Last weekend, we attended a web demo of Wolfram Alpha, a new "computational knowledge engine" based on the work of Stephen Wolfram. Some have dubbed Alpha a "Google killer," but, in reality, it is very different from the standard search engines that we are all familiar with today.
When we got the demo, Wolfram asked us to refrain from publishing any screenshots. Today, however, the Berkman Center posted a video of the public demo Wolfram gave earlier this week, so we think it's only fair that we share our own screenshots with our readers at this point.
One part people, one part machine. Is that a formula for more effective decision making? A number of high-profile entrepreneurs believe it is, and they are starting companies based on the idea.
In the following post we take a look at three of the most exciting startups entering this emerging market. The movement is a logical development now that millions of people are comfortable posting information online. The web's next step is to leverage machine learning. These are three companies to watch who are doing just that - combining user input with technology that improves its performance by gathering and processing data. In this case they are doing it in order to help people make better decisions, but these are just some of the first consumer technologies that will enter the cyborg-like space that combines people and machines in order to better serve people.
Via the Official Gmail Blog, the best news since the lunar landing: Go into your Gmail account, click on the Google Labs icon, and enable Google Search in your Gmail account.
A simple little search box will appear right there in your sidebar. But that's not even the awesome part. The range of tricks you can play with the search results is astounding.
Earlier this week, we reported that a large number of businesses worry that social networking could endanger corporate security, but according to a new report from Palo Alto Networks, social networking is only a minor issue when compared to the proliferation of browser-based file sharing tools, P2P networks, remote desktop access applications, and more sophisticated encrypted tunneling applications like SSH, GPass, and Gbridge.
Social interaction online is not very sophisticated. The news feed model of conversation has taken over the social web, from Facebook to Twitter to FriendFeed to MySpace, but by itself it doesn't serve us very well.
That's where the creation of groups of sources comes in. Various services have different ways for users to separate their "friends" into different groups, viewable by topic, category or type of connection. Facebook is making changes today to make it easier to break your Facebook Newsfeed into groups. That's going to be very important. The best Twitter applications offer group functionality that the site itself doesn't. MySpace offers no such feature, yet. The Facebook news prompted us to try to articulate the value of group creation online. By better understanding the value that groups can deliver, we can better strategize our creation of groups.
The search engine market is obviously dominated by a small number of big players, but that doesn't mean that small companies with interesting ideas can't still get at least a small slice of this market. One of these services is Duck Duck Go, which has a rather silly name, but turns out to be a pretty interesting search engine. Duck Duck Go aims to get its users to their desired destinations in as few clicks as possible. Instead of long lists of results, Duck Duck Go simply tries to return the most relevant links about a given topic.
This morning, Hulu and Disney announced that Disney will join NBC Universal, News Corp., and Providence Equity Partners as a joint venture partner and equity holder of Hulu. Thanks to this, Hulu will now be able to feature shows from ABC's prime-time lineup like "Lost," "Grey's Anatomy," and "Private Practice," as well as shows from ABC Daytime and SOAPnet. Hulu will also now feature a select number of programs from the Disney Channel and library titles from Disney.
At the OMMA Mobile conference on Wednesday, Jim McDonnell, marketing manager, emerging channels for Papa John's International, shared some bad news about the potential for mobile applications associated with a business. In short, he basically called the Papa John's iPhone app a dud, saying that the company hasn't "seen anything that really delivers for us as well as mobile display advertising," and based on the numbers, the company has decided not to expand to other mobile platforms.
Oh no! The iPhone doesn't deliver? Businesses take heed? Well, that's what it sounds like. Except there's just one small problem here: Papa John's doesn't have an iPhone app - they have a mobile website.
Last month, you may remember having heard about a special iPhone ad from Dockers. Its claim to fame was that it was the world's first "shakable" ad. Called "Shakedown to Get Down," the ad prompted users to shake the phone in order to set the on-screen freestyle dancer into motion. The dancer, of course, wore Dockers. It was certainly a clever attention-getter at the time, something that had everyone talking. But this ad wasn't just a one-off experimental project - it was representative of the start of a new trend and one that's going to change advertising as we know it.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a journalist. My heroes were people like Woodward and Bernstein and the people reporting from war zones. The profession seemed to be both glamorous and worthwhile. Faced with a real decision as a young adult, I went into the IT industry. Then, later in my career, I started blogging, and then writing for ReadWriteWeb, and now I am COO of this news media business. So that got me thinking about the past, present, and future of journalism. Disclosure: I do not come at this from a long career as a journalist. This is a personal, blog-style view of the journalism profession by somebody who cares about the outcome.
