The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Companion Cube cannot speak. In the event that the Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice. -- GLaDOS, Portal

The Driest Continent

Ever wonder which continent is most likely to dehydrate? Antarctica wins the prize for the most parched of the 7. Take heart though, if her ice sheets melted, the oceans of the world would be 200 feet higher. Source: Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, page 340, photo from Mike White on McMurdodo Dry Valleys

Green Potatoes Are Deadly

Potatoes are a member of the nightshade family (yes, the same family that offers up the Nightshade flowers that are so very useful in your Elder Scrolls plant collecting), and as such, do have a deadly component, Solanine. While small quantities of solanine are found throughout the plant, green areas on the tuber have higher concentrations. This is because green indicates the potato has been exposed to the sun, causing increased production of solanine (and harmless chlorophyll). Unless you actively attempt to poison yourself though, you're probably safe. You'd have to eat several pounds of green potatoes to see symptoms. Source: Wikipedia, Snopes and photo from Ask Julie

The Lydians Invented Money

As we all purchase our holiday gifts this year with money rather than chickens and goats, we should thank the Lydians, who are the first to coin money. That's, of course, as far as historians know, and certainly depends on the definition of the word 'coin', but remember, if the Lydians weren't the first, they were certainly the first to spread their coin around. Source: Exeter and photo from Numismatics

Which 3 Technological Advances Made the Age of Skyscrapers Possible?

Do you think you know all three? If so, submit your answer in the comments on this post. We'll announce the winner of the mute but cuddly Companion Cube tomorrow.

Congratulations to Andrew Orr, who submitted the best answer and won the Companion Cube. Stay tuned the rest of the week for more Trivia.

Last year, KFC started the first-ever Twitter scholarship where students had to tweet why they deserved the money in 140 characters or less. The winner was California high school senior Amanda Russell, who won with this tweet: "Hey Colonel! Your scholarship's the secret ingredient missing from my recipe for success! Got the grades, drive, just need cash!" She is now attending UCLA.

Students have to have a minimum cumulative high school GPA of 2.75 and plan to pursue a bachelor's degree next fall. Only US citizens or permanent residents can apply. So get out your cameras today and start posting! If you aren't artistic and want another chance to win, you can enter online here at the KFC Scholars website before February 1 for one of 75 separate $20k scholarships.

It's now 7 years after the term Web 2.0 was coined and, in association with HP LaserJet, we're running a contest to survey what (if anything) it means to you nowadays. Simply leave a comment here on ReadWriteWeb and the winner receives a $500 home office upgrade.

Contest Rules

You can read the full rules of the contest on this webpage, but here a few of the main points:

1) You must be a U.S. resident and at least 18 years of age to enter.

2) The Contest begins on October 10, 2011 at 12:00 p.m. ET and ends on October 21, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

3) To enter, simply leave a comment on ReadWriteWeb in the discussions area below. Be sure to enter your email address. The submission must be at least 25 words and no longer than 300 words.

To get your creative juices going, here is a brief history of Web 2.0 along with my own thoughts on its relevancy today.

A Brief History of Web 2.0

The term began as a moniker for a conference and grew into something much larger. Even as early as the first conference, in October 2004, the term was starting to assume a deeper meaning. I interviewed Tim O'Reilly in November 2004 and we had a long and fruitful discussion about the early themes in Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is still a moniker for a conference brand, only now it's two separate events: Web 2.0 Summit and Web 2.0 Expo. So as a conference brand at least, it's still very relevant.

As a description of a larger trend, Web 2.0 has evolved over the years. In September 2005, Tim O'Reilly published the definitive article defining Web 2.0. The core principle is that Web 2.0 is "The Web as Platform." The rest of the definition is expansive and difficult to summarize in a sentence or two. The following meme map attempted to bring it all together in one visual bite:

In October 2009, Web 2.0 got a refresh with the help of a new term: Web Squared. Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle co-authored an article, which explained that Web 2.0 was (in 2009) "being applied in areas we only imagined in 2004." Areas like smartphones, new "collective intelligence applications" like Twitter, and sensors. Web 2.0 was also being applied to real-world problems, such as health care.

The latest evolution is a Web 2.0 Map, which the organizers of the Web 2.0 Summit have developed over the past two years.

So, with all that said, what does Web 2.0 mean to me today?

The term "Web 2.0" is first and foremost the brand name of a tech conference. That's how the term was born and that's what still drives it. But regardless of its commercial usage, fundamentally I think we are still in the same era of the Web. Something important changed around 2003-2004, both in terms of a tech market re-birth and in the types of technology that were beginning to become popular.

I have always used the term "read/write Web" to signify what I believe was the essential change back in 03/04: the Web matured as a two-way system, enabling more and more people to 'write' to the Web as well as 'read' it. Tools like blogs and wikis, services like YouTube and Flickr, popular websites like Wikipedia and Amazon.com.

By 03/04, the Web had evolved from a broadcasting medium to a fully interactive one. That overarching trend has continued to evolve to this day. Today the Web is more social, more real-time, more mobile - among many other wonderful twists and turns.

That's what Web 2.0 means to me today, now let us know what it means to you. A $500 home office upgrade will be awarded to the person whose answer shows the most insight and creativity (as judged by a panel of qualified judges). Be in to win by leaving your comment below.

Update: Congratulations to Brittany Smith, from Portland, who wrote the winning comment and receives a $500 gift voucher. Thanks everyone who entered.

The campaign, started by three advertising creatives, will recognize the state of Kentucky as the birthplace of the Happy Birthday song among other feel-good homages to the Bluegrass State.

They have a ways to go, but that has not diminished Hiler's enthusiasm. "We're going rogue with it," he jokes. "The idea would be to have millions of Kentuckians invested in this project. This is about shedding light to the world that Kentucky is awesome and it kicks ass."

Kentucky, like other states facing fiscal pressures, could use the tourism boost, too.

We'll be tracking this project, and if you feel like getting a T-shirt in exchange for a few greenbacks to the Kentucky cause - and another possible proof of Kickstarter's successful crowdfunding concept - you can head on over.

InnoCentive has lots of other crowdsourced projects and problem solving challenges on their site than the PopSci challenge, it is worth checking out if you haven't heard of them before or read our article from several years ago here.

This is the week for contests. Over on our ReadWriteHack site we mention a contest being run by the US Defense Department for wannabe computer forensic examiners. And over on our Enterprise site, we wrote last week about how Intuit paid out a series of prizes for QuickBooks and Quicken App developers .

Evernote has raised around $45 million with its latest round a Series C $20 million injection in October 2010 from Sequoia Capital. Developers can use the Evernote API to build extensions or features onto the platform with the grand prize winner taking home $50,000. Evernote developers and users: what do you want to see built onto the platform?

"When coming up with your app, be creative," the company wrote. "We're not expecting an Evernote-powered jetpack (though that would be sweet) but, why not create an Evernote-enabled location-based shopping companion or a game that uses your notes to strengthen your memory? The possibilities are endless."

Busy Growing A Platform

Evernote was founded in 2007 and has around four million users across any operating system or device you can think of. It can clip the web, save personal notes, record audio from a mobile device and upload to the web, store pictures or articles to read later.

It has been busy rolling out updates over in the last couple years. Its Windows app got a social feature, redesigned its iPhone app, made its Android app more secure, updated its Web interface, integrated with StudyBlue, opened an app store, created a Mac interface, will introduce Android tablet functionality, created a Web clipping extension for Chrome and other browsers and created sponsored accounts.

So, it has certainly been putting its funding to good use. Perhaps they are out of ideas after rolling out so many new features, mostly in the last six months. Nothing better to dangle a carrot to developers and have them create new features for your platform. The move is similar to what Netflix started in 2009 with a developer prize of $1 million to create new products, features or technology to its predictive technology.

We wrote in Jan. 2010 that prizes can be a good way to foster a community around your platform, support innovation, gain recognition and create a set of challenges for developers to strive for. Contests are also a sign that a company has matured past just trying to survive the market and trying to conquer it, a la Netflix and its competition.

Another sign of Evernote's maturity is their first conference - the Evernote Trunk Conference in August in San Francisco. Winning apps will be showcased then.

I don't know about you, but when I hear the word "Lollapalooza," I think about beer, grunge rock and application programming interfaces. Wait, what?

Okay, so maybe an API isn't exactly what comes to mind, but this year, the rock festival that once helped propel bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam is looking to launch something else entirely: an open API chock-full of real-time scheduling data, stage geolocation and more.

Lollapalooza is offering over $5,000 worth of prizes and tons of promotional exposure for the best mobile, web and desktop apps created using their API. Developers can access data on artists, events, stages/venues and updates for Lollapalooza 2011. Prizes will be awarded for apps that help fans get the most from their Lollapalooza experience before, during and after the Festival. Winners will be promoted on the official Lollapalooza website and to fans via email, Facebook, Twitter, and the jumbotron screens at the Festival.

The HackLolla website has the full list of rules and deadlines.

If music and hacking are your thing (and let's face it - you're here, so they are) then you might also want to check out this weekend's San Francisco Music Hackday, which is being sponsored by Lollapalooza. The company will be making a more in-depth announcement on HackLolla. Immediately following, San Francisco will be home of the SF Music Tech Summit.

In all, it's a good time to be a music-loving hacker.

However, we wanted to call your attention to the competition, and also highlight a new video on the Extensions Contest Microsite (also embedded below) that gives a great less-than-three-minute overview by John Bristowe on Visual Studio Extensions and how to build them.

So check out the video above and then get started on your entry!

Discloser: This post was done from the road using a complimentary review EVO 4G from Sprint.

Anyone is invited to submit a video to YouTube Play, even video creators themselves, and the submission deadline is July 31.

The videos may consist of animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos and even "entirely new art forms" that challenge the perception of what's possible to do with video, explains the YouTube blog post about this unique collaboration project.

Two hundred of the leading videos will be selected for further attention by an international jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film and video. Twenty of those initial 200 videos will then be presented at the Guggenheim. Yes, that's right - at the Guggenheim itself. The YouTube videos will appear in the Guggenheim network of museums in New York, Bilbao, Venice and Berlin on October 21 and will be made available for the world to see on the youtube.com/play channel.

This isn't a contest per se, as the winning videos don't receive a cash prize or other sort of physical reward. But having a video dubbed "art" and being showcased internationally in one of the world's most famous art museums, is a reward in and of itself, most would agree.

This isn't the first time YouTube has proven itself the medium of choice for artists worldwide. Last year, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, an online experiment in music, sought out musicians to participate in the world's first collaborative online orchestra where the endgame was a performance at Carnegie Hall.

YouTube: Internet Leads to Instant Success?

What's most interesting about this current art competition as well as the Online Orchestra is the way that it is able to surface undiscovered talents and allow them to achieve fame without all the requisite toiling and tolling for years in "starving artist" mode, as was once par for the course for those wanting to break into the art world. Instead, with YouTube, a handful of videos can lead to a lifetime of success. Just ask Justin Bieber. Or Soulja Boy. Or Esmee Denters. Or Journey's new singer Arenl Pineda, discovered a few years ago. Or FRED, the annoyingly overactive boy whose high-pitched voice befuddles parents but whose videos and associated kid-friendly merchandise have made the teen rich beyond belief.

But while the above are certainly high-profiled examples, let's be clear about one thing: When it comes to art and music, YouTube hasn't surfaced the next Leonardo or Monet, the next Beatles or Stones, the next Janis Joplin or Jimmy Hendrix. To date, the folks who have made their way up through YouTube are not necessarily, forgive me Bieber fans, going to make their mark in the annals of history as being among "the best of the best." In some cases they may be great... but are they the greatest? Really?

However, with this contest, that may change. For next-gen video artists, there's surely no better place than YouTube to flex your artistic muscles. It should be interesting to see what video creation wins this latest attempt to elevate YouTube to art form. The end result will likely be just that: art.

Extensions are an add-on to Visual Studio 2010 that improves the user experience. Your extension could provide additional functionality to the product, or add a level of customization to better serve an individual or company's needs.

• VSX101: An Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 Extensibility
• VSX102: Deploying Visual Studio 2010 Extensions
• VSX103: Lighting up the new Visual Studio 2010 Editor with Rich Extensions

You also can download a trial version of Visual Studio and learn more about extensions on the Microsoft Visual Studio site.

We'll be featuring some of the most compelling extensions here at ReadWriteWeb - plus you could win prizes like a one-year MSDN Embedded subscription license (a $1,199 USD value!), an Xbox Elite bundle, or a Natural Wireless Ergonomic Desktop 700 keyboard and mouse.

Beyond submitting extensions, we also are looking for our development community to check out and comment on their peers' submissions. You can keep track of the submissions and submit your entry by visiting the Summer of Extensions page.

We'd like to grow our Facebook fan base, as it's a good way for us to interact with you outside of our own website. So to encourage this, we will be mailing our Facebook fans this once-only offer within the next 24 hours. Join our Facebook page now to be certain of receiving this offer.

Tonight, after an all-star panel of judges had reviewed more than 80 apps over a month-long period, a handful of winning applications were announced.

The BigApps prizes also included a Popular Choice Award, which was decided by an online public vote from people around the world.

The grand prize winner for the competition, Wayfinder, is actually an Andoird app that allows users to find the nearest and best directions to New York City subway and New Jersey PATH stations. It was also selected as the Grand Prize winner for the Data Visualization Award. That team received a total of $7,500 for both prizes.

Other winning applications include:

• Actuatr, a platform that simplifies opening up data to developers;
• NYC Way, an iPhone application that bundles a variety of NYC resources for tourists and locals (also the Investor's Choice for monetization potential and Popular Choice winner, a $5,000 prize altogether);
• PushpinWeb, a platform for public data;
• Trees Near You, an iPhone app that shows data about trees around New York City;
• UpNext 3D NYC, an interactive 3D map for exploring and discovering the city;
• Overview New York City Parks and Recreation Online, a web app for finding New York City parks; and
• Bookzee, a location-based library book search.

"We opened up the 170 datasets of City information to unleash the creativity and ingenuity of New Yorkers, and we were not disappointed," said Mayor Bloomberg, who announced the awards at a dinner tonight. "The apps submitted offer a range of unique capabilities, many of which use the data in ways we hadn't considered. We want New York City to stay ahead of the innovation and technology curve, and we'll continue to capitalize on our greatest asset - New Yorkers - to make sure we do. Thank you to all of those who submitted apps, and congratulations to the winners."

The New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications worked with around 30 agencies to provide more than 170 datasets for the competition. The data included geographic locations of all sidewalk cafés, laundry facilities, playgrounds, dog runs, city landmarks, as well as census data, extensive property valuation and assessments, the results of restaurant inspections, lists of permitted citywide events and even side parking and traffic updates.

The competition will be hosted by ChallengePost, an online network for organizations and individuals to create and offer competitions. The launch of NYC BigApps will be also be officially announced at tonight's NY Tech Meetup. So, what's in it for developers? Read on.

"Last week, we launched the Connected City Initiative to put technology to use improving services and providing information to New Yorkers as fast and in as many ways as possible, and BigApps will be yet another," said Mayor Bloomberg.

"The information we're providing is the public's, and we're relying on the creativity and talent of New York City's tech and entrepreneurial communities to come up with innovative and helpful ways to use it. It's a great example of a 21st-century, public-private partnership."

The New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications worked with around 30 agencies to provide more than 170 datasets for the competition. The data include geographic locations of all sidewalk cafés, laundry facilities, playgrounds, dog runs, city landmarks, as well as census data, extensive property valuation and assessments, the results of restaurant inspections, lists of permitted citywide events, and even side parking and traffic updates.

Another important aspect of the competition is the expectation that official, city government support of startups will add a measure of vitality to an already vibrant local startup culture.

"Supporting entrepreneurs and startups is an important component of our five borough economic opportunity plan and the launch of the Big Apps competition does just that," said Deputy Mayor Lieber. "By partnering with the private sector to encourage innovative and forward-thinking applications, we are leveraging existing resources to increase efficiency and transparency in government, stimulate investment, and create jobs."

Apps will be judged based on their benefit to residents, visitors, and government; their originality; their visual appeal; their effect on data accessibility and government transparency; and yes, their commercial potential.

The NYC BigApps Competition is open to individuals, startups, and non-profit organizations with fewer than 50 employees. Datasets will be available for download today from the newly-created Data Mine.

Submissions will be judged by a panel that is to include NY Tech Meetup co-founder Dawn Barber, Betaworks CEO John Borthwick, Mahalo co-founder Jason Calacanis, EDVentures Founder Esther Dyson, FirstMark Capital CEO Lawrence Lenihan, AlleyCorp co-founder Kevin Ryan, DFJ Gotham Ventures managing partner Danny Schultz, and Union Square Ventures managing general partner Fred Wilson.

Another Sunlight Foundation project is Get Represented. In a nutshell, Get Represented uses the GetSatisfaction model of public corporate discourse and applies it to Congress. Student Kyle Powers worked on this project for the Summer of Code in order to create a public feedback mechanism for government decision-making. Members of Congress have their own GetRepresented page and voters can comment, vote up articles and have public conversations with their representatives. While the final product is not yet available to the public, you can check for updates on the Sunlight Labs blog.

To view more Summer of Code projects visit the Google Open Source Programs page.

The I/O stands for "Innovation/Open" (i/o is also a programmer term input/output). Google told us in May 2008 that we're at an "inflection point for web app development" and that Google is all about "driving usage of the Internet". The Web is now the defacto platform for application development, according to Google, and so naturally they want to encourage developers to use both Google and Open Web products.

Please leave your feature suggestions in the comments below and be in to win a Google I/O ticket, worth $400 USD each.