Written by Rudy De Waele from m-trends.org and edited by Richard MacManus.
We are entering an era of broadband being available anywhere, on any device - and this
will happen all 'over IP' (Internet Protocol). So we are looking at an all-IP world where
choice of applications, devices and platforms is entirely driven by user preference;
which means Mobile Internet technologies will ramp up dramatically over the coming years.
Changes to mass user behavior in mobile are already happening and we saw a lot of
movement in this space in 2006 - e.g. VoIP, P2P music/video downloads, Social Media all
becoming available on the mobile device.
It has been nearly 2 years now since we saw the first VoIP provider going mobile; i.e. the Motorola and Skype alliance. Meanwhile Nokia has been listening to its customers and the word on the street - and is now pushing the frontiers of Internet phone calling with The Gizmo Project, which will enable VoIP calls for the N80i phone (internet edition).
Last week we published a list of web technology predictions for 2007, along with a poll asking which trend you think will be *the* biggest of 2007. Social networks dominated the Web scene in 2006, so what will be the equivalent in 2007?
We've had 1,235 votes so far (but we'll leave the poll open until 31 December). Here, in order of popularity, are the results at this stage:
1. Online Video / Internet TV 27% (337 votes)
2. Continued rise of browser-based apps (Ajax, Google, etc) 22% (275 votes)
3. Mobile Web 15% (185 votes)
4. RSS and structured data 12% (153 votes)
5. Rich Internet Apps (Apollo, WPF, etc) 9% (116 votes)
6. Web Office / Enterprise web apps 6% (77 votes)
7. Semantic Web 6% (75 votes)
8. Other (please comment) 1% (17 votes)
Given the impact YouTube had on 2006, it is not that surprising that Online Video / Internet TV is considered most likely to be the biggest Web trend of 2007. Google of course has prime position in this space now, after snapping up YouTube near the end of 2006. Perhaps of most interest is what the big media, TV and movie companies do next year - so far it's been a series of tentative deals between YouTube and big media, but 2007 may be the year that big media build (or buy) their own online video solutions. Watch this space...
It's a light posting week here on R/WW - but for those of you not out enjoying the xmas/new year break, here is a list of Read/WriteWeb's most popular posts in 2006. This is according to our server logs.
But honestly, you really should be reading a good book instead of blogs at this time of year ;-) I know I am!
10. Netscape Community Backlash; 1 July
When Netscape.com got re-branded into a Digg-style community news site, there was a lot of backlash within the Netscape community about it. This post tracked the upheaval - it was the most commented post on R/WW this year, with over 200 mostly negative comments before we closed it off.
9. 2007 Web Predictions; 19 December
The R/WW team pondered what web technology trends will be important over 2007.
8. List of Web 2.0 Lists; 5 May
A list of all the main web 2.0 lists - and other helpful web product data.
7. Yahoo! Mail Beta Release - Exclusive Podcast With Ethan Diamond; 13 September
In September Yahoo released the new Ajax-powered version of Yahoo Mail to all users in the US and across 18 international markets. We spoke exclusively to Ethan Diamond, director of product management for the new Yahoo! Mail.
6. New-look Google Reader Is Stunning!; 28 September
Late September Google Reader, Google's web-based RSS Aggregator, had a re-design which impressed R/WW's editor. With a look n' feel very much like Gmail, we believe it is a pointer to Google Reader being prepped for mainstream promotion - and/or merged with Gmail. Probably a bit of both, as a standalone RSS Reader is always going to be needed.
5. Exclusive: New Yahoo! homepage; 15 May
In May the world's most visited webpage, Yahoo.com, had a major re-design and Read/WriteWeb had the inside story. As well as the first in-depth look at the new yahoo.com, we had an exclusive podcast interview with Yahoo! Chief Product Officer Ash Patel and Vice President of Front Doors Tapan Bhat.
4. Firefox 2.0 Review; 17 October
Alex Iskold described Firefox 2.0 as "a solid release", noting that "the team's focus on performance, stability, usablity and security clearly results in a better, faster product - and users will be pleased with that."
3. Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search; 20 July
Ebrahim Ezzy's influential post defined search 2.0 as search technologies "designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive."
2. Top 10 Firefox Web 2.0 Add-ons; 29 August
Alex Iskold and I reviewed the best Firefox add-ons for Firefox 2.0. Firefox was consistently the most used browser for R/WW readers this year, ending the year at around 60% browser share for this site.
1. GoogleOS: What To Expect; 21 November
Emre Sokullu's number 1 smash hit not only became the biggest post of the year on Read/WriteWeb, but had us accused of smoking crack and all manner of other insults :-) But with over 100 comments, this post definitely stirred up a great discussion and deserved to be number 1 for 2006. Note: one of the comments was from my non-techie father, who normally does not comment on R/WW - but on this occasion he felt compelled to interrupt the Google navel-gazing with a Beatles joke.
So another great year on Read/WriteWeb - and you can see from this list of top posts how big a contribution the extended R/WW writing team made. Thanks Alex, Emre, Ebrahim, John, Rudy, and all the other super-smart guest writers R/WW has had over 2006. Here's looking to an even better 2007!
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
2006 was a year of many
interesting Web happenings and 2007 is looking like another bumper
year. In all the excitement, we wondered what can we give R/WW readers for Christmas?
Well since most of you are busy spending time with your families, unwrapping real
presents and likely having a lot of turkey, we need to think of something... well, bite
sized. So we thought - widgets! After all, widgets were one of the big things in 2006 and
they are likely to (pardon the pun) get much bigger in 2007. But instead of an analysis
of the widget marketplace (there's xmas pudding to get to, after all), we want to present
something simple. So we give you now the top five widgets for your blog, as recommended
by the widget experts over at Widgetbox - but with
our own commentary and guide on top.
Top 5 widgets every blogger must have
Tracy Pizzo, the Director of Business Development at Widget box, emailed us a handpicked list of the top 5 must-have widgets for every blogger. This list was compiled based on popularity on Widget box, as well as ease of use and user appeal. The top 5 are:
This is the third annual Best Web Companies round-up from Read/WriteWeb (ref: 2005 and 2004). This year we're spreading it out over 2 separate posts and this is the second one - see yesterday's post for Best BigCo of 2006.
It was a very hard decision this year, for a few reasons. Firstly a number of the frontrunners for Best LittleCo ended up being acquired by the end of the year! This is probably the nature of the beast - if you're a successful Web LittleCo, then you'll attract the attention of BigCo suiters. This is exactly what happened to our 2004 picks, Ludicorp (creator of Flickr) and del.icio.us - both of which were snapped up by Yahoo in 2005. Having said that, 2005 LittleCo winner 37Signals is still independent and doing its own thing.
So to 2006 - which LittleCo's have most impressed? In our post asking that very question, the following web apps were popular with commenters: MyBlogLog (the social networking widget featured in the sidebar of R/WW and other blogs), Meebo (web-based IM), DigitalJournal.com (social news), 30Boxes (online calendar), Zoho (web office suite), Clipmarks (social bookmarking), Netvibes (start page). Those were the ones that were mentioned more than once.
Yahoo has come up with a way to mix social networking with charities and
non-profits. Called Yahoo!
For Good, it has partnered with 'charity aggregator' Network
for Good and launched a personalized Charity Badge - for people to put on
their websites, social networks or email. To promote the initiative, Yahoo! will
match the amount raised by the user who generates the largest number of
individual donations from their personal social network (up to $50,000).
The Charity Badge works by allowing website owners or social network users to create and publish a personalized badge (essentially a widget). You can even put it on your email signature. With the badge you can set up a link to your favorite charity, so that family, friends and others in your social network can donate as well. Or you can simply copy the code for an existing badge, that someone else set up for a charity. Check out the top 10 badges to get an idea of how this works.
By Alex Iskold
We've been writing recently
about the rise of semantic web and how in 2007 we'll see many interesting semantic
technologies. The fundamental problem that all these technologies need to solve is
explaining the meaning of things to computers. There are several approaches to this, all
of which in principle can work.
There are companies and technologies that are doing it bottom up - by embedding semantical annotations (meta-data) right into the data. The opposite camp is exploring the top-down approach, which relies on analyzing existing information. The ultimate top-down solution would be a fully blown natural language processor, which is able to understand text like people do.
In this post, we are going to look at ClearForest - one of the companies in the top-down camp. At first glance, you might not think much of the company's web site, but a deeper dive reveals that ClearForest is restructuring - to apply its core natural language processing technology to facilitate next generation semantic applications. The fact that ClearForest has released both a Web Service and a Firefox extension that leverages an API to deliver the end-user application, says that the company gets what the next generation web is all about.
This is the third annual Best Web Companies round-up from Read/WriteWeb (see 2005 and 2004). This year we're spreading it out over 2 separate posts. In this post, we announce Best Bigco and the runners-up - with our special brand of analysis too. In our next post, we'll announce Best Web LittleCo of 2006 and the Most Promising Web Company/Innovator.
We lead off with a somewhat predictable choice for Best Bigco of 2006. In the poll we ran to ask which Internet bigco most impressed you, 53% of respondents voted for Google. Despite this, for a while we were tempted to pick Amazon (which was second in our poll with 14% of the vote), due to its outstanding innovation. But when it came down to it, Google's influence and impact throughout 2006 has been second to none - so Google once again gets the Read/WriteWeb Bigco of the Year honor (it was also the first recipient, in 2004).
By Guest Writer Gang Lu
FeedSky is the largest Chinese feed management
provider and has just launched its Beta 3. CEO Xinxin Lv described it to me as "mainly
a UI update with some performance enhancement".
The web2.0 market is still quite young in China, but its concepts are rapidly spreading throughout the country. The China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) reported that by August 2006, the number of bloggers had reached approx. 17.485 million and 33.747 million blog spaces had been registered. FeedSky's main competitor, worldwide RSS service provider Feedburner, reported in its Fast Facts and Stats that it has a total of 506,278 feeds registered. But the Beijing-based FeedSky, launched in July 2005, has just announced a company milestone - 1.5 million feeds have been registered and it has partnerships with over 30 BSPs (Blog Service Provider) and 40 media companies from mainland China, Hongkong and Taiwan. Feedsky has become the dominant service provider in the Chinese market and is probably going to be the largest feed management provider in the world.
Written by Emre Sokullu and edited by Richard MacManus
Did the above image shock you?
No, this is not a real Google advert! But something similar may well turn into reality.
In this sequel to our original GoogleOS blockbuster, we try to clarify our thoughts on what GoogleOS will look like. You'll have to read to the end for the exciting conclusion, but we can hint that Linux creator Linus Torvalds has a starring role to play. Please note
that these are not insider rumors, but just some educated guesses ;-)
In our first article we examined 3 GoogleOS scenarios:
Also there were some outstanding suggestions and ideas in the comments section to that first post. One of them (comment #49) noted that Google could utilize virtualization technology to host multiple operating systems smoothly - this technology has been developed by Microsoft, VMWare, Xen and others.
However our conclusion is that the most feasible one is the 3rd scenario - a mini Linux distro, that users can very easily install and essentially makes Google/Firefox the default Internet services. Now let's get into some detail about that option...
