ReadWriteWeb

Wakoopa, a social network for software enthusiasts, has released a list of the most used applications of 2008 based on the usage of its members.

Wakoopa has not just collated the most popular Windows, Mac, and web applications, but it's also identified newcomers that showed prolific growth during 2008.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the immensely popular Wikipedia online encyclopedia, just announced that it has reached its fundraising goal for 2008, which will allow the foundation to cover its operating expenses for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 2009. Overall, a total of 125,000 donors gave over $6.2 million during 2008, though in December alone, after a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, 50,000 individuals contributed more than $2 million.

According to the latest data from Net Application, in November, Mozilla's Firefox browser surpassed 20% market share for the first time in its history, while Microsoft's IE7 now only commands under 70% of the browser market. Google's Chrome, which had been hovering around 0.75% after its initial release, saw a small growth spurt at the end of 2008, while Apple's Safari made significant gains during the last year.

European researchers working on the MOBVIS project have developed a new system that will allow camera phone users to hyperlink the real world. After taking a picture of a streetscape in an urban area, the MOBVIS technology identifies objects like buildings, infrastructure, monuments, cars, and even logos and banners. It then renders relevant information on the screen using icons that deliver text-based details about the object when clicked.

Even though Google took their web browser Google Chrome out of beta last month, we can't help but feel like Chrome is still only half way to being a compete product at this point. Without RSS support, the ability to use add-ons, and gasp! no Mac version, Chrome still has a way to go before people give up Firefox for good and make a full switch.

EtherPad is not likely to win a prize for its user interface design, but it may just be one of the most useful web apps we have seen in quite a while. EtherPad allows you to instantly create a workspace for text documents that you can then share with your colleagues, clients, or friends. Every edit to the document will immediately appear on your co-workers' screens in real-time.

EtherPad acknowledges that Google Docs already allows for a similar kind of collaboration, but compared to EtherPad, Google Docs is clunky and slow when you just want to collaborate on a simple text document.

In the early days of blogging you could go to the Technorati Blog Index, enter some identifying terms for a particular niche topic and discover what the top blogs were in the field.

Identifying top niche blogs is invaluable knowledge for anyone wanting to enter, study or market to people in a particular field. It's one of the fastest and most effective ways to learn the lay of the land and get involved in the community of successful artists, real estate agents or 4-H club leaders using social media. I've been seeing a lot of demand for this information lately so I thought I'd write up some quick pros and cons of the options I'm familiar with. Perhaps you'll add some of your own favorite methods in comments.

Internet search and advertising giant Yahoo! has been a household name almost from its inception in March of 1995. During the dot-com bubble, Yahoo! shares sold at a record $118.75 a share. Thirteen years later, Stanford alumni and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang has lost his position as the CEO, over a thousand employees have been laid off, and the company missed its opportunity for a great exit. In order to survive and restore its position in the market, Yahoo! must now undertake drastic measures and survival tactics.

Developer Paul Mison has created an interesting Flickr mashup that shows you a map of the locations with the most photos based on a criterion of your choice. By default, that's a tag, but the mashup can also display your photos, the photos of your friends and family, or those belonging to your contacts.