Faviki is a new social bookmarking tool that offers something that services like Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, and Diigo do not - semantic tagging capabilities. What this means is that instead of having users haphazardly entering in tags to describe the links they save, Faviki will suggest tags to be used instead. However, unlike other services, Faviki's suggestions don't just come from a community of users and their tagging history, but from structured information extracted straight out of the Wikipedia database.
Last week, computer book publisher SitePoint relayed a story about recent experiences with Digg that demonstrates that the Digg system is far from perfect. We've written recently on ReadWriteWeb about the decline and fall of quality on Digg, but SitePoint's anecdote demonstrates that sometimes the wisdom of crowds approach is, well, kind of dumb. Now is probably a good time to revisit the rules for harnessing the wisdom of the crowds we published on this blog a year ago.
Muxtape, an online mix tape-making service, has been a big hit with music fans on the social web. The site lets you upload mp3s to create a playlist you can share with anyone. Now, a new service called Muxfind lets you to search through the muxtapes created by others in order to discover new artists, songs, and muxtapes that you might enjoy.
As print circulation continues its slide at most newspapers, one of the United States' most respected newspapers, the New York Times, is taking steps to boost online readership. The paper is already the third most cited web site on Techmeme, and the first on Memeorandum, proving that bloggers at least pay attention to its reporting. Now, the Grey Lady is working on an API that aims to make the entire newspaper "programmable."
There was an article over the weekend in the New York Times about new tactics Warner Brothers is planning to boost flagging DVD sales. Warner plans to release direct-to-DVD companion films alongside new releases in the future, in an attempt to build buzz for the later DVD release of the main feature. What they really should be doing, is to ditch the traditional DVD model altogether, and take a look at some of the things alt rocker Trent Reznor has done over the past few months.
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uvLayer allows you to search for videos and organize them in a Minority Report fashion. Do a search for any video and uvLayer will instantly provide you with a handful of videos matching your keywords in a collection. With the results, you can drag videos outside the collection and onto your canvas to play with them in a variety of ways. Here's a look at the Adobe AIR app for uvLayer.
In July 1969 when the US Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon, an estimated 500 million people tuned in to watch on TV across the world. The space race between the US and the Russians had captured the public's imagination the world over. Over the next few years, though, public interest in lunar exploration began to wane and NASA space missions were no longer a television spectacle. With unmanned missions to Mars over the past few years, however, that interest is back. People are no longer glued to their television sets, but instead to their computer screens. For tonight's Phoenix lander touch down, NASA is pulling out all the stops for Internet coverage, as it expects over a 100 million people to log on.
When it comes to staying up-to-date on the news, RSS is the best thing that could have ever happened to the web. You've probably subscribed to a ton of feeds by now through services such as Google Reader or software like FeedDemon. Instead of waiting impatiently for these services to give you the news you need immediately, why not try out Anothr from iNeZha.
With all the frustration, confusion, and support going towards Twitter this week, a break from Twitter might be just want the doctor ordered. This weekend users have been asking for alternatives to Twitter. In this post we answer that question in a variety of ways. Here's a look at several alternatives to Twitter both online and offline, that will help reduce Twitter's stress levels and temporarily minimize user frustrations.
