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Inventor of the Wiki Responds to Google Search Wiki

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:27:41 -0800

Google put on a full court media push tonight for a major change the company is making to its search experience. According to the Official Google Blog and a very unusual email the company sent out to press, a new feature called Google Search Wiki will launch soon.

We're not seeing it yet, but read on for an explanation of what the feature will do and a reaction to the announcement from Ward Cunningham, the man who invented the wiki.

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The feature will allow logged-in users to change the order of search results and mark up search results pages with notes. Only their own results will be changed - unless they click a link to view all Search Wiki notes on a search's page. Very few details are out yet, nothing regarding vandalism, libel, history, messiness, collaboration or other wiki matters. Those are pretty important concerns given that this could become the biggest and most important wiki in the world.

This isn't Google Labs, this isn't a little project off to the side, apparently there's a Google Search Wiki team and they have access to the primary search results page. We expect this to be a very big deal.

Reaction from the Inventor of the Wiki

We asked Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki, what he thought about Google Search Wiki. This was his first reaction.

I think it looks pretty sharp. It's simple and powerful - it will respond well to scale. I'm surprised that they called it a wiki. When I heard they wouldn't call a wiki a wiki [Jotspot was renamed Google Sites -ed.], then I decided I wouldn't call my searches Googles. Now that they are calling a wiki a wiki, I guess I'll call my searches Googles again....or should I call them wikis?

I can't tell if they have a wiki there or not, it might just be a forum. Collectively editing thoughts is what leads to the unique wiki behavior and I didn't see that demonstrated in the video.

They are going to get a lot of data. They obviously have the ability to weild information, let's just hope that we will all benefit. I don't think it's obvious that we all will benefit - but I guess I have enough trust in the behavior of a large number of people.

Photo of Cunningham by Joi Ito

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I Want My MTV? Not Anymore, Music Promotion Moves to Web

Richard MacManus — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:01:37 -0800

It's clear now that the Web has once and for all replaced TV's role in the music business. Yesterday Guns n' Roses released their very long awaited album Chinese Democracy via a colorful MySpace page. Then today NPR announced that they will offer an "Exclusive First Listen" to the new albums of two music legends - Neil Young and Paul McCartney. In late September NPR had a similar arrangement for Bob Dylan's latest album. Younger musicians are flocking to Web platforms such as Imeem and last.fm to promote their music. For bands still under the radar, all the afore-mentioned sites cater to them - but also small sites like Muxtape (a notice on its homepage currently reads: "relaunching soon, in the service of bands").

All of this is further proof that Web technology has gone mainstream in the music business.

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In an age when MTV seemingly doesn't play any music anymore - instead preferring to bore anyone over 15 years old with insipid 'reality tv' shows - it represents a big shift away from TV to the Web, when promoting new music.

The Guns n Roses MySpace page is impressive. It offers the full album online, a couple of days before the official release in stores. True GNR fans, including this author, will still buy the album when it is released. But by promoting the album online a couple of days before release, it encourages new fans and gives Guns n Roses a lot of free publicity and viral uptake on the Internet. This will almost certainly increase overall sales.

While Guns n Roses hasn't gone as far as Radiohead did with their latest album In Rainbows - which was released as a 'pay what you want' download before it was even an actual CD product - Guns n Roses and MySpace is an appropriate partnership for both parties. For Guns n Roses, it allows them to reach a young, hip, massive audience. And for MySpace, it gives them a lot of page views and we presume a very healthy profit from the record label and retailers such as Best Buy (which has a banner ad right at the top of the page). We should also point out that Guns n Roses has employed some heavy handed tactics to stop illegal file-sharing of the album, so they haven't been entirely savvy about the Web. Still, the MySpace promotion is inspired.

We've been impressed by many of the online music services this year - last.fm has continued to evolve its web services, Imeem has been a revelation for many music fans, Pandora's traffic continues to grow despite ongoing legal issues, sites like The Hype Machine (our coverage) and Muxtape (when it was available) offer something new and different, and so on.

But we're also noticing some of the more traditional radio stations vastly improving their Web sites - and NPR is a great example of that. NPR Music is currently marking its one year anniversary. It features content from NPR and 12 of its public radio stations, but what's impressed us has been the "original-to-NPR Music features" such as live performances, studio sessions, first listens to forthcoming albums, and interviews. This author is a subscriber to NPR's All Songs Considered podcast, which has recently featured a full Radiohead concert and a Guest DJ appearance by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

I want my MTV? Not anymore. I can get everything I want in my Web browser! Although to be fair, even MTV has moved its music to the Web.

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Mossberg Says Innovation is the Key to Success During the Econaclypse

Lidija Davis — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:31:23 -0800

Walter Mossberg, who has been reviewing technology since 1991 for the Wall Street Journal in his weekly "Personal Technology" column, is convinced the companies that succeed in this type of econaclypse, as AllThingsD has dubbed the economy, will be those that focus on innovation. "It has been my observation that while things do slow down in bad times, they don't stop," Mossberg said.

Speaking to a packed room this week at the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase in Redwood City CA, Mossberg, the "Most Influential Computer Journalist" according to Time Magazine, described the trends that excite him right now as happening both in computer hardware and computer software: outside the browser Web applications, service in the cloud, and hand held computers.

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Much like during the mid to late eighties, when we saw advances in the personal computer, Mossberg explained we are once again witnessing advances in hardware innovation. This time however, we are not getting excited about the Commodore, Radio Shack and Apple II devices; instead, a new model of computer is energizing the world of consumer technology. The super smart phones or hand held computers as Mossberg prefers to call them: the iPhone, the G1, and the soon to be released BlackBerry Storm.

In much the same way, this time also reminds Mossberg of the mid to late nineties as we are once again observing a swell of Internet innovation; this one happening on the software front with widgets/Web apps and service in the cloud.

With so much information available on the Internet, and the instant gratification demanded by consumers today, the melding of these products is inevitable. Mossberg, who believes widgets will flourish on hand held computers, suggested that while the new class of mobile devices offer better browsing than their predecessors, it is in the apps that he sees competition, innovation and ideas fermenting. "We don't necessarily need to go through a browser," he said.

The problem of course is replicating data across devices in a smooth, cohesive manner to ensure that data available on the Internet is available on the handheld. And that's where service in the cloud comes in. While corporate America has enjoyed technologies such as BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Microsoft Exchange, and Lotus Notes that have enabled data to be replicated between devices [servers, desktops, laptops and handhelds], according to Mossberg, nobody has yet been "wildly successful" in bringing this technology to the wider consumer world via the cloud.

And so the race begins. While Mossberg has always claimed he is not responsible for business coverage of tech companies, the fact remains that for the past 17 years, the star of the Wall Street Journal has accurately assessed innovation within the consumer tech market. Given his insights this week, the only questions that remain are: who will bring cloud services to the masses, and will it happen during the econaclypse?

Read the transcript of Mossberg's keynote below.

Walter Mossberg: Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase 2008

Effects of the economy

I think it's obvious to everybody that we're in for a serious recession. The question is only how serious. Barack Obama probably had thirty seconds of feeling happy and now has a whole lot to worry about.

At AllthingsD.com, our website, we have coined a term for the economy; we're calling it the 'econaclypse' and I think we are in kind of an econaclypse.

My observation, and I have been writing about tech for 17 years, I don't fund anything, but I do get pitched like VCs do.

I see all kinds of new companies, sometimes many months, sometimes over a year before their product ships. And it has been my observation that while things do slow down in bad times, they don't stop.

There is a digital tidal wave in the world, all kinds of digital products, whether they are hardware products, software products, services, web 2.0, whatever the hypesters are going to call the next phase of the Web. That stuff doesn't stop. It slows down a little, but doesn't stop.

And the companies obviously that can hold together and continue to work on their innovation, whether it's business model innovation, but especially if it's product innovation, those are the companies that come out of these things strongest.

Obviously this is not a typical company and I realize the model is different when you have 25 billion dollars in cash in the bank and no debt - which is what this person has - but Steve Jobs said, it was about a month ago or three weeks ago, Steve Jobs jumped on their earning call - he rarely deigns to be on their earnings call as many of you know - and he jumped on their earning call and said: in the last recession, that's when we opened our Apple stores, that's when we did... and he mentioned a couple of different innovative and expensive projects they'd taken on during the downturn, and he says we're going to try and keep innovating our way out of it.

Obviously on a smaller scale and without the 25 billion in cash, and maybe with a little debt that he doesn't have, still I think it's the right thing to do. And even if you don't manage to do that, somebody else will.

Just because the market is in the eight thousands instead of the eleven thousands or unemployment - which is actually the more serious number in my opinion for gauging the length of the recession - is 8.5 percent, which it might get to rather than 4 percent, it doesn't mean people stop working on new ideas, particularly in tech and particularly in consumer tech.

Mossberg's take on consumer technology today

Let me talk about what I think is going on, kind of the big picture of where we are and then we'll do some Q&A if you want.

This period we're in right now if we put the econaclypse off to the side for a minute, this period we're in right now, to me reminds me a lot of the mid to late eighties and the mid to late nineties at the same time. And here's what I mean. It reminds me a little bit of the mid to late 90's because we have another wave of Internet innovation going on.

There is obviously a million different things going on in the Internet but there are two categories I look at - and you've got to remember I don't write about, and I don't pay any attention to corporate technology, or niche technology. I also don't ever use the word enterprise, because the least enterprising and least entrepreneurial part of the entire economy are these giant bloated corporations to whom that term is often applied. I don't see anything enterprising about Ford Motor Company I just call them big corporations or big government agencies or whatever they are. Fine with me that they buy technology - it's great that they buy technology, and sure there is wonderful technology being produced for those folks, but it's not my job to write about them. So everything I say is in the context of consumer

So what do I mean when I talk about things going on on the Web that are to me as exciting and there is as much fervor and ferment and intellectual energy as there was when the Web was getting going in the mid to late nineties?

There are two buckets.

One is outside the browser - it's these widgets, web apps, whatever you want to call them, that did start on the PC and Mac. Actually in a funny way, some of them were tried in Windows 95 with what was called Active Desktop. Unfortunately the way that Microsoft presented it to the world was as sort of selling your personal computer desktop to Disney and Warner brothers, which allowed me to write a couple of great fulminating columns, and not just me.

But it was kind of this idea. And then the next instantiation of any importance, of any sort of economic clout was when Apple put this dashboard aspect into the Mac OS and then Microsoft followed with the sidebar in Vista. But really the place where I think it flourishes is on handhelds. Hand held computers, the iPhone class of computers of which there are now about to be three, and I'm going to get to that in a minute.

So, that's the first bucket, and I think there is colossal developer energy, intellectual energy, going into this question of "okay we have the Web out there, the Internet out there, it's just full of all kinds of information; commerce engines, and search opportunities, and entertainment opportunities, but we don't necessarily need to go through a browser - we can go through an app that takes advantage of the processing power and the graphics engine and all that on the computer that is narrowly focused on whatever it is.

How many people here have an iPhone or an iPod Touch? I'm talking about everything from the simple stock widget on there, to the now over 7000 apps for that phone - for that hand held computer. That's since 11th July. Two million downloads and 7000 apps for that phone, for that hand held computer. So that's one big area of excitement.

The other one, of course, is trying to take what has been true in corporate America for a long time, which is a sort of service in the cloud - whether it's the Blackberry Enterprise Server, or Microsoft Exchange or Lotus products that replicate data across devices and, push e-mail and other data out and bring that to the wider consumer world.

You see Google making some effort, you see Microsoft making some effort, you see Apple with Mobile Me making some efforts - that so far hasn't been successful. Nobody has really been wildly successful. Even RIM - much of the RIM effort has been focused - and when I talk about the consumer space most of the RIM, distributed computing through the cloud, is still out of the enterprise - although that is changing with their customer profile.

So those are the two big exciting areas that I see. I'm not talking about business models for those things. I understand that there has been some debate in some of the sessions about the viability of the advertising model versus other kinds of models, and I share some skepticism about relying solely on advertising.

But without regard to business model for a minute, I think those are two huge pools of excitement.

And then, complementing that and this is what makes me think of the mid to late eighties as opposed to mid to late nineties. What was happening in the mid to late eighties?

Remember the personal computer; the mass market personal computer appeared in 1977.

You had three of them; one of the most important of the three was the Apple II, but you also had a Radio Shack and Commodore. And those were the first machines where somebody without an engineering degree could actually take it out of the box and do something with it. And on the Apple II in particular, that's where business began to adopt personal computers because Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston wrote a program called VisiCalc. It was a spreadsheet, it ran on the Apple II and you were off to the races in terms of businesses using personal computers.

But it was in the eighties that you began to see this tremendous competition and intellectual activity and design activity and engineering activity around "what is a personal computer?"

So you had Apple doing its stuff, you had Commodore, you had Radio Shack, you had, you know, a million companies.

When I started writing my Personal Technology column in 1991, PC Magazine, and first of all, PC Magazine was the size of Vogue, and when they did their ratings of computers, there were 75 or 80 PC makers, and they were not all making the same sort of thing.

Well I think we're kind of back there because I think there are new form factors and models of computers. Some of them are these netbooks, everybody's heard that term, it's actually a misnomer. The original idea was it would be a very thin client, with very little memory and processing power and would mostly be used to access things on the Net, these widgety kinds of things. And there is still some of that, but within eight months, they've all gotten hard disks, they've all gotten Windows XP so they've all kind of become very small laptops, but nevertheless, it's an interesting category.

The much bigger category of new kinds of computers is what I call hand held computers or another term might be super smart phones. I mean this smart phone term has been out there and has meant very little. At one point Microsoft actually was using it as a brand for something that by today's standards would look very primitive.

You know, Treos were smart phones, Blackberry is a kind of smart phone, obviously these Windows mobile phones that have been out there but there is something new, another whole level of game changing power, and application development that was kicked off with the iPhone and there are now two devices in my opinion that are in that category; one is the iPhone, and one is the G1, the first Android phone, and there will be many other Android phones.

And this week we're about to see a third, which is this, the BlackBerry Storm, which is their effort to compete with the iPhone head on. It's a touch screen phone which will have an app store, and I'm not referring to the - there have obviously been third party apps for the Blackberry, but this is going to have, it has a new SDK, and it will have a major app store like Apple has like Google has for the G1.

These things are computers that happen to make phone calls.

Some of you who have tried some of these 7K apps on the iPhone know that here is pretty much a staggering variety of what you can do on there. And I at least can say in my travels and daily life, I'm as glued as the rest of you probably are to this stuff. I'm pulling out my laptop less and less often during stopovers at airports, and it's not just like when you use to have your Blackberry or Treo and you could look at your e-mail.

I'm doing Web surfing in the browser - which is a good browser in the iPhone - and all of these, the marks of these is they have a much more real browsers than the old phones used to have, but I'm also using a lot of these apps. These are kind of big broad areas where I think it is quite fun and exciting to see competition, ideas ferment; and innovation.

Now are these things immune to the economy? Of course they're not - of course RIM would rather be launching and Verizon would rather be launching Blackberry Storm in last years economy than in this years economy, and it may be that what it would have done in last years economy is not going to happen in this years economy. But luckily for me, I don't have to cover the business side of RIM or Verizon, I don't have to predict sales, I just have try to review and try to understand these products and where they are heading.

Just as a lot of the design and engineering energy left things like CD-ROMs and rushed into the Web when it was clear that it was a big deal, I observed, and I don't know about all of you, but I'm observing a tremendous migration of design and engineering activity into these super smart phones or hand held computers, iPhone class devices. And into these both cloud services and these kind of widgety outside the browser Web apps.

So that's what I think are the big kind of trends that going on right now, at least in consumer technology - of course mixed with other things. People are still making laptops, we have a new version of Windows coming, which I actually think has a chance of being quite good, and quite good is not a phrase you would have seen in any of my columns next to the word Vista, but I think the track they're on with Windows 7 is quite promising. So I'd like to open up to Q&A and we can talk about these topics or any other topic you might think I might be quite competent.

Thank you.

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Crowd Science Giveaway: 50 Free Accounts to RWW Readers

Admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:00:00 -0800

Crowd Science is a new tool that allows web publishers to gather demographic data. We're using Crowd Science currently on ReadWriteWeb - you may have already come across a pop-up invite and filled out the survey. If you haven't, that's because it's done randomly. So if you do get the Crowd Science pop-up, we'd love it if you filled in the demographic survey. The data from this survey lets us know more about our readers, which helps guide us in our topic selection and so on. Plus of course it enables us to get sponsors and ads that are highly relevant.

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Crowd Science has given us 50 free Personal accounts to give away to our readers. To get a free account click here and enter the promo code "RWW". Crowd Science will choose 50 people, randomly, to get an upgrade to a Personal account - which you will get free for a period of 1 year.

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YouTube Tests HD Videos

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:08:26 -0800

According to a report by Wired's Meghan Keane, YouTube is testing stereo sound as a default option for videos and is also offering very high quality HD versions of a small selection of clips. We weren't able to find a lot of videos that were encoded in the 720p HD format, but it is important to note that this is different from the 'watch in high quality' option YouTube already offers, which only features a resolution of 480x360 and which doesn't look half as good as the 720p option.

It would not surprise us if Google was adding these options to give professional content producers and TV networks more of an incentive to upload their content to YouTube instead of using Google's competitors.

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Competing for High Quality Content

As HD cameras are pretty much already becoming standard in the consumer electronics space, it would make sense for Google to start supporting this format. Also, a lot of YouTube's competitors like Vimeo already offer HD playback with a resolution of up to 1280x720.

We also know that Google is trying to get more professionally produced TV shows and movies onto its service. In this space, YouTube is competing with Hulu, which already offers some shows in HD, as well as the offerings of individual TV networks like ABC, which streams a large selection of its primetime shows in HD.

This February, we already wondered why Google was allowing YouTube to fall behind its competitors by not offering HD video, but now it looks as if Google might be catching up again. The question that remains, however, is when these 720p videos will become a default option for content producers.

To see these HD videos, you have to add "&fmt=22" to the YouTube URL, but we haven't been very lucky in finding a lot of videos where this option was enabled yet. If you find any, let us know in the comments.

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Casual Internet Use Is Good for Kids, 3 Year Study Concludes

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:16:45 -0800

The ways young people use the internet everyday are transforming learning in ways that adults often fail to understand but represent major new opportunities that need to be taken advantage of by supportive educators. That's the conclusion of a major new study by 28 researchers over three years released today by the University of California at Berkley and the MacArthur Foundation.

Titled "Living and Learning With New Media," the study articulates the value of social networking, text messaging and other forms of new media use better than anything we've seen yet. It's a major contribution to our understanding of the new web and the way it impacts the world at large.

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Funded by the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Series, the research is summarized in one two page document a 30 page white paper and a 12 part online book titled Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. MIT Press will be offering a print version of the book soon.

Leading education blogger Will Richardson pulls out some of his favorite parts of the study on his blog, some of which we excerpt below as well.

Self Directed Exploration Uniquely Motivating

New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in classroom setting. Youth respect one another's authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed, and the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented toward set, predefined goals.

That makes sense, of course, but is it effective?

New Forms of Learning Essential to Participation in Contemporary Society

Social and recreational new media use as a site of learning. Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technological skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning. Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access "serious" online information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions.

What kinds of rolls can adults play in this?

Adults Should Help This Process

Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads. Such learning differs fundamentally from traditional instruction and is often framed negatively by adults as a means of "peer pressure." Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting "learning goals," particularly on the interest-driven side, where adult hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers.

It's a new world for those privileged enough to have access to the web. The consequences of these changes will unfold in years to come. Do schools need to adapt to these new forms of learning in order to keep functioning well? Perhaps. But perhaps for some learning subjects in particular traditional schools have never worked as well as they could in the future if they support these new collaborative styles of learning.

This report is the end result of work done by 28 researchers over 3 years, based on interviews with 800 young people and 5000 hours of online observation. Check it out in full for yourself and let us know what you think.

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10 More Semantic Apps to Watch

Richard MacManus — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:00:00 -0800

In November 2007, we listed 10 Semantic apps to watch and yesterday we published an update on what each had achieved over the past year. All of them are still alive and well - a couple are thriving, some are experimenting and a few are still finding their way.

Now we're going to list 10 more Semantic apps to watch. These are all apps that have gotten onto our radar over 2008. We've reviewed all but one of them, so click through to the individual reviews for more detail. It should go without saying, but this is by no means an exhaustive list - so if we haven't mentioned your favorite, please add it in the comments.

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BooRah

BooRah is a restaurant review site that we first reviewed earlier this year. One of BooRah's most interesting aspects is that it uses semantic analysis and natural language processing to aggregate reviews from food blogs. Because of this, BooRah can recognize praise and criticism in these reviews and then rates restaurants accordingly. BooRah also gathers reviews from Citysearch, Tripadvisor and other large review sites.

BooRah also announced last month the availability of an API that will allow other web sites and businesses to offer online reviews and ratings from BooRah to their customers. The API will surface most of BooRah's data about a given restaurant, including ratings, menus, discounts, and coupons.

Swotti

Swotti is a semantic search engine that aggregates opinions about products to help you make purchasing decisions. We reviewed the product back in March. Swotti aggregates opinions about products from product review sites, forums and discussion boards, web sites and blogs, and then categorizes those reviews as to what feature or aspect of the product is being reviewed, tagging it accordingly, and then rating the review on as positive or negative.

Dapper MashupAds

Earlier this month we wrote about the recent improvement in Dapper MashupAds, a product we first spotted over a year ago. The idea is that publishers can tell Dapper: this is the place on my web page where the title of a movie will appear, now serve up a banner ad that's related to whatever movie this page happens to be about. That could be movies, books, travel destinations - anything. We remarked that the UI for this has grown much more sophisticated in the past year.

How this works: in the back end, Dapper will be analyzing the fields that publishers identify and will apply a layer of semantic classification on top of them. The company believes that its new ad network will provide monetary incentive for publishers to have their websites marked up semantically. Dapper also has a product called Semantify, for SEO - see our review of that.

For more on Semantic advertising, see our write-up of a panel on this topic from the Web 3.0 Conference.

Inform.com

Inform.com analyzes content from online publishers and inserts links from a publisher's own content archives, affiliated sites, or the web at large, to augment content being published. We reviewed it in January, when at the time the company had more than 100 clients - including CNN.com, WashingtonPost.com and the Economist.

Inform says its technology determines the semantic meaning of key words in millions of news stories around the web every day in order to recommend related content. The theory is that by automating the process of relevant link discovery and inclusion, Inform can easily add substantial value to a publisher's content. Inform also builds out automatic topic pages, something you can see around WashingtonPost and CNN.com.

Siri

We have met our share of secretive startups over the years, but few have been as secretive about their plans as Siri, which was founded in December 2007 and did not even have an official name until October this year. Siri was spun out of SRI International and its core technology is based on the highly ambitious CALO artificial intelligence project.

In our October post on Siri, we discovered that Siri is working on a "personalized assistant that learns." We expect Siri to have a strong information management aspect, combined with some novel interface ideas. Based on our discussion with founders Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer in October, we think that there will be a strong mobile aspect to Siri's product and at least some emphasis on location awareness. Siri plans to launch in the first half of 2009.

Evri

Evri is a Paul Allen (of Microsoft fame) backed semantic search engine that launched into a limited beta in June. Evri is a search engine, though it adds a very sophisticated semantic layer on top of its results that emphasizes the relationships between different search terms. It especially prides itself for having developed a system that can distinguish between grammatical objects such subjects, verbs, and objects to create these connections. You can check out a tour of Evri here.

UpTake

Semantic search startup UpTake (formerly Kango) aims to make the process of booking travel online easier. In our review in May, we explained that UpTake is a vertical search engine that has assembled what it says is the largest database of US hotels and activities - over 400,000 of them - from more than 1,000 different travel sites. Using a top-down approach, UpTake looks at its database of over 20 million reviews, opinions, and descriptions of hotels and activities in the US and semantically extracts information about those destinations.

Imindi

Imindi is essentially a mind mapping tool, although it markets itself as a "Thought Engine". Imindi was recommended to us in the comments to our previous post by Yihong Ding, who called it "an untraditional Semantic Web service". Yihong said that traditionally Semantic Web services employ machines to understand humans, however Imindi's approach is to encourage humans to better understand each other via machines.

Imindi has met with a fair amount of skepticism so far - and indeed it appears to be reaching big with its AI associations. However we think it's worth watching, if for no other reason than to see if it can live up to the description on its About page: "By capturing the free form associations of user's logic and intuition, IMINDI is building a global mind index which is an entirely new resource for building collective intelligence and leveraging human creativity and subjectivity on the web."

Juice

We've all been there. You started reading something on the Web, saw something interesting in the article, searched for it, wound up somewhere else, and after about 12 hops you've forgotten exactly what it was you were looking for. If only there were some way to select that topic midstream and have the information automagically appear for you, without disrupting your workflow or sending you traipsing off into the wilds of the Web.

If that sounds familiar, you may need a shot of Juice, a new Firefox 3 add-in currently in public beta from Linkool Labs, that makes researching Web content as easy as click-and-drag. In our review of Juice, we concluded that it avoids some of the more traditional stumbling blocks of Semantic apps by taking a very top-down approach focused on a distinct data set.

Faviki

Faviki is a new social bookmarking tool which we reviewed back in May. It offers something that services like Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us and Diigo do not - semantic tagging capabilities. What this means is that instead of having users haphazardly entering in tags to describe the links they save, Faviki will suggest tags to be used instead. However, unlike other services, Faviki's suggestions don't just come from a community of users and their tagging history, but from structured information extracted straight out of the Wikipedia database.

Because Faviki uses structured tagging, there is more that can be learned about a particular tag, its properties, and its connections to other tags. The system will automatically know what tags belong together and how they relate to others.

Conclusion

The Semantic Web continues to inch closer to reality, by being used in products such as BooRah, Inform.com and Juice. Let us know your thoughts on the above 10 products, and of course any that we missed this time round.

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Mufin Brings Better Music Recommendations to iTunes

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:26:31 -0800

When we first reviewed Mufin, a music recommendation service that is entirely based around algorithms that can automatically detect the similarities between different songs, we only gave it a pretty average review. Since then, however, Mufin has greatly improved its service and added Facebook and Myspace applications. The most interesting new product, however, is Mufin's iTunes plugin, which brings Mufin's recommendation engine to your own iTunes collection and allows you to create automatic playlists based solely on the musical similarities between the songs.

In our tests, Mufin often performed better than Apple's Genius feature, but for now, the plugin is only available for Windows.

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Fingerprinting

Mufin creates a unique fingerprint for every song in your library when you start the plugin for the first time. You can choose if you want the recommendations to be based on the analysis of 30 second snippets (for fast analysis) or on the whole song (very slow, but highly accurate). Mufin's proprietary algorithms can then create playlists based on the similarities between the songs in your library. In creating these fingerprints, Mufin looks at over 40 characteristics, including tempo, instruments, and rhythm structure.

Apple's algorithms, on the other hand, are hidden in a black box, but seem to be based around the listening and purchasing habits of other users on iTunes.

Mufin's approach means that it will work for any song you may have imported into iTunes, no matter whether it is part of Apple's library or not. Mufin is also agnostic as to what language the songs are in.

Similar to Apple's Genius, the Mufin plugin will also make purchasing recommendations for similar songs that are not yet in your iTunes library and take you right to the iTunes store to listen to the preview or purchase them.

Verdict

Overall, we have come away very impressed with Mufin's recommendations. Judging from what we have seen so far, it may just replace the Genius feature as our preferred way of constructing automatic playlists.

That said, we are still not great fans of Mufin's core web service, which, unlike the plugin, is encumbered by licensing problems and which can only play 30 seconds of most songs (and often it can't play the songs at all). The plugin, however, is a clear winner in our eyes.

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College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts: Start Of New Trend?

Sarah Perez — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:06:43 -0800

Officials at Boston College have made what may be a momentous decision: they've stopped doling out new email accounts to incoming students. The officials realized that the students already had established digital identities by the time they entered college, so the new email addresses were just not being utilized. The college will offer forwarding services instead.

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Starting next year, freshman enrolled at Boston College won't be given an actual email account complete with login and inbox, just an email address. This address, in the format of johnsmith@bc.edu will simply forward mail to the student's already established inbox, be it Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, or whatever else they may be using.

The college reached this decision after first looking into outsourcing their email to the cloud. They considered offering from both Google and Microsoft, but eventually decided against both in lieu of the new forwarding option.

A Smart Decision

While the Boston College decision may have been made for cost-saving reasons more than anything, we can easily imagine this as being the start of a new trend.

Can you even imagine a U.S. college student who didn't have an email address of their own by the time they were a freshman? It's practically unheard of. Today's students are digital natives who have been immersed in technology from the day they were born. It simply doesn't make sense to give them yet another account to manage when they enter college.

Some Challenges

By going this route, there are still some challenges to overcome, though. For example, a student who changes their email carrier will probably forget to alert the institution to the change and could then miss out on important messages from the university pertaining to their courses, scholarship, and disciplinary and/or safety information.

However, it can easily be argued that a change of (email) address is a student's responsibility to handle, not the institution's. If a student changed their address or phone number, would they not alert the affected parties? The same should hold true for email. And if the end result is more efficient and effective communication with the student body as a whole, the outliers who didn't follow through on managing their email transition are ultimately the ones at fault for any missed messages.

The only danger in drawing a hard line like that would be if the college or university was in the habit of sending out critical safety information utilizing the students' email addresses. If that was the institution's main way of communicating this urgent info, they may want to devise another solution. Urgent messages should ideally be sent out using multiple pathways: email, IM, text messages, and, these days, Twitter alerts would also be a valuable tool to use, too. In fact, Omnilert's e2Campus emergency notification system already integrates with Twitter and Facebook as well as email, SMS, and RSS.

In the end, we think the decision Boston College made could easily be the start of a new trend, especially for smaller institutions looking to reduce I.T. infrastructure and support costs. We're sure the students like it, too.

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A New Backchannel For Live Events: The Brightkite Wall

Sarah Perez — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:38:47 -0800

Whenever there is a conference or event, there's a secondary bit of action taking place behind the scenes: the backchannel. Here, the attendees are live blogging, twittering, posting photos, and streaming live video about what they're seeing on stage or in and around the venue. Twitter has always been the microblogging platform of choice in this scenario, but starting today, they just might have new competition from Brightkite, the mobile social networking service that's making a name for itself among the early adopters.

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Last night, Brightkite released a new feature for their mobile social networking platform called the "Brightkite Wall." This wall displays the live stream of notes, photos, and checkins at any one place. When launched full screen, the Brightkite Wall's placestream can be shown on any monitor, projector, or TV, which obviously makes it perfect for conferences and events.

Using the Wall

To get started, simply browse to the desired place and click the new Wall tab. Then click on the embedded Brightkite Wall to go full screen. Organizers can even customize the Wall beforehand, if desired. The message and location name can be modified, the shortcode can be selected for use within the U.S. or outside the U.S., and checkins can be turned on or off.

Of course, Brightkite has a much smaller user base than Twitter, which could have made this new feature a non-starter. However, Brightkite has that problem covered. With the Brightkite Wall, anyone can participate by texting a pre-defined shortcode provided for you by the service.

Better Than Live Blogging?

Brightkite's Wall may soon beat Twitter to become the microblogging platform of choice for live events because it offers a much richer stream of information. Instead of just displaying 140-character notes, Brightkite's Wall also displays photos. Combined with notes and checkins, this makes the Wall a much more engaging experience.

For those virtually attending the event, watching the Brightkite Wall could end up being even better than refreshing a blogger's post featuring their "live" coverage of the event. A live blog only gives you one point of view and set of images. Even if it's a group effort, it's not the same as being immediately tapped into the thoughts and reactions of all the event's attendees as you are with Brightkite.

Potential Problems

Our only concern for this new feature is that it doesn't appear to be any sort of administrative control over who can configure what. If some rogue conference attendee wanted to, he or she could highjack the Wall by customizing their own personalized greeting for all to see. That could lead to problems, especially if the message was profane or offensive.

Another concern is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of archiving system in place, so while the Wall may be a great real-time view into the thoughts and activities that are taking place at a particular point in time, going back to view older images and notes could be a challenge if the same locale (address) is used over and over again for subsequent events.

The Wall feature is still in beta, though, so as people begin to use it and submit feedback, it may be updated to even better reflect people's needs than it does now.

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10 Things to Know About Salesforce.com

Bernard Lunn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:00:00 -0800

These are reflections from having spent a few days at the annual Salesforce.com event, Dreamforce. We hope they are valuable to people who need an executive summary-level understanding of the company and its position in the cloud and SaaS marketplace. Full disclosure, the company paid for my flight and hotel to attend Dreamforce.

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1. They Are Ambitious

Salesforce wants to be the dominant cloud platform for business. Their view is that computing has seen two waves: the first was the mainframe, and then the PC client server, and now the third is cloud computing. They have been consistent about this since their inception in March 1999, so this is no recent bandwagon hopping.

2. They Have a Good Shot at Meeting This Ambition

They have a powerful mix of capability and relentless focus. They have the resources -- cash, cash flow, clients, track record, management team, and so on -- needed to execute on this vision. Their competitors are bigger, but Salesforce has the advantage of focus. They are pure play, and they have no legacy to protect.

3. They Are a Marketing Machine with Flair

Having attended a few big rah-rah events, such as Java One, I see that Dreamforce compares well on scale, details, and flair. Its messaging and visuals were consistent and powerful, and everything just worked well. This all costs a lot of money (which relates to the next point), but that money has to be well spent, and they seem to be doing that. The presentations had real flair and humor. Benioff knows how to be controversial to get press. They are a billion-dollar business that still acts like a start-up. Even the music was good.

4. Their Biggest Issue Is Maybe Price

There are many lower-cost competitors to their base CRM application. Now that SaaS is increasingly accepted, due in part to Salesforce's evangelical marketing, smaller competitors spending a tiny fraction of what they spend on marketing can undercut them. Their most visible competitor is Zoho, and it does not look like Zoho is going to shy away from this battle, and they have staying power. So Salesforce is fighting on two fronts. On the one hand they are competing with Oracle and SAP for big enterprise accounts. On the other hand they are fighting low-cost competitors, such as Zoho. This will require all their marketing and management skills.

5. They See Today's Troubled Economy as Their Moment to Win Big

They got their early big traction in the last downturn around 2001 and 2002 and have never looked back. They are greedy while others are fearful. They spend more, grow, and hire, while other firms lay off people. The basic economic advantages of cloud computing, such as lower capital expenditures and a faster time to market, resonate in a downturn to the point that they overcome the resistance of conservative buyers to cloud computing.

6. Their Vendor Eco-System Is Making Money and Acting Bullish

Salesforce knows that this matters. This is the lesson they learned from Microsoft. Will they move into the spaces currently occupied by vendors? Of course they will. Vendors will have to be agile; that is just how the game works. But today, in these tough markets, we see vendors that are profitable, growing, hiring, and raising money. The winners in many segments are being defined now. It is a great time to be an entrepreneur in this space. Salesforce knows how to leverage all its capability to make a few winners do very well and then promote that success big time, thus inspiring others to come on board.

7. They Believe That Good Software Design Matters to the Core Economics of Cloud Computing

They refer constantly to their "multi-tenant kernel," which sounds very techie for a such a marketing-driven company. It does appear that they are not suffering from the scaling and reliability problems that we have seen affecting consumer Web 2.0 ventures such as Twitter and Facebook.

8. They Also Know How to Partner with Big Companies to Make Themselves Look Bigger

They wheeled out large companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, as partners. The message was, "We are at the center of an eco-system with big partners." This makes large conservative enterprise buyers feel comfortable.

9. Focused Research and Development

They have a predictable and focused R&D plan, with a major theme each year. This again makes large conservative buyers feel comfortable: they know what to expect.

10. They Will Need to be Careful About Usability Issues

They are adding so much functionality and so many partners that they face the danger of users getting confused and going to simpler point solutions. That "hairball-of-complexity" problem bedeviled Microsoft as it grew fast, but Microsoft enjoyed a lock-in that Salesforce cannot count on. The SaaS world is naturally lock-in resistant, with low switching costs. There is no sign of this being an immediate problem for the company, but it is something they will have to look out for.

See also our most recent story about Salesforce: Salesforce.com Says Hello World.

Discuss

IT Must Learn to Bend or Business Will Break

Jason Rothbart — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:00:00 -0800

The current economic climate is having a devastating effect on almost every business around. In order to adapt to changing conditions and opportunities, businesses will need to use flexible, adaptable systems to survive. The days of expensive year-long implementations of behind-the-firewall software look to be behind us.

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I recently attended a Forrester Briefing and listened to comments by analyst Peter Burris, a very smart guy. The company has done a host of studies showing that technology will be a growing part of how businesses compete and differentiate themselves in the future.

While systems and software used to be very "behind the scenes" and often transaction-based, that is the case no longer. Consumers and businesses alike buy differently, consume differently, and recommend differently. Trends such as social networking, video on demand, and e-commerce will continue to force businesses to adapt to keep up with their customers. They cannot rely on systems that take years to implement, and most don't have the budgets to make large investments, at least they won't for the next couple of years.

The growing focus on SaaS, cloud computing, application platforms, etc. are all responses to this growing trend in the market. There will be other solutions in the future for mobile, etc. that we haven't even imagined. They all drive businesses to use systems that they can deploy, change, and retire quickly. In my main job, I remember meeting a venture capitalist who talked about how his firm looks for opportunities in which it sees lots of "wiggling." He couldn't describe what that really meant, or how one gets paid for wiggling. I thought he was a lunatic.

In retrospect, he does make a good point. Things happen quickly on the Internet and in this changing global economy. When a business sees wiggling (or opportunities), either positive or negative, they need agile systems to respond. One-size-fits-all software and packaging are going the way of the VCR. I think this will continue to grow in importance and focus as enterprises evaluate new systems and invest in new technology. What do you think?

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Google Lively Is Dead-ly

Rick Turoczy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:58:01 -0800

In an economic environment where a number of companies are stumbling, it's important to remember that sometimes even Google makes bad decisions. Such would be the case with Lively, a browser-based virtual world environment - and purported Second Life killer - that Google launched this summer to great fanfare.

Now, a little over four months after Lively's launch, Google has decided to turn the lights out on the alternate reality, announcing that they are discontinuing Lively at the end of this year.

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Google tried to be polite about pulling the plug:

"Since Lively's launch, we have been delighted to see the creative ways you've used the product. We enjoyed hanging out in Jen's coffee house, and checking out the Brasil Party room. We got a kick out of the YouTube videos in a variety of languages telling stories about your avatars. And we've been awed by the elaborate rooms that you've constructed, using mosaic tiles and photo gadgets in novel ways."

But ultimately, it decided to shut the whole thing down. Why?

There will be all varieties of speculation as to why Lively failed to remain a viable application for Google. Perhaps the traffic Google expected never materialized? Maybe it was going to be too distracting to take on a well-entrenched Linden Labs and its faithful user base? Was the "Windows only" format a problem? Could it be that, in today's economic conditions, Google simply couldn't afford to fund it?

I think we can take Ockham's Razor to this one. Because I think the answer is quite simple: It seemed like a good idea at the time. But, in actuality, Lively didn't offer Google any relevant data. And that, ultimately, is what killed Lively.

The world of Google - everything on which Google focuses its time and effort - is built on relevant data. A portion of that world involves making that data searchable. But the far more lucrative portion of that world involves analyzing how users are accessing that data and finding ways to monetize those behaviors.

Example? Think of the silliest Google app that you can. I'll pick Google Mail Goggles, a Gmail Labs feature that makes you answer math questions before you're allowed to send an email to prevent you from drunk-emailing your friends. But you could take Gmail emoticons, because - honestly - that's pretty silly too. Even those seemingly ridiculous apps provide thousands of data points through their use: Which users deem themselves "at risk" for sending unwarranted emails? How good are inebriated people at math? What's the trend of sad emoticons now that the economy has turned? How many people opt for traditional emoticons versus graphic ones? You could go on and on with the potential data points.

But those examples only make sense because of one thing: users. It's much more difficult to make that leap with Lively - which didn't boast anywhere near the traffic of Gmail - and as such, it just simply didn't fit in to Google's larger plan. And when traffic started to tank, it wasn't worth additional investment, because Google likely wasn't seeing any relevant application for the data as part of its core structure.

Yes, I'm sure other factors came into play, and I'm sure it wasn't easy to pull the plug on a splashy product that launched mere months earlier. But it's an important reminder that Google has a larger goal in mind and you're a big part of it. If you're not playing, nobody's paying.

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Wild Apricot: "Economic Scars"

RWW Sponsor — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:30:00 -0800

Editor's note: we're currently running a series of 'Sponsor Posts', focused on use cases and business stories. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.

Wild Apricot is a young technology company out of Toronto, Canada. We provide Software-as-as-Service for associations, clubs, and non-profit organizations. This is our story of an investment round that fell through due to economic conditions.

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Our clients are primarily based in US and Canada, as well as other English-speaking countries around the world: UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, etc. (software is currently only offered in English). As of now (November 2008) we already have over 12,000 organizations signed up for our membership website software, which we think is not bad for a barely 2-year-old startup.

Originally financed by our founders, the company wanted to grow faster and in December 2007 decided to seek additional financing from outside investors. Things progressed quickly, and by February 2008 we shook hands on a deal with a new investor: a very entrepreneurial investment company out of UK. Closing was planned for April 2008.

Of course, things never go as planned (and this is one of the lessons many startups learn the painful way). First, due diligence protracted much longer than expected. This was partially due to the fact that our Canadian-based company has a subsidiary office in Moscow, Russia, where the bulk of software development work takes place. The investor was keen to ensure that the intellectual property was properly protected, and it required changes to the legal setup of the Russian subsidiary, new employment contracts for all employees, and a bunch of other changes.

Then the MBAs and lawyers got their hands on the deal, and it quickly deteriorated from a relatively simple original term sheet to a thick stack of very complicated contracts.

This was to be the first Canadian deal for the investment company, and the deal stalled for a while as the investor's lawyers struggled to reconcile the terms sheet with their standard templates and the wording of UK contractual law with the Canadian legal system and its way of doing things. (That's another lesson for start-ups: making a deal outside of your home base frequently takes much more time and energy.)

The shareholder agreement, articles of association, board by-laws, and all the other fun documents multiplied in versions like rabbits.

Everybody got exhausted, and the deal almost derailed a few times and was only saved thanks to the open dialog between our company and the majority shareholder of the investment company.

Dmitry Buterin, the Chief Apricot (aka President of Wild Apricot), got the final documents on the morning of October 9th, 2008. He was visiting the Moscow office at the time and went to work having the documents signed and faxed between Moscow and Toronto.

Alas, it was not to be. At 4:00 pm, he got a call from the investor. "We are not going to close the deal after all. Our shareholders are panicking and withdrawing their money. We cannot do any new deals now." The financial crisis finally hit home.

After seven months of due diligence, many thousands of dollars spent on accountants and lawyers, and countless hours invested by the management team, Wild Apricot had to write it all off.

It was even more disappointing because our company was delivering on its promises. Back in January 2008, we provided a detailed financial projection, and at the last check-in with the investor team we were proud to show the September and year-to-date numbers were right on the projections.

As the saying goes, in every crisis there is opportunity. So, the Wild Apricot team went searching hard for those opportunities.

The story is still being written because the crisis is still unfolding, but here is what we have achieved so far:

We asked nicely, and the investor agreed to reimburse part of Wild Apricot's legal expenses, even though there was no legal obligation on the investor's part.
We contacted local media right away to capitalize on all of the hoopla about the crisis and ended up on Canada's CBC television.
The founders put together another round of their own money, and while they had to scale back some growth ambitions, we feel comfortable about riding out the current storm and bridging this and the next investment round. (we knew that any deal had a risk of falling through, so we had backup financing arranged in advance, and it came in very handy.)

Wal-Mart has been reporting record growth as of late and McDonalds is stealing market share from Starbucks. So we think Wild Apricot might do even better in these tough times. Non-profits are hurting and have to trim their budgets (just search Google News).

To tell you more about our software: the basic premise is that for a simple, flat monthly fee of $25 to $200, Wild Apricot replaces up to seven separate pieces of software: the content management system for your website, a members database, a secure private website for members and the board, an event registration system, online payments processing, software to send bulk emails and newsletters, and online community facilities, such as blogs and discussion forums. Technical support and updates are free.

For a small association or club, this set-up saves thousands of dollars in software, countless hours of volunteer time usually wasted on copying and pasting and reconciling the data between a dozen Excel files, and paying through the nose for IT services.

Wild Apricot delivers a custom-built website project that would cost the equivalent of $20,000 or more (not to mention hefty ongoing maintenance and support fees).

October 2008 has been our best month in terms of absolute financial growth (meaning our monthly revenue has increased by the biggest amount ever). Percentage-wise, our revenue grew by 11.3% in a single month! And November so far is shaping up to be an even better month for us.

We we are very confident in our ability to keep growing by staying agile on our feet!

And here is the silver lining:

The US dollar is shooting up against most other currencies. Wild Apricot software is priced in US dollars, while its expenditures are largely in Canadian dollars and Russian rubles. This adds a healthy boost to its bottom line.

What are your war stories? How are you navigating these waters, and what new opportunities are opening up for other technology startups?

If you're curious to know more about this 'gritty startup', please click through to Wild Apricot's website and support a RWW sponsor!

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Yahoo! Glue Finally Comes to the US and It's Awesome

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:31:02 -0800

This May Yahoo! started testing an "all in one" search product called Yahoo Glue in India. It's a really cool service that tonight becomes available to US users of Yahoo.

Yahoo! Glue search results include web search, images, news, blog search, Wikipedia and YouTube videos. That's right - in the India version at least Yahoo! displayed search results from both Google's YouTube and Google Blogsearch. The end result - all these links on one page - is pretty awesome.

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The Indian version prioritized pages relevant to India, which is interesting, but a little unhelpful to those outside of India. Tonight's roll out will include a version that prioritizes US relevance and uses an algorithm to determine which media type is most relevant to a particular search. That type's widget will appear highest on the page. Starting at 6:30 PM PST tonight you should be able to give it a spin and let us know what you think at Glue.Yahoo.com.

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