To the list of things you worry about when you're writing a blog post or updating your status ("How will this affect my Technorati ranking?" "Will Wil Wheaton finally retweet me?" "Is this going to get me on a no-fly list?"), you can now add this: "What's my boss going to think?"
More and more employers want to know what you're doing, not just in your cubicle, behind the register or out in the field, but on the Net. They're trying to find out if your social media antics are going to reflect poorly on them. Should that be any of their business? After all, it's your Facebook account/blog/Twilight fan wiki; how is what you're doing any of their concern?
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The intelligence community is inputting data to the Web at an amazing rate. That mountain of data can be overwhelming to mere humans who are trying to read through pages and pages of information to pinpoint exactly what they're after. Mark Rutherford of CNET News reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has hired a tech company to develop a reader that will scour the Web and render certain information and knowledge into a form that is more easily digested and usable.
We've added a few good events to our schedule this week. So, pull up your calendars and block off days for the ones that match your interests. This events guide is a regular feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.
Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.
Have you ever wanted to create an iPhone app, but can't code your way out of a wet paper bag? Users of NewsGator's NetNewsWire iPhone news reader will have to wait a little longer for the next version of that application because its creator, Brent Simmons, has been busy working on a new iPhone framework called TapLynx. The goal of TapLynx is to help users generate topic-focused media applications for the iPhone without any programming required. The first application, created by Simmons, has already been built for All Things Digital.
In October 2006 online movie rental company Netflix announced a contest called The Netflix Prize; any team that could beat its in-house recommendation engine by 10% in predicting which movies people would like would win a $1 million prize. It was a huge engineering challenge that more than 50,000 teams of computer scientists signed up to take. Today one team, a combination of four of the front running teams actually, announced that it has built a system that delivers a 10.05% improvement.
If that team withstands the month long period of scrutiny that begins now, it will not only mean fame and (some) fortune for them and a big boost for Netflix - it could signal a key turning point for recommendation technology on the web.
Moore's Law, the observation that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit has doubled every two years, explains the exponential growth in computing power that enables all the innovation we web-heads love so much. Futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that the exponential growth of computing power extends beyond the history of the integrated circuit, though. Exponential growth in computing happened as a result of innovations prior to the circuit board and it will continue after the integrated circuit's dominance has been surpassed, Kurzweil believes.
Steve Jurvetson, one of the best-known technology investors in the world, has posted an updated version of Kurzweil's visualization of the history of exponential growth in computing. In his thought provoking discussion of the phenomenon, Jurvetson calls this "the most important chart in technology business."
When you hear the name Seesmic today, chances are that you are thinking about a Twitter client, but once upon a time, Seesmic was a much-hyped online "video conversation" service. Now, however, after a recent redesign, the Seesmic homepage basically doesn't mention the video service anymore and the video service has moved to its own subdomain. In a new video, Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur, reveals that Seesmic's video conversation site hasn't seen any growth in the last couple of months and that Seesmic plans to focus on its Twitter client in order to give Seesmic, the company, a chance to survive.
imeem, which describes itself as the "world's largest social music service," just told its community members that it plans to delete all photos and videos that users have uploaded to their profiles and groups on Jun 30th. imeem argues that it is doing this in order to simplify the service and focus on the service's core social music features. According to imeem, user-generated photos and videos weren't very popular on the site and cost a lot to host and stream. In a comment that sounds similar to what we've been hearing from other social media sites, imeem also argues that "there's no ROI for us in UGV," as advertisers just aren't very interested in seeing their content next to amateur videos.
Great bruising battles between powerful antagonists is good for media. It "sells papers," as we used to say, or "generates clicks", as we now say. When you mix in a love triangle and jilted lovers, well, the audience just goes wild. And Wired did a great job in its piece on Facebook, Google, and Microsoft: riveting stuff. But the thought that kept coming back to me is that Facebook's bravado, its "grand vision" talk, is what you would expect from a concept-level startup. Surely by now, about 6 years into its venture, Facebook should show some substance? It is time to deliver some real financial results. The concept-level talk is great for attracting capital and talent. Facebook has done that brilliantly. But the point of attracting capital and talent is to be able to generate financial results.
