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The future of search almost certainly involves social networks, social graphs, or social filtering in some capacity. Companies will live or die by whether they get the "social" part right: creating the right level of intimacy, trust, reliability, social connectedness, and accuracy in their results listings. Of course, this specifically means that their user experience must at least meet or, preferably, exceed that of Google's.
To achieve this, we must first stop arguing over the different flavors of search.
There's an interesting discussion on Ethan Zuckerman's blog over a New York Times journalist's blog post that names an Iranian blogger as a rumored collaborator with the regime in Tehran.
One key thread in that conversation: are the rules different for journalists - for instance, around repeating rumors - when they're blogging than when they're writing for the front page?
This week, we've put all of our events into a calendar so that you can keep track of them using your scheduling app of choice. So, go ahead and download the entire calendar in iCal format. You can also use this link to import it into your Google Calendar, or import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly 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.
At its peak, a search for "Iran" on Twitter generated over 100,000 tweets per day and over 8,000 tweets per hour. The plot just below shows the growth in volume of information in the number of tweets per hour.
How does an Internet junkie, news organization, or political operative monitor rapidly evolving real-time events, from the crucial details to the bigger picture? More importantly, how can a data stream be turned into real-time action, reaching the people who need it, when they need it, and in a form they can easily digest?
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we analyze why Amazon spent nearly a billion dollars to purchase online shoe shop Zappos, explain why IBM is an early leader in the Internet of Things, investigate whether the Google Chrome OS will finally deliver us the mythical GDrive, look at why Barnes & Noble is a worthy challenger to Amazon's eBook empire, and more. We also check in on our two new channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).
Note: this week ReadWriteWeb released our second premium report: our Q2 2009 VC Funding Report. Full details below...
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs mentioned casually to CNN today that Twitter is blocked on official White House computers. Gibbs clearly doesn't appreciate the value that can be derived from the innovative social network; he jokes about it as if it is a tool for personal exhibitionism.
Many readers here will no doubt recognize that there's a whole lot more that can be done with the service than that. This is from the same administration that won't let its employees at the State Department use Firefox (State Dept. for IT admin reasons), so perhaps nothing is surprising. The Twitter admission by Gibbs was excerpted in a video embedded below, originally reported by Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times.
Update: On Monday morning, Rachel Sklar at Mediaite reported that some White House staff do in fact have access to Twitter from White House computers and there is work underway to extend that access to a larger group of employees. That sounds like good news to us.
In its effort to detangle itself from the ongoing proceedings of the European Union antitrust case, it seems Microsoft is offering to include rival web browsers in the Windows OS. Revealed in a statement by the European Commission, Microsoft offered to give consumers a choice of browser installation through a browser ballot screen. New computer owners running Windows may get a chance to choose their browsers form a variety of software makers.
Earlier this morning we reported on the AP's new content tracking system and already we're seeing the blogosphere light up with cries of nefarious intent. Nevertheless, just to prove that content tracking may not always be about serving DMCA take down notices, Creative Commons featured the Tynt Tracer tool in a morning blog post.
Earlier this week Microsoft announced the release of 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code is meant to enhance Linux performance when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or R2 Hyper-V. Essentially it is aimed at server resource efficiency and reducing the costs associated with managing a company's IT infrastructure. Nevertheless, as revealed by Vyatta engineer Stephen Hemminger, the release may have been a legal requirement as Microsoft's code was originally in violation of the GNU General Public License.
