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Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email.
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OpenSocial, Facebook Ad Network, MySpace HyperTargeting
Last week was all about Google's OpenSocial, a project that will tie together Google, MySpace and other social networking platforms in a common widget development environment. This week the discussion raged on. By the end of the week it had boiled down to two themes:
1) OpenSocial isn't quite as "open" as it makes out to be - check out Marshall Kirkpatrick's post for more. Also see Bernard Lunn's post on the privacy implications of OpenSocial. In summary, OpenSocial seems to be less about open standards, and more about Google setting the standards. Nevertheless, it also has a lot of things going for it - see Sean Ammirati's post Google's Kevin Marks Discusses OpenSocial at Defrag to find out Google's plans for OpenSocial.
2) Facebook isn't in a rush to join OpenSocial; indeed this week they focused primarily on pushing out their new advertising network. See Josh Catone's coverage of Facebook's ad plans. Also Josh wrote about why Facebook shouldn't fear OpenSocial.
On the advertising front, there was action from MySpace this week too. The world's largest social networking site announced that it would be launching a new advertising program called "HyperTargeting," which uses profile data to target ads to users.
This week we ran a poll asking: Will Facebook Join OpenSocial? See a summary of the comments here. The results at press time:
Yes 44%
No 46%
Open What? 10%
No GPhone, but Google Announces Android
The other big Web news of the week: after months if not years of speculation, Google announced that they are not in fact developing a single phone, but rather an ostensibly open-source mobile operating system called Android.
Other Web tech news this week:
Voting is now closed for the Best Technology Blog, but there is a potential vote rigging controversy afoot. The site currently states:
"RESULTS ARE NOT FINAL FOR THIS POLL! This poll is still being checked for excessive voting from individual machines. If excess voting is found it will be noted and the votes will be removed. The winner should be announced Monday."
Top gadget blogs Engadget and Gizmodo dominated the voting - and both are neck and neck, with 44.7% and 44.2% of the votes respectively. [let's not mention where R/WW ended up!]. Both of the big gadget blogs heavily promoted the contest to their readers. During the week I noticed Engadget take an early lead - and up till a couple of days ago when I last checked, Engadget held a reasonable lead over Gizmodo. But both sites have gotten a lot of fast votes over the past few days. Perhaps taking their fierce rivalry a bit too far?
There are a lot of ways to send large files online. One my favorites is Senduit from Davidville (the Tumblr guys), which I wrote about in April. I like its simplicity and how easy it is to use. Unfortunately, Senduit, which is built on the back of Amazon's Simple Storage Service, has a 100mb file limit and though speedy on the download, requires that the file first be fully uploaded before downloading can begin.
PipeBytes is a new service that cuts out the middle man. The service has no file size limits and lets recipients begin downloading before the file is finished uploading -- in fact, that file doesn't begin to upload until someone starts downloading on the other end. While files are being transferred, a YouTube video plays in the browser window to keep you occupied, and an animated status indicator shows you the progress of your transfer.
I was able to successfully send an 80mb MP3 file to Marshall Kirkpatrick via the service. Though we were both shown different videos, they seems uncannily matched content-wise to the file I was sending -- which was a DJ mix, and I was shown a video of a turntable routine. I'm not sure if PipeBytes read the file note I left, which mentioned what type of music the MP3 was, and tried to match up a like video or if it was a coincidence (I think I'd lean toward the latter).
This week's poll asks: will Facebook join Google's OpenSocial? The results so far:
Yes 45%
No 46%
Open What? 9%
From the comments on our original post, the 'Yes' camp thinks the benefits include Facebook getting more widgets and developers. Other comments: Timothée said that "Web 2.0 needs normalisation". MikeB asked: "how long can it [Facebook] continue to be a walled garden?". Kiran thinks that "it would be a mistake in long run if they [FB] don't conform to the standards."
In the 'No' camp, Dennis Howlett pointed out that it's a moot point "until identity management and interoperability are clarified [...]". Jon Burg said "there's no reason for Facebook to open the exit doors." Sean Tierney commented that Facebook will "join when it's in their best interest to do so and right now it doesn't make sense." Donv69 said that "Facebook is still too young to start making such moves. Google could easily cripple them using OpenSocial."
So, some excellent pros and cons mentioned in the comments. Also see Marshall Kirkpatrick's analysis of OpenSocial and Josh Catone's thoughts on why Facebook doesn't need OpenSocial.
But let's see if we can break the deadlock. We've all had over a week now to analyze OpenSocial and see how Facebook responded to the pressure (it unveiled a new ad network). So tell us what you think in the poll below:
The team over at Live.com Translation have released a very simple tool that allows anyone to put a drop-down translation menu on their website. Here's a live example, entered with one line of javascript. Give it a click and you can read Read/WriteWeb in a variety of other languages.
When users click on the prompt to translate the page into their language of choice, they are taken to a Live.com page where the original and translated pages are displayed side by side.
I think this is pretty awesome and I added it to my personal site right away. Thanks to LiveSide for the link, it's always the best source for in-depth and breaking coverage of the Live.com world.
The much hyped web drama "Quarterlife," which is set to debut on MySpace on November 12, may be making the jump to television as a result of the Hollywood writers guild strike. According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, the Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick-backed web show is rumored to be in talks with NBC to be used as strike-contingency programming.
Zwick and Herskovitz, the creative team behind the cult hit TV show "My So-Called Life" and the Oscar-nominated film "Blood Diamond," make up one of the more high profile teams to try their hand at a web-only production. They would follow the successful run of Michael Eisner's "Prom Queen" earlier this year.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Quaterlife" could appear on NBC as early as February. The show, which was initially developed for ABC three years ago, will go on with its Monday MySpace debut as planned, a spokesperson for Zwick and Herskovitz told the paper. However, Herskovitz has gone on record as saying that their MySpace contract only covers the first four hours of the show and the team would like to explore other distribution channels.
This would, of course, not be the first time NBC has looked to the web for talent for its television network. The network's late-night staple Saturday Night Live famously hired Andy Samberg after viewing some of his popular web video shorts.
Sunday night, Patrick Moberg, a 21-year-old web designer from Brooklyn, was riding the number 5 train from Union Square in Manhattan when he spotted the girl of his dreams. With rosy cheeks, a flower in her hair, and writing in a journal, it was love at first sight. And, in a stroke of good luck, the girl got off the train at his stop. But, sadly, Moberg lost her in the crowd.
The determined web designer went home and immediately put up a web site dedicated to finding what he thought could be the love of his life: NYGirlOfMyDreams.com. The site included sketches of the girl and himself, and information about which train he saw her on. On the web site Moberg posted his cell phone number and email address and within hours he had an influx of messages.
There's content news all around this morning. Microsoft just announced the launch of a new blog for its forthcoming Office Live Workspace Community, Glenn Close has launched a blog of her own to support the dog products ecommerce site her family has invested in and the classic tech podcast Gillmor Gang has been sighted on Facebook.
Last month we covered some early screenshots of Microsoft's soon-to-launch online collaboration suite, Live Workspace. It's built on top of the desktop Office tools and in competition with Google Docs. It looks very nice and today the company launched a new blog to do all the things a company blog can do for a product. Two questions. Why is the video on the site posted in one of Google's YouTube video players? Second, where's the Google Docs community blog?
Actress Glenn Close is blogging at a new dog site called Fetchdog. It's a nicely designed site, aimed at a tiny part (high end, eco products) of a big niche market - dogs. Dogs are big, shopping is big and Glenn Close is big - sounds like a good combination. We'll see if the celebrity blog strategy can be sustained over time, I'd guess not. Speaking of things that aren't sustainable - for this ecologically attuned site to promote the sketchy world of dog breeders and purebreds is a real shame. There's a huge number of mixed-breed dogs left abandoned and bound for extermination in pounds around the country.
Speaking of celebrities who struggle to produce regular content, Steve Gillmor is back. A long time tech journalist and an esoteric visionary, Gillmor gets the all-star crew of the old Gillmor Gang podcast back together for a conversation about OpenSocial and so much more. Nick Carr, Michael Arrington, Jason Calacanis and some enterprise guys who are fun too. Many people have missed the Gang a lot and hope that it resumes.
Where can you find the show? On Facebook, oddly enough. The beleaguered Podtech, Gillmor's employer for at least much of this year, isn't part of the picture. One way or the other, bring on the 90 minute, rambling, high-level conversation from a handful of elite industry thinkers. It's always been a great education and I'm not alone in wanting much more.
YouTube just announced the availability for Windows users of a desktop uploader (install page here). Users will now be able to do bulk file uploads. The company also raised its file size limit from 100 MB to 1 GB. Length will remain at 10 minutes though, so that just means more high quality video will be available on the site.
Google Video remains the option of choice for long form video uploaders but some YouTube users have long complained about the small file size requirements and resulting low quality. Vimeo, a tiny boutique competitor owned by IAC, opened to HD uploads at the end of last month.
A Mac version of the uploader is in the works, the company said. Hopefully the time limit will be changed as well - the YouTube brand is so strong there's no reason not to encourage users to store their full length videos there. Video archiving is important work and YouTube should be up to the task.
