable across applications would be a huge benefit.”

So where does all of that leave us?

Well, I don't think we saw something new created last week. What we saw was a restating of some principles at the heart of the Semantic Web, a recognition that the social graph so frequently mentioned in relation to the big Social Networking sites shares many of those principles. Finally, we saw the beginning of an informed discussion that might - finally - see the fruits of many years of Semantic Web research and development surfaced in language that can be used in conversation with the pragmatists building the mainstream Web of today, aligned to technologies and techniques fitting for that Web, rather than simply making the gloomy shadows a bit more pronounced.

Which brings us, with all due respect to Julia Donaldson, right back to the Gruffalo! :-)

“'A gruffalo? What's a gruffalo?'

'A gruffalo! Why, didn't you know?
He has terrible triples, and terrible graphs, and terrible OWL in his terrible ontologies.'”

Hmm. Maybe not. Read the original anyway, it's good...

Content adapted from a post to Nodalities.

Giant Global Graph: from the publisher-oriented web to the viewer-oriented web

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:00:00 GMT

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