ReadWriteWeb

Blogs, RSS, IM, Twitter and FriendFeed - the number of sources of sources of information online can feel like it's multiplying exponentially every day. It's easy, natural even, to feel overwhelmed. Especially when we are more familiar with the tightly controlled editorial policies of mainstream media.

The social media space is noisy, though. There are many times when filtering that noise effectively makes a lot of sense (some tools discussed below) - but there are also many times when noise is just what we need.

For every 1000 people who read a tech blog post, there may be one that leaves a comment. Lurking in the crowd are any number of people who work for companies related to the subject of the post. They almost never comment, and when they do they often come across as obnoxious, self-promoting and spammy. It doesn't have to be that way, though.

Launched a couple of weeks ago by U.S. Representative John R. Kuhl, Jr., a Republican from New York's 29th District, the "Fix Washington" project aims to make DC politics a user generated affair. Noting that the majority of Americans aren't happy with the way Washington is run, Kuhl is soliciting ideas for bills until July 18th. Kuhl will then choose his favorite 5 submissions and users will vote for the best, and the winning idea will be introduced on the floor of the US House of Representatives. It's a novel idea, certainly, but is it a good one?

Earlier this week something interesting happened in the world of social networking: Verizon, which this week became America's largest mobile carrier after moving to acquire Alltel, moved its branded social network to Facebook. The company announced a plan to shut down its Verizon Community site -- a moderately popular corporate social network -- in favor of its 18,000 member strong Facebook fan page. Right now, Facebook Pages can't be considered full social networks, but could they ever be the best place to center your social media strategy?

How Changing Technology is Having Big Impacts on Business

In case you haven't heard yet - the I.T. world is changing. The rise of social computing technologies, generally branded as "Web 2.0" and including things like wikis, blogs, social networking, RSS, and more are slowly making their way into the business world. This new movement is called Enterprise 2.0, and it's no small shift. They're even having a conference about it next week. But the change encompasses more than just the introduction of new, social software into the formerly stodgy business world - it also includes the movement of server software from in-house data centers to the cloud, the rise of a mobile workforce, the rebirth of thin client computing, a self-provisioning user base, and more.

This week Barack Obama won the Democrat nomination for US President, pitting him against Republican candidate John McCain. At the same time both candidates have ramped up their web efforts, with Obama's camp calling for web developers to "Write Software, Change Washington" and McCain's camp launching a new-look website. In this post we check out the latest web developments in the race to become the next US President.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the latest demonstration of Android, Google’s soon-to-be-released open-source mobile OS. While last100's Dan Langendorf is reserving judgment, I’m already sold on Android’s User Interface. Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and it’s here where comparisons to the iPhone are also inevitable. But Google is banking on one app that carriers and handset makers won't want to touch - the browser.

Live video broadcasting service Ustream.tv will announce tomorrow that live feeds on the company's website and distributed video players got a combined 10 million unique viewers last month. If those numbers are solid, it's a major validation of live streaming video on the web.

When YouTube Live launches later this year, this medium is only going to get bigger.

The theme for this week must be the erosion of market share for dominant technologies. Earlier, we reported on the Firefox web browser's steady march into Internet Explorer territory, and today NewTeeVee points to a recent study from Ipsos MediaCT that shows the PC continuing to encroach on the television's dominating position for eyeball time when it comes to video watching. Where are you watching video? Vote in our poll below.

If Freebase is an "open shared database of the world's knowledge," then Thinkbase (found via information aesthetics) is a mind map of the world's knowledge. The interesting and incredibly addictive Freebase visualization and search tool is the brainchild of master's degree student Christian Hirsch at the University of Auckland. Thinkbase is one of the cool proof of concept applications built on top of Freebase that we mentioned last week.