ReadWriteWeb

June 2010 Archives

ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 31 July 2010

By Abraham Hyatt / July 31, 2010 04:00 AM / Comments

We're always on the lookout for upcoming Web tech events from around world. Know of something taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

You can import individual events in the Events Guide into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal file (which is importable into Google Calendar, Outlook, Windows Live Calendar, etc.) or even view it as a world map.

Weekly Wrap-up: Street Slide vs. Street View, StumbleUpon's Success, Digital Natives Not So Savvy, And More...

By Abraham Hyatt / July 30, 2010 10:00 PM / Comments

Readers were in the mood for maps this week because they pushed this story about a must-see video of Microsoft's Street Slide into the most-viewed category. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010: Internet of Things sensors are chicken; golfers get a hands-on augmented reality experience; and these are the data-sucking mobile Droids you're looking for. Read on for more.

Like a Robot Struck by Lightning: Gowalla to Launch Write API, Possibly With Pictures

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / July 30, 2010 10:28 AM / Comments

Imagine you were a robot who only knew how to describe the world in four ways: self, other, time, and object. Now imagine you were struck by a bolt of lightning and found your robot brain aware of a whole new column in the spreadsheet...Place. You'd feel like a whole new robot and you'd probably sing a very happy robot song.

That's what the social web is going through right now, with the rise of location data and services as a viable pivot point for developers to work their magic with. Next week 2nd place check-in app Gowalla says it will launch at least the beginning of something a small but fascinating group of robot magicians has long waited for: a write-capable API.

Twitter Annotations Not Coming Soon, After All

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / July 30, 2010 09:53 AM / Comments

This spring at Twitter's first developer conference Chirp the big splash was a forthcoming feature called Annotations. The feature will allow publishing software to annotate Tweets with a wide open variety of metadata, which could then be read and analyzed by other software. Annotations are going to be big, if and when they launch.

At Chirp it was said that the Annotations feature would launch in the second or third quarter of this year. Now the company's developer advocate, Taylor Singletary, said today on the Twitter developers list that it's not going to work out that way. "We haven't yet announced a release date," he said in response to an inquiry, "and it's still a ways in the future while we tackle some other projects."

Study: Youth Not Only Care About Facebook Privacy, They Do Something About It

By Mike Melanson / July 30, 2010 02:25 AM / Comments

Over the past year, Facebook and privacy are two topics that have become practically joined at the hip. The site has changed its privacy settings again and again and last winter CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared the death of privacy. One of the leading arguments behind all of this has been that we live in a new era, beyond the "age of privacy", and the new social norm for the next generation is to share, freely and without regard for such antiquated concerns as privacy.

New research released today from Eszter Hargittai and danah boyd shows that instead of disregarding privacy, youth have increasingly modified their privacy settings on Facebook over the last year. The age of privacy over, indeed.

Move Over Taylor Swift, Occipital Brings Real-Time Panorama Creation to the iPhone

By Chris Cameron / July 30, 2010 02:00 AM / Comments

Taylor Swift has nothing on Boulder software startup Occipital. The pop star has been seen recently in an ad for the Sony TX7 Cyber-shot whose selling-point is the ability to create a panoramic image by sweeping the camera once from side-to-side. Occipital, makers of the popular RedLaser app (which eBay recently purchased from the startup), has brought this very same functionality one of the best selling cameras on the market today - the iPhone. Launching today in the AppStore, 360 Panorama (or just "360" for short) will allow iPhone users to do their best Taylor Swift impersonations by creating panoramic images with one sweep of their phones.

Tests Confirm "Death Grip" Unique to iPhone 4, Consulting Firm Says

By Sarah Perez / July 30, 2010 01:45 AM / Comments

International management, I.T. consulting and technology firm PA Consulting Group claims that the so-called "iPhone death grip" (the method of holding the iPhone 4 to degrade antenna performance) is a problem unique to the new iPhone. After performing tests, the firm confirms that the phone's wireless performance was generally in the same range as other smartphones except when held in the "death grip" - then, it performed significantly worse than its competitors.

According to Simon Tonks, the consultant who led the testing, "Our tests indicate that the 'death grip' issue is real, and is worse for the Apple iPhone 4 than for other smartphones."

Apple Patents Travel, Hotel and Fashion Applications

By Sarah Perez / July 30, 2010 12:37 AM / Comments

Three new patent applications that just became public on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website reveal that Apple is now patenting ideas for mobile applications. Specifically, these patents applications describe iPhone apps that would aid in making travel arrangements, booking hotels and shopping.

The patent applications were uncovered this morning by wireless news site Unwired, which called the development "scary" and equated Apple to a patent troll. If granted, these apps would allow Apple to patent ways in which mobile applications function, including everything from mobile boarding passes to store locator functions.

Google Earth Shows Real-Time Weather

By Mike Melanson / July 30, 2010 12:05 AM / Comments

While we certainly don't expect you'll begin planning your days around the new feature, Google has added a new layer to Google Earth that makes it feel even more like you're taking a live, real-time look at the earth from a satellite above - real-time weather.

Just added to the latest version of Google Earth, the feature offers a live view of the weather, from radar to raindrops.

Video Content Farms: Howcast

By Richard MacManus / July 29, 2010 04:01 PM / Comments

Content farms have been in the spotlight over the past year. They're companies that generate hundreds or thousands of new pieces of content on a daily basis. Much of their traffic comes from Google search, so the aim of content farms is to rake in the money with online advertising. Demand Media has been the most ambitious of these companies, but even the big portals are doing it nowadays. Yahoo! recently acquired Associated Content and AOL launched an initiative earlier this year disingeniously called Seed.

In our content farms coverage so far, we've focused mostly on textual content farms. But video may well be the next frontier. A startup called Howcast specializes in mass production of video content.

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