Forget the implosion of the housing market. Never mind whether the Big Three automakers have been dragging their heels on fuel efficiency and innovation. Set aside financial deregulation and a culture of greed. I now know the real reason for the economic collapse:
It's those damn puppies.
Reports were flooding in this week over Twitter, about workplace after workplace where people couldn't get a thing done because they were entranced by the antics of those little furballs. Productivity must have gone through the floor since that Ustream channel went live.
A rapidly spreading network worm, known as Agent BTZ, has prompted the U.S. army to put the use of USB drives and all removable data storage devices on hold temporarily, according to Wired's Noah Shachtman.
Given the worm is based on SillyFDC, which has been around for several years and has a low risk factor, the question has to be asked: is this over-kill by the Defense Department?
In just under eight hours, YouTube will begin celebrating its first live streamed event in San Francisco with a concert and party intended to celebrate its user community
Celebrities, Web celebs and major artists, including the mad scientists from the Mythbusters crew, will.i.am, Lisa Nova, Michael Buckley, and Joe Satriani will be joining the celebrations, and YouTube will be offering three live streams direct from its Live channel.
It's time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. On the trends side, we pondered the future of YouTube, analyzed mobile messaging trends, looked into a new search innovation from Google, and more. On the product side, we checked in - one year later - with 10 Semantic Apps we are tracking, celebrated the 1 billionth Mozilla addon, reported on a new Open-Source Media Center, and more. We also have highlights from the Enterprise Channel and Jobwire, our brand new product that tracks hires in tech and new media.
Every now and again some of us at ReadWriteWeb pop up in video or podcast recordings. Our VP Content Dev Marshall Kirkpatrick moreso than me, as he is based in the US. And Marshall is appearing on an interesting live video show tonight, called Strange Love Live. It will be broadcast live on Ustream at 10pm PST tonight (Friday). Hosted by Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal, Strange Love Live focuses on the latest happenings in online tech - calling on techies around the Portland, Oregon area to provide insight into their areas of expertise. Interesting without being dull, recent topics have ranged from OpenID to WordPress to iPhone apps. We're looking forward to seeing Marshall live tonight! Tune in at 10pm PST.
Canadian startup Sayvee will "soon" launch a new service that allows artists to quickly and easily create their own websites to sell their art, build community, support positive political causes and more. That doesn't sound like a show stopper (unless you're an artist in need of a website) but the videos the company made to promote their service are awesome!
We wish everyone put this much care into promo videos - then our jobs watching promo videos would be even more fun. And the serious business of promoting important web startups would overcome one of its most challenging obstacles - getting people to listen to and understand your explanation of some crazy new idea. So check out the Sayvee video we like best below, stop by their site for more and sign up there for notification when the new service is available.
Most people quickly answer this question in the affirmative. I certainly do. However, there are people out there who aren't sure. They look at the monthly cost of a SaaS application and compare it to the equivalent licensed product over an extended period of time. Given enough time, you will eventually hit a point when the SaaS product appears to be more expensive. Let's look at it from the perspective of the total cost of ownership (TCO).
Don't trust what you read on the internet? That's no longer the dominant sentiment in the US, according to a new poll by Zogby International. A survey of more than 3000 people performed in the two days after the US Presidential Election found that 37.6% of respondents considered the Internet the most reliable source of news, 20.3% consider national TV news most reliable and 16% said that radio is the most reliable source.
The survey found that most people find all the news biased in some way and there were a number of other interesting findings. It's quite striking, though, that we're at a point in history where the internet is trusted more than TV and the Radio!
Just about half a year ago, Google announced a limited beta of Friend Connect, which allows site owners to display OpenSocial based gadgets on their sites and site visitors to sign in to these social gadgets with their OpenID, AIM, Yahoo, or Google accounts.
Amit Agarwal has been keeping a close eye on Friend Connect since it was announced and he assumes that the service could go live pretty soon. Just last week, Google published a new YouTube video geared towards users and now the support site for Friend Connect is available as well.
Does Adobe think they can out-Google Google? Perhaps. The company is involved with Zoetrope, a joint project with researchers at the University of Washington. What they're building is a tool that allows for manipulating the web over time. Instead of the snapshot of the web you see today when googling, Zoetrope will let anyone use keyword searches to discover archived web information and look for patterns in the data found.
