Inside Steve's Brain, a book about Steve Jobs written by Leander Kahney, is a fascinating look at the thought processes and inspiration behind Apple's products and branding. It has a particular and much welcome focus on the current era - iPod/iTunes, the latest iMacs, the Apple Store and more. The central theme of the book is that much of Apple's success can be attributed to the personality traits of co-founder and current CEO Steve Jobs.
Searching around for an image for a blog post is one of the most frustrating procedures of blogging. It could take hours to find that perfect image. These are hours, minutes, and seconds that most of us would rather not waste. Normally, one might head to Google Image Search, but there can be legal issues to using it. Instead, why not try out Flickr image search tool Compfight.
Our beloved Twitter has been digging its own grave for several months now. Recently, the service has experienced an absurd amount of downtime. There have been numerous posts calling for Twitter to be replaced. With so many problems plaguing Twitter, it seems the company could care less. Here are a few factors that are helping to kill Twitter.
Whenever a new product comes out that has the early adopter set all atwitter -- like say, Twitter, for example -- there is a certain amount of discussion devoted to when or if the product will go mainstream. Sometimes we're not even sure if a new web app or service maybe already has reached the masses. A lucky few new web apps will cross the proverbial chasm into the mainstream, but most won't. Some those that don't will nonetheless see their ideas co-opted by a site that is already undeniably mainstream -- Facebook.
Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we explored: next gen apps outside the browser, uses for wikis, Facebook's usefulness (or lack thereof), the public launch of Google Health, and 4 promising mobile social networks. On the trends side we analyzed: the Mobile Web, how to utilize Social Media in education and social change, and the state of the URL. Last but not least we covered this week's SemTech conference, about the Semantic Web.
"Goodnight ma!" "Goodnight pa!" "Goodnight, John Boy!" That's what they used to say in every episode of the TV classic The Waltons (see below). That same kind of repetitive chorus has grown more frequent around the web announcing that yes, the Twitter website and API are down again.
What do you do when one homestead on the frontier range gets more leaky than you can bear? You pick up and move to another one. We'll discuss one particular alternative to Twitter below, but more important is the matter of data portability.
Last month, we reported the arrival of Facebook's version of a lifestream when they began offering you a way to import content from various online services into your Facebook Mini-Feed. At the time, the only services available were Flickr, Picasa, Yelp, and del.icio.us. (Digg was added later on). Today, a post on the Facebook blog announces that you can now import from several other services, including YouTube, StumbleUpon, Hulu, Pandora, Last.fm, and Google Reader.
TechPresident points to and interesting article today from the Yale Journal of Law & Technology (draft version of article set to appear in 2008-2009 Fall Issue) that proposes a new form of open government that encourages the closure of government web sites. The idea is that US government web sites are so notoriously bad, they should just be torn down in favor of private sector alternatives. But this is more than just a privatization push, this is about turning the government into a data platform.
Here at ReadWriteWeb we spend a lot of time reading the blogs of companies we write about (send yours to tips@readwriteweb.com) and we've found that some of them are just plain fun. An interesting company blog can be a great way to draw in new people through relevant content of general interest - and some of them will stay to check out the service you provide.
Some companies just blog about updates to their own technology and that's good for existing users to see. Others are fun to read whether you're a user or not. Here are some of the company blogs we recommend reading for a good time.
Facebook's new profile design, which we first wrote about in February is now live for developers. Any developer can visit http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php to access the developer sandbox and play around with the new design, which aims to unclutter the site by breaking the profile into five distinct areas. Will the new profile provide a better user experience? Or will it be met with resistance?
