Latest Web 2.0 News & Articles

Here’s a fun Friday thought: Mobile social networks that are private, targeted to niche groups and location-based.  

On Monday Google shelled out more cash for the acquisition of Picnik, a photo-editing website that allows users to edit right inside their browser, rather than purchase or download the necessary software. Are we surprised? Not exactly. Do we think it’s going to contribute to Google’s goal to rule everything Web? Absolutely.  

TechRadar recently delivered what they and top experts consider to be key trends for the next 12 months in web design. At the core, is an increased focus on usability. Smashing Magazine sought to promote better user experiences with storytelling, encouraging designers to capitalize on users' emotions. The bottom line: by focusing on usability, a better website can be built.

Google has challenged popular networks like Facebook and further blurred the line between social networking and search by graduating their Social Search tool to beta for all Google users.  

Following up on their plans to bring a little Web 2.0 into the enterprise space, the Sage team (news, site) has announced the upcoming release of the new Sage Enterprise Webtop. Designed to operate on the cloud or on premise, the tool represents the company’s shift toward an all out user-centric good time.  

Everyone knows that there are idealists, and there are pragmatists, and the two don't mix. Right? Well, the world is rarely that black and white. Want proof? A key name in the history of open source and the open web has just gone to work for a company-devouring corporation.

Atex’s baby, Polopoly Web CMS (news, site), came around for round 9.14 last week. The highlight of the new version is the inclusion of widget plug-in framework, which aims to make tacking on third-party website components that much easier.

Alcatel-Lucent has a set of new capabilities for all the service providers, content providers and application developers out there. The release, which includes the Application Exposure Suite and an Open API Service, aims to speed up the creation of Web 2.0 services while keeping the process secure and controlled.  

It seems that Google Chrome is (still) slowly but surely moving in the frills direction. This spring Google announced the simple browser's first official extensions, and then in September they removed the developer flag, opening up the doors for higher volume participation. 

This week it was announced on Google's blog that the Chromium team is officially accepting submissions from third-party developers. Big G provides information for writing an extension here, and once it's ready to go all a developer has to do is upload a zip file of the code and an icon for easy recognition. Descriptive information in the form of text and screenshots or YouTube videos is also welcome. 

Once an extension is uploaded, Google takes care of packaging and signing, and if a developer wants to update their baby, all it requires is a new file uploaded to the gallery. Additionally, over the next few days Google plans to open up the gallery to a select group of testers in order to provide insights and bug reports. 

And all of this is happening before the beta launch in hopes that things will be extra polished for the real release. 

"We can't wait to share all the great extensions that you'll submit with all of Google Chrome's users," writes Lei Zhing of Google Chrome. And honestly? We're pretty curious ourselves. Let us know what you'd like cooked up, or check out what people are already asking for here.

Well guys, it’s safe to say that we’re finally in the clear.

For awhile there things looked pretty bad for Skype (news, site), as eBay and the platform’s original co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis battled it out over legal issues.

The whole sitch started looking up a couple weeks ago when the opposing sides finally came to an agreement, granting Skype ownership of critical software. The settlement opened up some doors, and last Thursday eBay sold a 70 percent stake in the company for somewhere around US$ 1.9 billion up front with another US$ 125 million on the way. The remaining 30 percent stays with eBay. 

Zennstrom and Friis now have a substantial hold on their creation through Joltid, part of the investor group that purchased the large chunk from the auction king. 

Among the relieved is Skype CEO Josh Silverman, who says, “You’ll see Skype become a lot more ubiquitous in a lot more places, both mobile devices as well as embedded devices,” he says, adding “expect to see us on a lot more platforms.”

Follow them here, and let's see how things fare in 2010. 

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Twitter scraps 'suggested users' list


• We're at war! For the Web!


• Facebook implements a new privacy policy


• Twitter and Facebook party with Xbox Live, but it's not poppin'

There isn’t much that doesn’t take place in Vegas. Including the 2009 BlogWorld & New Media Expo, the first and only industry-wide trade show, conference and media event dedicated to blogging and new media.

The BlogWorldExpo was witness to an announcement by Thoora.

For those who don’t know, Thoora is a site that helps people discover the news attracting the most attention within social and traditional media. In real time, Thoora identifies the most interesting stories by exploring the entire blogosphere, Twitter and nearly 5,000 traditional media sources to determine the stories attracting the most blog posts, comments, tweets and news coverage.

Six Apart (news, site) is all over the place lately. In addition to Movable Type integrating Zemanta, the company has two new introductions to make. 

TypePad Cloud Platform is a new tool that enables developers to build social applications via the system's API. Meanwhile storage, infrastructure and organization of the data is left to TypePad's cloud environment.  Secondly, meet TypePad Motion, the first application built on the new platform. Typepad Motion is a microblogging app that evolved from Pownce, which Six Apart acquired last year. 

Yesterday Google Wave made headlines once again as Big G began to send out the 100,000 preview invitations they promised. The real time communication and collaboration tool's preview release will reportedly be hosted on the platform's own website rather than in the separate "sandbox" developers have been using since the platform's release to developers in May. 

"In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up," said Google Wave Project Manager, Dan Peterson.

Will Google Wave be the next step in communication as so many like to imagine it will? Or the viable alternative to traditional e-mail that Google themselves planned for it to be? Well, we're about to find out. If you didn't help report bugs and are feeling lousy about it, don't worry. Google wave is expected to be officially released for public use early next year. Alternatively, you could comb the net for someone who was invited, as each of the 100,000 chosen also received 5 invited of their own. 

In any case, keep up with the movement here. 

 We’ve been following SeeWhy (news, site) since the inception of their so-called abandonment tracker, a tool primarily designed to lure waffling e-commerce customers into purchasing.

Many people have been (understandably) a bit skeptical about the tool. And so, in what is presumably an attempt not only to enhance their capabilities but also prove their value, SeeWhy has partnered up. Will working with e-mail marketing platform provider ExactTarget help gently drag shopping cart abandoners back to the checkout line? Maybe.

Calling all you fame seekers! The WordPress (news, site) MultiUser plugin contest is officially open for submissions.

Every year WPMU.org challenges all participating authors to put their skills to the ultimate test. Winners take home the glory of being in the WordPress spotlight, plus a fair amount of cold hard cash. Today the pot is at US$ 1,000 but team WPMU is still seeking more donations to add.

The rules are simple:

1. Make an awesome plugin and upload it somewhere on the ‘net (WPMU recommends WPMU DEV http://wpmudev.org/)
2. Register as a contributor at WPMU.org and write up your plugin for general consumption.
3. Vote. Wait. Vote. Wait. And while you’re waiting make sure you vote.

In addition to traditional WPMU plugins the contest also supports submissions for BuddyPress, WordPress MU’s new-ish bundled collection of extras specifically for social networking.

All submissions must be made by October 16th. For more information, including details on becoming a sponsor if you're in a charitable mood, redirect yourself.

Adobe (news, site) moves fast. You may recall that the company recently acquired analytics provider Omniture, to the surprise of many a tech nerd.

The coupling of Adobe’s creative brand and analytics—which admittedly seemed odd at first—is already being reflected in its solutions. First off the conveyor belt is the brand new Adobe Flash Platform Services for Distribution. The platform gives Flash app developers more insight into how their apps are being used, and enables advertisers and content publishers alike to promote, measure and monetize their tools across the Web.

Former Sun Microsystems (news, site) CEO Scott McNealy is credited for stating: "Privacy is dead - get over it!" And while being reminded that our confidentiality is quickly drowning in the digital age can't hurt, whether or not we should "get over it"—or better yet, whether or not we even have a choice—is now at the forefront.

For example, analyst Seth Schoen recently published an article in the Electronic Frontier Foundation highlighting research from Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, Latanya Sweeney. Sweeney found that the mere combination of gender, zip code and birthday was unique for 87% of the U.S .population. Meaning? All those "anonymous" surveys we fill out from time aren't so anonymous after all.

Well kids, it looks like it’s come down to official legal charges. Again. That is to say, Skype (news, site) founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström are suing eBay for what they claim is a violation of their license agreement and copyright infringement.

Though Friis and Zennstrom insist they are not seeking to halt it, we’re guessing that this new development doesn’t exactly help eBay’s recent arrangement to sell the Internet telephony platform.

Man, technology is COOL. Particularly new stuff like image recognition-based search engines, which operate using audio-visual content rather than tags.

IBM (news, site) announced that they are currently working in collaboration with the European Union consortium on such a tool. Search in Audio-Visual Content Using Peer-to-peer Information Retrieval, (SAPIR) analyzes photos, sound files and even video queries. Once you feed the engine any of these file types, it scours the ‘net and hands back similar pieces.