Many a neutech hipster looked askance at the huge IBM-plex situated front and center at this year's Web 2.0 conference.
No one could deny the hardware/software/services giant's place in tech history (their first plant is now almost 100 years old), but what does it have to do with the glassy, streamy, widgety world that tech had become? IBM staff on-site had many answers for that oft-repeated question, which was usually phrased, roughly, "What the hell are you guys doing here?"
Streaming themed tweets in such fascinating verticals as journalism, venture capital, and music, Twitter aggregator SawHorse has raised an undisclosed seed round to support its growing network of sites.
Its two newest sites are focused on pets and celebrities.
Sometimes the low-hanging fruit holds the most potential - but it's hidden in plain sight. Facebook opened up the activity streams of users' friends this week to outside developers to put into new interfaces. The showcase examples in the news were things like Facebook-inside-desktop-Twitter applications. A San Francisco developer named Teck Chia saw another opportunity.
Chia built a Facebook application that you can grant permission to pull your Facebook newsfeed out of the site and publish as an RSS feed. It's called Newsfeed RSS. It's a simple thing, but it's an important development in the gradual opening of the walled garden that Facebook has been. Just to give you some ideas, here are five things that can now be done with the Facebook RSS feeds that Chia has set free.
New today from the self-explanatorily named TwtApps: TwtJobs, which aims to help job seekers and employers connect via Twitter.
Job seekers can create a "Twitter Resume," and employers can post job openings. The posting part is simple, elegant, and leaves one with a clean, ad-free, scannable piece of HR collateral. Users can even name their own price for a white-label version of the app that pulls design elements, including background and color schemes, from their Twitter profiles.
Social news site Reddit launched a great new service today called Reddit.tv. The new page allows users uninterrupted viewing of videos submitted to Reddit. Videos are split into categories and top comments from Reddit users appear beside the video player.
It's not perfect but it's pretty great. It's reminiscent of the excellent StumbleUpon Video but more timely, less repetitious and less full of commercials. The main question that comes to mind is: why hasn't Digg launched something like this yet?
Google just launched an experimental version of Flu Trends that focuses only on the current flu outbreak in Mexico. Google Flu Trends, which was launched last November, tracks and maps flu-related search queries to predict how many people in a given region actually have the flu. Google stresses that Flu Trends for Mexico is only an experimental product, and that it tries to distinguish between topical searches about the flu and searches by users who may actual experience flu symptoms. Given the current interest in the swine flu, a lot of users are obviously looking for general information about it, which could easily skew Google's algorithms.
Amazon just announced AWS in Education, a new program that will give students and educators free access to Amazon's Web Services (AWS) for work on research projects, class assignments, or other entrepreneurial projects on campus. Grants for researchers will be offered four times a year, and educators can request Teaching Grants, which would give every student in a teacher's class $100 in AWS credits. Students who are working on entrepreneurial class projects can also apply for grants.
The White House is making unprecedented use of consumer web technologies but those technologies aren't always well suited to fit the government's needs. They aren't always well suited to fit anyone's needs - but maybe if Obama leans on them a little bit things will change.
Today the White House launched an official collection of photos depicting Obama's first 100 days in office on Flickr. The Creative Commons Foundation asks why these photos are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution (meaning you have to credit the source) instead of being in the Public Domain free for use in any context, as data created by the Federal Government usually is.
Last October, Google announced that it had reached a deal with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, that would allow Google to scan, display, and sell advertising against out-of-print books. The advertising and subscription revenues from this deal would be shared between Google, the authors, and publishers. In the last few days, however, there have been a number of setbacks, and while the project probably won't be derailed by these, it looks like there will definitely be some delays.
A year ago, I wrote a magnum opus three-part post that attempted to chronicle some of the underlying changes happening in the economy and how this would impact web technology ventures. "Useful, but too long" was a recurring comment. So, here is a one-year update, much shorter. And hopefully a bit clearer, seeing as we are further into this transition.
