ReadWriteWeb

In time for the one-year anniversary of the destructive Haiti earthquake, a group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MediaLab have rolled out Konbit, an expansive work database for those effected by the devastation, usable by those with computers and without, by those literate and illiterate. Aaron Zinman, a grad student who, along with Greg Elliott, developed the site, explained the opportunity.

"Normally (non-governmental organizations) organizations import foreign labor into Haiti due to the difficulty of finding local talent -- a problem we are trying to combat."

Editor's note: Every December the ReadWriteWeb team looks into the murky depths of the coming year and tries to predict the future. How did we do last year? Well, Facebook didn't go public, Google Wave didn't make a comeback, and Spotify didn't make it to the U.S. But our forecasts for Google Chrome, cloud computing, Facebook and something we called the "iTablet" were spot on. What's in store for 2011? All this week we've been posting our predictions. Let us know your prognostications in the comments.

Editor's note: Every December the ReadWriteWeb team looks into the murky depths of the coming year and tries to predict the future. How did we do last year? Well, Facebook didn't go public, Google Wave didn't make a comeback, and Spotify didn't make it to the U.S. But our forecasts for Google Chrome, cloud computing, Facebook and something we called the "iTablet" were spot on. What's in store for 2011? All this week we'll be posting our predictions. Let us know your prognostications in the comments.

1: There will be major opportunities and innovations around big data - storage, processing, analytics. "Data-driven" will be the new buzzword. "Data scientist" will be the new hot job. So in the spirit of the film The Graduate, I want to say one word to you. Just one word. "Statistics."

Champagne and fireworks not your thing? Instead of partying it up this New Year's Eve weekend, why not take the time to do a little hacking instead?

??Every so often, we like to feature a "weekend project" here on ReadWriteWeb. These generally consist of the kind of things you'll want to try out and play with when you have some free time, like over a weekend. Past projects have included things like hacking Nike+ for automatic Foursquare check-ins, a resource list on how to get started hacking Microsoft Kinect, experimenting with a customized, third-party version of Chrome OS called "Vanilla," and more.

This weekend, we've decided to round up a few resources detailing how to peek inside your mobile applications.

China outlaws Skype. VOIP phone and messaging systems have been outlawed in China with the exception of the state-owned China Unicom and China Telecom.

This is a pattern in China, where the two birds of repression and protectionism nest in the same bush. The combination of eliminating competition and controlling discourse made this act inevitable.

Not all legacy tech sticks it out, alas. Preceding floppies into the long techno-dark is Kodachrome.

The last roll of the color film will be developed tomorrow at Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, ending a 75-year run. Kodak's "discontinuance notice" explained the simple fact behind the end of a product that first debuted in 1935.

One of the features that the Barnes & Noble Nook has had that the Amazon Kindle lacked is the ability to lend e-books. No more.

You can now lend your Kindle books, as the feature, first reported back in October, has gone live today.

But before you get too excited about the ability to share your digital library, there are a number of key restrictions.

Editor's note: Every December the ReadWriteWeb team looks into the murky depths of the coming year and tries to predict the future. How did we do last year? Well, Facebook didn't go public, Google Wave didn't make a comeback, and Spotify didn't make it to the U.S. But our forecasts for Google Chrome, cloud computing, Facebook and something we called the "iTablet" were spot on. What's in store for 2011? All this week we'll be posting our predictions. Let us know your prognostications in the comments.

1. Predictive analytics will be applied to more business processes, regardless of whether it helps. Netuitive is applying predictive analytics to IT system monitoring. This is an ideal use for predictive analytics. But Theresa Doyon has written about how survival analysis can be applied to customer attrition and employee turn-over.

GAIN Fitness, a web based personal fitness service built by a team that includes two former Googlers, has launched in early Alpha mode to the public today. The service aims to help users make the most of the limited time to exercise, by recommending personalized workouts built from a list of 400 exercises and based on a user's goals and available time.

The GAIN team includes Nick Gammell, who spent two years doing financial modeling for YouTube and Google, and Robert Bailey, who was the lead visual designer for Google-acquired Picassa. It's rounded out by a Fullbright scholar who can do a one-armed pull-up and a software engineer with a demonstrated ability to lose weight quickly.

The link sharing service AddThis, which said this month that it's now tracking the interests of more than 1 billion people across the web, has published an infographic breaking down the most popular destinations for content shared through its little widget. Sites with an AddThis widget (like ours, above) allow readers to send pages of interest to friends through 300 different methods. What's the most popular way people share?

Facebook. Now more than ever, AddThis reports that Facebook's share of sharing grew from 33% last year to 44%. The company says that email, the second most popular method of sharing through its service, is 38% bigger than sharing on Twitter! And MySpace, though in sharp decline (down 27%), remains very popular. There are of course many different ways to share content, but these numbers from AddThis are quite interesting none the less. If you're not making it easy for website visitors to share your content by email, for example, you're probably making a big mistake.