Social networking overload - it's a common problem and one that it seems like it could be easy to solve. Thus there are countless attempts being made to build services that tie it all together. Some of those attempts are awful and one of those is a service we tested today called SocialU. RWW readers can try it out themselves via this link.
SocialU is a half-baked, condescending, poorly designed, ad-ridden lifestreaming app built in Adobe AIR. We'd refrain from writing about it, but the things we dislike about it seem worth mentioning and with all the frothy clone-like startups flying around on the web, who doesn't like seeing one that deserves it get a good blog-lashing sometimes?
The social news and bookmarking site reddit today announced that it will allow its users to completely modify the CSS for their custom reddits, as well as pointing those sub-reddits to any domain they would like. You can now also choose your own header image and replace the reddit alien with your own creation. After opening up the sub-reddits and open-sourcing its code, this is yet another radical (but logical) step, and reddit's users are likely to greet it with joy.
Adobe Photoshop is a top of the line design software. We've written extensively in the past about the many ways Adobe is branching off of Photoshop to cater to a broader audience from the release of new features for Photoshop Express for lighter usage to the entire Adobe package. Adobe is sure enough building an online empire. The next addition is a mobile version of Photoshop!
We were big fans of Muxtape here at ReadWriteWeb, but when the the virtual mixtape service shut its doors last week because of legal issues with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it definitely left us wanting for more. Last night, we heard about OpenTape, a self-hosted open source version of Muxtape. Being the Muxtape fans we are, we just had to install it for ourselves and came away quite impressed with how well it worked.
Adium, the popular Mac IM client that lets users chat across multiple services at once, issued a major new release last night that is sure to please users old and new. Highlights include the addition of Facebook chat to the list of options and a new search bar that lets you quickly find anyone on a long list of contacts.
This incredibly customizable program lets you chat seamlessly across almost every IM network you can think of - the absence of interoperability becomes almost inconsequential after you sign up for an account on each service and tell Adium to log in to each. We are very excited about the upgrade.
Shelfari, a small book sharing startup, was acquired today by Amazon (an existing investor in the company). Shelfari is known for its innovative user interface, something which we've discussed a few times on ReadWriteWeb. Shelfari's competitors include GoodReads and LibraryThing. The relationship with the latter has been frosty, with LibraryThing writing on its site today that Shelfari is a "clone" and that it is "somewhat less intellectual, less featureful", among other barbs.
Fast growing social network Facebook has hit the 100 million users mark, according to a statement today by Dave Morin, the company's Senior Platform Manager.
How does that compare to MySpace's ascent? A guy named Rick appears to have become MySpace's 100 millionth registered user in 2006. MySpace took 3 years after launch to hit that magic number; for Facebook it took 4 years and 6 months.
A new school year is about to start and students nationwide will be clamoring for ways to keep up with their school work. With many schools starting to offer free iPod Touches, iPhones, and laptops, the iTunes App Store will be one of the first places to go for back-to-school apps.
The new school year also means that research via Wikipedia is going to be on the rise. Fortunately for those with iPhones and iPod Touches, they can now access Wikipedia anywhere while on the go with Wikipanion from the iTunes App Store.
Open Web Asia '08,
the first pan-Asia web technology event bringing together executives,
entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from throughout Asia, will be staged on
October 14, 2008 in Seoul, Korea.
This event was organized by the OpenWeb.Asia Workgroup and prominent entrepreneurs and bloggers within Asia's web industry.
FriendFeed, one of our favorite lifestreaming applications, launched the beta version of its new user interface today. The new version adds features that allow for organizing friends into different groups, which makes FriendFeed a lot easier to manage, especially for those who follow a large number of people. Also, you can now easily share photos on FriendFeed directly and see the home feeds of other users, which makes finding new friends a lot easier as well.
