Weekly Wrapup, 26-30 May 2008
Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we covered announcements by Google about Gears and App Engine, we looked at some compelling Yahoo! Pipes apps, we checked out Strands Lifestreaming, and we reviewed promising Semantic Apps Faviki and Freebase. On the trends side we analyzed the contentious Semantic Search market, we looked at Google's Android vs iPhone, we put the Social Networking battle between Google and Facebook in context, and we explored more social media trends.
Web Apps
Google Gears Turns One: Future is in Open Standards
Google Gears, the offline web application API it debuted last year at its developer conference, turned one this week. To celebrate, Google dropped the company name from Gears. The name change is a symbolic move aimed at reinforcing Google's commitment to working with existing standards communities and helping them to define better open standards for bridging online applications and the offline world.
See also: Google App Engine Announces Pricing Plan, APIs, Open Access; Why Google is Wooing Web Developers
The Ultimate Yahoo! Pipes Creations List
Yahoo! Pipes is one of the coolest ways to mashup the RSS feeds of various sites and sources to get the data you want. Since our initial coverage of Yahoo! Pipes, thousands of creations are now available. However, finding the best picks can be tough. ReadWriteWeb has done the hardest part and comprised a list of some of the best Yahoo Pipes created by users. We give you the ultimate Yahoo! Pipes list.
Strands Lifestreaming: What They're Doing and Invites for Readers
Recommendation service Strands.com launched a lifestreaming service this week that aims to pull together the company's wide range of services in particular media and online activity into one central place for users to share socially. The new Strands is a way to share your music, bookmarks, blog posts and other activity with friends, family and groups. It's a major entry into one of the most interesting sectors of the new web. We give it a mixed review...
See also: Recommendation and RSS: A Look at Two Readers Filtering the Noise
Faviki is a new social bookmarking tool that offers something that services like Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, and Diigo do not - semantic tagging capabilities. What this means is that instead of having users haphazardly entering in tags to describe the links they save, Faviki will suggest tags to be used instead. However, unlike other services, Faviki's suggestions don't just come from a community of users and their tagging history, but from structured information extracted straight out of the Wikipedia database.
Freebase: Dispelling The Skepticism
Freebase, the first product of semantic web company Metaweb, is an open, semantically marked up database of information that we called one of the "10 semantic apps to watch" last year. With $57.4 million in funding, a smart team, and a tech legend in Danny Hillis at the helm, Metaweb is considered to be one of the most serious players in the Semantic Web space. Yet the company's
efforts to date have been met with skepticism. Particularly, people have asked how is Freebase different to Wikipedia? Jamie Taylor, the Minister of Information at Metaweb, spoke at the SemTech 2008 Conference that took place in San Jose last week in an effort to dispel some of that skepticism.
SEE MORE WEB APPS COVERAGE IN OUR WEB APPS CATEGORY
Web Trends
Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality
For a few years now people have been talking about semantic search.
Any technology that stands a chance to dethrone Google is of great interest
to all of us, particularly one that takes advantage of long-awaited and much-hyped semantic technologies. But no matter how much progress has been made, most of us are still underwhelmed by the results.
In head-to-head comparisons with Google, the results have not come out much different. What are we doing wrong?
See also: Making the Web Searchable: The Story of SearchMonkey
Android Is Out For iPhone Blood
Wednesday, at Google's I/O Event, the company demonstrated their Android prototype phone, a device which has been greatly improved since its last public outing at this year's CES and Mobile World conferences. Today, Android looks classy enough that you half-expected them to pull a Steve Jobs and announce that you could run out and buy it right now. During the demo, the company showed off some of the applications that will run on Android - like a Google Maps Street View app that drew cheers from the crowd. From the buzz surrounding the Google Phone at this event, it's clear that Android has a shot at knocking that other touchscreen phone off its pedestal.
See also: Google's Android: How Will it Compare to iPhone?
The Social Networking Arms Race
Last November, when Google launched Open Social we asked readers if Facebook would join Google's platform. The results were split right down the middle, but as we get farther from the Open Social launch, and the two sites continue to launch competing APIs (Google FriendConnect vs. Facebook Connect, for example -- the former banned by Facebook), that seems less and less likely. This is becoming a social networking cold war.
See also: How Many Friends is Too Many?
The Fork in the Road for Social Media
Social networking is at a major fork in the road. Down one road is adding more features to a walled garden and opening up just enough, so that users seldom need to leave. Most sites are going down this yellow brick road and the prize is clearly a big one. But they may end up back in Kansas. Down the other road, lies a future of being the primary repository for your connections (aka the social graph), but with this data available via open APIs to anybody who needs it. That is a utility type model, and as with any utility, it can be hugely valuable at scale.
See also: Sometimes Crowds Aren't That Wise
Who Are The "Digitally Savvy?"
A new report put about by consumer and media research firm Scarborough Research has revealed some interesting information about the section of the U.S. population that's being called the "digitally savvy." These are the consumers who are more likely to own high-tech items like DVRs, satellite radios, and VoIP phones and are more likely to engage in Internet activities that include blogging, downloading music, and other web 2.0 activities. In other words - they're us.
See also: When User-Generated Content Goes Bad
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
Comments Off
Google AdSense: Coming To A Feedburner Feed Near Your Soon
Finally Google will start rolling AdSense into Feedburner feeds. I guess the integration process was not that easy, given the time it took them after the acquisition. Regardless, this is good news for all webmasters and bloggers alike. Here is what they said on their blog:
We’ve been hinting at this for awhile, but it’s finally time to spill the beans: Starting next week, we’ll be rolling out AdSense for feeds to a small group of publishers, in anticipation of a full launch to all FeedBurner and AdSense publishers “coming soon”. If you start seeing “Ads by Google” on an ad in a feed somewhere, that’d be us.
Publishers that are already part of the FAN (Feedburner Advertising Network) will keep serving CPM ads, while having AdSense ads to fill the remaining inventory.
Definitely another source of income to be considered by most bloggers out there. What do you think?
Sponsor: Monetize your traffic! Join Neverblue Ads and access 1000's of high quality, high converting offers.
Copyright by Daily Blog Tips.
Comments Off
7 Things to Avoid While Leaving A Blog Comment
Many people already wrote about the rules of blog comments before. Most of them, however, focused on the so called blog comments etiquette. That is, they told you how you should always add value to the discussion, respect the other people, never feed the trolls, be genuine and yada yada yada.
While that advice is solid, I feel that it lacks some practical sense. There are other points that I see people doing almost daily when leaving comments, and they can be equally annoying for the blog owner and for the other readers and commentators. Below you will find them: 7 things to avoid while leaving a blog comment.
1. Using the bold or italic attributes to highlight your whole comment
Blog comments can send good traffic to your website, and if you manage to catch people’s attention with your comments, this traffic might increase. Now, attention should be grabbed with a funny or interesting comment, and not by making your comment text bold or italicized.
Use bold only or specific words that you want to put in evidence, and italics on names and titles of books and similar.
2. Signing your comment
As you probably have already noticed, most comment forms ask for your name on the first input box. That is, you already signed your comment even before writing it, so there is no need to finish the comment with your name a second time.
Apart from being redundant information, it is also annoying for some people. For more on this topic read “If You Sign Your Blog Comments, You Are a Dork.”
3. Including a second (or third) link to your website
The previous point applies to website links also. Most comment forms allow you to include a URL that will be used to hyperlink your name. If you include that URL at the end of your footer a second time it will give the impression that you are just spamming the comment section for some links.
4. Leaving a comment without reading the article first
Common sense you say? I wouldn’t bet on it. I have seen a huge amount of comments, both on my and on other blogs, from people that had no clue about the topic of the article in question.
Sometimes they knew what the article was about, but they interpreted the message from the author on a completely different way.
If you are going to leave a comment, make sure that you have read and understood the article to begin with.
5. Leaving a one-word comment
It might be the case that people leaving comments such as “Great!” or “Thanks!” truly read the article and mean it. Regardless, those comments will be considered as spam.
Just take the effort to come up with a complete sentence, will you?
6. Leaving a second trackback
If you link to another post on your blog, your blogging software will send a notice to that blog, which will in turn create a link pointing back to your post on the comments section. This is called a trackback.
Sometimes trackbacks will not work, and in this case you could leave a comment mentioning that you wrote about the post in question. If the trackback worked, however, you would be spamming that blog by leaving a second comment with a link pointing to your article.
7. Leaving a comment as if you are the know-it-all guru on the subject
Whenever I come across a comment that begins with “This is just stupid…” or “You are so wrong…” I already arm myself against potential nonsense ahead.
If you disagree with the opinions of the author, express it politely. Even if you are right about the issue you will be seen as a jerk if you come with the I-know-it-all attitude.
Just take it easy.
Update: Obviously these are my opinions, so feel free to disagree. And if you are guilty of one of these points, remember that it is not a big deal. Just keep it in mind for future comments!
Sponsor: Monetize your traffic! Join Neverblue Ads and access 1000's of high quality, high converting offers.
Copyright by Daily Blog Tips.
Comments Off
Creating Passionate Customers - The follow-up
After my post about creating passionate customers earlier this week (yes that one with the heated debate), I realized that I was actually following the example set by a real-life role-model.
As many of you would know; Fused Network sponsors the server bill for the hosting of my own blog, as well as all of my Premium News sites. And one of the things that has constantly impressed me, is the level of quality service and support I’ve received from the guys at Fused since I joined them in the last quarter of last year. What this has meant to me, is that my web hosting is not something I need to worry about every day, as I know I’m being looked after.
But all of that you should know by now, as I’ve blogged about it before… Where I want to get at is that I’ve been jumping at every single opportunity to promote Fused to friends / contacts / customers. And my reason for promoting Fused to that extend is not financial (as I don’t receive any kickbacks or remuneration), but because I know that if I tell a client Fused Network is the way to go, that Fused will back up my word with outstanding service.
To me, this is an excellent example of how profitable passionate customers can be to a company - especially online! And I have to admit that I’ve been following this great example; and even though I’m not on par with them yet, I will continue to answer support e-mails professionally until I get there! 
Comments Off
IETester - the answer to our prayers?
Via Ajaxian comes word of a new way to test in different versions of Internet Explorer. IETester is a separate browser that allows you to select the rendering engine to use with each tab you open. My quick and dirty testing seems to indicate that it’s doing what it promises, so if you’ve never got on well with the old multiple IE solutions, this just might be the silver bullet you’ve been waiting for.
It’s currently only an alpha release, but definitely one to keep an eye on.
Comments Off
