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Skip to info about... Strands: recommendations Mindmeister: online mind mapping Glue: social browsing Rackspace: cloud computing experts Direct Media Exchange: meta ad network for websites Crowd Science: demographic data Wild Apricot: membership management Quintura: visual search Eurekester: custom topic portals Our Hosts and Blogging Software: Media Temple and SixApart

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Mindmeister

Mindmeister is an collaborative online mapping tool. A 'mind map' is a popular way to brainstorm new ideas, graphically instead of textually or verbally. Many people do their best thinking when visualizing ideas and connections. And as with most other online tools, bringing mind maps onto the Web means that users can collaborate with each other in real time. This is the case with Mindmeister, where users can create, manage and share mind maps online. Check out all the latest features in Mindmeister, on the company blog - task management, wikimaps, history view, and more.

If you're curious about how online mind mapping works, check it out by signing up for a free account at www.mindmeister.com.

Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we've struggled to get in the past. It's important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

You can sign up to get demographic data by clicking here.

Wild Apricot

WildApricot enables clubs, associations and communities to automate and streamline administrative tasks, using their online membership management software.

The company has an active and well written blog, focusing on issues and trends in web technologies that help your organization achieve more with less. Example posts include Show, Don't Tell: Google Earth Outreach for Nonprofits and How to Learn More About Your Website Audience.

Wild Apricot gets lots of love in the social media; book sales pro Ann Kingman, for example, says she has "been very happy with Wild Apricot in the past few months we've been using it. Great customer support."

See for yourself what Wild Apricot can do at http://wildapricot.com.

Strands

Strands has created a social recommender engine that is able to provide real-time recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices. Recently the company announced the 5 finalists in its Strands $100K Call for Recommender Start-Ups and the companies they unearthed look pretty interesting. Also Strands recently added personalization to music.strands.tv. As Atlanta-based creative strategy consultant Vincent Hunt said on Twitter: "If you are not on @strands... All I can say is... You are MISSIN it!! HOT"

Check their new Strands Business Solutions to add recommendations to your site.

Glue

Glue enables you to connect with friends while browsing. It is a product of AdaptiveBlue, an innovative company founded by one of our own genius writers, Alex Iskold. In the company's blog, Glue is described as a browser add-on that "makes it easier to connect with friends around books, music, movies, restaurants, stocks, wine and more."

The beauty of Glue is that it displays on popular websites such as Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yahoo! Finance, and many others - Glue goes where you go. When you go to Amazon and other sites, Glue shows you what your friends have looked at there and what they thought.

You can sign up to Glue by clicking here.

Rackspace

Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting. The company is hosting two events this month, a conference on Cloud Computing and the Rackspace Customer Conference 2008.

Direct Media Exchange

Direct Media Exchange is a simple solution for managing ad networks that allows publishers to make more money from their websites. You can find a number of case studies on their site describing publishers that they helped double ad revenues for.

Quintura

Quintura is a visual-based search engine, which we are now using to power ReadWriteWeb's main search. Check it out here. If you haven't tried it before, you should - it's a very interesting way to explore search results.

Quintura can power visual search on your site for free. This company is backed by Mangrove Capital Partners, the same VCs that provided early funding to Skype.

Eurekester

Eurekster is developer of the swicki that we use on RWW, a custom social search portal on the topic of your choice (in our case web tech), powered by the community.

People build swickis on all kinds of topics, some people build a lot of them. Alex Holmes, for example, builds really nice looking swickis on topics like the 2008 Election, Ocean Animals and Home Buying.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

ReadWriteWeb is hosted by Media Temple and is published using SixApart's MovableType.

If you've ever wondered what RWW looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the MovableType publishing interface - that's it on the left. That's where we live, virtually, though our staff lives physically all over the world. Some of live in the Southern United States, some of us in Oregon, others in New Zealand. Wherever we are though, the companies above pay our rents or mortgages and we appreciate it. We hope you'll stop by their sites and see what they've got to offer.

Have you got a smart company that could use some more visits by the sophisticated readers of a blog like ReadWriteWeb? Drop us a line and let's talk.

Thanks to all our sponsors and our readers for your support!