Let‚Äôs start from the premise that Search is ‚Äúgame-over‚Ä?. Google has won. The best explanation of Google‚Äôs dominance is in this Read/WriteWeb post. But if there is a Google-killer out there, the odds are that it won‚Äôt be from any of these types of search start-ups:
It is possible that Freebase will be a major breakthrough; but as it is not even in Beta yet, it is hard to judge. It is also stretching the definition of Search too far. And maybe that is the point ‚Äì the Google-killer won‚Äôt be ‚ÄúBetter Search‚Äô, it will be ‚ÄúPost Search‚Ä?.
Web Office suite vendor ThinkFree has offered 50 invites to get into the ThinkFree Premium closed beta. The first 50 respondees who send an email to the inbox readwriteweb@thinkfree.com will get a fully-licensed version of ThinkFree Premium to evaluate. I'm not sure at this point how long the evaluation period is, so I've sent an email to ThinkFree to clarify that (* see update below). But in any case Web Office fans should check this out. ThinkFree Premium's main benefit is its offline support, so you can use it on the desktop similar to Microsoft Office. It also features file synchronization, backups, tech support and more.
Continuing their aggressive push into the online advertising market, Microsoft today announced that it had acquired the online ad exchange AdECN. The deal was first announced by Kevin Johnson, the president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, at Microsoft's Financial Analysts Day. "With this AdECN acquisition, it complements the work we've done with adCenter," said Johnson (via Todd Bishop's blog). "It extends the work that aQuantive brings. And it now enables us to move forward with all of the core components that we need to enable this ad platform."
AdECN, which is based in Santa Barbara, California, is a "real-time, auction-based, neutral exchange for buying and selling online display advertising." The company operates tools for ad buyers and sellers that are very similar to the Right Media Exchange, which Yahoo! purchased in April. AdECN is an open market that allows advertisers to bid in real-time on ad space on publisher websites.
The team behind SeeqPod, a music search and recommendation engine, believes strongly in what they call "playable search." SeeqPod trawls the web, indexing all the music files it finds, and then offers them for playback direct from that location. The company knows that because they are not hosting any music files, but are merely offering links to them, they can neatly sidestep copyright and legal concerns.
The homepage is reminiscent of Google's original unadorned page with just a simple search form. The vital difference,is that SeeqPod also displays a sample of current music being indexed by its engine. These songs are meant to draw you in, and succeed at it. There's something mesmerising about watching track after track scroll by.
Earlier this week I wrote about my favorite iPhone features.
Most of you agreed that the iPhone is a unique, breakthrough device that is years ahead of other smart phones.
A few of you said that there is nothing special about it, but one reader said that we should
cover both the good and bad things about it. This reader gets his wish in this post, in which we take a look
at things that are missing or need improvement in the iPhone.
To be frank, there are no deal breaker missing or broken features in the iPhone. It is a very well thought-through device. In typical Apple style, the Occam's Razor principle is followed - giving only necessary functions and not adding bells and whistles. However, some applications on iPhone, email in particular, are still quite raw. As discussed in this post on TechCrunch, the email on iPhone is inferior to Blackberry in a number of ways. People also complain about the quality of the iPhone as an actual phone. However I can't find much wrong with it as a phone - in fact, I like it better than the RAZR that it replaced.
The world of webtop publishing (WTP) has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years, with plenty of services feeling as good, if not better, than many standard desktop packages. This is particularly true in the case of Microsoft Word-alikes such as Google Docs (née Writely), ThinkFree and Zoho Writer, which were featured in Josh Catone's excellent Self-Publishing Toolkit post earlier this week. In this post we'll take a look at one stand-out service on the more visual end of the market - an online tool aimed at those who are familiar with the 'print' world's standards such as Quark Express or Adobe InDesign. The service is FormatPixel, a Flash-based app that mimics the functionality of a desktop publishing app for the purpose of creating a visually stunning brochure web site without the need to break the bank.
Tim Bray announced today on his blog that the Atom Publishing Protocol, a way to create and update Web resources, is "done". He wrote:
"Atom is done. Now the editorial processes grind away and eventually the official specification of the Atom Publishing Protocol will be an RFC substantially identical to draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-17; it’ll join RFC4287 as the official products of the IETF Atompub Working Group."
via Danny Ayers
What does that mean in english? Basically that the Atom Publishing Protocol is almost finished. It's not yet 'official', but it's all over bar the shouting. There is already an Atom syndication format, which is a competitor to the more widely used RSS 2.0. The term 'Atom' is used to refer to both the syndication and the publishing standards - and ultimately Atom aims to enhance feeds on the Web.
Things are moving along nicely for the RSS 2.0 spec too, with Version 2.0.9 being published in June. So now is a good time to compare progress of the two competing feed standards. RSS 2.0 is the market leader, but a number of things point to a promising near future for Atom.
37Signals relaunched their Backpack service today. The app's back end code was completely rebuilt from scratch, according to Jason Fried, and the service also got a new UI to match some of 37Signals' other recently updated products (such as Basecamp). The design still feels very familiar to any 37Signals app user, however.
There are a number of new features in Backpack, but a handful of them really stick out, and those are the ones that I'll focus on in this post.
ZipGarage is a new site for garage sale enthusiasts to list and scout out local garage sales (or rummage sales, or yard sales, or whatever your preferred nomenclature) in the United States. The site is absolutely dead simple and completely free, and was created by 365Labs.
Finding sales on ZipGarage is as easy as entering your zip code and getting a listing of sales in your area (ZipGarage automatically searches within 10 miles of your zip code). You can subscribe to an RSS feed for your zip code to be instantly updated on new garage sales in your area, which can then be mapped on Google Maps with a click. Unfortunately, ZipGarage has yet to attract many sellers, so the listings are rather sparse. Reaching the critical mass that will make this site truly useful will be the hardest thing for ZipGarage to do.
I know I recently railed against copycat sites -- I assure you that the irony of this post isn't lost on me. But as they say, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." As I said in my post 3 weeks ago, "if you do feel the need to borrow an idea, you should definitely make changes and try to innovate and push the concept in new directions." That's what Kevin Rose and his team did with Pownce, which seems likely inspired by Twitter. Pownce has pushed the idea in new and exciting directions, however, and added to the concept in positive ways for users (read our review). Some copycat sites, on the other hand, are more shameless in their theft.
The services below have not only spawned copycats, but software projects designed to make copying them easier, which may be proof that there is really something to their idea.
