If you've been waiting to see all the standard Web 2.0 site features put to a socially significant use - wait no longer, check out OpenCongress.org. This beautifully designed site makes it far easier and more fun to track activities in the US congress than it's ever been since the organization was formed.
A project of the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation, OpenCongress is a site that anyone even remotely interested in politics should see.
The British government is telling press that there is a growing trend in online organized crime rings hiring college students to do their dirty work and solve difficult technical problems - often under pretense that the work is legal security consulting. Here at RWW we're seeing, even participating in, a related trend of hiring college students for online work blogging.
Hiring college students to work online is desirable for a number of reasons. Below we discuss some of those reasons and offer a short list of alternatives to working on the dark side online.
Talk about a knee-jerk reaction. Yesterday, news broke out in Scotland about how the internet was to blame for Scotland's failing exam pass rates. According to the Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC), Wikipedia, among other sources, was cited as the reason as to why the students were failing. Is this a case of the internet making us stupid? Or do students just need to learn how to use the new research tools of the web a little more appropriately?
The first phones using Google's Android platform were meant to go to market by the second half of this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, however, Google is facing some major setbacks thanks to the intricacies of the cell phone business.
Social networking site Facebook has launched a Chinese-language version of its web site. Users logging into the site from the Chinese mainland are now being redirected to zh-cn.facebook.com, where users can choose between a version in simplified or traditional Chinese.
The Summer Olympics are nearly here. Beginning August 8th, the world will be watching as athletes compete for the gold in Beijing. Of course, many people will be watching the coverage on TV or the web, but others will keeping up-to-date on the latest news via their mobile phone. To take advantage of the demand for mobile coverage of this event, Yahoo has recently launched a site devoted exclusively to the 2008 Beijing Games. And they're not the only ones catering to the ever-growing mobile audience.
Last week we started a new series called Mainstream Web Watch, in which we'll be exploring how the Social Web is infiltrating mainstream culture. We started out with NBA.com last week, to celebrate the end of the basketball season and the crowning of a new champion (Boston Celtics). In this post we look at another mainstream basketball site, but this time a small niche site created by someone with a passion for the sport - InfiniteHoops.com.
Twitter is one of the most talked about services on the web these days. The service has taken off since its inception two years ago at SXSW. The service has seen a huge spike in traffic and more than its fair shares of ups and downs. Needless to say, Twitter is all about the community and harnessing the power of the sub-communities within Twitter. Through it all, Twitter has developed a culture of its own.
Microsoft has done a lot of revamping and renaming to their web services over the recent years. The strategy of renaming was an awful attempt at trying to break ground on the web. It only resulted in confusing a lot of users. Recently, a handful of those services have seen the end draw near including Windows Live for TV, Windows Live Expo, Live Search Books, and Live Search Academic. What a list!
Recently, Google Trends added an update to the service and extended its functionality to websites with Google Trends for Websites. Google Trends gives recommendations on popular trends occurring on the web today. Now anyone with a website can find out popular trends about their website, except for the small guys.
