Google has created a site called Google Gadget Ventures. Marissa Mayer will announce it this evening at the Searchonomics Conference in Santa Clara.
It's a pilot program, with the aim of "bootstrapping an economic ecosystem around gadgets" - according to a press email we received. The program has two separate monetary offers. The first is an opportunity for already successful Google Gadget developers to get a grant of $5000, to develop their gadgets further. Developers are eligible to apply for this grant if they’ve developed a gadget that’s in the Google gadgets directory "and gets at least 250,000 weekly page views." Applicants must submit a one-page proposal detailing how they will use the grant to improve their gadget.
With the excitement building about Apple's iPhone, and lots of third party apps being developed for it, now is a good time to find out how many R/WW readers will be buying one - and if so, when? Please participate in our poll below:
As media and blog coverage of the iPhone release on Friday June 29 reaches boiling
point, web app providers are frantically pumping out versions of their apps for the
iPhone.
CRM provider Etelos - which has already embraced other popular Web platforms like Google Apps, Netvibes, Pageflakes and Windows Live - announced on its blog today an Etelos CRM suite of modularized CRM tools, for use on the iPhone. It already works on the Blackberry, but Etelos' Eric Berto says that "the browser for the iPhone is much better than the BlackBerry".
Yahoo! is changing. Terry Semel's resignation and co-founder Jerry Yang's return to the CEO position is one of the most visible changes. Yahoo! has always been harshly criticized for not being a technology company and lagging behind Google. They have even been criticized for not having the foresight to buy Google early on when the opportunity arose and missing a big opportunity. But in my opinion, Yahoo!'s mistakes should be viewed with more understanding. After all, Yahoo! was one of the first companies to experiment with the Internet industry at that level. Their field was all new and full of uncertainties. In time, with more data, things have become more quantifiable and able to be analyzed. Google was lucky to be able to follow Yahoo!, although they also had what turned out to be a better approach. But the important point is actually to learn from past experiences - and Yahoo! seems to have learned and is starting to apply those lessons for the future of the company.
Let's take a look at what has changed at Yahoo! over the last few years...
On Monday the blog Inside Facebook broke the story that the Facebook-only application Favorite Peeps had been acquired by slideshow creator Slide (and Slide confirmed to me yesterday that they had reached an agreement with the creator of Favorite Peeps). The rumored acquisition price was $60,000. This is the second Facebook app buy-out reported by Inside Facebook in the past week. Last Friday, they reported that the Extended Info application had been acquired by travel startup SideStep, who make a top 50 Facebook app called "Trips."
These acquisitions are fairly significant because they affirm how seriously companies are taking the fledging Facebook platform. Just about a month old, the Platform is already attracting about 1,000 new developers per day who have created hundreds of applications that reach millions of people. The top 25 applications alone collectively reach over 55 million users (though, obviously with a good deal of overlap). Because these apps have yet to make any money, and whether that will be possible remains an unanswered question, these acquisitions are about the users or the developers.
Just a quick update on my post last week, stating that Read/WriteWeb is looking for writers to do startup and web product reviews. The response has been overwhelming - over 100 people so far have emailed to say they're interested. So it's taking me longer to sift through the emails than I first thought (and also I have been traveling this week). So a note to all the people who 'applied': thanks very much for your interest and I am in the process of looking at each and every email right now. More soon on this....
It's great that so many people want to write here, and I've noticed an upturn in comments lately too. So the R/WW community is growing! We also got a nice mention in the PC World 100 Blogs We Love round-up :-)
WebOS vendor Morfik has created a platform for developers to build applications for Apple's iPhone, which is being released Friday night. Morfik claims this is the first development tool for the iPhone.
Up till this point, no one had announced a development tool for the iPhone - although there have been suggestions by bloggers that Adobe AIR and Google GWT might become iPhone development platforms. However, it seems Morfik is the first to do it.
Tonight Microsoft is launching two more products
into its suite of Windows Live branded consumer web
apps - Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta and Windows Live Folders Beta. According to
Microsoft, tonight also marks the beginning of the next stage of the Windows Live
rollout. This "next generation" of Windows Live has the goal of being a more cohesive
suite of products than in the first phase.
I spoke to Brian Hall, General Manager for Windows Live, this week to find out more about Microsoft's plans for Windows Live and how it is evolving.
There has been quite a lot of buzz lately around a vertical search engine
for people, called Spock. While still in private
beta, the engine has already impressed users with its rich feature set and social
aspects. Yet, there is something that has gone almost unnoticed - Spock is one of the best
vertical semantic search engines built so far. There are four things that makes their
approach special:
By Heri Rakotomalala of Montreal Tech Watch
Canadians use the Internet more than anyone in the
world. According to
comScore, Canadians spend on average 39.6 hours per month on the Internet, followed
by Israel at 37.4 and South Korea at 34, while the USA is in 8th position with 29.4.
Canada also leads in online reach with 70% of households having Internet access. The
average pages viewed per visitor is 3800 in Canada, while the U.K. is second at 3300. And
at 67%, Canada has one of the highest broadband penetrations in the world, 21 points
higher than the US. Finally, while Canada still lags in online advertising, with $28.05
per Internet user and the US with $71.43, ad spending is expected to grow
32% this year (Ernst&Young LLP). So Canada is a sophisticated, and growing,
market for Web apps.
