After only 3-4 months of
general release, distributed social network MyBlogLog has been bought by
Yahoo for an estimated $10-12M. This adds to Yahoo's collection of trendy Web 2.0
apps - they can pop the MyBlogLog folks in with Flickr and del.icio.us. When MyBlogLog
initially came out in October 2006, I described it as "a kind of instant social
networking system for bloggers". What surprised me was how fast this thing took off. But
then after using it on my own blog for the last 2.5 months, I can see the attraction for
both users and Yahoo.
For bloggers, MyBlogLog lets you literally see your readers - and it's amazing how much of a difference putting a face (or icon or avatar) to a reader is. It actually makes it a real community, because you begin to recognize and know people. There's also a homepage (actually two of them - a members and a community page) at your MyBlogLog account. Personally I haven't used the statistics data that MyBlogLog collects, but that too can be beneficial for bloggers.
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
Last week it was reported that Browster, one of the first companies to deliver previews of web pages, is done. Browster drew a lot of attention in 2005 and was backed by a 6M first round from Advanced Technology Ventures, Vanguard Ventures, First Round Capital, and individual investors.
Browster delivered previews of web pages (before clicking on a link) via a browser plug-in. Cooliris and Snap are companies doing similar things. But the question of whether previews are actually a good - and viable - idea is still up in the air. Therefore in this post we look at various kinds of Web previews and decide if the concept is here to stay, or will it go down with the Browster ship.
The basic idea behind previews is simple: they save you a click. Instead of clicking on a link to see the content, you can get a preview of the page using a gesture - typically a mouseover. Assuming you can decide if the page is interesting or not based on the preview, you can save a click and more importantly the page load.
The big assumption is that
the preview is useful, which is not always the case. For instance a thumbnail preview may
be useful if you already know the look and feel of the site, but otherwise you can't
really tell what you are looking at. This is because scaling the snapshot of a page down
to a thumbnail results in a substantial loss of information. As we will see below,
Cooliris and Snap are using different techniques to avoid this problem.
Yahoo issued a slew of
press releases today, at CES, all about their mobile Internet services. The main news is
the launch of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 (now available
for java-based handsets) and Yahoo!
oneSearch. This comes on the back of recent initiatives by Google, which appears to
be leading the Mobile Internet and search space right now - over half of US users go to
Google for mobile search, according to M:Metrics, with
Yahoo in second place. So, not to be outdone, Yahoo has ramped up its Go brand for mobile
and introduced the new oneSearch product - which essentially creates an on-the-fly portal
page for each search query.
Yahoo also made several joint announcements with key operator and device manufacturer partners, related to the two product launches: with Nokia, Opera, Blackberry (RIM), Samsung and 3 Group. In addition, Yahoo says it is working with Sony on a release for "BRAVIA Internet Video Link", one of Sony's new digital home initiatives.
Web Security
firm Finjan has just released their Q4 2006 report on web threats, which
includes describing two cases of web 2.0 hacker attacks, on Wikipedia and MySpace. What's
more, the report says that hacking the Web is very much a commercial activity nowadays -
which is keeping Web security companies like Finjan on their toes heading into 2007. The
report also makes some predictions around web security for 2007.
You may remember that R/WW covered the Q3 Finjan report, which outlined threats to Web 2.0 and Ajax websites. The Q4 report extends that theme and notes that the dynamic nature of the Web complicates security going into 2007. It states:
"2006 saw the arrival of a diverse range of web-based infection techniques -- including rogue anti-spyware, ransomware, and rootkits -- that elude traditional security solutions geared to protect against email viruses and spam. Another development in 2006 was the commercialization of malicious code, as financial motivations played an increasing role in the evolution of malware. Motivated by financial gain, hackers are trading vulnerabilities in online auctions, commercializing products such as malicious website creation toolkits, and developing new distribution techniques, including spam, for the propagation of malicious code."
Finjan predicts that in 2007, Web 2.0 platforms and technologies will increasingly be used by hackers as a "legitimate" tool for distributing malicious code. Also they predict that, as Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.0 begin to achieve critical mass, this "will likely trigger a new wave of exploits from professional hackers who have had time to prepare in advance for this scenario."
Bill Gates' keynote at CES was webcast live by Microsoft. This keynote was entitled 'Connected Experiences' and a relaxed-looking Bill Gates kicked things off by cracking a joke about how, at future CES appearances, he might talk about infectious diseases (referring to his increasing involvement in philanthropy work).
He starts off by discussing
"the digital decade", noting in particular digital photography and the Internet. He says
65% of homes have digital cameras, there's more broadband penetration now, and 40% of
homes have multiple computers. As far as Microsoft devices go, he says there will be more
high definition and use of advanced graphics in games and virtual reality - "presentation
richness" he calls it. He also talks about the terabytes and petabytes of storage being
made available now.
Although he says "we have amazing hardware" (referring to hardware in general, not necessarily Microsoft's), he thinks there are some key things missing - especially "connections". He gives the usual Microsoft refrain about multiple devices connecting people together, via the Internet. Interestingly he also notes that it's not just a consumer experience - but spans into the business environment too.
It's going to be a big week of tech news, as Apple's Macworld conference and expo in San Francisco
goes head-to-head with the 40th annual CES (Consumer
Electronics Association) show in Las Vegas. Both conferences kick off Monday 8 January
and there will be no shortage of blogs and other websites covering the news. What
Read/WriteWeb will do is filter the best of it for you, focusing on the most promising
web technology announcements and product demos.
So what will we see from the shows this year?
Written by Alex Iskold
Earlier this week we wrote about The Race to beat Google. In that article we discussed various approaches that startups are taking trying to unseat the web giant. In this post we are going to zoom in on one of the companies - Clusty and their search clustering technology. Before looking at the specifics of Clusty, we will discuss the issues with search at large and will give an overview of clustering.
What is perfect search?
It is interesting to ask: What do we expect when we enter a term into a search box? Ideally, we'd like to get the perfect answer right away. Often, we have an idea what that perfect answer should be, and when computer does not get it for us we are disappointed. But are we being reasonable? Can we expect the "perfect" answer all the time?
Consider for example, our interactions with an Information clerk at the mall. When we ask for a location of a store, she may or may not give us the "perfect" answer. She might not know where this store is, she might not understand us or we may not understand what she said. So for many reasons we may not get the "perfect" answer right away.
In the current Read/WriteWeb poll (see below), we're asking what 'search 2.0' concepts you think stand the best chance of beating Google. The results so far are interesting, because Artificial Intelligence is currently top pick - despite having a history of underachievement in the tech industry and there being no real AI search contenders yet. Hakia, which we profiled recently, is one such AI (or natural language processing) search engine. But Hakia is at this stage a fair way off being a finished product.
Poll results so far:
1. Artificial Intelligence (e.g. Hakia, Powerset) 23% (123 votes)
2. People Powered Search (e.g. del.icio.us, ChaCha) 21% (115 votes)
3. Vertical Search (e.g. SimplyHired, Technorati) 15% (81 votes)
4. Personalized Search (e.g. Collarity) 12% (63 votes)
5. Clustering (e.g. Clusty, SearchMash) 11% (58 votes)
6. Social Search (e.g. Eurekster, Rollyo) 7% (37 votes)
7. Visualization (e.g. Quintura and Kartoo) 6% (33 votes)
8. Previews (Snap, Live Image Search) 5% (25 votes)
Metalink is a
new technology that makes it easier and faster to get large files. It's kind of
like a playlist for such files (they can be FTP, HTTP, or P2P), because it stores
multiple file locations in a single file - and then the download proceeds according to a
set of rules.
The Wikipedia page for metalink describes it like this:
"Metalink is an open standard/framework for programs that download (download managers, BitTorrent clients, Web browsers, FTP clients, & P2P programs). For increased convenience, it stores the many locations of files (FTP/HTTP/P2P) in a single file (a .metalink) for extra reliability in case one method fails and so chunks/segments of each file can be downloaded from multiple resources at the same time (known as accelerated/multi-threaded/segmented downloading)."
For developers, metalink files are made up of XML and they are extensible. They also work across multiple operating systems. For ordinary users, metalinks apparently make downloads "simpler, faster, and more reliable".
Interesting development from Microsoft - and one that makes perfect sense given their
media device strengths (a.k.a. stranglehold over the OS). Microsoft has released a
Windows Live for TV beta. The project is code-named "Orbit" and it is built on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Windows Live for TV will connect people via a Vista PC (with IE browser) or
Windows Vista Media Center, which is shaping up to be Microsoft's linchpin Internet
connection device for the living room. According to the official
blog:
"Windows Live for TV is an early beta 3D browser application that makes it easy to connect to your social network as well as friends and family from within Vista Media Center or IE7.0. You're be able to view the best of Windows Live Spaces and communicate with Friends and Family over Windows Live Messenger 8.1 with voice & text chat as well as make a phone call."
