WonderHowTo aggregates and curates a large database of instructional videos from all over the Internet. It employs a number of editors who search the web for good how-to videos and then categorize them into 36 vertical categories. Thanks to this editorial process, the quality of these how-to videos featured on WonderHowTo is surprisingly high and topics range from Spanish pronunciation to surviving nuclear blasts. One of the most interesting features of WonderHowTo is its recently launched 'Related How-To Videos' sidebar for Firefox.
The high profile but heretofore loosely organized Data Portability Working Group announced last night that it has elected its first group of Steering Group officers. The Working Group strives to help user data become freed for secure re-use across different websites and services. The first chair of the Steering Group will be Daniela Barbosa, who is a Business Development Manager, at Synaptica, a Dow Jones company.
Can the Data Portability Working Group overcome some early shakiness caused by the perception that it's all hype and no substance? The group got big press when Microsoft, Google, Facebook and many other companies publicly joined up - but critics allege that press is all that's been accomplished.
Recently, we took a look at the growing trend involving lifestreaming and how more people are choosing to go this route instead of establishing a more traditional blog. But outside of certain celebrity lifestreamers like Julia Allison, the streams belonging to "regular folks" may serve more as a personal collection of content for your own reference instead of a site that's meant to draw traffic or readers. There's nothing wrong with that, though, and you don't need any special software to "lifestream" in this way either...all you need is a platform and an app. And there are at least a few apps from the iTunes app store that can help you get going.
Zoho's online office suite is getting closer and closer to becoming a real rival to Microsoft Office. One important update Zoho recently released was support for Visual Basic compatible macros in its spreadsheet application, which was great for importing already existing spreadsheets with macros, but writing macros was limited to coding them in a text editor. Today, Zoho has rolled out an easy to use macro record and playback function, similar to what most offline office suites offer.
When you hear the word "semantic" you likely think of the semantic web - the supposed next iteration of the World Wide Web that features structured data and specific protocols that aim to bring about an "intelligent" web. But the concept of semantics doesn't necessarily apply just to the web - it can apply to other things as well, like your desktop...or even your Excel spreadsheets, according to Ian Goldsmid, founder of Semantic Business Intelligence, whose new app, SDS, brings a semantic system to spreadsheets.
Behind the scenes of many tech blogs these days, there's a rat race for attention, with PR agents struggling to overcome the noise of feeds, news sites and other agents in order to get coverage for their clients. Tiny web tech companies pay $5k, $10k or more per month for PR agents to work the media, old and new, in hopes that it will help them find wider audiences. Big companies spend far, far more on PR.
Is that really necessary? Won't great technologies find their own audiences when their undeniable value is discovered by one person and passed on to the world at large?
Yahoo just announced that the close beta period for its location platform Fire Eagle has ended and that the service is now open for everybody. We wrote about Fire Eagle extensively when the beta was first announced. Since then, a number of high-profile services, including Brightkite, Movable Type, Dopplr, and Pownce have implemented Fire Eagle through the numerous APIs Yahoo provides for accessing the service.
Making charts and graphs might not seem like an exciting way to spend your time, but new service Widgenie manages to make this common task relatively enjoyable. The service allows you to upload spreadsheets and create nice looking visualization widgets that can be embedded on web pages.
You might not make graphs very often, but the next time you do - this service is worth a look. There are a lot of graph making tools online, but few are as easy to use and attractive as this one.
We've mentioned Disqus here on ReadWriteWeb numerous times. You can even preview Disqus' popular commenting system across numerous personal and major blogs. It's been taking off since it hit the scene with advocates such as Steven Hodson and Louis Gray. Now, they're taking their platform to the next level with a new look and improved integration.
Lijit, which provides search services to bloggers and blog networks, announced today that it has closed a $7.1 Million series C round led by Foundry Group. Lijit had raised a small Series A round in January of 2007 and a larger $3.3 million Series B in July 2007. With this new round, Lijit is planning to use this new influx of money to finance the launch of its search-powered ad network.
