ReadWriteWeb

Google Street View has made a few headlines at RWW lately - once for getting itself into hot water in Europe and once, notably, for bringing Street View's photo-tour features into retail outlets.

Now, we've learned that Street View will also begin to feature user-submitted photographs. According to a recent Google Lat Long blog post, "We began integrating user photos into Street View last year. User photos allow you to view locations from entirely new perspectives, whether through the eyes of a talented photographer with a knack for capturing architectural detail, or simply taken from locations we couldn't get to... We're making it easier to navigate through these images in a way that should feel similar to how you're used to exploring within Street View."

We've recently come across an app that literally brings its users "talking pictures."

Essentially, Fotobabble attaches an audio caption to any image you can upload. It's a cute, fun way to share and narrate photos with friends, and could even be useful for certain kinds of online businesses - for example, photographers who wanted to explain more information about a particular shot or online retailers who wanted to give potential customers details about a product. Can Fotobabble accomplish these tasks better with audio than conventional text-based captions do now? Read on and tell us what you think.

Last year, Foursquare was called the break-out mobile app of the conference by more than one tech journalist.

This year, a new contender has appeared - Austin's native Gowalla. And Brightkite is still hanging on to the LBS community,

Which do you use now? And when your attention is at a premium during one of the year's most popular geek conferences, which app or apps will you use to collect badges, connect with friends, and find out where the party really is?

You know those time-lapse videos that compress days, weeks or years into minutes? The ones with flowers budding, blooming and then withering in seconds? Or late-1990s Silicon Valley startups getting venture capital, blowing it on espresso bathtubs and Dr. Pepper fountains, and vanishing into receivership?

I think Twitter may be the same thing, except for language. In spoken English, it can take decades - even centuries - for new words to emerge, become part of common parlance, and then fade into disuse.

Our readers know ReadWriteWeb as the blog that's ahead of the technology curve. Our sponsors know us as that, too. Once a week we introduce our sponsors to our readers and let them know a little more about who they are and what they do. You can say thanks to the companies that make ReadWriteWeb happen by tweeting them (see the link below each sponsor) or following them using our Twitter list.

Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? Our readers are smart, tech-savvy decision makers; 40% have a graduate degree or PhD, and over 45% play a key role in information technology purchasing decisions. More than 1 million people on Twitter follow us to stay abreast of the latest Web technology trends from around the globe. To find out more about our sponsor packages, visit our advertising page or email our COO.

The big news of the week was Google's efforts to remove censorship from its search results in China - read on for our coverage and analysis of this news. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Internet of Things.

Note: We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format.

There's plenty of new stuff on this week's calendar but nothing comes close to Global Ignite Week. And with more than 50 events all around the world, it's likely that there's an Ignite close to you. Remember, they're almost guaranteed to make you smarter. Like the the Ignite motto says: "Enlighten us, but make it quick."

How do you like your events calendar? As a world map? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Earlier this month we noticed PRManna climbing up the Hacker News front page and reached out to the creator for an interview. Ryan Waggoner started PRManna in his spare time and was open in saying that the project was inspired by Peter Shankman's Help a Reporter Out. The difference between PRManna and HARO is that Waggoner's product was specifically meant for startup companies to answer blogger and journalist tech queries. Whereas, HARO is a general news service. The question is, are the sites far enough apart to be considered different products?

Last year, the ARToolkit, a fundamental building block for creating augmented reality applications, was ported to Flash in the form of the FLARToolkit. This was a watershed moment for AR, as it became exponentially easier for Flash developers to create their own augmented reality experiences. Before then, AR had been a high-tech concept that experienced developers and companies had been experimenting with; by becoming more accessible to Flash developers, AR took off in popularity last year.

Facebook is about to become a quieter, less annoying place for users. The company just announced that it has deprecated "application notifications" and will require apps to use other, less intrusive methods of sending news to users. It's a big step in the ongoing anti-MySpace-ification of Facebook. Though to be fair, MySpace recently instituted something similar. Now your "notifications" section on Facebook will just be for things like comments left on your posts.

It's a good move that puts the interests of users ahead of short-term benefits for app developers and monetization.