"Eye On The World"
Web 2.0
OPEN WEB AWARDS – 26 People’s Choice Winners
Dec 16th
The winners of Mashable’s 2nd annual Open Web Awards was announced Dec 16, 2008. The Open Web Awards are a multilingual, international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. By way of an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements of websites and services in 26 categories.
Twitter appeared to be the frontrunner for the “Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks” category, but the European social portal Netlog took that honor.
People’s Choice Winners Mainstream & Large Scale Social NetworksWinner: Netlog Runner-up: Platinum Lounge
Embeddable WidgetsWinner: Qoof Runner-up: Sprout
Blog PluginsWinner: ShareThis Runner-up: AddThis
Social News More >
Twitter Stats – 2008 Demographics
Dec 11th
Ignite Social Media has compiled their 2008 Social Network Analysis Report: Geographic, Demographic and Traffic Data Revealed – the sources are Google Insights and Google Adplanner.
You will find some very interesting insights in these reports which cover 42 different social networks. Presented for your convenience below are the data on twitter (because twitter is my latest obsession.) The graph shows 7 age groups. The age group using twitter most is the 35 – 44 group. The age group using twitter least is the 0 – 17 group, man are they losing out while they text away with their turbo thumbs. The group I’m in represents slightly More >
Mashup Your Peeps – PeopleBrowsr
Dec 4th
PeopleBrowsr (I would have called it PeepBrowsr) is an online app that lets you keep tabs on your online IDs. Kinda like TweetDeck as an online application, but in addition to Twitter, you can keep track of your other online identities. If you have used TweetDeck you will get PeopleBrowsr immediately. Although it’s in Alpha, PB seems stable and very useful. Using PB you can update your networks, follow your friends, organize your favorites and search across Twitter, flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg, Seesmic, Identi.ca, Photobucket, upcoming and FriendFeed.
As an example of using it with Twitter, just go to PeopleBrowsr.com, click on More >
Your Tweet Value
Nov 18th
What’s your Twitter Account worth in USD?
YATT – Yet Another Twitter Tool – TweetValue – assigns value to any Twitter account in US Dollars. Find out what your Twitter account is really worth.
To find out the value, give TweetValue your Twitter ID and it calculates the value of your account. You can also view the list of top accounts, the most expensive account belongs to the great Chris Brogan and is worth $8,145.00. Chris advises biz, organizations and individuals on how to use Social Media to build relationships and Deliver VALUE. Wow, which waves are you catching? Social Media and Building Relationships are More >
WWW Becomes WWDatabase
Nov 17th
In the 6,527 days since the Tim Berners-Lee made the first web page we’ve gone from sharing computers to sharing links and now – sharing data with the semantic web:
Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired Magazine) at the Web 2.0 Summit, Nov 5 – 7, 2008, in San Francisco, CA gives his impressionistic view of what he thinks we are all headed towards.
This video starts with a brief review, then at about the 3 minute point – the web as OS.
During the next 6,000 days, we move from Web 2.0 into the Cloud. Information and data all moves into the More >
10 Great Web 2.0 Books
Nov 14th
Web 2.0 is changing how the world communicates and does business. Pick a book or two and broaden your understanding – Recommend starting with The Cluetrain Manifesto.
(click on the book covers for reviews at Amazon.com)
5 More Books After the JUMP
Social Media Predicted the 2008 Presidential Election
Nov 5th
On March 19, 2008, before the candidates were nominated, Mike Elgan wrote a column entitled “Has Digg Already Picked the President?” suggesting that social networks might be the best predictor of the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. He was right:
“At the time, I conducted an analysis that varied from site to site, and included Digg, MySpace and Facebook, to see which of the candidates the social sites preferred. I also suggested that if social sites ended up accurately predicting who would win, they might be taken seriously by future pundits when guesstimating who is likely to be elected in the More >
Startups – Free Microsoft Software from BizSpark
Nov 5th
Microsoft has today unveiled their BizSpark initiative.
Get software, support and visibility. Microsoft is hoping to seed Silicon Valley (both real and virtual) with future customers by providing a full kit of tools and software to software development startups for free (for three years.) This is a global program that provides access to full-featured development tools with no upfront costs.
The startup must be nominated by a BizSpark network Partner, privately held, in business for less than 3 years, less than USD $1 million in annual revenue, and in the business of software development. For more details download the Microsoft BizSpark Program More >
Losing a National Treasure
Oct 23rd
Many of those who fought for us in WWII are gone, most of those still with us are in their eighties. In this era of self-indulgence and expectation of entitlement along with an increasing lack of respect for the commitments and contributions of those who came before us the stories of those men and women who left hearth and home and went into harm’s way to protect their way of life for themselves, their families and all Americans need to be told. Of those who went, many did not return. Those who came home have carried their experiences and their stories More >
Flock 2.0 – Your New Favorite Browser
Oct 15th
Flock 2.0 the Social Web Browser has been released and it’s ready to ROCK! This appealing browser is all about integration and making it easier for us to share and interact online. The words discover, create and share come to mind as you experience Flock which was designed based on the web being an indispensable social platform. It’s your window on the world and your connection to others. Find out more at the Flock pressroom, the Flock blog or take the Flock tour.
Quite different from Google’s Chrome browser which believes that browsers should be seen and not heard while supporting applications and More >
YouTube’s New Theater View
Oct 11th
Get beamed up with Scotty and watch McGiver do miracles with paperclips – youtube has introduced, theater view, lights out mode (like what you’ve seen if you watched TV on your computer via Hulu.com) and Super HD and full-length programming labeled with a Film Strip symbol ( ), but you “may” see in-stream video ads in some episodes.
From the youtube blog:
Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Now The Infinite Web
Oct 11th
An article by Scott Loganbill in the monkey_bites section of webmonkey reports that “As our economy sours more and more technologists are writing off Web 2.0 as dead.” Then he goes on to say, “We believe … the web is evolving. In fact, there’s no sign it will ever stop.” He also states that “Luckily for all of us, web technology is still in it’s infancy…”
I side with Scott on this. Whoever the “nervous technologists” are, they are wrong. Human beings are all about connections and relationships. The World Wide Web, that Tim Berners-Lee so un-selfishly gave us, is all about connections. The web is still More >
Penzu – Your Life & Your Journal
Oct 9th
From About.com - “Journaling is a great way to reduce stress, process your feelings, better understand yourself, and have a catalog of your life’s events.”
From cnet.com – “I’m not kidding when I say Penzu is the most realistic re-creation of paper I’ve seen on the Web. The service has a serious leg up on its pulp-born competition with a slick looking college-rule that holds all your thoughts (intelligent or not) and saves them to the cloud. When it comes time to print them, they’ll come out just like they look like on the page, sans rulings of course.” – May 29, 2008
Get on over More >
2008 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle
Oct 4th
We live in a world of constantly emerging, developing and maturing technologies. These technologies are at the confluence of rapidly accelerating ideas and innovation.
The IT industry research firm Gartner has for many years tracked and analyzed emerging technologies from their inception to their fruition or demise and has developed, from their observations, the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.
This cycle tracks the market views of various technologies, which go through predictable cycles from their “trigger” to their inflated peak of expectations, then down into the trough of disillusionment, then up the slope of enlightenment and, finally, to the plateau of productivity.
Keep in More >
Web Search for Dummies
Sep 24th
Lee & Sachi LeFever at CommonCraft.com do the “…In Plain English” video series.
Here is their new video on “Web Search Strategies”, only 2:51 in length.
Tip from this video: Words have multiple meanings which gives way too many search results. To limit your search use a hyphen or minus sign before a word to remove that word from your search results:
The LeFever’s have a unique story. Read all about them and CommonCraft.com at ReadWriteWeb, at their “About Us” page, and view their year of world travel journal (lots of cool photos and videos.)
More >
