Disclosure: Pageflakes is a sponsor of Read/WriteWeb.
It's the season of v2.0 launches! The
personalized start page Pageflakes has undergone
a major upgrade to its interface, which has just gone live today. Back in May I posted about
Pageflakes' page publishing feature, which enables users to share their pages
with other people - as read-only or editable. This type of community functionality has been extended in
the new version of Pageflakes. On the homepage it states:
"You can have multiple pages. For each of them you can choose to keep it private, share it with friends or publish it on the Web."
The idea is to enable users to form groups and share widgets that way. This may drive user growth, as people get 'invited' into the system by their friends and family. That looks to be the plan anyway - and it'll be interesting to watch how it works out. There is still a sense that personalized start pages are too geeky for the average user, which Pageflakes (and its competition) will need to overcome.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. Disclaimer: Alex's company AdaptiveBlue has a product called The blueorganizer, which is a Firefox extension.
In this post, we take a look at what the Firefox team is going to deliver in their
upcoming major release: Firefox 2.0. We ask the question: will it be enough to make
significant ground on IE?
In just a few years, Firefox has taken the previously dormant browsing market by storm and woken the slumbering giant Microsoft. The Mozilla browser now owns 12-14% of the browser market (the number varies depending on the source - see Wikipedia for more). The Firefox brand is also making an impact, thanks in part to the Spread Firefox campaign. For example, last year Firefox was voted the #7 global brand by brandchannel.com. But the question is still up in the air: will Firefox ever get close to Internet Explorer's market share?
Firefox share, Feb 04-July06; Source e-janco
In our
recent Social
Bookmarking Faceoff, we discovered that social bookmarking site StumbleUpon actually has more
users than the more hyped del.icio.us. Currently
StumbleUpon has 1,375,696 users, according to its About page. Recently del.icio.us announced it had reached 1
million users. I grew even more curious about StumbleUpon's success after reading the
comments on a
recent post of ours, where a few StumbleUpon users left almost mystical comments
about the product: "I became a Stumbler in order to learn more about the world [and] it
has been invaluable", noted
one commenter.
To
discover more about the mysterious StumbleUpon, I interviewed co-founder and Chief
Architect Garrett Camp. In this post, Garrett describes StumbleUpon as a "personalized
content discovery" service and outlines how it has grown to the million plus users it has
today. Interestingly, he says that nearly half their user base is outside the US and more
than a third are over the age of 35!
In other highlights, Garrett muses on the serendipity of SU and the "social interaction that emerges from using StumbleUpon". We also hear about StumbleUpon's future plan to become "your guide to the web, a community-based discovery tool". Finally Garrett notes a new feature called "Stumble it!" - which lets people submit and review sites without installing the SU toolbar.
Back in February I wrote a post entitled Rating the Meme Trackers. At the time I rated Memeorandum (now known as Techmeme) as the best, but I thought Topix and Tailrank were right up there too. Tailrank has just launched a new version, labeled - you guessed it - Tailrank 2.0. It has a new UI, but the main change is an overhaul of its ranking algorithms. Developer Kevin Burton wrote:
"Tailrank now breaks stories faster, cluster them better, and generally does a better job at finding the hottest news in the blogosphere."
In terms of how it performs compared to market leader Techmeme, an easy way to compare these news tracking services is to do a spot check and see which one covers the most interesting stories. Right now (9pm PST on a Monday) Tailrank's tech homepage is this:
Today
Six Apart will release a new version of its Movable
Type Enterprise
edition. I spoke to Anil Dash (a SixApart VP) and Chris Alden (EVP and GM of Movable
Type - formally CEO of Rojo) about the upgrade and to discuss the future of Movable
Type.
Some of the more 'experienced' bloggers will remember the time when Movable Type was released 5 years ago. At that time it was the bee's knees and all the geeks loved it. Then Six Apart started to get commercial, which annoyed some prominent bloggers. Then the open source Wordpress came along and (let's be frank) stole a good chunk of the developer community away from MT. Well, that's the short version of the story. It probably helps explain though why Movable Type is now being marketed more as a business blogging tool, even though a lot of individual bloggers (like me) use MT also.
Movable Type is currently being positioned as "the most advanced business blogging platform". Chris told me that the majority (75-80%) of Fortune 500 companies that blog use MT, as well as a lot of small businesses and power bloggers. He told me that over the past couple of years a lot of businesses have begun to develop strategies around blogging - i.e. moving up a level from project to strategy. So he said Movable Type Enterprise 1.5 is a response to increased demand by businesses for scalable blogging systems, ability to integrate with existing systems, and easier admin.
MT Enterprise: Groups
The Product (RED)
campaign is sweeping the world, thanks to some heavyweight backing from celebrities
(Oprah, Bono) and brand names (Apple, American Express, Armani). It's a great cause,
because for each (RED) branded product or service sold, a part of the profit goes to the
fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Africa.
Some prominent Web brands are getting behind it too - MySpace and AOL are the two media sponsors currently listed as "donating space on their various platforms".
Also the (RED) website itself is a great example of how the Web can contribute. For example the YOU page asks people to submit videos detailing what (RED) means to them:
"In the coming months, we will be launching a "video wall" that includes streaming video of people talking about what (RED)™ is. Some of the people featured will be world leaders, others will be people involved in creating some of the products, and others will be passionate people like you!"
There is also a (RED) blog, hosted on blogger.com. It's an interesting blog outlining the seemingly normal lives of RED's core team. Well, I say *seemingly*, because how many normal bloggers are able to write something like this...
"I heard news that the Oprah taping the day before was amazing, received a phone call from Bobby about the important encounter with President Bush at the airport (see previous post (RED) Force One), readied our servers for the influx of launch-day web traffic, sent newsletters announcing the U.S. launch of (RED) to everyone on our mailing list, and exceeded my tolerance for caffeine many times over – things were in order."
...you know, hum-drum blog stuff like being on the Oprah show and meeting the President.
So an excellent cause and very nicely done too with the website and blog.
To further Read/WriteWeb's
continuing look at the Web Office space, I spoke again recently with Joe Kraus - CEO of
JotSpot. What started out as a wiki company, is slowly
but surely morphing into a Web Office suite contender. Although JotSpot does not actually
position itself in that way - they're positioned as a kind of wiki/office hybrid, which
we discuss in detail in this post. Also JotSpot has just released 3 new features, which
are outlined below.
Back in July, JotSpot released its 2.0 version. It was described by Joe Kraus at that point as "wikis meets Microsoft Office". The upgrade enabled JotSpot users to collaborate on different types of "office-like" products. Its spreadsheet product, Tracker, was integrated into their core wiki product - along with calendars, File Cabinets, Photo Pages.
In the latest release of JotSpot, more apps have been added to their application gallery: group directory, forum and To Do Lists. Nothing revolutionary there, but it beefs up their Office Suite credentials a bit more. This screenshot from their Applications Gallery page shows the latest list of office (aka productivity) apps:
These are all "Page Types", which basically means different types of productivity applications presented as Wiki pages. The theory behind this, Joe told me, is that all the Page Types "have this wiki-esque properties - they're group editable, they're immediately collaborative, they have the same access control model on top of them."
Joe said to me that although JotSpot still positions itself as a wiki nowadays - they don't necessarily see themselves in that space in 5-10 years. But he said the metaphor of wikis still has appeal to people, as a representation of the Web's shift from a monolog to a dialog - aka the read/write web! JotSpot then is about "bringing the familiarity that people have with office [software] and bringing the Wiki metaphor to that." In essence, bringing the 'dialog' and collaboration features of wikis into the office environment.
IBM has
been pretty slow to cotton onto the social Web, but this year they've started to embrace
web 2.0 and ramp up its marketing (some would say hype) around it. While IBM has
undeniably always been at the center of technology and innovation, it's taken them a
couple of years to marry their 'traditional' idea of web innovation to the more sexier
consumer trend of 'web 2.0' - probably because they are such a huge company with layers
of hierarchy.
IBM has just announced the 10th anniversary of alphaWorks - their showcase website for emerging technology. At the same time they've launched alphaWorks Services, an online initiative which will let the outside world view work done by IBM's R&D labs - by highlighting the company's most cutting-edge work and providing it for free download. alphaWorks Services will also let external people provide regular feedback to IBM's R&D labs, in hopes of creating a more collaborative community environment.
There's a video released on YouTube that explains more. In it IBM VP of Technical Strategy and Innovation Irving Wladawsky-Berger says that alphaWorks will keep IBM young, moving fast and in tune with the marketplace. He said it will let IBM "keep innovating where it counts".
I kept thinking though... isn't this supposed to be a showcase of emerging technology? So where's the show?
Examples of alphaWorks success stories in the past 10 years are Autonomic computing, the Eclipse platform and Servlet Express. Others currently in the works include ADIEU, WebRB and Deep Thunder. None of these are 'sexy' consumer web 2.0 apps, which is one reason I'm a bit skeptical of how the alphaWorks Services initiative will play out.
The metaphor used in the press release of alphaWorks being "a window for users to get a sneak peek into our R&D labs" is a fitting one... it conjures up the image of white-coated scientists doing important stuff in the IBM labs. Universities and a lot of developers will certainly find this interesting - but it's not going to capture the imagination of consumers, like Google labs does... or even Microsoft's Windows Live.
Perhaps I'm being unfair. It may not be in IBM's interests to capture the public's imagination like Google or Microsoft, because after all IBM is an enterprise software company and not a consumer one. Nevertheless with the trend of 'the consumerization of the enterprise' happening at lightening pace, plus all the Web Office (aka office 2.0) developments, I think there are opportunities for IBM to reach out more to early adopters in the consumer market.
For a start alphaWorks Services is designed to showcase interactive online services, so how about making it a bit more interesting for the Web users in enterprises - rather than just the developers? Just a suggestion, and maybe a wrongheaded one. But personally I'd like to see IBM sex it up some more!
Slightly adjusted (just the first word) opening lyrics from Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back:
"IBM bringing sexy back;
them other boys don’t know how to act.
I think it’s special, what’s behind your back?
so turn around and I’ll pick up the slack."
Web
security firm Finjan has just released
a report outlining "sophisticated new threats that target Web 2.0
platforms and technologies." According to the report, this web security
threat "centers on the use of Web 2.0 and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and
XML) technologies for malicious activities."
Finjan acknowledges that Web 2.0 and AJAX technologies enable a rich user experience for Internet users, but they warn: "the technology also flings open the door to new malware propagation methods." How so? Because hackers are targeting high-traffic web sites and either embedding malicious code in hosted Web content, or using AJAX to query what Finjan calls "the hidden web".
Also the report shows that content of websites distributing malicious code is being duplicated on storage and caching servers used by ISPs, Enterprises and leading search engines. This means that malicious code is available and can be referenced by third party web pages to exploit an end user's machine - even if the original malicious website has been taken down.
I've asked Finjan to send me the full report, but I thought in the meantime it's worth throwing the question open: have you ever experienced a web security breach on a web 2.0 or ajax service? Particularly on a "high traffic site" - which I take to mean a MySpace or a YouTube. What hacking stories do you know of in the web 2.0 space?
Written by Sebastian Moser from Austria and edited by Richard MacManus
With 4.6 million internet users (a
penetration rate of 56.8%) and a broadband penetration rate of 61.8%, Austria is a little
bit above the average for the European Union in internet usage. Besides the Internet, 8
million people use a mobile phone - which means that just 200,000 people do not
use a mobile phone. However even though there are a great number of people using the
internet (or who own an internet-enabled mobile phone), there is no real Web 2.0 industry
in Austria. Nevertheless, this will change in the years to come - primarily because of
the immense potential of the mobile phone market in Austria.
Jajah provides a web-based telephony-service.
You don't have to download any software to use it, it is browser based and you use your
normal telephone or cell phone for the calls. Recently, they started to offer a mobile
version of their software, making telephoning via cell phones much cheaper. Few people
know that Jajah's founders are from Austria. After a Sequoia investment, their offices
moved to Luxemburg, the United States and Israel.
