Zoho wants you to know they believe in being open and transparent with their users. That’s why they have added a new section to their website called Zoho Status. Now you can see at a glance the health of all those Zoho applications you use.
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Zoho Offers Application Health Status View
It’s time to review the week that was on ReadWriteWeb. It was a very busy week on the product side, and not surprisingly it was dominated by the release of Apple’s 3G iPhone and the accompanying App Store. Also this week Google launched a virtual world, Yahoo opened up its index and search engine to outside developers, and there was a (unconfirmed) rumor that Twitter had bought Summize. On the trends side: we analyzed the problem of spam in social networks, and investigated why ‘old school’ bloggers dominate in new apps like FriendFeed and Twitter.
iPhone 3G Released Globally on 11 July
This was the week that Apple delivered its much anticipated 3G iPhone and second generation iPhone software, to over 20 countries around the world. The hype was partially overshadowed by the high pricing plans that international telcos charged. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop iPhone fanatics (including several of us here at ReadWriteWeb) from snapping up the new phone on its first day of sale.
Note: You can view an optimized version of ReadWriteWeb (as the above screenshot shows) on your iphone at: http://m.readwriteweb.com.
This week Apple also released a new version of iTunes, which includes the long-awaited App Store. On the day of the launch, there were 552 applications available in the store. More than 25% of the apps are available for free. Applications from the App Store will run on both the iPhone and iPhone touch after users upgrade to the latest firmware.
Lively: Google Launches Virtual World
While IBM and Linden Labs are cozying up to each other, Google released its own virtual world: Lively. Lively is available through a browser plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer. It is Windows only for now. Lively does not feature one coherent world like Second Life but splits worlds up into different rooms. Lively was originally developed as a 20% project by Niniane Wang.
See also: After Lively, What’s Next for Google? and Linden Labs and IBM Break the Metaverse Barrier, Teleport Across Virtual Worlds
Search War: Yahoo! Opens Its Search Engine to Attack Google With An Army of Verticals
Yahoo! took another bold step this week: opening up its index and search engine to any outside developers who want to incorporate Yahoo! Search’s content and functionality into search engines on their own sites. The company that sees just over 20% of the searches performed each day believes that the new program, called BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), could create a cadre of small search engines that in aggregate will outstrip their own market share and leave Google with less than 50% of the search market.
See also: MyYahoo 2.0 Goes Live for All; Developer Platform Coming Soon
Summize Likely Acquired by Twitter
Well placed rumor has it that microblogging service Twitter has acquired search engine Summize. Summize calls itself a tool for “conversation search,” and that’s a well deserved tagline. The service’s automatic translation tool uses Google Language tools to translate non-English Twitter messages into English with a single click. It’s access to the Twitter XMPP API enables it to offer on-screen notification of any new search results as they become available. The Summize search API has become the must-have Twitter search tool for all the best 3rd party Twitter clients and services.
See also: Get A Less Noisy FriendFeed With Moopz
Exclusive: First Look At Genome, A Next-Gen Social Networking Service
What are the number one problems facing today’s social networks? According to the young developer Vladislav Chernyshov they are: privacy issues, distraction and time-wasting, quantity over quality, ads, and lack of control over your identity. That’s why he, Dmitry Gorpinchenko, and Andrew Chernyh, all students at Novosibirsk State Technical University (NSTU) in Russia, have founded Genome, an upcoming next-generation social networking service which addresses the main problem of Web 2.0: the ever-increasing quantity of Web 2.0 resources and the lack of tools to manage them.
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY
According to a new report, over the past 12 months more than four-fifths of social networking site users said that they had received unwanted friend requests, messages, or posts on their social or professional network profile. While friend requests on their own seem innocuous enough, they are often just the first step towards whatever the spammers’ intended malicious activity is, be it redirects to phishing or malware sites or even just unsolicited advertisements.
See also: Six Ways To Update Your Status
Priming the Pump: New Users, Meet the Old Winners
Social media, it’s all about the democratization of communication and empowering new voices - right? A few years into the new media revolution, reality is looking a little more complicated than that theory would suggest.
The wild garden of services growing from the read/write soil of the new web struggles each time a new app is launched and looks more like a ghost town than a place to enjoy the network effect of the crowd. How can new services ramp up social connections quickly? Recommending “friendship” with active early adopters is one strategy being explored by a number of sites. The end result can be a lopsided environment where a handful of winners dominate the collective mindshare - again.
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
This week we recorded the third episode of RWW Live. We discussed the following issues:
We plan to start promoting RWW Live more, including inviting people to participate live, very soon.
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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Weekly Wrapup, 7-11 July 2008
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we explored Yahoo’s ongoing troubles, reported on Firefox 3’s record-setting week, covered a new “universal edit” wiki offering, and checked out some Mobile Web apps. On the trends side, we looked at what could disrupt Google search, explored the issue of ‘info overload’, analyzed lessons from Flickr, polled you about IM clients, and interviewed VC Brad Feld.
There’s been a lot of hand wringing in the media lately about Yahoo’s rejection of Microsoft’s takeover bid. Most of the coverage has focused on the (very serious) financial and people issues that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang is now facing. But this week RWW focused on the impact on Yahoo’s product line. Yahoo’s key properties remain yahoo.com, email, myyahoo, and even Answers can be considered special. In short, content is what continues to drive Yahoo and those core properties are still enormously popular. It’s just a shame Yahoo got bumped out of the way in social networking and online video — two high growth content segments in recent times. Click through to read our recommendations for Yahoo.
See also: Yahoo Clings to Its Leading Web “Starting Points”
Firefox 3 Sets Download ‘Record’
This week Firefox set out to break a record for most downloads in a 24-hour period. It surpassed the 5 million download mark it set out to meet well within the time limit - and ended up with 10.1 million downloads! We polled our readers: are you using Firefox 3? Do you plan to upgrade? Here are the results:
See also: Get Firefox and Vuze is Another Good Download
Wiki Providers Come Together to Offer Universal Edit Button
Leave it to people in the wiki market to know how to collaborate. Nearly 20 different wiki providers have teamed up to offer a new Firefox extension that will notify users whenever they are on a page that is publicly editable, using a standard icon that sits in the same place the RSS autodiscovery icon appears. Clicking on the icon (img. on the left) will take you to that page’s editing interface. It’s a great little idea that could help breath new life into the wiki community. We would love to see the extension become a standard part of Firefox.
Loopt: Another Mobile Contender
Loopt is the third location aware mobile social network to become available for the majority of U.S. smartphones . It joins fellow competitors Whrrl and Brightkite, both of which have already started to gain traction (see our coverage of Brightkite here). However, this is not a market where the first one to debut on the smartphone will be the ultimate winner. Instead, in the wild west of the mobile social networks, the key will be adoption. This is an area where Loopt is making headway, having recently announced deals with all the major U.S. carriers and support for Blackberry smartphones.
See also: Fring API Could Shake Up the Mobile Web and Mobile Banking on the Rise
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY
11 Search Trends That May Disrupt Google
Bernard Lunn’s first post for ReadWriteWeb (nearly a year ago) started with the premise that search was “game over”, that Google had won and the only opportunity left was (re)search - i.e. what one does after the basic search. Unfortunately, none of the search start-ups since then has made a dent in Google’s relentless march towards search market dominance. In this article, we outline 11 search trends that may change that.
Info Overload: The Problem & Solution
This was a 2-part series on today’s information overload problem and how we can cope. Part 2 is here.
Information overload is no longer a joke. For those who suffered with this affliction, it never was, but now that there are real numbers attached to the problem, it has finally prompted companies to take action. Those numbers come from a recent study by a research company called Basex and they are to the tune of $650 billion in wasted productivity. Ironically, the time wasted comes from use of applications and technologies that are supposed to make workers more productive. Unfortunately, they seem to have the opposite effect.
Learning from Flickr’s Co-founders on Their Way Out of Yahoo
In June 2005 Yahoo! acquired upstart Canadian photosharing web site Flickr and the web hasn’t been the same since. Yahoo, on the other hand, didn’t change nearly as much as everyone expected it to. Pre-CEO Jerry Yang told then-Business 2.0 writer Erick Schonfeld six months after the deal “I look at Flickr with envy, it feels like where the Web is going.” Flickr co-founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield have now cashed out and officially left the company. Though Yahoo! doesn’t appear to have internalized many of the lessons of Flickr, it’s not too late for the rest of us to look at those same key lessons for inspiration in our work on the web.
See also: 72Photos Offers a New, Sleek Alternative to Flickr
Why IM Interoperability May Just be a Dream
Interoperability between instant messaging (IM) clients is something a lot of users have wished for. More specifically, we wish it was standard and provided right out of the box instead of having to turn to third parties such as Adium, Digsby, Trillian, or Pidgin. Yet there seems to be a problem with the concept of interoperability for the companies of the more popular IM clients.
Also see the results of our poll on IM clients:
Which Instant Messaging client(s) do you use? (multiple choice)
Note: 3 IM clients were added belatedly to the poll, due to demand in the comments of our post. Therefore the numbers for Pidgin, Miranda, and Apple’s iChat are under-represented.
People in Tech: Brad Feld, Foundry Group
MIT Alumni, technologist, venture capitalist, marathon runner, Colorado dweller,
thinker, blogger, and all around super human, Brad Feld (LinkedIn, Twitter) has made a huge impact on startups. With posts on his personal blog, Feld Thoughts,
and on Ask The VC (a must read for anyone interested in venture funding) Feld has played a major roll in lifting the curtain on the traditionally mysterious venture process. We recently caught up with him for a quick interview.
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
Finally, check out the latest episode of RWW Live, in which Sean Ammirati from ReadWriteTalk, Richard MacManus from ReadWriteWeb, Steve O’Hear from Last100 and Charles Knight from AltSearchEngines discuss a number of big events over the last week.
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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Weekly Wrapup, 16-20 June 2008
Lance Armstrong, the champion cyclist who was everybody’s hero until he dated Mary-Kate Olsen, is taking his LiveStrong brand to the Web much in the way that MC Hammer did with DanceJam.
Armstrong has formally partnered with Demand Media to launch LiveStrong.com, which debuted in full on Tuesday. It’s a site for keeping tabs on fitness, wellness, and weight-loss goals, along with discussion forums, editorial content, and videos–other sites in this space are Wellsphere and SparkPeople.
It’s a for-profit spinoff of Armstrong’s nonprofit Lance Armstrong Foundation, or LiveStrong.org, the cancer awareness foundation best-known for those bright yellow bracelets that were ubiquitous in the summer of 2004. Armstrong himself survived testicular cancer before going on to win seven Tour de France titles.
LiveStrong.com is operated by Demand Media, modeled off The Daily Plate, a site the company already runs; Armstrong and his charity have stakes of an undetermined amount in the new site.
The Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media also owns several domain-naming services, a handful of knowledge sites like Answerbag.com, and eHow, as well as health and fitness sites like Trails.com, Run The Planet, and entertainment sites like Cracked and a number of online gaming titles.
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Lance Armstrong launches health and fitness site, sort of
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we explored: next gen apps outside the browser, uses for wikis, Facebook’s usefulness (or lack thereof), the public launch of Google Health, and 4 promising mobile social networks. On the trends side we analyzed: the Mobile Web, how to utilize Social Media in education and social change, and the state of the URL. Last but not least we covered this week’s SemTech conference, about the Semantic Web.
Next Gen Apps Won’t Be Pushed Around By the Browser
The invention of the browser was a huge boon to the internet and a substantial amount of computing now goes on through that interface we’ve grown to love. The internet is not a place where innovation takes a break, though, and a new generation of applications are emerging that have a different relationship with the web browser.
From taking control of the browser to connecting to the web outside of it, there are a number of new strategies being implemented by startups these days. In the following post we discuss seven different ways that new apps are telling browsers “you ‘aint the boss of me now!” Some you’ll be familiar with, but some you may not be.
Wikis Are Now Serious Business
Only a handful of years ago, it was common to hear people laugh at Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it! How could you take it seriously? These days, just as blogs are, wikis are on their way to winning a reputation as serious publishing platforms.
Free hosted wiki provider Wetpaint announced last night that it’s now raised a total of $40 million in venture capital. To celebrate this major financial validation of the wiki world, we thought we’d offer a brief survey of some of the most interesting ways that wikis are being put to serious use today.
How to Make Facebook Useful Again
Oh the heels of some of Facebook’s missteps (ahem, Beacon) and the proliferation of a myriad of useless, silly, and time-wasting apps, some former Facebook users decided to quit the site for good this year. However, a handful of early adopter angst doesn’t have Facebook worried. Why is that? Because Facebook has a whole generation of users who grew up using their site for everything social back when it was just a way to network with their high school or college friends. So what are the everyday Facebook users doing that keeps them engaged in the service? It’s not throwing sheep, apparently. For many Facebook users, there are still useful apps to be found and ways to use the service that the rest of us could learn from.
See also: Why There Should Be Web Search on Facebook and Facebook Censoring User Messaging: Spam Prevention or Unaccountable Control of Conversation?
Google Health Launches - Cautious, Non-Innovative Entry into Health 2.0
This week Google announced the public availability of Google Health, after initially launching as a closed beta back in February. It is described as “a safe and secure way to collect, store, and manage [your] medical records and health information online” and is being positioned as a way for users to control their own medical records.
Google Health is a decent entry into the game-changing (and potentially hugely profitable) world of health 2.0. But in comparison with other health startups, Google Health has a limited scope and is not as innovative a service as we’ve come to expect from Google…
The Future of Mobile Social Networks: 4 Promising Services
Recently we discussed some of the problems plaguing mobile social networks. These problems include location, marketing strategies and compatibility issues. Our readers also contributed their thoughts on hardware compatibility and GPS. While no network is perfect, in this post we profile some of the key players in the market. Here’s a look at four mobile social networks that may have what it takes.
SEE MORE WEB APPS COVERAGE IN OUR WEB APPS CATEGORY
Report: The Mobile Web is the New Hangout
According to Opera’s survey of the more 11.9 million Opera Mini users in March, almost 41% of mobile traffic now goes to social networking — up to 60% in some countries, including the US. Compare that to about 6% of total web traffic for social networks outside of the mobile web. That’s not overly surprising, though, given the recent proliferation of new smartphones aimed at consumers (or at least phones that can view the full web), made ultra-chic over the past year by Apple’s iPhone. Says Opera, 3/4ths of mobile web traffic is now to the full web, rather than WAP or .mobi sites, which are quickly becoming out-moded.
See Also: To Beat Google, Beat Google to the Mobile Web
Do you use the mobile web? Remember to vote in our poll below.
Social Media U: Take a Class in Social Media
Social media. Web 2.0. You know what these things are and you take advantage of them every day on the net. Whether you’re socializing on Facebook, updating Twitter, or just adding a new bookmark to Ma.gnolia, social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s something that everyone innately understands or knows how to use - especially when it comes to using it for marketing, PR, or other business-related purposes. That’s why many of today’s colleges and universities are now offering “social media” classes as an option for their students.
How to Use Social Media for Social Change
Did you participate in the Twit-Out this week? Do you even know what that is? To get you up to speed, a handful of Twitter users, fed up with the regular outages of their favorite service, decided to band together to show Twitter some tough love by boycotting the service for a day. (Unfortunately, despite having fewer users on the service, Twitter still went down). However, in light of recent world events, it’s a shame that the cause the tech community has chosen to rally around is that of Twitter’s instability. Aren’t there more important things going on right now?
The URL Is Dead, Long Live Search
Last week Josh Catone was watching TV and saw something that really caught his eye. It was a commercial for Special K, the breakfast cereal from Kellogg, and rather than end with a plug for the product’s web site — SpecialK.com — it advised people to search Yahoo! for “Special K” instead. He started to wonder two things: 1. is Yahoo! paying Special K for tack-on advertising? and 2. has searching really become so natural that it is more effective to tell people to search for your site than it is to tell them to visit directly?
SemTech Panel: Taking Semantic Technology to the Masses
How will the Semantic Web make the jump to the mainstream? That was the topic of a panel at the SemTech 2008 Conference that happened this week in San Jose. The panel was moderated by Carla Thomson from Guidewire Group and featured Josh Dilworth from Porter Novelli,
Tom Tague, who heads the Calais initiative at Reuters, and Mark Johnson, who is a product manager at Powerset.
This post is based on notes from that panel.
See also: SemTech Panel: Investor Opportunities and Pitfalls
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
Excerpted from:
Weekly Wrapup, 19-23 May 2008
