The most impressive thing about the new search engine Delver is that it knows who you are and who
your friends are even if you don't import your address book or add your social
networking profiles. Instead, Delver leverages the social graph to map out a
user's social connections. Since everyone's social graph is unique, like a
fingerprint, the same query will yield vastly different results for each user.
The results are more personal and meaningful to users than a generic search
using "normal" search engine.
I just participated in a launch test for desktop video conferencing service Oovoo and if you're looking to have a private video session with up to six people then it's worth checking out. Mac and Windows users can have a high resolution session with IM, file transfer and video recording (Windows) augmenting the call.
The clunky launch of Yahoo! Live last week has a lot of people talking about live video online. There's a long list of services that you can use to do web based public broadcast of live video, but those services aren't what you'd use for small group, private sessions. Forrester explained the landscape well in a report last year, "Legacy videoconference systems of all types have failed to live up to their promise because of technical complexity and user interface issues." The tech problems are being solved and a free, cross platform solution with recording is great - but interface issues remain.
AOL today announced the Open Mobile Platform, which the company plans to release to developers this summer. AOL says the software development platform will help developers create applications across major mobile device operating systems including BREW, Java, Linux, RIM, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. The platform will consist of three parts: an XML-based scripting language, a device client, and an application server.
As many of you know, we recently underwent a re-design at ReadWriteWeb and upgraded our publishing system at the same time. Unfortunately that resulted in some frustrating technical glitches with our comments system. However, we're now pleased to report that ReadWriteWeb's comment system is back running 100% -- and it's a heck of a lot faster than it used to be. And yes, we now have OpenID! [sound of dogfood being eaten]
To celebrate our new comments system, from Monday 11 Feb (US time) we are giving away one $30 Amazon gift voucher every day for the next month for the best daily comment.
It's a big week coming up in the Mobile Web world. The annual Mobile World Congress is being held in Barcelona, 11-14 February. The early buzz is around Google's much (and oft) rumored GPhone. According to the Times Online, Google "is expected to produce a prototype mobile handset" at the show. Even if Google itself doesn't unveil a phone, there will be plenty of Android prototypes on display (Google's open source Mobile Operating System).
There are some excellent Web conferences happening soon, including a great one in my neck of the woods. The awesomely named Webstock is on this Thursday and Friday, in my home city of Wellington New Zealand. There are a number of Web stars coming from overseas for this event, including Molly Holzschlag, Tom Coates from Yahoo, Chris DiBona from Google, Cal Henderson from Flickr, Info Architect gurus Liz Danzico and Peter Morville, web design gurus Dan Cederholm and Kelly Goto, and many others.
Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. 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.
Highlights this week: Josh explores Super Tuesday on the Web and pinpoints why Obama and Paul are the Internet kings; Marshall dives deep into the MySpace and Facebook platforms, and ponders the privacy implications of Google's Social Graph API; Alex analyses Reuters' new Semantic Web initiative; Sarah looks at MySpace's partnership with web browser Flock; and Bernard tells us why the current recession isn't our bubble.
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Moody offers a different way
to categorize your music collection. Using color-coded tagging, this app lets
you categorize your iTunes music based on the "mood" of the song. Horizontally,
the scale goes from sad to happy, and vertically the scale goes from calm to
intense. 
ReadWriteWeb network blog AltSearchEngines announced this week a partnership with Near-Time to establish a new forum. The forum has three levels. One tier is for CEOs and executives of Alternative Search Engines, the second tier is open to all AltSearchEngines readers, and the third tier is for the international advisors who provide AltSearchEngines with their bilingual content.
