One role of the government is to protect the country and make its citizens feel safe through policy and regulation. But in today's digital era, policy making is moving to the people, and we are witnessing individual corporations - be they for profit or not - getting more involved in Internet standards.
A panel of industry experts convened at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this month, and moderated by ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick, discussed the issues surrounding Internet standards. We've written up our notes below and hope to begin a conversation about whether Internet standards should be administrated by private organizations or our leaders in the White House.
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter where the top stories of the week are summarized, we present highlights from our coverage of the Web 2.0 Expo (held this week in San Francisco), review the new Skype app for iPhone, discuss the local / mobile Web with a panel of experts in our podcast show RWW Live, check out the winners of the Ribbit VOIP KillerApps Challenge, and more. Also, we look at featured stories from ReadWriteHire, our new product which tracks hires in tech and new media.
The Web 2.0 Expo's startup showcase, Launch Pad, gave five companies five minutes each to present their product to a panel of experts today and the People's Choice winner was awesome. The judges who cut the field from more than 80 applicants down to 5 were Matt Marshall (VentureBeat), Anand Iyer (Microsoft) and ReadWriteWeb's own Marshall Kirkpatrick.
Members of the audience voted for their favorite product via SMS. Of those who voted, 43% decided that mobile development platform PhoneGap was the winner. We have a summary of the pitches below.
Some of us know what hitting the front page of Digg can do: send 20,000 - 200,000+ clicks through to a site. Some of us have even felt the blessing (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of the Digg Effect. But how much do you know about integrating social media, specifically Digg, into your site, and what the benefits of doing so can bring to publishers?
Bob Buch, VP of business development for Digg spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today and explained that if you want successful social media integration, you need to think chocolate chip cookies. "Much like social media, choc chip cookies are made up of five key ingredients," he explained, "and if you want to succeed, you need to know what those ingredients are."
Tim O'Reilly, co-founder of the Web 2.0 Conference, gave a short address on the 5th anniversary of that event at tonight's Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and offered some thoughts on what's going to come next. He discussed five applications that he believes point the way.
Two themes stood out: sensors will surpass humans in front of their keyboards as the primary data source on the web and Moore's Law will need to be applied to humanity's greatest problems.
