Vator.tv, a social media site for entrepreneurs, announced a micro-blogging service for startups today that allows these companies to update their followers about the latest developments at their companies. This micro-blogging service works similar to Twitter, though the character limit has been raised from 140 to 280. Currently, only ten companies are using this feature during the alpha program, as Vator.tv was worried about potential scalability issues. These ten companies are Occipital, Nimbuzz, Blippr, Indaba Music, Crispy Gamer, Wize, Ignighter, Famplosion, Vayyoo, and Buzzd. Vator.tv expects to roll out a larger beta program within the next month.
Few elements of the "Open Stack" have garnered as much attention - or as much support - as OpenID, a way to use a single digital identity across multiple Web sites. That acceptance led ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick to call the OpenID Foundation "one of the leading organizations in the new standards world." In that same post, Kirkpatrick urged people to participate in the elections for the OpenID Foundation Board of Directors. Now, the time for that participation has come.
Podcasting has had its challenges over the past couple of years and we even once questioned whether it would survive! But at heart we at ReadWriteWeb love listening to podcasts, nearly as much as we love reading blogs. So we decided to find out the favorite podcasts of our readers and writers. We put the call out on Twitter and got a great response. The results are below, together with the favorites of the ReadWriteWeb authors.
We'd like to continue the discussion in the comments - and also tell us how you listen to podcasts these days. I usually listen to them while walking the dog. But everyone is different, so tell us your preferred podcast listening method.
SlideShare is the most popular social site for presentations on the Web. Microsoft PowerPoint - despite its detractors - remains the most popular presentation software around. What if those two had the power to work together? What if sharing new PowerPoint presentations was as easy as clicking a button?
Now, it can be. Today, SlideShare is introducing the "SlideShare Ribbon" an add-in that makes the sharing and social features of SlideShare accessible without even leaving PowerPoint.
In November, Microsoft released a major update to its Windows Live online services. Today, Microsoft also released the new versions of its Windows Live Essentials desktop tools that accompany the online services. The Windows Live Essentials suite includes updates for Live Mail, Live Messenger, Live Writer, Live Photo Gallery, Live Movie Maker, Live Toolbar, Office Outlook Connector, and Windows Live Family Safety. There are also a two new additions: Windows Live Sync and the Office Live Add-In. Silverlight is now also part of the Live Essentials suite.
Taylor McKnight has been called a "serial mashup developer" and he's involved in some of the coolest mashup sites we've seen in recent years. Three years ago he won the grand prize at the first ever MashupCamp for his site PodBop ("We podcast bands coming to your town"). Then he came on board at one of the most popular little music sites on the web, Hype Machine. He's also working in a little startup called Sched.org, a service that started by offering an unofficial calendar for the SXSW festival and now pays the bills building custom social schedules for other events.
Today Taylor McKnight launched a new site that he's been working on since Spring, and he says it's like Hype Machine for standup comedy.
Looking back on 2008, we can definitely call it the year of the Mobile Web. That designation, in large part, is due to the success of the iPhone. Although the iPhone was originally launched in 2007, it wasn't until mid-2008 that the 3G version debuted, bringing with it the faster internet speeds that finally made the device a usable mobile computing platform.
There is no doubt that the iPhone led to a trickle-down effect that influenced nearly every aspect of both handset development and the mobile web itself. Every manufacturer is looking for an "iPhone killer," everyone is dong an app store, and web sites themselves are becoming iPhone-friendly. Meanwhile, mobile app developers are reaping the rewards of having a new platform on which they can develop.
We've just published aggregate stats for the past 6 weeks of new hires reported over at Jobwire today and we think the numbers are pretty interesting. Marketing and social network companies are making lots of hires and both developers and community managers/new media specialists are getting a lot of those jobs.
Join us over at Jobwire to check out our pie charts and where tech and new media companies are putting their money these days.
While the Wikipedia is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, it surprisingly lacked an official mobile version until today. Over the years, a number of companies released their own mobile versions of the service, but an official version the Wikipedia itself was never available through a dedicated mobile interface. Now, you can surf to mobile.wikipedia.com to see a stripped down but highly functional version of the Wikipedia on your favorite mobile device.
At ReadWriteWeb our mission is to explore the very latest web technology products and trends. We like to test out all the new web apps and spot the trends before others, and we're fortunate to have a great group of sponsors who support this goal. So once a week we write a post about them; here's who they are, what they do and what they've been up to lately. We hope you'll pay them a visit as a way to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site.
Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is read by a particularly sophisticated audience of thought leaders and decision makers. We have several innovative new features in our sponsor packages which we'd love to tell you about. Email our COO Bernard Lunn for all the details.
