It is almost two years ago that the term “Crowdsourcing” was invented by Jeff Howe in Wired magazine in June 2006. Since then this word became one of the buzzwords of the web 2.0 community.

Definition:
Crowdsourcing is taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. Using the general public to do research or other work, which may or may not be paid.

Examples:

• Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk enables requesters post Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) along with the fee they will pay for their completion. Turkers (the workers) choose their HITs, do the jobs and submit the results. Examples of HITs are locating information on a document, translating foreign languages, transcribing speech, as well as comparing audio to written transcripts. (The name comes from a Hungarian nobleman Farkas Kempelen's mechanical "Turk" in the mid-1700s, which was an expert chess player dressed up as a wooden mannequin.)
• InnoCentive enlists scientists worldwide to do research for pharmaceutical, biotech, agribusiness and other companies. Awards are issued for solutions that best meet requirements.
• Google Answer, a venture that began in 2002 and ended in 2006. Users would post questions and a fee they would be willing to pay for the answer, and Google retained 25% of the amount. Any of several hundred Google Answers Researchers (GARs) could answer the question. To qualify as a GAR, people had to fill out an application. Registered users could also comment on questions.
• Threadless.com is a community-centered online apparel store which prints T-shirts with designs submitted to its Web site by its community. It’s running since 2000. In August 2007, Threadless opened a retail store in Chicago.
• Lego, one of the biggest toy company in the world encourages its fanatical customers to design everything from robot operating systems to Lego sets.
• Cambrian House is a community owned web 2.0 company where members earn Glory Points for participating by posting in their forums, submitting or commenting on ideas and businesses, and other worthy feats.
  

Today’s news, according to ReadWriteWeb.com, that Facebook users in China "received a message on their main pages this morning asking them to help out with the translation of the site into simplified Chinese". Kaiser calls this a "a very Web 2.0 approach to the arduous task of translating the site."

Sources:
Computer Desktop Encyclopedia
Wired article: Look Who's Crowdsourcing
Wired article: The Rise of Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing directory
ReadWriteWeb article: Facebook to Crowdsource Chinese Translation - China Launch Imminent?
Cambrian House

Yahoo launched its web portal for women, Yahoo Shine. They say, they didn’t want to be a site just for moms or just for single women or working women, or any specific demo- or psychographic. They wanted to create a smart, dynamic place for women to gather, get info and to connect with each other and the world around them.

The important thing Yahoo Shine wants to achieve is not how to talk to a 32.5 year-old with 2.2 kids but how to inspire them laugh, think, get mad, empathize, and be surprised and entertained. On Shine they want women to blog, to comment on articles, to vote in our daily polls, to join in as daily events are discussed. To become web 2.0 users with all the benefits of the read/write web.

They cover the following topics: fashion + beauty / healthy living / entertainment / parenting / love + sex / work + money / food / at home / astrology / speak up They have integrated Yahoo Mail in the site: registered users can check their new mail in their inbox without having to leave the site. They have a blog list of interesting blogs submitted by Shine users. At the end of the site readers can see all of the latest headlines and top articles.

Yahoo’s new site’s biggest competing sites are: sugarinc.com, glam.com, ivillage.com.

Source: TechCrunch article

... because Chinese social network service (SNS) QQ.com has five times more active accounts (around 300 million) than media spotlight Facebook (around 60 million), according to Benjamin Joffe, Managing Director at Asia Internet consultancy +8*. He gave a presentation at the Media'08 event in Sydney in March 2008 (see his downloadable slideshow here).

He started his presentation with two false “general assumptions” among many people living in western cultures: 1: everything from the USA is GREAT; 2: everything from Asia is WEIRD (and sometimes funny). He also cited three anonymous managers confirming this mistaken cultural approach: a telecom manager in 2000 said that “Japanese like texting on mobile because they have small fingers”; an internet company manager in 2005 said that “Asians like avatars because they read mangas and watch animes”; a media company manager in 2006 said that ”Chinese like ring-back tones because they go to karaoke a lot.”

It is important to look at Asia, because some Asian markets are strategically important – especially China, which is the most populated country; Japan, which is the second powerful economy; and South Korea, which is the number one digital society in the world. It is also important to look at these markets since some great ideas have already been proven, according to Benjamin Joffe. (His example: Pandora.tv preceded YouTube as it was the first video sharing service introduced in 2004.)

I think only some of us knew that social network services in Asia preceded Facebook the “number one” social network site. Facebook entered the scene in 2004, but the world’s biggest social site, the Chinese qq.com started its service seven years erlier (!), in 1997. QQ.com has five times more active accounts (around 300 million) than media spotlight Facebook (around 60 million), although their reach numbers (number of internet users) are almost the same: around 200-200 million. In the revenue figures QQ.com considerably exceeds its American counterpart Facebook: while Facebook revenues in 2007 were estimated around USD 200 million, QQ.com’s revenues were more than twice as much, USD 520 million. More to this, while Facebook’s operating profit for the same period was a USD 50 million loss, QQ.com made a USD 224 million operating profit.

The business model of the two major SNSs greatly differ: while Facebook provides a vast variety of different digital services, QQ.com not only provides these digital services, but also provides games, and mobile value added services.

Benjamin Joffe defined three main areas where these business models have “the missing blocks” and should concentrate their future development: payment infrastructure, trust system, new value chains.

Source: Readwriteweb.com article / Benjamin Joffe’s slide at SlideShare

The increasing popularity of Ajax and Flex applications is changing the way companies do business online, says a Forrester Research report by Ron Rogowski, issued this March (“The Business Case For Rich Internet Applications”).

Firms that measure the business impact of their rich applications (RIA) say that rich applications meet or exceed their goals:The main reasons why companies choose RIA are:

• The overwhelming majority of those who tried RIAs say that rich applications greatly enhance their Web experience. 52 percent of online consumers have used highly interactive applications like Google Maps and Zillow.com.
• Since RIAs provide a range of capabilities — like improved data visualization and streamlined processes — that go beyond the limitations imposed by HTML they enable tasks that HTML can’t. RIAs give companies a superior alternative to HTML for crafting customer interactions.
• Firms that measure the business impact of their RIAs say that rich applications meet or exceed their goals. As the RIA success stories of these early adopters become more widely known, site owners at mainstream companies also look to RIAs to boost online effectiveness.
  

One may ask: if RIAs have such benefits, why haven’t they become more widespread?

• RIAs aren’t an imperative for every site. Sites that are light on function, like corporate home pages and investor relations sites, don’t necessarily need this level of functionality.
• Many firms lack the necessary Flash and Ajax development skills to create their own RIAs.
• Making a quantifiable business case is hard. Companies committed to being online leaders in their industries, like Dell and Fidelity Investments, take a leap of faith that rich technologies will boost their bottom lines. But when site owners at mainstream companies must build a business case to get budget approval, they struggle to define and quantify potential returns on their RIA investments.
  

Source: Forrester report
More to read on this blog:
Rich Internet application (RIA) usage on the desktop
Adobe AIR – Rich Internet apps to the desktop

Online advertising expenditures for newspaper websites in the US in 2007 increased 18.80%, to USD 3.17 billion - accounting for 7.50% of all newspaper ad spending in the last year (up from 5.72% in 2006), according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

The fourth quarter of 2007 was the 13th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for online newspaper advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.

However the print ad expenditures were down 9.4% in the same period, and total (print and online) newspaper ad expenditures were down 7.9% for 2007. Year 2000 was the peak for the print ad expenditure, when total print ad expenditures were the highest of all times: USD 48,67 billion. In 2007 this figure declined to USD 42,209 billion, which is a 13,28% decline.

Sources: Marketigcharts.com / NAA website
Realted story in my blog:
The trend continues: increasing Web usage in news consumption in the US

New York Times technology columnist, David Pogue, at a conference for the public-relations industry a couple weeks ago, was asked to speak about Web 2.0. Before his talk the audience was warmed up with an exercise: P.R.-related questions were raised to the attendees who could respond to these on wireless laptops. The responses appeared on a big screen. One of the questions was: "Why isn't your company (or client) taking advantage of Web 2.0?"

Within seconds, there were 132 responses on the screen in a huge, scrolling list. "Not enough money." "Don't understand it." "No technical resources." "Not enough manpower." "No visible return on investment." "Fear of ridicule." "Fear of slander." "Fear of permanence." "Fear of the public running amok."

„The fears are rational enough: over and over again, we've all seen blog comments devolve into juvenile, offensive bickering, backstabbing and grandstanding”, says David Pogue.

Two points I found very important in this article:
“When a company embraces the possibilities of Web 2.0, though, it makes contact with its public in a more casual, less sanitized way that, as a result, is accepted with much less cynicism. Web 2.0 offers a direct, more trusted line of communications than anything that came before it.”

Being a company, using moderated, managed web 2.0 applications (e.g. blogs, podcasts, videos), “you'll gain trust, goodwill and positive attention. You'll put a human face on your company. And you'll learn stuff about your customers that you wouldn't have discovered any other way.”

Source: Article of The New York Times

Wendy Tanaka, a Senior Writer for Forbes.com made a selection of the seven top travel sites on the net which I found especially useful considering that some of us have already started to plan summer holidays. (Also see the latest statistics for the top 10 travel - tourism guide sites for February 2008 provided by marketingcharts.com.)

Kayak
The breadth of its searches has made this start-up a standout. Kayak crawls travel agency sites such as Orbitz and Venere as well as hundreds of airline and hotel sites to find the best rates. It also compares rates from different sites. Last year, the company acquired SideStep, another popular travel search engine. Link: www.kayak.com

TripAdvisor
Considered the granddaddy of user-generated travel review and recommendation sites, TripAdvisor was redesigned recently to give users easier access to reviews, chatrooms, maps and other features. The company was acquired by IAC/InterActive, which also owned travel mega-site Expedia, in 2004. The following year, TripAdvisor was rolled into Expedia. Link: www.tripadvisor.com

IgoUgo
This social travel site, which hosts user-generated reviews, tips and photos, calls itself a place for savvy travelers. Founded in 2000, IgoUgo now has more than 350,000 members worldwide. The company was acquired by Sabre Holdings, owner of Travelocity, in 2005. The following year, IgoUgo was folded into Travelocity. Link: www.igougo.com

TripIt
Planning a trip online often requires going to different sites to reserve a flight, hotel room, car rental and restaurant. As a result, travelers must keep track of many reservations. TripIt's personal assistant service consolidates reservations from different booking agencies and puts them into one master itinerary for easy access. Travelers simply forward all their travel confirmation e-mails to TripIt; the company says it can spit back a comprehensive itinerary in minutes. TripIt also adds weather forecasts, maps and city guides to itineraries, and it can send itineraries to friends, family and co-workers. Link: www.tripit.com

VibeAgent
This travel-related social networking site hosts user-generated reviews of hotels around the world, and also lets users search and book hotels. VibeAgent also has a question-and-answer section. Users ask a wide range of questions, from "Is there a small, hip budget-priced place to stay not far from the Oregon Convention Center?" to the more finicky: "Which hotel or chain offers the best bed?"--the Hilton's Serenity Bed, The Marriott Bed or The Heavenly Bed by Westin? Link: www.vibeagent.com

Farecast
The site's tagline is "Know when to buy, when to fly and where to stay." Farecast says it can search more than 100 airline, hotel and online travel agencies, such as Expedia and Hotwire, simultaneously to produce a list of rate comparisons. Farecast also provides suggestions on when to book to get the best rate. Link: www.farecast.com

InsideTrip
If you're comparing flights online but don't know if you should go with the cheapest fare, InsideTrip can help you decide. The recently launched site compares airfares using several criteria, including flight-time duration, leg room and the airline's on-time performance and lost-luggage track record. InsideTrip then calculates a "TripQuality" score for each airfare--the higher the score, the better the overall value. For instance, InsideTrip gave a $386 round-trip flight a TripQuality score of 62, but a different, slightly more expensive $395 flight had better overall value and received an 88. Link: http://insidetrip.com

Read more: Forbes article

Zemanta , a Slovenian web 2.0 startup announced its public beta version of its web service yesterday “that will make blogging life fun again!” – they claim.

Zemanta is building a platform for assisted on-line content production. Their solution is best demonstrated by taking a text (a blog, an article or a web page) and feeding it into their system. The system recognizes the content and returns suggested images, smart links, keywords and relevant related stories from the Internet. It can be referenced from a user's preferred content publishing platform through a simple plug-in.

All you need to do now in order to test the service is go and write a new blog post (see supported blog platforms and browsers below), just like you used to do. You will notice a new Zemanta sidebar added to your post editing page.

Before you start writing your post editing page will already contain the most interesting pictures from Flickr, that you can use as an inspiration. After you start writing, the recommendations will refresh every 300 characters, and should improve as you write more.

Photos are suggested from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers (currently Shutterstock and Fotolia). They are suggested based on contextual comparison of your text and the image's title, description and articles they were used in originally.

Zemanta index around 300 top media sources and numerous blogs of their users. They analyze your blog post through their proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and statistically compare its context framework to our preindexed database of other content. All suggested content is copyright cleared - either clearly licensed as Creative Commons, or approved by stock providers.

Supported blog platforms and browsers:
Blogger / TypePad / Wordpress.com / and your own hosted Wordpress
The Alpha version supports Mozilla Firefox 2 and 3. Internet Explorer version is in private testing. Opera and Safari support is under development. The service works only (best) for English language posts.


Zemanta Blogger integration from zemanta on Vimeo

Zemanta, founded in May 2007, was picked by the largest venture capital funds as one of the 6 most promising technology start-ups in Europe in September 2007. In January, they have successfully received the seed investments of two distinguished funds, T.A.G. and Eden Ventures, totaling USD 1.5m.

More to read: Zemanta website

Related articles

• Zementa Brings a Semantic Layer to Your Blog [via Zemanta]

I am sure that most of us living in western democracies assume that China’s internet users are both aware of and unhappy about their government’s oversight and control of the internet. This is not so, according to a survey which was funded by the New York-based Markle Foundation and directed by an internationally respected research team at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

According to by Deborah Fallows, a Senior Research Fellow at Pew Internet & American Life Project, in this new survey, almost 85% of Chinese say they approve of internet control and management, especially by the government. Guo Liang, the deputy director of the Research Center for Social Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explained that people’s acceptance of government control and management of the internet is born of the realities of modern Chinese governance and a historical sense in which the state is assumed to be broadly responsible for social management and public values.

The Chinese government controls its internet since Internet became a world-wide service. It censors or blocks politically-outspoken blogs. It has arrested citizens on charges of “inciting subversion” for posting articles in chat rooms critical of the Communist Party. It passes internet traffic through a “Great Firewall” designed to deny access to such international websites as Wikipedia, Technorati, all blogs hosted by Blogspot, and many sites maintained by the BBC. It also censors content on Chinese-based sites dealing with a host of topics, including the religious group Falun Gong, the 1989 Tiananmen incident, corruption among government officials, the independence movement in Taiwan, a free Tibet, various human rights issues, political incidents, or citizens’ uprisings. Last week’s news was that Chinese government shut down 25 video sites, penalized 32 more video-sharing services.

Most important findings of the survey:

• From 52% in 2003 to 26% 2007 trust in the reliability of online content has fallen by one-half. Only about one-third of internet users (30%) said they considered online content reliable. Nonusers were even harsher in this regard with only 18% saying they considered online content reliable;
• 93% of internet users said they considered much of internet content to be unsuitable for children;
• 61% of internet users and 81% of non internet users thought internet users could easily become addicted to the internet;
• 43% of internet users and 66% of non internet users said the internet could lure users into making the wrong kind of friends,
• 42% of internet users and 55% of non internet said internet usage easily presented risks to personal or private information,
• 87% of internet users would control or manage pornography; 86% violent content; 83% spam or junk mail; 66% advertisements; 64% slander against individuals; 27% online chatting.

Source: PEW report

A couple of hours ago YouTube presented YouTube Insight, a free video analytics tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. Users can find currently available metrics by clicking under the "About this Video" button under "My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos."

Uploaders can see:
how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions,
how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time,
how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

YouTube plans to develop new features and additional information available “fairly quickly”, e.g. a specific breakdown of how viewers discovered the video.

Source: YouTube blog

Rich Internet applications (RIA) are generally web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications.

According to Adobe, which is one of the major players on the desktop RIA market, the most important benefits using Rich Internet applications on a desktop are:

• Establish a more persistent connection with existing customers
• Deliver fully branded experiences with desktop functionality Leverage existing personnel, processes, and infrastructure
• Develop and deliver RIAs efficiently using proven Adobe technology
• Increase the ROI of your web investments

The most important differences between a RIA in the browser or on the desktop is summarized in a table on Adobe AIR website:

Source: Adobe AIR page

Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that enables you to use your existing HTML/Ajax, Flex, or Flash web development skills and tools to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAS) to the desktop. Adobe AIR applications support native desktop integration, including clipboard and drag-and-drop support, local file IO, system notification, and more.

Adobe made a public preview release of AIR along with a SDK on March 19, 2007. Version 1.0 was released on February 25, 2008. A Linux version is expected to be released in the second half of 2008.

One of the mostly used Adobe AIR applications is eBay Desktop which was developed to serve the power sellers, who find the browser limiting when managing an immense volume of transactions in the browser, due to the stateless nature and cumbersome request/response model. Managing individual items that may exceed hundreds or even thousands becomes a nightmare task as a seller refreshes web pages in a browser over and over. By removing the browser and integrating the application into the desktop, eBay allows power sellers to manage their auctions at an entirely new level. Sellers can create auctions while offline, get system notifications when they've been outbid, and drag and drop auction results to the desktop to be saved as common desktop file formats, such as Microsoft Excel.

Some other well known names also use Adobe Air:
AOL uses Adobe AIR to reach customers beyond the browser.
NASDAQ enables investors and brokers to replay market activity in great detail at any given point in time.
The New York Times provides a new way to share information across the desktop and devices.
Yahoo! Live connects users in the browser and on the desktop.

I also found useful some other Adobe Air based applications:
Webkut - allows you to capture web pages, or parts of them in a very simple way. It provides you 3 capture options: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection.
Google Analytics Reporting Suite – brings Google Analytics to the desktop, with a host of features that help you understand how your website is performing and where you can improve.
Color Browser – you can chose from and build your own color sets e.g. to set up your new blog.
CleVR Stitcher – drag and drop your photos to join them into a panorama and, plus you can share it on the web.

More to read: Adobe AIR

I read one of the most comprehensive articles on Reuters by Anupreeta Das on the nowadays so often debated issue: why even the most popular social sites do not meet their financial goals.

"Virtual beer and vampires may no longer be enough to keep members of social networks like Facebook and News Corp's MySpace riveted to their computers. Instead, the key to the future of these Web sites may lie in more practical functions, such as making plans, booking tickets or checking stock quotes."

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google Inc. said on a conference call in January that "I don't think we have the killer best way to advertise and monetize social networks yet", after they reached a lower-than-expected revenue in the fourth quarter in this market segment.

It seems that people are tiring of the activities these sites can offer to them. According to the Reuters article "the number of U.S. visitors on MySpace fell to 68 million in February from about 72 million in October, while the average time people spent on their Facebook profiles dropped to 161.3 minutes from 195.6 minutes." (A 5.6 percent decrease in the number of MySpace visitors and a 17.5 percent fall in the number of average time spent on a Facebook profile.)

According to Reuters: Charles Moldow, general partner of venture capital firm Foundation Capital said that "I think (investors) are going to lose of lot of money. The widgets currently in fashion are very lightweight and do not command the loyalty of their audiences."

The future is viral marketing?

Reuters states that "social networks benefit from engaged users who share their likes and dislikes with friends, helping advertisers through word-of-mouth, or viral marketing."
Jupiter Research analyst, David Card said that "If you can tap into that and then there's sharing, if you have a big audience that's engaged with you, you will be able to make money off it." Many investors who share the conviction that this is the road to success for social networking has led to fund useful widgets.

Many analysts cautioned however that marketing tailored to people's online behavior might not succeed if people feel their privacy is intruded upon. Facebook's Beacon was an early experiment in such marketing but it was a big failure and they had to deactivate the service. In spite of this, some analysts say that the acceptance of this kind of viral marketing could be expected by the majority of users in time as it happened with marketing via e-mail.

Source: Reuters article

An article by Gerry McGovern on CMS Wire writes about the potential benefits and mainly vainness of site redesigns. Since I participated in numerous redesign projects before (redesigning a couple of times the website of Hungary’s second biggest GSM service provider and redesigning Hungary’s market leader political daily’s website), I was happy to find a good article summarizing and expressing my own experiences in this field.

I fully agree with Gerry McGovern’s summary: “Redesign is classic organization-centric thinking. It rarely has much to do with making things better for the customer.”

The main problem is that many of the redesign project teams are not focusing on the main question: is my site serving my custmers' needs, if not why and how can we make it better. “Organizations love projects. You get a budget and a launch date. You can get busy and look like you’re working really hard. Some web teams love website redesign projects. It’s fun. They get to go to lots of meetings and talk about graphics and colors, and to extol about how bored they are with the old design. But usually it’s not the web team that wants the redesign. Rather, it’s some marketing manager. Or some senior executive in communications who has had a golf course conversation about the Web. Or some newly appointed manager desperate to reinvent the wheel.”

Don’t redesign, improve

“Relevancy, accuracy and up-to-datedness of content are key problems that websites face today. You don’t need a redesign to address these issues. Instead, you need professional publishing processes, with a particular emphasis on how you review and remove old content.”
One of the most important goals to achieve is to enable customers to find things quickly on your website. Two easy tasks to achieve these goals: make your content more search-friendly; make the words more customer-centric.

Redesigning only to have a “top of the class” new graphical design is not only aimless but in most cases annoys your most loyal customers. Gerry McGovern raised the case of eBay which a couple of years ago wanted to change the background color on their website: “within minutes of making the change, they had a stream of calls from angry customers saying that they couldn’t find anything on the website.”

Evolution, not revolution!

Start with the most important issue to be solved on your website and improve it bit by bit. Test a change, see how your customers react, refine and test again. Only then move onto your next task.

Read more: CMS Wire article

I have read and mostly agree with the article on Canadian tech lawyer, Rob Hyndman’s blog which is a conflicting opinion compared to the majority of the innumerable praising opinions and articles about Facebook.

His verdict is short and rather negative:

“Most of the people I know who used to spend time on Facebook don’t bother anymore. Why not? I bet it’s the same reason I don’t: Facebook is boring.”

“How is Facebook not useful? Let me count the ways. First, why isn’t there a native capability to recommend to me people I should meet? The first best thing about friends is being with them, but the next best thing is making more of them. This is a powerfully useful thing - regardless of why you want to meet those new friends. Facebook knows who my “friends” are, knows with whom I message, knows the movies I like, the books I like, the music I like, where I live, what schools I went to, and so on. If anyone knows who I might like to friend, Facebook does. This feels to me like a killer app for social networking, and I don’t understand why Facebook won’t dive in.”

"Next, what about web content? When I post something to Facebook, why isn’t Facebook analyzing that content, and drawing inferences about me, my interests and people who might share them? Right now a posted item sits on my Facebook page like lump of coal. Great - I put it there to make it useful to someone else - but again, why isn’t Facebook using that information to do something useful for me?"

I made a little "experiment" to find out Facebook's boring/great ratio: I found 4,980 hits on the "Facebook is boring" and 41,700 hits on the "facebook is great" expressions on Google. The ratio is 1:8.4.

Source: Rob Hyndman's blog article

I found these very informative, brief and expressive diagrams at Ross Dawson's website. He is CEO of consulting firm Advanced Human Technologies, based in Sydney and San Francisco, and Chairman of Future Exploration Network, a global events and consulting firm specializing in the future of business.

Source: http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/Web2_Framework.pdf

Aggregation Bringing multiple content sources together into one interface or application.

AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) A combination of technologies that enables highly interactive web applications.
API (Application Programming Interface) A defined interface to a computer application or database that allows access by other applications.

Embedding Integrating content or an application into a web page, while the original format is maintained.

Folksonomy Rich categorization of information that is collectively created by users, through tagging and other actions. (cf. taxonomy)

Mashups Combination of different types of content or data, usually from different sources, to create something new.

Remixing Extracting and combining samples of content to create a new output. The term was originally used in music but is now also applied to video and other content.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) A group of formats to publish (syndicate) content on the internet so that users or applications automatically receive any updates.

Ruby on Rails An open source web application framework that is frequently used in Web 2.0 website development.

Tag cloud A visual depiction of tags that have been used to describe a piece of content, with higher frequency tags emphasized to assist content comprehension and navigation.

Tagging Attaching descriptions to information or content.

Virtual architecture The creation of avatars (alternative representations of people), buildings, objects, and other artefacts inside virtual spaces.

Widget Small, portable web application that can be embedded into any web page.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) An open standard for describing data, which enables easy exchange of information between applications and organizations.

Source: Web2 Framework pdf (published at: www.rossdawsonblog.com)

LinkdedIn, founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, is a networking tool to find connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Allows registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. It lets you search your former classmates and colleagues, helps you in rebuilding your social and professional network. As of March 2008, it had more than 20 million registered users, spanning 150 industries. It’s current traffic rank is 216 among the world's biggest sites, according to Alexa.com.

According to TechCrunch, today morning they will launch company profile pages that partly serve as fact sheets for about 160,000 companies and partly serve to reveal the connections that members have with them. The company says that it plans to wiki-fy these company profile pages in the next few months, allowing employees to edit company overviews, upload logos, and add other custom modules. Some of the information on these pages will also be distributable via widget.

Most used feature is that users can maintain a list of contact details of people. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection. The list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:

• A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second degree connections) and also the connections of second degree connections (termed third degree connections).
• This can be used to gain an introduction to someone you wish to know through a mutual, trusted contact.
• It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.
• Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.

Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.

The feature LinkedIn Answers, similar to Google Answers or Yahoo! Answers, allows users to ask questions for the community to answer.

Sources: TechCrunch article / Wikipedia article / Alexa page about LinkedIn

According to eMarketer, Carat "the leading independent media communications agency", as they define themselfs, issued revised forecasts for global advertising expenditure for 2008 and 2009.

2008’s global advertising forecasts have been revised marginally downwards to 6.0% from 6.2% forecast in September last year. 2009 is predicted to see advertising growth of 4.9% worldwide, with the fastest-growing regions set to be Asia Pacific and Latin America, with strong increases predicted for India, Indonesia and Argentina, at 21.2%, 22.3% and 15.0% respectively.

The strongest growth remains in Internet, at 23.3% for 2008, although it is expected to slow somewhat to 18% in 2009. Hot on the heels of the internet are cinema and out-of-home, closely followed by TV. Only newspapers are declining overall.

"Thanks to one-off events like the Beijing Olympics and the US Presidential elections, we are predicting strong global growth in ad spend for this year, up to 6.0% from 4.6% in 2007," said Mainardo de Nardis, CEO of Aegis Media.

“Digital’s success story continues. We predict it will approach a 10% share of all global ad spend in 2009. Outdoor and TV are also set to enjoy strong growth in 2008.



eMarketer predicts that, despite the economic rough patch, US online advertising will continue to grow through 2008. Online ad spending will rise by 23%.

The main reason of this continuous growth is "the greater ability to measure ads online will likely encourage marketers with reduced budgets," David Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer said. "Those same marketers are finding that the audiences they need to target are spending more of their media time on the Web."


Source: eMarketer article / eMarketer article 2 / Carat article

A Reuters report states that “The flow of venture capital into the social networks, blogs and other interactive applications that make up so-called Web 2.0 is starting to slow, indicating the business is maturing.”

On the one hand, venture capitalists pumped a record $1.34 billion into 178 so-called Web 2.0 deals in the U.S. in 2007, up nearly 88 percent over amounts invested in 2006, but on the other hand, although from 2002 to 2006, Web 2.0 deal flow doubled every year, 2007 only saw deals increase 25 percent from 143 deals to 178 in 2006. But while venture funding is slowing, social networks and their counterparts are getting more attention from established technology and media companies and institutional investors.

The largest Web 2.0 deal was Facebook which raised $240 million from Microsoft Corp. as well as at least $60 million more from individual investors last year. The next-largest Web 2.0 deal was the $44 million first round for Ning, which lets users create their own niche social networks.

These startups, which largely rely on advertising revenue, may struggle this year, said Jessica Canning, director of global research at Dow Jones VentureSource. A slowdown of the economy and in online advertising rates will challenge these startups' ability to make money, Canning said.

Read more: Reuters article

In its most recent report, "The State of the News Media 2008," the Project on Excellence in Journalism finds that the news industry is changing rapidly. Summary below:

Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.

Matthew Hindman’s (“Political Accountability and the Web’s Missing Middle, 2007”) research cast's a variety of doubts about democratization. Among them, he finds that the top 10 news Web sites account for 29% of all Web traffic. The top 10 papers in newspapers, in contrast, account for 19% of newspaper circulation. “Across every measure, newspaper content is more concentrated online than in print.” Hindman’s research also establishes a stronger pedigree in terms of elite education and advanced post- graduate degrees for the top bloggers than for the country’s leading op-ed columnists. And the top news Web sites have 30 times the traffic of the top political and public affairs Web sites.

For all the network sites, 2007 was a year of creating partnerships perhaps more than building the sites internally. ABCNews.com formed a partnership with Facebook, MSNBC.com joined with the New York Times and National Journal, and CBSNews.com teamed up with Digg.

Newspapers have become places of more innovation online, even adopting many of the traits of new media, from blogging to citizen content. And some of newspapers have become major players in traffic. The top newspaper Web site, NYTimes.com, ranks No. 5 overall among news sites (14.7 million visitors a month), followed by the combined sites of Tribune and Gannett. USA Today is the No. 2-ranked individual paper (and 10th over all among news sites at 9.6 million monthly visitors) followed by the WashingtonPost.com (No. 14 over all with 8.6 million visitors).

Magazines, particularly newsweeklies, continued their push online in 2007. Time, Newsweek, The Economist, the New Yorker and The Atlantic all redesigned or punched up their sites.

Citizen media, the most well-known form of Web 2.0 activity, blogging, appeared to be growing as quickly as ever in 2007, but the evidence suggests that most Americans are not turning to blogs for news. The technology of Web 2.0 has not only set new standards for community interaction among people online, so-called “netizens,” but it is also promising to challenge the definition of journalism as citizens take on the job themselves. More momentum appears to exist in citizen agenda setting than reporting, at user-news sites like Digg, which allow visitors to choose and share what they define as news.

Source: InformationWeek article / The State of the News Media 2008 report

Google is holding a developer event called Google I/O in May 28-29 2008. The main topics:

• AJAX & JavaScript: AJAX and JavaScript continue to capture the imagination of web developers. These sessions focus on tools and techniques of client side code, and how to use them to make serious applications faster, safer, and more easily.
• APIs &Tools: Development tools for the web are evolving. Product APIs allow integration and extention of web applications. Tools like Google Web Toolkit provide a whole new way to improve performance and compatibility, for your app and your development team. This topic area looks at development tools and APIs for web developers.
• Social: The web is an inherently social place. A new wave of APIs and frameworks are opening up interesting ways to interact with people through applications. Learn about the bleeding edge of social applications, how to use OpenSocial as a platform, and what it takes to create your own container site with Shindig.
• Mobile: Mobile devices are blurring the lines between handset developers and web developers, opening up interesting opportunities for applications that span multiple platforms. We'll take a look at how developers can use technologies such as Android and Mobile Gears to build applications on the mobile web.
• Maps & Geo: Since the introduction of the Google Maps API in 2005, geo and map applications have been one of the most interesting phenomenons of the web. These sessions focus on the many aspects of Geo applications, from KML to the Google Maps API and more.
  
  Since I live in Hungary, unfortunately I cannot attend the sessions but I hope Google will publish the main events on their YouTube Chanel called “googletechtalks”.
  
  More to read: Google I/O site / YouTube googletechtalks Channel

One of the editorials of the latest issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that “Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder” which is a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging.

The characteristics of this disorder:

1. excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives;
2. withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible;
3. tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and
4. negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue.

The article features one of the most interesting research on Internet addiction which has been published in South Korea : using data from 2006, the South Korean government estimates that approximately 210,000 South Korean children (2.1%; ages 6–19) are afflicted and require treatment. About 80% of those needing treatment may need psychotropic medications, and perhaps 20% to 24% require hospitalization.

Source: TechCrunch article
Read more: American Journal of Psychiatry (article)

According to Reuters, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged sliding share values and a shortage of credit in financial markets was "a very serious issue" and that many people were expecting a global economic slowdown. (Shares in Google, which traded near $750 in November, fell 4.1 percent to $419.87 on Monday.)

Google, which earned $4.827 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, makes around 98 percent of its income from text ads but was exploring new formats, such as advertising on You Tube videos.

"It's too early to say if there's (already) been any specific impact but if there were I don't think it would be much," Schmidt told reporters. Direct marketing, a successor to online marketing, had historically performed well in times of economic recession, Schmidt said.

Source: Reuters article

An article of internetevolution.com with the same title as above (without a question mark) states that nearly 500 of their “paranoid readers” participated in their poll last week resulting that 36% of them voted that social networking sites win out as the least trustworthy of all the online data consumers. Google was no. 2 most distrusted sites with 27%.

I agree with the article characterizing their readers as “paranoid” since I don’t think that as much as 36% of the web users think these sites are trustlessin any way . But I am sure most of us have pondered on the question before: are the social networking sites commit themselves really to guard our privacy?

Read more: Internet Evolution article

An article on Prescient Digital Media summarizes the intranet prediction for this year. Here is a resume. “…further consolidation of the portal market, increased competition from new web 2.0 vendors, and a simpler home page for the enterprise portal or home page.”

1- Consolidation of portal market
Without continued reductions in prices, portal software sales will continue to slow. A few big vendors are dominating the portal market – Microsoft, IBM, BEA, Oracle and Vignette. “The remaining vendors are a complete afterthought and will fall by the wayside.” (Is it so?)

2- New web 2.0 challengers
Portals are overly complex and usually over-priced. More and more organizations want to have a portal-like enterprise intranet, but don’t have the money. Enter the new challengers using Web 2.0 including mash-ups, RSS and AJAX. It’s not surprising then that some of the new Web 2.0 technology including RSS and mashups are beginning to undermine expensive portal solutions and the concept of intranet personalization. (The difficulty with personalization is that it requires a phenomenal amount of work and planning; the technology component is relatively simple. Organizations that roll-out personalization have to identify and define multiple roles and content and then map all the content to those roles and ensure that the content is provided on an ongoing basis (writing, updating, publishing, formatting, etc.). Even more troublesome is that while employees like the idea of personalization, few will ever use it.) RSS, for example, is a XML format for publishing frequently updated content. While it is typically used for blogs and news feeds, it can also be used for publishing any type of regularly updated content, including reports, documents, and other key information.

A number of vendors are offering mashup solutions that are not yet alternatives to deep, enterprise level integration, but are alternatives to Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and portals that are able to aggregate top-level data. A few of the emerging solutions: Dapper, WorkLight, Grazr, Jackbuilder. Additional contenders that we know nothing of yet will also emerge in 2008.

3- Workflow diminishes
Content management workflow has been the focus of lots of development and improvement with many of the leading vendors. Yet most organizations don’t give a damn about workflow and most barely use it. Content managers and approvers prefer to use e-mail and MS-Word for content approvals and gate-keeping and will continue to do so. Workflow mechanisms will continue to exist in almost all CMS products, but future R&D will wane as customer apathy increases.

4- Home pages become simpler
Employees are screaming for simpler home pages, with fewer links, more white space, and less color.

5- Intranet Governance gain strength
The biggest problem of intranets is the lack of ownership, management and governance. More and more companies realize this and start to put in governance models.

6- Facebook gains enterprise support
Forrester Research study found that 78 percent of IT organizations are concerned with the employee-driven, unsanctioned use of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprises. In spite of this, slowly Facebook will begin to win corporate support and more companies will use as a means of competitive advantage particularly in the areas of employee recruitment, business development and marketing.

Sources: Enterprise intranet predictions for 2008 / Alternatives to intranet personalization

I read two articles on TimesOnline.com, one with the same title as above, the other: “Facebook and MySpace a threat to Britain's competitiveness?” Here is a resume…

According to Global Secure Systems’ survey puts the cost to British industry at £6.5 billion per annum in lost productivity and questionable bandwidth usage. The poll was carried out amongst 776 office workers who admitted to spending at least 30 minutes a day visiting social networking sites whilst at work; that equates to three weeks of work per year lost to social network sites. In polling 20 corporate information security officers (CISO), they estimated that between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of a company's current bandwidth is being taken up by employee usage of social networking sites. CISOs advise companies to come down hard on social networking addicts in the office.

On the contrary many of the biggest brand names such as mobile operator O2 are using social networks for recruitment, marketing and customer outreach. The conclusion of the article is that an introduction of a “reasonable use” policy could balance between the undeniably negative effects of surfing these social networking sites and the also undeniably positive effects of these sites (e.g. usage as HR, PR, and marketing tools).

Global Secure Systems also surveyed 500 English school children between the ages of 13 and 17, 51 per cent confess to checking their social network profiles during lessons. Over a quarter admit their in-school daily social network fix exceeds over 30 minutes each day. King John and the Magna Carta try competing with the latest lunchroom gossip being broadcasted to mobiles, Facebook and Twitter. For teens, failing to attend to these duties (updating their profiles, networking) could end friendships, sink reputations and mean missed opportunities to climb the fickle and precarious social ladder of young adulthood.

I agree with Bernhard Warner, the author of the mentioned article, when he says: “Yes, they’re probably neglecting their history paper to complete it, but the end product is a far more valuable lesson learned in creativity, courage and computer coding. Perhaps it is we educators who need to learn how to harness this power into our everyday classroom lessons.”

Sources: TimesOnline article 1 / TimesOnline article 2

I saw a video on YouTube in which Eric Schmidt, the Chairman and the CEO of Google Inc., shared a few ideas about the term web 3.0. (He was at the Seul Digital Forum last summer and he was asked to define Web 3.0 by a member of the audience.)

He said that Web 3.0 will ultimately be seen as applications that are pieced together having mainly a number of characteristics:

• The applications are relatively small,
• The data is in the “cloud”,
• The applications can run on any device, PC or mobile phone
• The applications are very fast, and very customizable
• The applications are distributed virally, literally by social networks, by e-mail

"That's a very different application model than we've ever seen in computing" he summerized his vision.

Source: YouTube video

Sorce Intranet won Intranet Journal's Product of the Year Best Design Suite award. According to the article on Intranet Journal, one big reason that Sorce took this award is that their readers were impressed by the improvements to its latest version, Sorce V7.

"I think the main reasons why it became very popular is that we put a lot of effort into the usability of the product, making sure non-technical people could maintain and author all parts of the intranet, giving them the ability to maintain and correct their own pages," said John Nicklin, vice president of sales at Sorce.

Sorce V7’s main intranet and extranet solutions:

• Simple navigation and menu construction
• Over 30 business-ready applications to choose from
• Flexible formatting to reflect your organisation’s identity
• Secure access to information on the intranet and extranet
• Distributed administration that enables trained users to manage and maintain content
• Easily adapted to multi-language versions for international organisations
• Easy integration with other business applications and databases
• Customised reporting on any aspect of intranet/extranet use
• Fully scalable for 50 to 5000+ users

Manchester United FC, the Rugby Football Union, and the Youth Hostel Association are among their users.

Source: Intarent Journal article

Craigslist.org is a community moderated, largely free, centralized network of online communities, featuring classified advertisements (with jobs, internships, housing, personals, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories) and forums on various topics. It has local classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwidein 50 countries.

The service was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark. After incorporation as a private for-profit company in 1999, Craigslist expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four each in 2001 and 2002, and 14 in 2003. As of September 2007, Craigslist had established itself in approximately 450 cities in 50 countries. In 2007 it had a staff of only 24 people.

Craigslist serves over 9 billion page views per month, putting it in 66th place overall among web sites world wide, 10^th place among web sites in the US (per Alexa.com on March 15, 2008), to over 30 million unique visitors. With over 30 million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. 86.4% of their users come from the US.

Sources: Wikipedia (Craigslist) / Alexa

An article on O'Reilly Radar tries to answer this interesting and important question, having in mind that Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most dominant web app today.

Last fall, they released a report by Shelly D. Farnham entitled The Facebook Application Platform, that demonstrated that far from being a "long tail" marketplace, Facebook has very much of a "short head" when it comes to applications. She found that among the more than 5000 applications on Facebook, 87% of the usage went to only 84 applications! Only 45 applications had more than 100,000 active users. The economic models (for developers at least, though not for Facebook itself) rely on getting into the very short head.

Shelly D. Farnham author of this report now published her second report, The Facebook Application Ecosystem: Why Some Thrive--and Most Don't.

She states “the main question: is it worth your time or money to either create a Facebook application, or integrate your existing social technology into Facebook?"

“In reviewing the dominant types of applications, it is clear that most of the applications are helping users achieve social goals such as improved communication, learning about the self relative to others, finding similar others, improving self-presentation, engaging in social play, and engaging in social exchanges via gifts and media. Despite its shifting demographics, Facebook is still very much a social arena in the private, personal domain, not the professional domain.”

She found that when a social application (e.g. a social games) does not provide a place for verbal interaction within the application itself, the review section of the application became overloaded with demands for the user-to-user communication required to use the application. As she summarizes this finding: “People come to social sites to be social, and will twist any application into an opportunity to communicate."

Sources: Article on O"Reilly Radar / Blog by Shelly D. Farnham

Berners-Lee, who "invented" the World Wide Web in 1989 while a fellow at CERN, the European Organsation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, would not be drawn on the type of application that the "Google of the future" would develop, but said it would likely be a type of "mega-mash-up", where information is taken from one place and made useful in another context using the web.

Existing "mash-ups", such as progams that plotted the location of every Starbucks in a city using Google maps, were a start, he said in an interview with Times Online, but they were limited because a separate application had to be built each time a new service was imagined.

"In the semantic web, it's like every piece of data is given a longitude and latitude on a map, and anyone can 'mash' them together and use them for different things."

"At the moment, people are very excited about all these connections being made between people — for obvious reasons, because people are important — but I think after a while people will realise that there are many other things you can connect to via the web."

He also spoke about what he described as one of the key challenges of the web today — confronting the security risks associated with large databases of information that were attractive to criminals and identity fraudsters. "One option is to build systems which more effectively track what information you've used to perform a particular task, and make sure people aren't using their authority to do things that they shouldn't be doing."

Source: TimeOnline (article)

Def. 1. The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content. At its core, the semantic web comprises a set of design principles, collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. (1)

Def. 2. The semantic web is a term used to describe the next phase of the web's development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can "communicate" with other information. (2)

The term derives from W3C director Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange. His definition: “I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”

Whereas the existing web is a collection of pages with links between them that Google and other search engines help the user to navigate, the "semantic web" will enable direct connectivity between much more low-level pieces of information — a written street address and a map, for instance — which in turn will give rise to new services.

One frequently given example is of typing a street address which, if it had "semantic data" built into it, would link directly to a map showing its location, dispensing with the need to go to a site like Google `maps, type in the address, get the link and paste it into a document or e-mail.

Sources: Wikipedia (Semantic Web) / TimesOnline (article)

Intranet Journal announced 2008 intranet related product of the year winners. Here is the list of the best nominees and the winners:

Intranet Design Suite
Sorce Intranet
CustomerVision BizWiki
WebGUI
Hyper Office
Microsoft SharePoint 2007
Intranet Dashboard
Winner: Sorce Intranet

Semantic Tool
Altova SemanticWorks
Freebase
Google
Yahoo
Winner: Google

Blogging Software
WordPress
Movable Type
Traction Teampage
Apple iWeb
Blogger
Typepad
Winner: Blogger

Document Management/Collaboration Product
Central Desktop
Jive Software Clearspace X
Hyper Office
Mindjet MindManager 7
Clarizen
ThoughtFarmer
Winner: Mindjet MindManager 7

Enterprise Search Tool
Google
ISYS
X1
Microsoft Sharepoint 2007
Coveo
Fast
Winner: Google

Source: Intranet Journal article

Most people automatically think of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Server which is extremely expensive and not Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) which is free! Not only is it all free, but it can all be setup and ready in just a couple of hours. (This is what we are told in the source article - see below.)

WSS is perfect for many companies, especially small to medium-sized organizations that cannot afford the expense that a full scale SharePoint deployment costs. One of the reasons that makes SharePoint so expensive is its reliance on Microsoft SQL server, which isn’t cheap. The good news about the free WSS is that it uses the free Microsoft SQL Express 2005 database, which is robust enough for most environments.

The most important differences between WSS and MOSS:

• Search across site collections - In WSS, each site collection is an island unto itself. MOSS adds the portal umbrella that pulls together those separate site collections and allows for searching across them.
• Personalization - MOSS allows users to have individual, personalized sites; WSS doesn’t.
• User Profiles - MOSS allows you to import, store, and update personal data on your users, it’s not available in WSS
• Audience Targeting - MOSS allows you to target content to specific user groups; WSS doesn’t.
• Crawl and Index sources outside of SharePoint for searching- MOSS allows you to return search results for indexed sources such as file shares, web sites, Lotus Notes databases, and much more; WSS can only crawl and index WSS sites.
• Search administration and customization - MOSS gives its admins much more control over the configuration of its search engine; WSS doesn’t.
• Extra Site Templates - MOSS provides additional site templates (and workflows) for content management and portals.
• Business Intelligence - allows you to track key performance indicators and build BI dashboards into your team site. The dashboards can assemble and display business info using Excel spreadsheets, SQL, or integrate with line of business applications. Excel Services in MOSS go beyond simply displaying Excel spreadsheets, you can actually stream parts of a spreadsheet, showing or hiding various parts.

The crawling, indexing and searching “weaknesses” of WSS can now be resolved by using Microsoft’s Search Server 2008 Express which is also free! Here is an exhaustive feature comparsion matrix for all SharePoint versions. Also, keep in mind that you can always upgrade from WSS to MOSS if/when the time comes!

Source: How to Build Your Own Social Network in the Enterprise for Free

Read more: Official WSS Homepage

The idea behind TricksPRO is very simple: any solution can be visually explained shortly. Their goal is to create an environment allowing users to contribute their knowledge by sharing their Tips and Tricks as computer, video games, , phone hacks, photography tips, entertainment, hobbies, lifestyle, romance and much more.

E.g you can find video showing the way to find a “hidden” audio file in Windoxs XP which is said to be written by Brian Eno (C:\WINDOWS\system32\oobe\images\title.wma).

Visit: TricksPRO

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Surveys, March 2000-March 2007. All surveys prior to March 2000 were conducted by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press. For 1995, internet users include those who ever use a home, work or school computer and modem to connect to computer bulletin boards, information services such as CompuServe or Prodigy, or computers at other locations. For 1996 to 1998, internet users include those who ever use a home, work or school computer and modem to connect with computers over the internet, the World Wide Web, or with information services such as America Online or Prodigy. For 2000 to 2004, internet users include persons who ever go online to access the Internet or World Wide Web or to send and receive email. For 2005, internet users include those who at least occasionally use the internet or send and receive email.

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives.

Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software, such as WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger or LiveJournal, or on regular web hosting services.

Types:
By media type: vlog / linklog / sketchlog / photoblog / tumbleblog / artlog
By device: moblog (written by a mobile device)

The most known blog search engines: Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati.

Gartner Research forecasts that blogging will peak in 2007, leveling off when the number of writers who maintain a personal website reaches 100 million. Gartner analysts expect that the novelty value of the medium will wear off as most people who are interested in the phenomenon have checked it out, and new bloggers will offset the number of writers who abandon their creation out of boredom. The firm estimates that there are more than 200 million former bloggers who have ceased posting to their online diaries, creating an exponential rise in the amount of "dotsam" and "netsam" — that is to say, unwanted objects on the Web.

Video blogs, sometimes shortened to vlog are blogs whose medium is video. Regular entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order and often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Vlogging saw a strong increase in popularity beginning in the year 2005. The Yahoo! Videoblogging Group saw its membership increase dramatically in 2005. The most popular video sharing site to date, YouTube, founded in February 2005, was publicly launched between August and November 2005.

Read more: Blog (Wikipedia) / Vlog (Wikipedia)

Hulu is an online video service founded in March 2007 by NBC Universal and News Corp. that offers a selection of hit shows, clips, movies, and more at Hulu.com and other destination sites online. Till tomorrow it is in private beta, Hulu is a free ad-supported service for users.

Hulu’s aim is to help consumers find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how they want it. Hulu gives users the flexibility to enjoy content across the Web via its distribution partners: AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo!. Additionally, users can embed videos on their own websites to further extend distribution online.

Try it tomorrow: Hulu.com

Richard MacManus, editor and founder of ReadWriteWeb.com, the 13th site of Technorati’s Top 100 list has made a presentation at the Media08 event in Sydney: “Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond”.

The presentation, as an introduction, starts with a short description of what Web 2.0 means, then it tries to answer the question, ”what’s next? (Web 3.0)”:

• Web sites become web services / Intelligent web = data is getting smarter / Beyond PC – mobile, IPTV, physical world integration
• It describes the concept of semantic web and shows some semantic applications.
• It deals with the open data concept (it also gives relating examples of products and standards).
• Shows the main characteristics of mobile web, and gives 5 examples of these apps.
• It also deals with the future of “recommendation engines” and provides examples.

Read more: the presentation

According to Forrester Research (G. Oliver Young) the enterprise Web 2.0 market, which includes the deployment of tools like blogs, wikis, and social networking within the enterprise, was a growing force in enterprise software in 2007. Forrester expects to see strong demand growth for tools like enterprise RSS and social networking.

Forrester gives three reasons they think deployment of web 2.0 will sneak onto enterprise agendas in 2008:

1. IT guys are already using web 2.0 - many IT departments and shops have been using web 2.0 tools for internal tasks like project management and support ticketing. The utility of these deployments will encourage them to push web 2.0 tools out more broadly in the enterprise.
2. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em - when big business is unable to stem the use of Software as a Service tools and things like social networks by employees, rather than allow untested software and services on their networks, they will mitigate risk by deploying enterprise-class tools in their stead.
3. They make you look cool - for IT departments aspiring to be more relevant to the business, enterprise web 2.0 tools will be a high-impact, low-cost method to show leadership and innovation.

Many of the companies that discovered utility in blogs and wikis last year will realize that RSS is necessary to push that content to users. While 9% of enterprise firms expect to consider the use of RSS in 2008, they believe that number will be close to 20% by year-end.

Technologies that more and more enterprises are actually planning to invest in over the next 12 months are discussion boards and wikis. Forrester, though, expects that it is these technologies that will drive the further adoption of RSS.

Forrester expects Microsoft SharePoint to "steamroll" the market, and will reap the most rewards from a shift toward web 2.0 thinking in the enterprise market.

Source: ReadWriteWeb (article), Forrester.com (article)

As wired.com sated it Jango.com is an "extremely social streaming radio". The fast-growing new social music site, in January 2088 announced that more than 1 million listeners have created over 3 million custom Internet radio stations within just two months of its public launch. To accelerate growth, the company released the Jango Jukebox, an innovative music widget that can be embedded on any MySpace profile, a personal blog, or a website. It’s free to use! (Although you can not download.) Pieces of music like rock, pop, R&B/soul, rap/hip-hop, electronic/dance, country/folk can be selected and put into your own radio station which anyone can listen to… it’s a great place to meet with real people whose common ground is love of music.

Try: Jango.com

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis. The first ever wiki site was created in 1995.

The biggest wiki in the world today is Wikipedia.com:

It was launched in 2001 and as of December 2007, it had approximately 9.25 million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.74 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of March 4, 2008 it had over 2,267,000 articles consisting of over 986,000,000 words. These articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and the vast majority of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Having steadily risen in popularity since its inception, it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.

Wikis are used in many businesses (also referred ad corporate wiki) to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for Knowledge Management. Today some companies use wikis as their only collaborative software and as a replacement for static intranets.

Critics of publicly-editable wiki systems argue that these systems could be easily tampered with, while proponents argue that the community of users can catch malicious content and correct it.

Source: Wikipedia (wiki); Wikipedia (Wikipedia), wiki.org (What is wiki?)

Picnik is perhaps the best online photo editing service today with many image manipulation features similar to the popular image editing software, Photoshop. It can "auto-fix", rotate, crop, resize, modify the exposure and colors, sharpen your photo. You can also use many effects, different type of texts, shapes, frames and other tools. It can import photos from Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Photobucket, Webshots and also offers options to upload from a computer or to upload from a website. And most of its services are free! Try it!

O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is one of the most famous American media company (established by Tim O'Reilly in 1978) publishing books and web sites and producing conferences on computer technology topics. It held its 7th O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference which “hones in on the ideas, projects, and technologies that the alpha geeks are thinking about, hacking on, and inventing right now, creating a space for all participants to connect and be inspired.”

The March 3-6, 2008 conference had the following main topics which presentation files can be downloaded at http://en.oreilly.com/et2008/public/schedule/proceedings/:

• Antigenic Cartography: Visualizing Viral Evolution for Influenza Vaccine Design – Terry Jones (Fluidinfo)
• Connecting Your Life to the Web, with Android – Dan Morrill (Google)
• CouchDB from 10,000 ft – Damien Katz (IBM - CouchDB)
• Disruptive Supply Chain + Disruptive Technology = Disruptive Commerce – Liam Casey (PCH International)
• Mobile Social Software from the Inside Out? – Nicolas Nova (Media and Design Lab)
• Open Source Hardware – Phillip Torrone (Maker Media), Limor Fried (Adafruit Industries)
• OpenMoko and Ubiquitous Computing – Michael Shiloh (OpenMoko)
• Personal Productivity is Personal: Choosing What YOU Need to Overclock Your Workday – Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
• Project Darkstar: Putting the Massive in Massive Multiplayer – Chris Melissinos (Sun Microsystems, Inc.)
• Tap is the New Click: Designing Gestural Interfaces – Dan Saffer (Adaptive Path)
• What it Takes to Make a Browser Smart – Alex Iskold (AdaptiveBlue)
• Why Won't Second Life Just Go Away, Already? Understanding Web 2.0's Most Misunderstood Phenomenon – W. James Au (The Making of Second Life)

Source: Wired, the conference page

The phrase The Long Tail is a buzz word of web 2.0 and it was first used by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of certain online businesses such as Amazon.com.

Products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. This theory is proved by e.g. Amazon.com’s business: a significant portion of Amazon.com's sales come from obscure books that are not available in brick-and-mortar stores. The Long Tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap that market successfully.

An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday”.

Anderson has explained the term as a reference to the tail of a demand curve. The term has since been rederived from an XY graph that is created when charting popularity to inventory. In the graph shown above, Amazon's book sales or Netflix's movie rentals would be represented along the vertical axis, while the book or movie ranks are along the horizontal axis. The total volume of low popularity items (light green part of chart) on the online market exceeds the volume of high popularity items (dark green part of chart).

In an article published in 2003, Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Michael D. Smith showed that, while most of the discussion about the value of the Internet to consumers has revolved around lower prices, consumer benefit (a.k.a. consumer surplus) from access to increased product variety in online book stores is ten times larger than their benefit from access to lower prices online. Thus, the primary value of the internet to consumers comes from releasing new sources of value by providing access to products in the long tail.

Where inventory storage and distribution costs are low, it becomes economically viable to sell relatively unpopular products; however, when storage and distribution costs are high, only the most popular products can be sold. A traditional movie rental store has limited shelf space, which it pays for in the form of building overhead; to maximize its profits, it must stock only the most popular movies to ensure that no shelf space is wasted. On the contrary, an online movie rental company like e.g. Netflix stocks movies in centralized warehouses, its storage costs are far lower and its distribution costs are the same for a popular or unpopular movie. Netflix is therefore able to build a viable business stocking a far wider range of movies than a traditional movie rental store.

Sources: Wikipedia (The Long Tail), Chris Anderson - Identifying "The Long Tail", Wired article

The application’s main features:

• some videos of London's most notable attractions (even some great aerial views);
• iPhone and Mobile users can use the telephone links to get straight through to important tourist targets (restaurants, hotels, etc.);
• built in maps: iPod users can access hundreds of maps showing the location of all the major attractions and tube stations whilst iPhone users can choose between using the quick reference maps or Google Maps. They also provide some Video Maps;
• frequent online updates (another big advantage of the online guide: an offline printed London travel guide can only be updated if its reprinted, which means you have to buy a new guide to get the update infos);
• ECO-friendliness: for every 100,000 people who use their guides instead of purchasing a paperback, approximately 500 trees worth of paper will be saved.
• Last but not least: its free J

The LondonTravelGuide.com is a project from UK software developers Coolgorilla (established in 2005).

Source: Digg (LondonTravelGuide.com)

Animoto Productions is a bunch of techies and film/tv producers who created a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos from user-uploaded songs and images using their own patent-pending technology. After the upload a unique video is automatically generated for them. No two videos are ever the same. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music.

It's no problem if you have no music just photos: they have plenty of ready to use pieces from classical to hip-hop. Animoto is easy to use, and relatively fast (considering that video rendering is a rather PC-killer action).

Cons: it doesn’t support MP4 files: music bought via iTunes cannot be used in your clips & you need to upload your photos every time you want to make a new video. Altogether I think it will be a big shot!

Animoto's front end is built on the open source web framework Ruby on Rails, facilitating rapid "Web 2.0" (Ajax, etc) application development. Animoto has partnered with Amazon to leverage multiple offerings in their Web Services (AWS) platform which, in conjunction with Animoto's own render farm, constitutes the Animoto web infrastructure.

Visit Animoto!

According to a definition on Wikipedia a web desktop or webtop is a network application system for integrating web applications into a web-based workspace. It is a virtual desktop on the web, running in a web browser as software.

The term Webtop was first introduced by the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) in 1993 for a web-based interface to their UNIX operating system. The initial concept was launched as the Tarantella Webtop. Tarantella allowed real UNIX and Windows applications to be displayed within a web browser through the use of Java to form a true web based desktop or Webtop.

Some of the most known web desktops: Cloudo / Desktop on Demand / Desktop Two / G.ho.st / ISDesktop / Jooce / Netvibes / Purefect / Virtual-OS / YouOS

The engine of most of the above mentioned web desktops is Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)

Advantages

• Convenience: Own a personalized desktop on every PC which has a simple internet browser installed
• Simple Software Management: Always use the latest software / No need to install updates/patches / No need for software to distribute software over the network
• Minimum hardware requirements
• High security niveau (if using https)*
• Less downtime (one single system can be protected easier than twenty)

Drawbacks

• Security: Due to the fact that all data is transferred over the internet, it might be possible for a hacker to intercept the connection and read data. Although with the use of https 256-bit encryption and access control lists, this can be easily safe-guarded.*
• High-speed internet: When using a web-based desktop, the whole code used for visualization (.js/.css files, Flash player files, etc.) needs to be transferred to the local computer, so that it can be displayed.
• Critiques say that there is no point to web operating systems and that they are "inherently an inadequate application development platform. (I strongly disagree with this point! Just one example where a web desktop application could be very useful: e.g. in the third world countries where most of the families still cannot afford to have a PC, the children could have a virtual desktop in their school.)

• Sources: Wikipedia (Web desktop) / Wikipedia (Web operating system)

The Future of Web Apps (FEWA) conference was held in Miami (28 Feb - 1 Mar, 2008) where they announced the winners of the top Web applications.

They received over 3,000 votes from all over the world, mainly from experts across the industry but they think the results are quite conclusive.

The top 10 web applications are:
1. Gmail
2. Flickr
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Ravelry
6. Wordpress
7. Mint
8. Last Fm
9. Basecamp
10. Livejournal


Read more: http://www.webappcharts.com/

Experts at the conference (Feb. 28-Mar. 1, 2008) shared lessons they learned from starting up their Web 2.0 companies.It's possible to launch a successful Web startup with little money, especially if you focus on building a great Web application.

The main agenda was:

• What makes the next great startup?
• Open social: plug in to a new platform
• The future of web apps is beyond the browser
• Launch a web app in 40 minutes
• The problem with social networks

The following sites (companies) had speakers:
Digg / TechCrunch / Flickr, Yahoo! Inc / Wordpress / Google / Pownce / Twitter / Wufoo / Remember The Milk / WineLibrary.tv / Superfluousbanter.org / Plaxo / VentureBeat / dev.aol.com / Goowy Media / Microsoft / Sun Microsystem /

Find out more: FOWA Conference in Miami / scrapblog

The European Union is spending 14m EURs ($22 million) to create a standard way to send TV via the net. An additional 5m EURs ($7.4 million) is being contributed to the project by 21 other partners including the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union.

The project will create a peer-to-peer system that can pipe programs to set-top boxes and home TV sets. It will be based on the BitTorrent technology many people already use to share movies and music. The broadcasters can use the internet as a distribution platform for very low cost.

The finished system would be able to handle stored content for download and streamed content sent from live programs such as football matches or other big ticket events.

Peer-to-peer systems have no central host that hands out content, such as TV shows, to viewers. Instead all the machines downloading a show make parts of it available to all the others that want it. In this way, the load is distributed across the network. However, the finished system would also have to be able to handle broadcast-type events that can be restricted to particular audiences.

The project aimed to have some parts of the system available by August 2008. A more complete test version should be finished within 16 months that can pipe programs to set-top boxes so people can watch on their TV set rather than a PC.

P2P Next will build on the Tribler technology under development at the Delft University of Technology. Built in to this are tools that viewers can use to communicate with others that enjoy a particular program or genre. Ultimately, there will be P2P-Next clients for the Mac, Windows and GNU/Linux, as well as a dedicated hardware Set Top Box client.

Links: P2P-Next / BBC / TMCnet

According to a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll 67% percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to the new survey.

While most people think journalism is important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets. 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%)

More than half of those who grew up with the Internet, those 18 to 29, get most of their news and information online, compared to 35 percent of people 65 and older. Older adults are the only group that favours a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38 percent selecting television.

Howard Finberg, of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, said the study does support the belief among many large media companies that focusing on local issues is important to their journalistic and economic survival.

The survey of 1,979 adults nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-21, 2008.

Source: Zogby International

eBay Inc warned in an annual report on Friday that it faces difficulty getting former customers to return, adding to the normal challenge of attracting new users to its sites. They face challenges in their three largest markets: the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

EBay revenue has suffered a dramatic slowing of growth in recent years - down from rates of 30 percent to 40 percent.

They say they have to focus on "reactivate former users," adding to the typical Web business concerns about attracting new users and keeping existing users active. They acknowledged that significant changes made in January in fees and policies on its marketplaces have been controversial with many sellers.

Rivals such as Amazon.com are enjoying surging growth in its merchant business as eBay slows.

In spite of the above mentioned facts, Wall Street analysts, on average, expect eBay this year to earn revenue of $8.7 billion, a rise of 14 percent on 2007.

Source: Reuters

Definition

Tim O’Reilly: The business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (… ”harnessing collective intelligence.”)

In his article ("What Is Web 2.0", 09/30/2005) Tim O'Reilly and his colleagues formulated their sense of Web 2.0 by the following examples:

Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication

Main characteristics:

Participation Every aspect of Web 2.0 is driven by participation. The transition to Web 2.0 was enabled by the emergence of platforms such as blogging, social networks, and free image and video uploading, that collectively allowed extremely easy content creation and sharing by anyone.

Standards Standards provide an essential platform for Web 2.0. Common interfaces for accessing content and applications are the glue that allow integration across the many elements of the emergent web.

Decentralization Web 2.0 is decentralized in its architecture, participation, and usage. Power and flexibility emerges from distributing applications and content over many computers and systems, rather than maintaining them on centralized systems.

Openness The world of Web 2.0 has only become possible through a spirit of openness whereby developers and companies provide open, transparent access to their applications and content.

Modularity Web 2.0 is the antithesis of the monolothic. It emerges from many, many components or modules that are designed to link and integrate with others, together building a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

User Control A primary direction of Web 2.0 is for users to control the content they create, the data captured about their web activities, and their identity. This powerful trend is driven by the clear desires of participants.

Identity Identity is a critical element of both Web 2.0 and the future direction of the internet. We can increasingly choose to represent our identities however we please, across interactions, virtual worlds, and social networks. We can also own and verify our real identities in transactions if we choose.

Sources:

Tim O'Reilly article /PDF of futureexploration.net / Tim O'Reilly report on YouTube / Tim O'Reilly on TiECon07 (YouTube)