Latest Web 2.0 News & Articles

We’ve talked a lot about the benefits of semantics in the recent past with regard to search functionality, but you’re probably wondering if there’s anything else to be gleaned from linguistic development.

Straight up: you want to know if semantics, in any way shape or form, mean money. The answer, friends, is "yes." BooRah, a restaurant reputation report, is a prime example of this.

As the browser wars rage on, third-party extensions, plug-ins and add-ons have become key players. With Google Chrome out of beta, Microsoft Internet Explorer is working hard towards a full public release. Here to help them on their way is OneRiot’s Hot Topic Web Slice.

If you're mom has started using Facebook then you won't find this recent report surprising at all.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life project, who released a report on Adults and Social Networking Services, "adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from eight percent in 2005 to 35 percent."

As lifestreaming continues to grow in popularity, so do the ways in which it’s presented. Introducing one of the first players to take the sentimental route: thisMoment.

Still in its beta testing phase, thisMoment isn’t marketed as a lifestream, a micro-blogging service or a social network, even though it could easily be used for any of those things. No, thisMoment is presented as something a little closer to the heart. Specifically, “A place for saving and sharing the moments of your life.” 

They made it to Forrester's list of top Communities providers for interactive marketing because of their ability to create branded communities. So it should come as no surprise that Awareness has launched a set of Best Practice Communities based on what they say are the top eight social media marketing use cases and business goals.

Mochila has been quiet for a few months, but they have emerged recently to announce a new partnership with GlobalPost.com that chose Mochila to be the principal architect and developer of its website, which launched January 12. Mochila already distributes GlobalPost.com's content via their online media marketplace which works to syndicate a plethora of premium news articles, videos and photos.

While Mochila definitely deserves attention for being selected, the real focus of the initiative is GlobalPost. The online international news gathering and syndication service aims to "exploit powerful global demographic, political and economic trends by creating the only Internet journalism site devoted exclusively to international news and related content."

With more education opportunities online, one of the world's largest educational facilities has been slow to embrace the evolving nature of the web. Just as the rest of us embark on web 3.0, the Smithsonian Institution has proudly announced that they are now entering Smithsonian 2.0. 

There are a number of really great services that allow you to search images and videos hosted on specific sites like YouTube and Flickr. Some examples are Wibe7.tv, PicClick and Compfight and though all of them are useful in their own right, none hold a candle to the visually stimulating Cooliris. We’re talking of course about Cooliris’ infamous 3D wall and browserless environment. (Think gigantic interactive media viewer in 2002's "Minority Report")

Imagine then, our delightful surprise at learning about CoolFlick, a Cooliris-powered image search engine with similar eye-pleasing aesthetics. What’s even better? With CoolFlick there’s no downloading necessary.

We're not even a month into the new year, but already there is speculation as to what web design will bring. Identifying on-going experimentation may lead us to new and exciting design approaches.

So what new trends will 2009 most likely bring?

IBM has announced a new suite of collaboration services straight from the cloud. LotusLive is their new portal offering a number of collaboration and social networking services. With integration from some solution providers like Skype, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com, IBM customers will be happy to go cloud-jumping.

User-generated content is a rapidly developing revolution in media. News media have been implementing user generated content in an effort to supplement content and community perspectives.

Citizen journalists now wield power over online content and new business models are emerging in response to this shift. To help bring together content-trendsetters and business leaders in a variety of fields, Mediabistro presents User-Generated Content Conference and Expo.

Are customers fed up with poorly trained, outsourced service personnel? Are they tired of spending endless hours on the phone listening to someone read screens? Maybe. We know that many have been turning to things like Google, forums and other online sites for the answers they seek. So how does a business regain the faith of their customers through support?

They join in conversations in the cloud. Salesforce.com has released a SaaS based application called The Service Cloud which can get business back on track with true customer service.

As you know, the art of graphic design takes investment in training, resources and software. Yet, in today's waning economy, companies are wanting ways to do more with less. Design often falls onto the plate of non-designers, like programmers or information architects in an effort to save money, but can suffer aesthetically, as a result.

Google Chrome is a good browser. A speedy, delightful little browser. Sure, the themes and fancy applications that Mozilla offers aren’t there, but the crash rate is much lower, the dynamic tabs are sweet and you’re warned when you may be visiting a harmful website. In fact, perhaps it’s the no-frills approach that has kept Chrome as functional as it is.

Whatever the case, no-frills is still no-frills, and in an era of endless options there will always be those that try to add a little “flava” to the things that lack it. As a result, add-ons to Chrome are available via browser bookmarklets. Because of popular demand, you can now even employ them in order to manage two new ways to work with RSS feeds.

They are flying through our inboxes as fast as hamburgers get flipped at MacDonald's. So we thought we better bring a few to your attention so we can read the rest of our email. The list of webinars that follows run the gamut of application development with Alfresco and IDV Solutions to content management with SharePoint and SaaS to Social Media Marketing - there's even a Twitter one for all your Twitter junkies.

Technical communications, much like many other industries, has been clamoring for a comprehensive suite of tools that meets the demands necessary to keep up with the evolving technological world. A few years ago Adobe answered that call with their Technical Communications Suite. Today, they push the envelope even further with the release of their Technical Communications Suite 2.

Click over to your preferred search engine and type “global warming,” hit enter and wait for the faint tang of smoke curling up from your processor. What’s that? Six billion hits! Let’s get sophisticated and try “global warming” and “Al Gore”. Oh, wait. Google just sent you an email threatening legal action if  you keep instigating "insanely vague" searches.

If you’re a scientist, attempting environmental studies with a focus on atmospheric phenomena, and you type "red tide," it doesn’t really help to see links to redheads.com. In fact, it’s a distraction you don’t need.

This is when you may need Noesis, a new semantic web search engine developed at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a promising addition to scientific research.

Shortly after making a huge announcement alongside Google at Adobe Max North America 2008, Sprout, Inc. drops another bomb. And this time, it’s going to cost their customers money. End a bad economic year on a good note and start a bad economic year with bad news. It doesn’t seem like the best course of action for the creators of Sprout Builder and Sprout Mixer.

Last December, TypePad Connect was announced as a way to bring a new level of visibility into blog posts, comments and other action taking place on weblogs. The commenting system offered by TypePad allowed your blog to have threaded comments, commenter profile pictures and allowed blog owners to block spam comments and read/reply to comments within email.

The blogging platform provider has now announced that you can easily sign into TypePad Connect with less fuss by using an existing account you probably already have including Yahoo, Google, Blogger, AIM, Vox and many more.

Forrester kicks of 2009 with their review of the latest community platforms. The Forrester Wave™: Community Platforms, Q1 2009 is based on lab evaluations and interviews of nine community platform vendors. The top contenders are not really surprising, considering the market the review was based on.