ReadWriteWeb

ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 5 December 2009

Abraham Hyatt — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:00:00 -0800

We hope you're enjoying these weekly events guide. As always, you can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

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7 December 2009: San Francisco

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit brings together 600+ visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology eco-system in a proactive environment, highly conducive to deal making. Register with a great ReadWriteWeb 15% discount.

8 December 2009: London

Sprout Up

Sprouter, an online collaboration tool for entrepreneurs, is holding its first Sprout Up event in London, England, from 6-9 p.m. at Waterpoet Pub. Sprouter facilitates networking and collaboration between entrepreneurs around the globe, with Sprout Up events in Toronto, New York City and other cities. The London event is part of GaryVee's Crush It! book launch. About 200 entrepreneurs are expected to attend. It's a chance for startups around the city to get friendly, discuss current trends and network in a casual, open and focused setting. Attendees will walk away with new insights, new friends and actionable ideas for their businesses.

8 December 2009: San Francisco, California

DiscoveryBeat 2009

DiscoveryBeat 2009 is focused on the "secret recipe" for application discovery and the opportunity to create the relationships needed to succeed in a crowded and competitive space. Hosted by VentureBeat, this half-day event will be led by the hottest and most sought-after app developers, entrepreneurs and leaders from the games, social and mobile eco-system. Speakers include the masterminds behind Zynga, Playfish, Smule, Playdom, Moderati and Backflip Studios.

Save 15% off regular price tickets with your exclusive ReadWriteWeb discount by clicking here here.

7 - 11 December 2009: Chicago, Illinois

Search Engine Strategies 2009

From social media to local search to video SEO, Search Engine Strategies Chicago puts you in front of the experts who will help you sort which technologies and channel will take you to the next level and which are just hype.

Search Engine Strategies is the pioneer of educational conference series in search engine marketing. It's the venue where the industry visionaries and thought leaders gather each year to discuss the newest trends, share insights and present the strategic action plans you need to grow your business. Sessions include:

SEO Through Blogs and Feeds
Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues
What's the Link Between Search and Social?
Online PR: Where to Next?
Search Analytics

See more at www.SearchEngineStrategies.com/chicago. ReadWriteWeb readers receive a 15% discount when registering here using RWW15 code.

11 December 2009: Mountain View, California

Add-on-Con

Add-on-Con is a single-day conference focused on the future of the browser and its emergence as a platform.

Developer sessions will cover best practices, cross-browser development and mash-ups. Marketing sessions will focus on monetization opportunities, distribution strategies and stats. Join 200+ individuals involved in add-on development to help define an emerging new market in the Web's eco-system.

ReadWriteWeb readers save $50 by using the discount code "addoncon09RRW."

12 December 2009: Silicon Valley

> TEDxSilicon Valley

TEDxSilicon Valley is gathering world-leading thinkers, makers, and doers at Stanford University to discuss Innovations for Social Change. The audience is composed of a diverse yet curated mix of 200 thought leaders from Silicon Valley and beyond for a stimulating day of presentations, discussions, entertainment and art that will spark new ideas and opportunities for all. Speakers include Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn.com, Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired magazine, and Peter Hirshberg and Josette Melchor, founders of the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.

During the event TEDxSV is supporting multiple remote TEDx SV(satellite) events. Groups from around the world, including Waterloo, UC Berkeley, Tokyo, and live Twitter groups will engage with TEDxSV event onsite via a live, real-time channel provided by UStream. If you would like to participate in hosting a TEDxSV event in your local area please visit TEDxSilicon Valley.

11 January 2010: Nashville, Tennessee

Social Fresh Nashville

This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Nashville will have 30+ speakers, including Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Gavin Baker of Ruby Tuesday and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart).

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15".

26 January 2010: San Francisco, California

Catalyst Conference

Vator.tv , a leading platform for entrepreneurs and innovators to broadcast themselves, and provider of news and information through VatorNews, and Girls in Tech, a social network enterprise focused on education and empowerment of influential women in technology, are seeking five women-led startups across any stage to present at the Catalyst Conference on January 26, 2010 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. To be one of the five, join the Catalyst competition today and win the chance to present.

27 - 28 January 2010: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI?

This senior executive event will bring together decision makers from the Top Fortune companies to discuss innovative strategies on how to maximise business performance through social media engagement. The event will include keynote speeches, best-practice presentations as well as interactive discussion sessions.

The summit will provide excellent opportunities for you to hear international experts discuss best practices on how to drive business performance using Web 2.0 and social media. Key issues to be discussed include:

How to integrate social media programs successfully into business strategies?
Building business momentum, visibility and market growth through social media
Measuring success and influence using metrics and analytics: what are the tools and techniques
Integrating viral marketing and social media into traditional marketing mix
Developing and activating audiences using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs

4 February 2010: San Francisco, California

Vator Splash

Vator.tv, a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to broadcast themselves, is holding its inaugural Vator Splash event on February 4, 2010 at the Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. Catch onstage presenters: Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Smule CEO Jeff Smith, August Capital VC Howard Hartenbaum and Google Ventures VC Bill Maris. Ten promising startups will also get to present onstage. Enter the Vator Splash competition if you want to present.

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 25% discount on their tickets using the code VatorReadWriteWeb.

8 February 2010: Tampa, Florida

Social Fresh Tampa

This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Tampa will have 30+ speakers, including Chris Barger of GM, Maggie Fox of Social Media Group and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart).

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15".

18 February 2010: Silicon Valley, California

Future of Funding

Active limited partners, top rated venture capitalists, and successful entrepreneurs are invited to Silicon Valley on February 18, 2010 to discuss the Future of Funding. The venture capital bubble has burst, and change is coming. Now is the time to have a constructive dialog about the future with all of the stakeholders at the table.

Don't miss the opportunity to partake in this exclusive event hosted by TheFunded. Please visit www.futureoffunding.com to see speaker and event details.

ReadWriteWeb readers use the code "RWW" and get 10% off.

15 - 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum -- London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

Social Networking World Forum
Enterprise social media
Social TV World Forum
Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

Full workshop program within exhibition area
Evening networking reception
Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
Free pass for exhibition only

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

Discuss

Technical Q&A With FAROO Founder

Bernard Lunn — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:00:16 -0800

About 18 months ago, we wrote about an obscure search startup from Germany called FAROO. We believed that its radical alternative, using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, had a shot at being a real disruptive force. Today, it has made some progress, has raised some money and is getting out into the market. (Disclosure: FAROO is currently a ReadWriteWeb sponsor).

FAROO is wisely underplaying P2P in its marketing, preferring more fashionable terms such as "real-time search" and "social discovery." But the P2P technology drives it.

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So, we decided to invite someone who understands P2P at a technical level to interview Wolf Garbe, FAROO's founder. Our tech expert, Kiril Pertsev, of Agily Networks, has already written about P2P for us in the past.

Kiril: Why .NET? Did you already have development resources or did you make this choice because you consider it a better option for networked desktop applications? Would you make this choice again? And if you're not satisfied with .NET, what would your platform of choice be, given all of your experience over the past few years?

Wolf: I come from Delphi (Object Pascal). So, the choice of C#/.NET was a dedicated decision for a new platform, not driven by legacy. When I started to work on the first prototype in 2004, Delphi moved towards .NET. I preferred to go with the original, especially because the development of C# was led by Anders Hejlsberg, the designer of Borland's Turbo Pascal (which Delphi derived from).

Of course, I also looked into Java, which I found quite similar, both from the language perspective (C# vs. Java) and the JIT Runtime environment (Java Virtual Machine vs. .NET Runtime). The decision for C# was based on the dominating desktop market share of Windows and the assumption that embedding the .NET framework into the OS would ensure fast penetration of .NET. This only partially came true, partly due to the limited success of Vista, which was the first Windows version with .NET pre-installed.

Kiril: Doesn't this choice hinder your ability to move to Mac and Linux platforms.

Wolf: We were betting on Mono for platform compatibility. Unfortunately, Mac OS X still has no Mono application launcher, other than starting with the terminal, which is not feasible for a mass market. With the increasing importance of the Mac OS X platform, I expect this to change. Silverlight today is already natively available for Mac.

For the ultimate platform independence, we are also continually observing the diverse RIA developments (AJAX, AIR, Silverlight, Mozilla Prism, HTML 5 persistent web storage, Mozilla's DOM storage, Google Gears and Flash persistent storage), which could one day allow us to remove the download and installation step for P2P. But so far, no solution meets all of the requirements: out-of-browser capability, permanent background operation, auto-start option, tray icon support, cross-domain connection support, persistent storage, accepting an incoming connection and receiving data and NAT traversal.

Kiril: If you become dissatisfied with .NET, what would be your next platform of choice.

Wolf: Although not everything went as expected, I still believe that .NET is a very powerful platform, and C# as a language is evolving at a much faster and broader pace than Java.

Today, we have a good .NET penetration rate in the US and Europe. With Windows 7, I expect that to increase in Asia as well.

Kiril: I see that you're using a pretty simple P2P communication technology instead of sophisticated Hamachi-like NAT traversal using UDP hole punching.

Wolf: I suppose you are referring to the transport layer, which is HTTP over TCP/IP. The real P2P overlay protocol on top of that is not that simple anymore.

Because our distributed search engine system architecture breaks with almost all legacy paradigms, we thought it would be a good idea that it be at least based on proven and widely used standards wherever possible. There are several reasons for this:

It reduces complexity and development time.
It improves compatibility (there is probably no protocol more widely used than HTTP over Port 80).
It's unlikely that this connectivity will break anytime soon by changes in protocols, OS, drivers or hardware.
Behaving like a standard browser from the protocol view makes the application less vulnerable to filtering, blocking or traffic shaping and ensures that it even works in most corporate environments.

NAT traversal is the most critical issue for every P2P application. It's really a shame that although the Internet is built on a distributed foundation, end-to-end connectivity between users in a decentralized way is completely broken. We are using several NAT traversal techniques: Manual Port Forwarding, Automatic Port Forwarding via UPnP and Teredo. Teredo is a IPv6 Tunneling technology, standardized according to RFC4380.

Teredo is part of Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7; with Miredo, there is also an open-source implementation for Linux and Mac OS X available. Microsoft reports that with Teredo, the chance of a connection between two peers increases from 15% to 84% (PDF link). Our observations are somewhere between 60% and 70%.

Teredo is quite sophisticated technology and is a more universal approach. It provides connectivity at the OS level, in contrast to having several applications in use, where each uses its own proprietary traversal technology.

Kiril: Could you please elaborate on choosing network technology, having achieved a substantial number of users and collecting usage statistics. Do you know how many active and passive peers you have at any given time? What is the ratio?

Wolf: We have solid insight into the state of our P2P network. We know the number of active and passive peers on any given day (using the log from our update server). The active peer ratio is between 60 and 70%.

We are also currently working on an improved distributed intraday statistic. (The distributed statistic currently built into the P2P client is not valid anymore for the increased network size. For scalability, every peer has only a limited view of the whole network, which requires more advanced methods for calculating the actual network size.)

Kiril: Your search index essentially is a distributed storage system with DHT addressing, right?

Wolf: Yes.

Kiril: Have you thought about other uses of such technology, beyond search: back-up, private distributed storage, file-sharing, etc. (like Wuala)?

In a publication from 2001 (in German), in which I also outlined the idea of a peer-to-peer search engine, this was part of an integrated solution with a P2P Web server, P2P file-sharing and a P2P anonymizer. Due to various legal copyright issues, we are currently not looking into file-sharing.

But from a technological standpoint, a distributed storage system is quite universal, from storing a search engine index to attention data, Web pages, instant messages, social network profiles, micro-blogging messages, back-ups and files.

Kiril: Could you please share your vision of the mythical "P2P operating system," now that we already have P2P networking, P2P processing, P2P storage and P2P applications (like search).

Wolf: P2P and distributed architectures are a universal principle that the whole Internet is built upon. Unfortunately, distributed technologies like Mail, IRC, Usenet and even independent Web servers are being increasingly replaced by centralized solutions (the cloud, Google Wave, etc.). Despite the obvious short-term convenience, this leads to long-term monopolies and dependencies and makes the Internet infrastructure more vulnerable in terms of reliability and political influence.

I believe that a solid, standardized P2P stack integrated in the operating system can fix the broken end-to-end connectivity between users, enabling the use of an endless amount of latent storage, memory, processor cycles and bandwidth.
Distributed storage is certainly a core component, as is distributed processing to make more sense of all of the data.
On top of this, there should be a distributed programming framework, which enables the development of distributed applications and the distribution and aggregations of tasks in a standardized manner (e.g. the distributed version of MapReduce/Hadoop is part of this).
A distributed attention data repository, shared by all applications, but under full user control.
There should be resource management that puts the user in full control of the amount of resources she or he would like to dedicate to a particular distributed project—possibly combined with a ratio system and/or virtual currency to maintain a healthy usage to contribution ratio.
Distributed identity management and authentication, authorization and access control.
This could replace most of the centralized cloud solutions by delivering the same convenience and scalability in a decentralized way.

BOINC (the universal distributed processing platform where seti@home runs today) goes partially in that direction.

This is partially because the peers contribute, by taking tasks from a centralized server and providing results back to this server. But this system is not fully distributed, nor are the results intended to be used by the peers themselves.

Kiril: Do you encounter scalability issues? Do you have any single point of failure resources in your P2P network? How reliable is it—meaning, what percentage of the network could you lose without seriously degrading search quality and performance?

Wolf: We have scaled the P2P network in a controlled way. While we have made some scalability-related adjustments to our P2P protocol, the core algorithms proved that there are no inherent scalability limits. Due to our fully distributed architecture, we have no single point of failure.

We have twenty-fold redundancy of each item, which replicates automatically if peers leave the network. Only if all 20 copies of the item are removed at the same time would this piece of information be lost. This leads to a mean information lifetime of 120 years under realistic churn (i.e. the peers randomly joining and abandoning the network temporarily or permanently). This is more than sufficient for search, where 50% of the information changes during the year (and is therefore refreshed anyway at a much higher rate).

Kiril: Do you think that "mobile P2P" is feasible? What would you say about implementing P2P search (or any other application) on, say, the iPhone? Are mobile terminals ready for P2P? Are cell networks ready? Do they have enough CPU power, etc?

Wolf: Today, we distinguish between mobile connectivity and landlines. But I believe this separation will fade away. Device performance, bandwidth and flat-rate pricing structures will become close. While today, processor cycles, memory and bandwidth in mobile phones are too precious for wide use of P2P applications, this will change. Even "walling off" tendencies and restrictive App Store policies will be liberated by regulation or user demand.

But much more interesting than bringing file-sharing to the iPhone will be P2P applications that use mobility, possibly combined with GPS, distributed camera/augmented reality and RFID. This will bring P2P technology into completely new application fields. Think of distributed traffic control (peers could be users with iPhones in cars or the cars themselves) or applications to lead crowds of people at large public events or in disaster zones, as well as gaming, distributed weather and earthquake prognosis.

Bluetooth could even make this independent of cell networks. Global communication between peers would be asynchronous through moving people. Also, cell network and Bluetooth mashups would be possible.

In the near future, we will provide Web access to our P2P Web search for mobile users. They will just be passive users of the resources contributed by active PC users.

Kiril: What is your vision of the P2P road map? Apparently, the first "killer P2P application" was file-sharing, Kazaa, then BitTorrent. Given that the next one is search, what would be the next after that?

Wolf: As I mentioned, instead of another isolated P2P application, I would like to see P2P built into the OS and Internet stack in a standardized manner. So that an application can benefit from P2P without any specific effort, in the same easy and natural way that applications today use the Internet (HTTP, AJAX and JSON).

Then, P2P technology would become ubiquitous and part of almost every application. Every application that uses cloud services today could benefit from such P2P technology. An example would be a distributed platform for micro-blogging services and social networks, heralding the end of walled gardens.

But my personal vision is to combine P2P with the next thing after search. Twenty years ago, I wrote a small expert system on my C64 (today, a C64 emulator is on the iPhone!), using Predicate Logic and an Eliza-style natural-language interface. So, you could tell the system, "All cats have claws. All tigers are cats." And then you could ask the system, "Do tigers have claws?" And it would answer, "Yes!" You could retrieve information and relationships that were not explicitly stored (or that anyone was even aware existed).

At that time I had to enter every bit of information manually. Today, almost all information on earth is accessible on the Internet, together with comments and conversation streams.

Predicate logic would be supported by fuzzy logic, statistical machine learning and more. Today, known translations are used to translate untranslated text. But this could be much more universal: using known connections in one field to explain unknown correlations in another. Such a system could autonomously formulate queries, combine facts, fill in the missing link in a theory to prove or falsify it.

So, I think the next step after search will be reasoning; and in combination with P2P technology and distributed processing, this may bring us a kind of global brain. A brain that not only stores and retrieves information but that is capable of cognition and conclusion at a giant scale. It will discover hidden correlations and unknown facts and will answer questions with answers that cannot be found in any document.

You can see, this is much more HAL than the next Google.

Kiril: What technical feature of your technology are you most proud of? 100+ patents must something.

Wolf: Most crucial has been to ensure both a quick response time and complete results for queries with multiple terms and phrases (only 15% of searches are single keywords) in a completely distribute P2P architecture. For queries with multiple keywords, we eliminated the need for the intersection of huge posting lists across different peers.

While we had to invent a lot of things—just because they hadn't been done before in a way that was required for distributed search—they are not all patented (so, we don't own 100+ patents). Prior to funding, this would have been impossible financially.

Kiril: How is your real-time search related to the P2P search? Does it also run on a distributed network? If so, then how do peers communicate results to the front page of the FAROO website?

Wolf: Currently, we use a hybrid architecture. While we are building up our P2P network and use it for general Web search, in parallel we use a central index for the real-time data. The focus on the most recent and popular Web pages keeps the costs moderate. Attention data collected by FAROO peers serves also for real-time discovery and ranking (in addition to analyzing the Twitter stream).

But we believe in a holistic approach. Our real-time search will evolve into an integral part of Web search and be fully based on our P2P architecture. There will still be a gateway/proxy server that enables Web access to our P2P network for those users not able or ready to install a P2P client (e.g. for mobile).

Discuss

Weekly Wrapup: Best Web Products 2009, Part 1

Richard MacManus — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:00:00 -0800

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - the first and still the best weekly newsletter for tech news and reviews - we present our end-of-year series profiling the best web products of 2009. We tell you our picks for Best Mobile Apps, Best Consumer Apps, Best Semantic Web Apps, and more. Also in this weekly wrapup, we take a look at Facebook's new privacy controls, and ask whether Google and Yahoo! are giving away too much control over user identities to Facebook and Twitter. As well, we check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

Plus: this week we released our new premium report, about the Real-Time Web!

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Order Our New Premium Report

This week, we launched our newest premium report: The Real-Time Web and its Future. To create this report, we conducted interviews with 50 companies and individuals that drive innovation in real-time technology. The first copies of the report went out on Monday, and here's what some of the first readers had to say about it:

"The report is excellent - a great synthesis of why the real time web is different, what changes, what doesn't and what the industry needs to do in order to press forward."
- John Borthwick, CEO, Betaworks

"Recommended."
-Hewlett-Packard Official News

"Fresh... Great information. Not the same old same old stories that we've all heard."
- C.C. Chapman

"...all there is to know"
- The Next Web

We're flattered by the initial praise, and we hope you'll check out the report for yourself! Take a look at the Table of Contents and this sample chapter, and keep an eye out for the 2-report package that allows you to save money on previous reports when you buy our latest installment.

Buy Now >>

Web Products

In what's become an annual tradition, over December ReadWriteWeb will present our 'best of' posts for 2009. These are a series of 10 articles that will examine the top web products in categories ranging from consumer web apps to RSS and syndication platforms. Our first 5 articles went up this week...

Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2009

We kicked off the series with a look at the top mobile web products of the past year. This is a subjective list of editorially selected products, but one which includes some of the biggest names in mobile web applications for 2009.

Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2009

Every year at ReadWriteWeb, we look at hundreds of new web apps aimed at everyday users. Occasionally, we come across a service that stands out from the pack because it offers a novel solution, disrupts the way incumbent market leaders do business or changes the way we experience the Web. Here is our list of the top 10 consumer web apps of 2009.

Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2009

2009 has seen a lot of Semantic Web and structured data activity. Much of it has been driven by Linked Data, a W3C project which gained momentum this year. The 10 products we've picked out for this end-of-year review are ones that have done interesting things with data. Connecting to other data, building new applications with data, sharing data, and more.

Top 10 International Web Products of 2009

Thriving tech communities exist around the globe, from Toronto to Tel Aviv, and the success of internationally-based web products serve as a reminder to all of us that innovation knows no borders.

Top 10 RSS & Syndication Technologies of 2009

The web isn't about pages any more. Now it's about streams, feeds and syndication. Only one service makes a repeat appearance this year.

Your Favorite Mobile Apps: Facebook, Tweetie, Google Maps, Foursquare, and More

Last week we surveyed you, the ReadWriteWeb community, about your favorite mobile applications. We asked for your top five mobile apps and ended up with nearly 200 different mobile apps in the post and comments! In this post we reveal the full results. We discovered that you like social networking on the go (Facebook, Foursquare), Twitter clients (Tweetie, Twitterrific), Google (Google Maps, Google Mobile), and innovative mobile-focused apps (Evernote, Shazam).

Amazon Announces Record Sales For Kindle While B&N Misses Deadline

Amazon announced this week that November was its best month ever for Kindle sales. According to Amazon, the $259 Kindle is the "most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon." Barnes & Noble is also seeing strong demand for its new nook e-reader, but is unable to fulfill current orders before Christmas. The company has also delayed shipments to its stores until December 7.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.

Microsoft: Office Web Apps for your Mobile - Let the Confusion Begin

What exactly from Office Web Apps and Office Mobile 2010 can you use on your mobile right now and what will be available when the product ships next spring? We take a sky high look and see if we can make sense of things, so you know what to do if you when giving Office a try on the mobile.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

How Startup Companies Can Change the World

While startup companies are often asked about their monetization and member strategies, it's rare that they're asked how they plan on changing the world. At this week's Supernova Conference in San Francisco, speakers attacked the subject of social chance and how it applies to business models, technological expertise and mass distribution.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Trends

Identity Wars: Google & Yahoo! Bow to Facebook & Twitter

Yahoo! announced this week that it is adding Facebook Connect across many of its properties. Also Google Friend Connect announced the inclusion of Twitter as a top-level log-in option. These moves will be convenient for users, but may not be good for the future of the web. We're worried that the Royalty of the web's last generation has crowned these two leading social networks as the Royalty of the current generation in a deal that offers traffic and money, but that could suffocate the most creative developments of the open, distributed web.

Google Dumps Gears for HTML5

It's official: Google is ditching its homegrown Gears offline web app API in favor of backing HTML5 for the win. Now that the Chrome browser is becoming available for Mac, and the Snow Leopard OS doesn't play nicely with Gears, a Google rep confirmed the company has decided to trash the whole works and wait for HTML5, even though the spec isn't yet ready and isn't supported by commercially available browsers.

How Facebook's New Privacy Changes Will Affect You

In a late night post on Facebook's company blog, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a round of upcoming changes that will affect all users of the social network. Specifically, the changes focus on new privacy controls for information sharing. For Facebook's user base, now 350 million strong, the updates represent a major overhaul as to how privacy is handled on the site.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Discuss

Top 10 RSS & Syndication Technologies of 2009

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:43:50 -0800

The web isn't about pages any more. Now it's about streams, feeds and syndication. As part of our annual Best of Series, below are our picks for the most important RSS and Syndication Technologies of 2009.

You can see last year's list here and most of those remain important services. Only one service makes a repeat appearance this year. It was a very big year for this class of technologies, after a long, sleepy period the Real-Time Web began to cause substantial disruptions over the last 12 months. Check out our list below and let us know if we've missed anything important or who your picks might be for next year.

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This is the fifth in our series on top products of 2009:

Facebook has 350 million users today. Just 12 months ago there were a mere 140 million Facebook users. A syndicated stream is the default view in Facebook, meaning that 210 million more people have been introduced to this paradigm by Facebook in 2009. That's a powerful cultural change.

Twitter may not be anywhere near the size of Facebook, nor growing as fast, but for tens of millions of people, 2009 was a year they got comfortable with streams, lists (just like cute little OPML files!) and soon geolocation data - thanks to Twitter.

Echo, from JS-Kit is a reverse syndication service for distributed social media conversations. It brings back tweets and other mentions to the page they refer to. The service is growing fast and becoming more sophisticated every week. New features come so fast and furious that it's overwhelming but the end result is an experience that brings the dispersed social web back together again.

Fever is a gorgeous new RSS reader that costs $30 and lives on your own server. It's got a very interesting system for ranking hot stories by your own criteria - we just wish we could change the timeframe so that ranking was for every 2 or 3 hours, not per day. Fever looks great and works wonderfully on the iPhone. If people ask you what good web-based alternatives there are to Google Reader, Fever is a good place to start looking.

PubSubHubbub (and RSSCloud) are two feed formats for the real-time web. PubSubHubbub is method for pushing real-time updates from a publisher, to a hub and then to all subscribed parties - immediately. RSSCloud is a similar technology that originated years ago as a part of the RSS spec. These are the protocols that a whole new era of user and developer experience on the web will be built on.

Superfeedr is a new service powering millions of real-time feeds. It's a transformer, from lots of different formats into real-time feeds in PubSubHubbub or XMPP. It's like FeedBurner for the real-time web.

Tweetdeck (and Seesmic) are the market's leading stream readers. They are tools for reading and writing to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and someday other social network streams. There are lots of innovative stream readers on the market, from the beautiful Skimmer to the Inspector-Gadget style Favit, but Tweetdeck is the clear market leader. It's in a perpetual back-and-forth battle of the sweet features with Seesmic. Both are dramatically changing the way users experience the flowing social web.

Honorable Mentions:

Postrank just keeps getting smarter. This social media analytics service tracks distributed conversation regarding blogs and feeds and scores items based on the relative engagement of those conversations. The usefulness of this service just doesn't stop and the company's movement into large-publisher analytics and APIs this year should bode well for customers, developers and consumers. Postrank is the only service on this list that was also on 2008's list.

ActivityStreams is a proposed standard way to markup user activity data in social networks. If everyone adopted the standard, then streams of data would be interoperable, we could see what friends on other networks were doing and we wouldn't be locked-in to the big networks because little innovators could provide tools for conversation. So far Facebook, MySpace, Netflix, Sun Microsystems and more are working hard at making this a reality. 2009 was a big year for ActivityStreams, right down to last week's announcement that a feed normalization API was released by startup Cliqset.

The Breaking News Online iPhone App is the best remnant of a fabulous story that's changed dramatically in recent weeks. BNO is a news organization that's so fast in breaking news from around the world that the Red Cross watches them for disaster news and MSNBC syndicates their stories. Unfortunately, the company owned by now 19 year old Michael van Poppel sold control over its wildly popular Twitter account to MSNBC this Winter, but the iPhone app remains a very valuable resource. BNO's research and original reporting is definitely one of the biggest stories in syndication of 2009 and its iPhone app is a must-have.

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If Apple Acquires Lala: 3 Models for Service Integration

Dana Oshiro — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:30:00 -0800

If the rumors are true, then something is afoot in the Apple music camp. According to a recent article in Bloomberg, Apple is in talks to acquire online music service Lala. If a sale is finalized between the two companies, a number of new music monetization models can emerge and with Apple holding the supply chain from devices to players to downloads, a streaming music component may prove devastating to others.

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Tiered Pricing: With a Lala purchase, Apple could easily employ a tiered pricing model for a streaming service. Users would continue to purchase streams on a per-song basis while also having the option to download songs through the iTunes store.

Full Subscription: In contrast to this model, Apple could also follow MOG's lead and launch a full subscription service with links to purchase Apple downloads.

Full Subscription with Download Limit: And finally, different still, there's the opportunity to employ Microsoft's Zune Pass model. The company could offer a $15 dollar per month subscription streaming music service with the option for users to download their ten favorite songs per month to keep. If Apple decided on this route, downloads would still prove lucrative as users in excess of their download limits would be driven to iTunes for additional sales.

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FedEx Joins the Internet of Things With SenseAware

Richard MacManus — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:40:37 -0800

International courier giant Fedex has just released a new tracking device and web service for packages. Called SenseAware, it keeps tabs on the temperature, location and other vital signs of a package - including when it's opened and whether it was tampered with along the way. Fedex is running a trial period of about a year with 50 health care and life science companies, for tracking delivery of surgery kits, medical equipment - and even live organs.

We spoke with FedEx head of innovation, Mark Hamm, about SenseAware and how Fedex is tapping into the emerging trend called Internet of Things.

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We've covered Internet of Things extensively on ReadWriteWeb over the past year. It's when everyday objects become connected to the Internet, usually via RFID tags and/or sensors. In the case of Fedex's SenseAware, it is powered by multiple sensors including light, motion, temperature.

Fedex's Mark Hamm described the SenseAware device as a "quad-band world phone." As well as the device, there is a browser-based collaboration platform allowing businesses to actively track the progress of a package. Users can set up triggers, alerts and notices - for example using geo sensors to alert others when a package arrives at a destination. Users can set these triggers and decide who they go to. Essentially, the SenseAware events trigger business processes for the users.

For the web service, businesses pay a single monthly fee of $120 - for that they get the devices and the browser-based web service. Hamm noted that Fedex worked with the FAA to get permission to use the product on their freight planes; the only such device to have permission from the FAA, he told us. Fedex assembled components for SenseAware from a collection of partners, using Fedex's design specifications.

Real-Time Decisions Based on Sensor Data

Hamm said that SenseAware will enable companies to make real-time decisions much more easily. For example if a perishable goods package sets off on a 2 day journey, but the sensor data shows that the shelf life suddenly decreases - then the package can be instantly diverted to another location, where the product can still be used rather than becoming useless if it sticks to original delivery schedule.

The initial trial period targets life science and medical companies (for example biotech firms), where things like security and knowing the vital signs of a package are very important. Also Hamm highlighted that these companies can collaborate on the sensor data, with precise data and records of delivery.

The trial with the life sciences companies is designed to help Fedex make the "last 20%" of the product more efficient. After about a year of this trial, Fedex will then launch the product globally, as a generally available platform. Hamm expects it will be used by any company or organization dealing with perishable goods, high value goods - such as jewelery, dangerous goods, expensive equipment, and goods that are high value because they're unique (art work, music tapes, etc.).

Hamm told us that he expects this type of sensor product to be "mainstreaming over time as people become used to interacting with shipments."

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Etherpad Goes to Google - Just Another Silicon Valley Soap Opera

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:56:52 -0800

Innovative real-time document collaboration software company AppJet, makers of Etherpad, has been acquired by Google. TechCrunch broke the news and AppJet promptly confirmed it. AppJet was started by ex-Googlers, got a YCombinator investment (you know, that firm that invests in anonymous college kids from around the country) and will now close down its own product to work on Google Wave.

What a cynical bore. Here's the new formula, meant only to tease users with innovation and ultimately enrich a select few Valley darlings:

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Be a smart computer scientist
Get a job at Google
Leave Google, create startup
Use your Google resume to get high profile Silicon Valley backing
Build something cool, win some fans
Sell to Google
Tell Silicon Valley insider press about sale
Kill product, break a few hearts, get absorbed again by Google but with millions of dollars in your pocket
Work on less interesting Google product...
Repeat, if you can get away with it.

Some people don't go right back to Google, they go to Facebook or Twitter. You thought FeedBurner had a lot of potential? It's an ad network now, its founders have nice houses and work on other things or in other places. FriendFeed was cool, founded by ex-Googlers who are now at Facebook and say that FriendFeed is actually too sophisticated for the users of their new Sugar Daddy's software.

Check out the Etherpad company blog post about the deal. They didn't even pretend to be sorry about closing the service. They didn't thank any community of users for help along the way. They just said the deal is done, here's what's happening to the money you paid, now get out.

Maybe Google Wave will change the world, maybe it won't. It's hard for a person who loves startups and innovation not to feel a little toyed with by this kind of drama though.

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MySQL Usage Expected To Drop Following Oracle Acquisition

Alex Williams — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:19:35 -0800

Open-source users will be a bit less inclined to use MySQL following Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

The news comes from a report by the 451 Group, which surveyed people in the open-source community about the issues surrounding the acquisition.

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The 451 Group surveyed 347 people. Of those, 82.1% now use MYSQL. By 2011, 78.7% of respondents expect to use MySQL. The total will decline to 72.3% by 2014.

The Oracle acquisition has a part to play in that decline. 15% of open-source users and 14.4 % of current MySQL users said they would be less likely to use MySQL if it is acquired by Oracle.

The news is not all that dire. The majority - 57.9% of all users and 63.9% of MySQL users - indicated that they would continue to use MySQL where appropriate.

On the flip side, Oracle Database usage is expected to rise from 19.3% today to 19.6% in 2011 and 21.6% in 2014.

About 32% of respondents said they would prefer that MySQL be turned over to a foundation. But only 4 percent said that they would want Oracle to sell MySQL to another software company.

But there may be more trouble ahead. European authorities have particular concern about the future of MySQL under Oracle ownership and have it under review.

More about the report is available on the 451 Group's web site.

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Social Shopping: Putting the Emotion Back in E-Commerce

Guest Author — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:00:00 -0800

What are you going to buy this holiday season? Gift cards aren't very personal, but friends' recommendations can be.

Richard MacManus recently covered the trends in e-commerce over the past decade. He noted that Amazon and eBay have dominated the online retail market with their model of using implicit user data to generate recommendations for others. Although this model will surely remain a centerpiece of the online retail experience, it may soon face competition as "social shopping" takes off.

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This guest post was written by Brynn Evans.

What is social shopping? This is similar to the question of "What is social search," which I addressed previously by describing the three flavors of social search: what they are, why they're relevant and how they will help you search better. The Amazon and eBay model of online retail tapped into what I refer to as "collective social search." Social shopping, on the other hand, is more like "friend-filtered social search."

In social shopping, you see recommendations and reviews that your friends have shared. You see items that your friends have purchased or brands that your friends have shopped with. This matters a lot when you're shopping for a digital camera and are stuck deciding between three different models. Of course, the last 10 years' worth of people's purchasing histories and written reviews on Amazon may help you narrow your choice - if you can filter out the noise. But those reviewers are entirely anonymous to you, even though they may use a real name and have a rating history with the site.

The decision you are making, as with most decisions, will carry consequences going forward, which is a part of the reason why collective intelligence can't provide the necessary emotional "spark" in quite the way that a personal recommendation can. Patricia Mejia, a commenter on Richard's e-commerce trends post, explained why she wants this in shopping: "I want to be inspired, intrigued and entertained when I shop online."

Algorithms don't provide that emotion. But a recommendation from a friend just might.

Plus, users increasingly expect this, and the larger and more connected our networks become, the more powerful this social shopping model will be. What are the social shopping services that do this best today? (Hint: not Amazon.)

Sites like ProductWiki are devoted to product comparisons, but their user base is most likely not your peer network. ThisNext and Kaboodle lie closer to the intersection of social media and e-commerce. They are predominantly social networks dedicated to sharing products and personal reviews.

Kaboodle's user profile for "aplyler" closely resembles other social networking sites, and the site provides functionality for creating product lists, commenting on items and, of course, adding friends.

On ThisNext, users' recommendations are featured front and center on their profiles. Here, "rjax" has been promoted to "Expert Maven" because of her extensive collection of recommended items. Unfortunately, the collection's range is so vast that you probably wouldn't care about the Christmas ornaments if you liked her review of the Macbook art decal.

Thus, the limitation with sites like ThisNext and Kaboodle is that you, your friends and the products you're going to buy all exist on those sites. In other words, the sites are social shopping silos.

RunToShop, on the other hand, brings a distributed social networking model to social shopping. A small Finnish startup, RunToShop aims to bring social recommendations to you wherever you may be, and from the friends in your network who you trust.

This means that if you're shopping for golf clubs on Smart Golf, recommendations will be embedded on the site through the RunToShop widget. Currently, all user reviews are shown, but in the next release, recommendations from friends will be prioritized. (You can pull in your friends with Facebook Connect.)

RunToShop also integrates with Facebook. So, if Facebook is where you spend most of your time, you can browse product offerings and friends' recommendations directly through the RunToShop Facebook app.

Finally, its distributed social networking platform allows your product reviews to percolate out to other sites where those products exist. If your long-lost sister, for example, discovers one of these products through LinkedIn, she can view your recommendation right there.

Based on most of the services I've seen to date, including RunToShop, the implementation and user experience around social shopping still has a long way to go. In the meantime, keep this in mind the next time you're shopping for the right social shopping service: will it provide the emotional spark you need?

Guest author: Brynn Evans is digital anthropologist, design researcher and author who studies social interaction design and social search.

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Can Social Networking Find 10 Red Balloons?

Frederic Lardinois — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:45:26 -0800

Tomorrow morning, teams from all across the United States will try to find 10 red balloons. The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to moor 10 red weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States, and whoever sends in the GPS coordinates of all the balloons first will win $40,000. With this event - called the DARPA Network Challenge - DARPA wants to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Arpanet - the predecessor of today's Internet. DARPA wants to test how the Internet, crowdsourcing and social networking can help to solve "broad-scope, time-critical problems." Read on to see how you can participate in this event.

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Teams from all over the United States have registered for this event - although anybody can participate. Entries will be accepted until 12 p.m. ET on Dec. 14. The balloons will be on display during daylight hours from 10 a.m. ET until 4 p.m. local time.

Strategies

Some teams have developed iPhone apps (iTunes link), while others are going to scour Twitter for clues. Some teams are also taking a more traditional approach and plan to simply drive around hoping to spot the balloons - and hoping their team will be large enough to find them. Click here for a list of teams; most of them are still more than happy to accept new volunteers. Even if you don't belong to a group, you can still send out a tweet with the GPS coordinates if you happen to come across a balloon by coincidence. The teams will surely be grateful for this information as well.

DARPA is financing this challenge because it hopes that this event, just like earlier DARPA challenges, will foster fresh thinking and encourage technologists to discover "new, collaborative ways to approach problems that were not dreamt of 40 years ago."

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Mint.com: Are You Really Unemployed?

Alex Williams — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:27:11 -0800

The federal government reported today that the unemployment rate fell to 10% for the first time since the recession started last year.

But are the numbers accurate?

Mint.com is not so sure. The company is giving its own take on what it really means to be unemployed with an amusing video they are calling "The Unemployment Game."

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We are curious why Mint.com would take on unemployment as an issue. But take a look at Mint.com and you see the company is clearly trying to take economic trends and provide their own spin on what the numbers mean.

For companies in our space, the unemployment issue hits home. Thousands of people have been let go from their jobs. Jobs are hard to come by. So this is a perspective that has some resonance.

Free budget software - Mint.com

Mint.com makes the point that we need to take a closer look at unemployment figures. The government tells us that the recession is over and the economic stimulus is working. But we still have to be thinking about how the Fed reports its numbers. Mint.com says that if you count everyone, the unemployment rate should be 17.2%.

The video is amusing. It's a smart approach that gives a different perspective on the economy. We cover a lot of enterprise issues but the perspectives we see from companies often focuses exclusively on their products and other narrowly focused issues.

Mint.com takes a different approach. They are a personal finance service, but the issues they cover affect anyone who works in the business world.

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The Real Reason Why Wolfram Alpha Shut Down Its Mobile Site

Frederic Lardinois — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:09:09 -0800

Yesterday, Wolfram Research shut down the iPhone-optimized version of Wolfram Alpha, the company's "computational knowledge engine." Many pundits speculated that Wolfram decided to shutter the mobile site in order to drive more users to the company's $50 iPhone app. Earlier this morning, we got a chance to talk to Schoeller Porter, Wolfram's product manager for the iPhone app. According to Schoeller, the reason for killing the mobile site was simple: not enough people were using it.

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It is important to remember that while Wolfram offered an iPhone optimized landing page, the actual results pages were always identical to those of the regular web version. All Wolfram did was shut down this landing page. According to Porter, users can still get the same result pages by entering their queries into the search box on the default Wolfram Alpha website. Porter argues that nothing of substance was actually removed.

Why Did Wolfram Kill the Mobile Landing Page?

In our conversation, Schoeller Porter pointed out that this landing page was only meant to be a test, and traffic to the site had decreased to the point where the company simply decided to pull the plug.

It's not surprising that Porter would defend Wolfram's decision to shut down the mobile site as a traffic issue, and not as a ploy to sell more of the company's pricey mobile app. According to Porter, users can still choose to get a good mobile experience through the website and those users who need a mobile experience can always get the mobile app. Until now, though, the mobile landing page offered a happy medium between the regular desktop website and the mobile app.

Currently, the team wants to focus on enhancing the experience on the default website and the mobile app; Wolfram is also thinking about mobile apps for Android and BlackBerry.

Why Not Just Keep the Mobile Site Up?

One could argue, however, that it really wouldn't have cost Wolfram a lot of money or manpower to keep the mobile landing page up for the time being. The company also didn't help itself by killing the mobile site without any explanation on its blog. The fact that the mobile site now features a big add for the iPhone app only helped to fuel the speculation about Wolfram's intentions.

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MySpace Launches New Mobile Website with Built-in IM

Sarah Perez — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:17:45 -0800

Social networking site MySpace has just launched a new version of their mobile website designed for iPhone, Android and Palm WebOS users. The now-improved site at m.myspace.com offers quick access to your profile, including comments, your activity stream, your status, your inbox and more. Also available is a button dedicated to your photos, which makes it easier to browse through your albums. However, the most notable of the new features is the built-in instant-messaging function which makes the new mobile website a communication tool in addition to being just another social-networking app.

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New Features

Although the mobile site at m.myspace.com is available from any mobile web browser, the newly updated version only visible to users of select smartphones. That's because the new site is specifically designed to take advantage of features present in the advanced web browsers present on those devices. Users visiting from other phones will still encounter the older site, which itself was revamped at the beginning of the year, with a new look designed to make it more closely resemble the original, desktop-based website.

In addition to real-time updates from MySpace, the new mobile site introduces a built-in client which displays a web-enabled version of MySpace IM, the company's own instant messaging service. By tapping on the "IM" button under the "Me" tab, you can instantly go online and chat with friends just as if you were using a standalone instant-messaging software application.

Mobile Website Now Outperforms Native Apps

What's most interesting about the new web-based IM functionality in the updated site, is the fact that this is (for now) the only official tool provided by the company for IMing from your mobile device. Believe it or not, the dedicated mobile applications built for the iPhone, Android and Palm do not include an IM client at all. This has been a much-requested feature from MySpace users who have had no other choice but to use third-party applications like BeeJive IM, for example. In fact, a quick Google search on the topic leads to multiple MySpace forum posts begging for this feature as well as this user-created YouTube video demonstrating how you can get MySpace IM on your iPhone via other methods.

According to the company, 75% of its user base accesses the mobile web site, which could explain why they've focused on updating the site first before updating the native apps. However, it's likely that the majority of their mobile web visitors are those without expensive smartphones, and so are being redirected to the older site. Without detailed statistics from the company itself, this is only a guess. But outside demographic studies show that MySpace is dominated by younger users, and is the social networking site with users in the lowest income levels. It seems probable that the network's mobile-website visitors don't own expensive mobile devices. That makes the smartphone mobile-website update and any forthcoming native app updates somewhat of a nonstarter for many MySpace users.

It will be interesting to see if MySpace soon updates their native applications to include this new functionality as well, or if they're more sold on the idea that the mobile web is - or at least should be - the app of choice for their users.

If you're interested in visiting the new site, you can do so via m.myspace.com using your phone's web browser. The new changes are live for everyone as of now.

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Star That Tweet! Favit Launches in iTunes App Store

Sarah Perez — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:13:06 -0800

There's a new iPhone application from Favstar.fm which launched late last night in the iTunes App Store. Like the Favstar website, the new Favit app (iTunes link) aggregates the "best" Twitter posts based on the number of stars they receive from other Twitter users. However, while starred tweets should in theory point to interesting and useful content that people want to save for later viewing, the Favstar service tends to favor humorous tweets instead. The new iPhone app does the same, which makes it the perfect addition to your collection of time-wasting apps for curing boredom.

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Nearly all iPhone users have at least one if not more applications whose sole purpose is to help kill time. Whether you're sitting in a waiting room or standing in a long line, these apps are lifesavers for those of us who are so digitally connected that a few minutes of boredom feels like a death sentence. For many people, these apps include casual games. But outside of that genre, there are plenty of other apps for quick-fire entertainment that is meant to be consumed in small doses. For example, FML (iTunes link) is a personal favorite. This app lets you read through people's posts of their unfortunate, embarrassing and downright hilarious personal stories. Trivia-based Cool Facts (iTunes link) is another. (And yes, both were discovered thanks to a high-school aged family member. Don't judge!) The new Favit application fits right into this category of casual entertainment apps.

Using Favit

With a very simple interface, Favit displays one Twitter post at a time on the screen. After reading the tweet, you can flip to see the next one using a finger swipe. If you see a tweet you want to star yourself, just tap the giant star button beneath the tweet.

You can also swipe down on the tweet for more interactions. Doing so reveals the author and then lets you re-tweet their post or email it to someone. In addition, clicking on the "+" (plus) sign lets you add the author to a special Favstar.fm list, which is synchronized with your saved lists on Twitter. This allows you to build your own personalized list of favorite twitterers, accessible from Twitter.com or any other Twitter client that supports lists.

What's Missing

Although the iTunes app description notes that Favit has a celebrity and tech filter built in, we couldn't find these settings in the application itself. However, you can follow these pre-filtered lists via the Favstar.fm website's Leaderboard section. We hope this feature is coming to the application in an update, because it would be great to switch from the funny and entertaining tweets, over to the tweets from the tech- and social-media set, and then over to celebrities, depending on what interests you at the time.

Another missing feature from the application is one of our favorite features from the Favstar.fm website - the ability to see who has been favoriting your tweets. The Favit app could offer a quick and easy way to track those people and then add them to a list or follow them, but sadly it does not. Still, that's hardly a deal-breaker since Favstar offers RSS feeds for this purpose via their website. Besides, it's clear the app is meant to be more of a fun toy for casual users rather than a handy utility meant for data-obsessed folks like us.

If you want to check out the new Favit application (iTunes link), you'll have to fork out a little cash. Favit, unlike similar time-wasters including the above-mentioned FML and Cool Facts, doesn't come in free and pro versions. Instead, it's one price only: $2.99. That may seem like a lot for an app just meant to amuse you, but the next time you're terribly bored, you'll be glad you downloaded it.

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A New, Now Netbook You Can Actually Buy: PsiXpda

Jolie O'Dell — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:45:01 -0800

The dirt is still fresh on the grave of the CrunchPad; we ought to feel guilty for writing this post.

But our good friends have been working with a few cohorts on a stealth-mode startup for quite some time - working on the problem of the lightweight, portable, web-friendly device. Only their product is smaller in size and larger in spirit than any netbook or notepad yet seen - perhaps there is a balm in Gilead after all.

But you didn't come here for literature; you came to see pics and read specs. So here we go.

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The name of the gadget geek's new muse is the PsiXpda (pronounced sigh ex PDA). It measures 174mm by 95mm by 25mm, and it looks like this:

Specifications

The device is a hardware nerd's dream, described as "very techy and hackable" by one of the minds behind the project, Ewan Spence. It's smaller than netbooks, roughly 2/3 in length and 1/2 the width. It weighs 430 grams, around 15 ounces.

In the closed position, the screen is on the outside. There's no accelerometer, but there are key commands for rotating the screen. The keyboard is backlit - perfect for conference whores, said Spence. It has a VGA webcam and 2-4 hours of battery life, depending on CPU usage. It's got a USB port and a VGA port on the optional docking cradle.

It's a full-strength computer with a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard. The first units will ship with Windows XP preloaded. Spence expects that hackers will get Android and Chrome OS running on it fairly quickly, as well.

As for the web, the PsiXpda will feature bluetooth, WiFi and 3G connectivity. Users will be able to blog, run web apps, play Flash-based games or just browse their hearts out on the browser of their choice.

A Pearl of Great Price

The drawback? "Well, we're not going to put it in Best Buy," said Spence.

This beauty is a pearl of great price for the most discerning only. With a very limited pre-holiday drop and a list price of $830 US (£500) - slightly cheaper than an out-of-contract iPhone - the PsiXpda aims to be the Lamborghini of the notepad/netbook/PDA 2.0 set.

"If you look back to the '80s," said Spence, "to the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrums, they were small manufactuers doing a couple thousand machines to see if it worked or not.

"One of the benefits of not having a huge staff and a huge VC investment is that we don't have to have unrealistic goals for unit sales," Spence continued.

There will be lots of support for those who want to hack the device. Any needed third-party programs or drivers needed will be made available as soon as possible.

"I am very interested to see what hackers do," said Spence. "Because of the numbers involved, if you have 10 guys and gals that start going crazy over these things, that's probably going to take us to capacity for the first drop."

Provenance & Use Cases

The device is the heir apparent to the Psion, which enjoyed an extended love affair with European techies. In the States, those devices were forced to compete with Palm, and lost. You can read an extended history of Psions, or you can take our word for it that Psion Series 5 still commands a dedicated fanbase in Europe. "We were doing this while you guys [Americans] were making the Palm Pilot," said Spence.

But now, in the States and elsewhere, the PDA has gone the way of the pager, and consumers are clamoring for technologically lightweight, physically small, ultimately agile devices. The Apple tablet is a fable, and the CrunchPad is, even we are sad to report, the year's most disappointing vaporware.

The PsiXpda has appeared on the scene to meet consumer demand at just the right time.

"One of the places that's shown interest is someplace like a hospital," said Spence, "just drop it in a doctor's coat. Also, because of the size, it's very non-threatening for looking up information, so it'd work for salespeople. And it's wonderful on a ten-hour flight from London to L.A."

In other words, it might be small, but it's by no means a browser-on-a-stick piece of hardware. This beauty was made for people who like to sit on the couch and browse the web, yes; but it also takes into consideration that most people need and want to have a read/write experience online.

The machines will be for sale next week. Stay tuned for videos of the review unit.

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