ReadWriteWeb

A group of popular Web device designers briefly meet and draw up a sketch of their newest gadget. Once they all agree, they hit save and they're done. By the end of the day, hundreds of truckloads of their latest Internet of Things device is not only in the hands of customers on every continent, but each device has already been uniquely modified for each user's specific needs.

This fast approaching era of desktop manufacturing via advanced MakerBots and other 3D printers is in part why ThingM co-founder Mike Kuniavsky runs an annual conference called Sketching in Hardware. The event aims to "bring together a small group of people from technology, education, art and design worlds to talk about how to make creating electronics as easy as drawing with a pencil."

In the age of 1080p HDTVs, when almost every home has at least one computer and state-of-the-art mobile phones are seen in the hands of grade-schoolers, its hard to remember a time when viewing media required a trip to a theater. We've come a long way since those days, but theaters still put on plays and musicals, symphonies still perform, and musicians still entertain - but how can they compete with new media in hopes to attracting a younger audience? As the old saying goes: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Amir Salihefendic, the mastermind of Todoist and Plurk, has introduced another -ism with Wedoist.

Wedoist is a real-time project management tool - think along Basecamp lines. Amir has folded into the system a number of tech trends, hoping to point the product into the future.

Real-time alerts and notifications are a powerful feature being added to more applications every day; the addition of real-time notifications can make a big difference in user experience and peoples' work performance when using apps.

Unfortunately, there's not one standard way to easily code these notifications across platforms and there's very little support for web apps seeking to send notifications to users. It's been one of the advantages that desktop apps have had over the web. That could be about to change.

Crowdsourced GPS app Waze has announced a further integration of its service with microblogging and location apps, as well as support for the iPhone's new iOS4.

The iPhone version was approved by Apple this afternoon, according to Waze community cartographer Di-Ann Eisnor.

"This updated version is fully optimized for the iPhone's new iOS 4, which allows apps to run in the background while giving users the ability to simultaneously conduct other important tasks, such as sending and receiving calls, all while still hearing turn-by-turn voice instructions. When Waze goes into the background, smart algorithms are applied to detect whether or not the device is in motion. Following a long standstill, Waze will automatically close itself when it determines that you are no longer using the app, avoiding needless data and battery consumption."

Google News today announced it is rolling out a new layout with new features designed to bring readers a more personalized, local and social news experience. While still highlighting top stories and adding a list of trending topics similar to Twitter's, Google is now giving the reader additional customization options and adding a section for local news and weather, among other features. As Megan Garber at The Neiman Journalism Lab puts it: "The new site is trying to balance two major, and often conflicting, goals of news consumption: personalization and serendipity."

Opportunities to visualize data can turn the theoretical into the actual. Even so, many tools and services that do so are useful mostly to professionals - academics, economists, business people. Paper.li, a young Swiss company that turns a user's Twitter links into a newspaper-like Web page has been spectacularly successful at doing so for the lay person.

We're not the only entity to think so, apparently. A scrum of investors lined up behind the company, including Kima Ventures, whose co-founder, Xavier Niel, recently bought what is, arguably, France's best-known newspaper, Le Monde.

Ever since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the subsequent and ongoing spilling of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the public has been asking many questions. Who is to blame? How long will it take to stop the leak? How much irrevocable damage has been done? Thankfully, YouTube may be the best platform to get answers to these questions straight from the horse's mouth.

Wesabe is closing its doors. In an announcement on its site today, Marc Hedlund, the company's CEO said the personal finance site can't take care of its obligations to assistance and security.

Almost two years ago, we wrote a survey of the 10 leading personal finance sites. In the intervening months, three have shut down, one has been folded into another and a fifth, Mint, has been acquired. That's quite a grisly faceplant for a sector in which we could find 10 companies to profile.

Shopping giant Amazon bought online auction phenomenon Woot today, and given the relative sizes of the companies, it can only be a move made with long-term Amazon strategy in mind. Earlier this afternoon we wrote about the deal as a victory for freaks and a marriage of light- and heavy-weight supply chains, but there's something else going on here, too.

Woot is bringing real-time social shopping to Amazon. We pinged ReadWriteWeb reader Michael Vorel, the CEO of commerce, Internet marketing and consulting company Vastplanet for a brief comment, and he argued that this was a competitive move against the coming media convergence that will pit Amazon against TV shopping networks.