The Rock Hard Times is a music search engine and database where you can perform searches or browse by artists, genres, places (countries), and labels. Each page on the site is filled with content like album listings, photos, videos, and links to lyrics, tabs, fansites, shopping sites, and more. The Rock Hard Times' creator, Mime Cuvalo, envisioned the site as an IMDB of music, but really the site is more of a mashup between IMDB and Wikipedia, since every page of TRHT is editable by anyone.
Last week a new site called Gwap was launched by Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. The site offers an array of multi-player games that have a benefit beyond just that of momentary distraction or amusement. These games are helping improve image and audio searches, teaching computers to see, and enhancing AI. However, all that won't matter to the players because, as it turns out, these games are actually fun.
ReadWriteWeb is the exclusive Media Partner for an interactive debate on the future of the Web, featuring Tim Berners-Lee. The event is June 11 and is being run by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The debate will address questions such as: Is net neutrality essential for democracy? What role does AI have in the future of the Web? What will Web 4.0 look like?
I am not a journalist. I am an entrepreneur who blogs. I blog on ReadWriteWeb because I don't like talking to myself and there are some great conversations here. Being part of RWW means I get to be on the receiving end of PR processes such as news releases and embargoes, which to me is strange. I have spent way more time on the other side of the street, hiring PR firms when I have the budget and doing it myself when I don't. This new perspective has lead me to some advice for companies about dealing with the press.
Today we’re pleased to announce a new biweekly feature on ReadWriteTalk, our podcast show. It's a live discussion with the ReadWriteWeb Network authors that we’re calling RWW Live. On this first episode, host Sean Ammirati is joined by myself (Richard MacManus) and Alex Iskold from ReadWriteWeb, along with Steve O’Hear from Last100 and Charles Knight from AltSearchEngines. We discuss a number of big events over the last week including:
Every week it seems like the debate over access to, portability of and privacy over user data on the social web has reached new heights. It's only going to get louder though, just as discussions about other forms of economics will never be resolved.
That's a part of what's going on, economics. This is an information economy, after all, and user data is clearly one of the most important currencies in circulation.
What sort of funding opportunities exist in the budding Semantic Web space? What are VCs looking for and how much are they will to invest? That was the topic of a panel at the SemTech 2008 Conference that just concluded in San Jose.
The panel featured Stephen Hall from Vulcan Capital, Eghosa Omoigui from
Intel Capital and Amanda Reed from Palomar Ventures. This post is based on notes from that panel.
Today, I came across a site from Red Hat called Mugshot that neither I nor Sarah Perez had ever heard of. Mugshot is an open source lifestream aggregation service that went overlooked in our list of 35 such sites last February (though it was mentioned in a comment left about a week later). Mugshot has clearly flown under the radar -- for 2 years! Though it wasn't always a lifestream aggregator, the Mugshot project was launched 2 years ago. So why has Mugshot stayed small while FriendFeed has blown up?
Social/wiki search engine provider Eurekster has been down for the past two days and users are wondering if the company will return to provide the site search functionality that many have come to depend on. Things look rough for the company.
Eurekster provides a service called a Swicki, a search function that lets site owners identify what other sites in their community they would like to have included in their Swicki search results. We've used Swicki here at ReadWriteWeb for some time, as have many other blogs and online communities. The company offered revenue sharing from search ads. Eurekster says that more than 100,000 sites have created Swickis and traffic to Eurekster used to be strong.
Rifflet is a new site where musicians can gather to finish each other's work. The concept involves the uploading of something called a "rifflet," which is a piece of a song - like a bass line, a guitar riff, a drum beat, or something else altogether. Each rifflet must also be less than 60 seconds long. Members of the site can then browse through these "proto-songs," and combine them with other rifflets they find or even just incorporate them into their own original music.
