Microsoft Research has hired social network researcher danah boyd, probably the most high profile academic in the world focused on the emerging web and its social consequences.
Who is danah boyd? (She spells her own name with lower case letters.) You may have seen her when she hit the international spotlight for writing about the shift from MySpace to Facebook. She wrote that her research leads her to conclude that "The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other 'good' kids are now going to Facebook. ...MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, 'burnouts,' 'alternative kids,' 'art fags,' punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm."
Spore was one of the most anticipated PC games of the year and launched to great hype. While most reviewers weren't too ecstatic about the game itself, it was Electronic Arts' attempt to stop piracy with an overly restrictive DRM scheme that got Spore a lot of its post-launch coverage. Shortly after its release, irate users started to flood Spore's Amazon page with negative reviews. Most of these users complained about the DRM scheme that only allowed the game to be registered on three computers and only allowed for one user account per license. Now, according to the BBC, Electronic Arts has given in and extended the number of possible installations and users to five.
New Dev Suite Lets LongJump Work With Other Apps
When LongJump first launched, the PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) model was only just taking off. Since then, we've seen Google launch their App Engine and more services than ever are taking advantage of Amazon's EC2. Today, the Sunnyvale, California-based PaaS provider, LongJump, tries to one-up those big-name sites with the launch of their new LongJump Development Suite, a tool set that helps developers extend the power of LongJump by allowing interoperability with other systems and applications.
Today, socialmedian, the social news web site which we've described as a "less noisy FriendFeed" launched a new set of features called "Replize." Now socialmedian users can track conversations on the service, much in the same way that users can track responses to a question on Twitter, all it takes is the use of @username.
Socialmedian has also announced Flickr integration which allows you to include your uploaded photos on Flickr in your news stream.
The tech and mobile industries are buzzing about the impending release of the first Google Android handset. We've been waiting since February to find out whether an official Android handset will see the light of day. But after numerous setbacks, a device that will carry Android is finally here. Better known as the HTC Dream or G1, the device is set to be available on the T-Mobile network as early as next week, priced at $199.
We'd like your help in predicting the following: Will T-mobile or AT&T adjust their entry price point (either up or down) for the HTC Dream and the iPhone respectively in 2008? Let us know by casting your vote at RWW Predictions.
This week, as part of our ongoing Mainstream Web Watch series, we'll be looking into how religious groups are using Web technologies. As early adopters in the tech industry, many of us have near spiritual experiences about our favorite products - as Rob Cottingham highlighted in his RWW cartoon over the weekend! But let's look at how actual religions are deploying web technologies to spread their respective gospels.
In this post we'll look at a Christian church, LifeChurch, which is using the Web in an extensive way. In upcoming posts we'll cover other religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Note that we're going to keep a tight focus on the technology - rather than what is being preached with the technology.
RWW is the Premiere Media Sponsor for the Defrag Conference, happening 3-4 November in Denver Colorado. You can register for Defrag here. Entering the code "rww1" will get RWW readers $200 off of the early bird price.
Highlights from Defrag this year will include a discussion about Strategic Intuition, a presentation from Esther Dyson called 'The Quantification of Everything', a discussion about whether collaboration is changing how we consume and interact with analysis, and much more.
iPhone users tend to get pretty excited when they see a number alert right over the App Store icon. This means that an app or two has been updated and is available for downloading. This week we've seen seen numerous great updates from some apps that we love.
Here are our picks of the top 4 app updates that brought great features and more stability to our iPhones this week.
Back in July Apple released a handful of tools for enterprises looking to deploy iPhones to their organization. One of the tools released was the Web Configuration Utility for Windows and Mac OS. This allows enterprises to easily create, sign and distribute configuration profiles using a web browser.
Now, Apple has released another tool to extend the functionality, allowing enterprises to access logs and install apps on iPhones as well as configure them.
There are times when I wonder if there's something wrong with the fact that I anticipate, say, the next Macworld keynote or big Google announcement more than, say, my own birthday.
But then I get distracted by a cool new web application, and the feeling goes away.
