With the excitement building about Apple's iPhone, and lots of third party apps being developed for it, now is a good time to find out how many R/WW readers will be buying one - and if so, when? Please participate in our poll below:
Ever since Facebook announced its open platform at the end of May, I have been receiving a flurry of emails from friends and blog buddies wanting to connect on Facebook. It could be just the 'in thing' with early adopter blogger types, but maybe it's more than that. It could be the tipping point for Facebook going mainstream.
Max Kalehoff from Nielsen BuzzMetrics has a good analysis of Facebook today. And next week Read/WriteWeb will explore just how open Facebook really is (as Sam Sethi twittered today, "It's a proprietary silo, no RDFa/mf's , no RSS and no Atom Publishing Protocol"). But for now, I want to do a quick poll of R/WW readers, to see how many are now members of Facebook. Up until a month or so ago, I wasn't. Indeed, today I was "poked" for the first time - by Joshua Porter (does this mean I have to buy him a drink next time I'm in the US?). Anyway here is the poll:
Plenty of interest this week in our poll, asking which online collaboration platform do you use? So far, after over 1,100 votes, Google Apps is way out in front - 47% of respondents use it. Basecamp is next with 20%, with Zoho on 10% and ThinkFree 6%. The two Microsoft options, Office Groove and Office Live, have only 2% each. Sign of the times, ay?
There's still time to cast your vote; and remember that the poll is multiple-choice.
This week's poll was requested by a reader, who wanted to find out what online collaboration platforms R/WW readers used. The email I received noted: "While mass services such as myspace and facebook get a lot of coverage, there's not a lot of data showing how well collaborative platforms do. I think that your audience could help." It's very true, the blog world tends to get excited about the latest consumer apps - like Facebook or Twitter - but there is a lot of interest outside the blogosphere on which online collaboration apps are being used.
Below is a list of such apps - and it is a fairly wide-ranging list, and open to contention about what exactly is an "online collaboration platform". I've included the main Web Office suite players, as well as project mgmt apps and some wiki platforms. And I'm bound to have missed a couple of obvious apps (do me a favor and yell out which obvious apps I forgot to include, asap, in the comments!).
Earlier this week we reported that the F.T.C. is looking at a possible antitrust investigation against Google, over its DoubleClick acquisition. Our poll this week asks: Should Google be investigated for antitrust? I'm somewhat amazed to find that nearly half of respondants so far think that YES, Google should be investigated for anti-trust. At this point 47% of you think that.
42% say no, Google should be left alone. 11% of you don't know either way.
There's still time to cast you vote. Not that the F.T.C. is avidly following Read/WriteWeb's poll (well, I guess that could be a reason for the delay). But seriously, what do you think? Is Google/DoubleClick a monopoly that the US government needs to crack down on?
In developing news, the NY Times is reporting that The Federal Trade Commission has "opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google's planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick". Ironically two of the companies that called for this were Microsoft and AT&T, both of whom have colorful histories battling antitrust suits. According to the NYT:
"Within a few weeks, perhaps within days, the F.T.C. will decide whether to escalate its investigation into the Google deal, antitrust experts say. That step, known as a "second request" for information, would suggest that the proposed acquisition raises more serious antitrust issues.
Google said it was confident that the deal would withstand scrutiny."
As noted in the Weekly Wrapup, one of the 2 big news announcements this past week was Google rolling out "Universal Search", where they integrate search results from across their properties (news, video, etc) into the main search. (the other big news was Microsoft acquiring aQuantive). Read/WriteWeb has two analysis pieces on the Google news - Josh Catone compared Universal Search to other next-generation sandbox search initiatives, and Alex Iskold drilled down into the impact on vertical search engines. Both pieces are well worth reading, but in this post I want to pose the question that Alex asked: will vertical search engines survive this latest move by Google?
We're midway through the week and this week's poll has thrown up some interesting results so far. We asked: among the big Internet companies/orgs, whose web app deployment platform do you like best? Frankly I was expecting Adobe and Microsoft to top the poll, as Apollo and Silverlight have gotten a great deal of attention lately. But instead, it's Mozilla (which as yet hasn't even got a platform! -- but they could get one) and Google (which mostly relies on Ajax and the browser). Poor old Sun doesn't seem to have many supporters so far. Why? Perhaps because they're seen to be re-inventing the wheel (i.e. Ajax)?
I'd suggest then that the takeaway from the results so far is that people a) want the browser to remain the main platform for deploying web apps; and b) preferably they'd like it to be open source.
Here are the results so far. We've had 470 votes up till time of publishing this post, but there are still 3 days left in the week - so have your say by voting below.
Qst: Whose vision of web app deployment do you like the best?
Mozilla (open source, microformats, browser-based) 35% (166 votes)
Google (Ajax, mostly browser-based) 29% (135 votes)
Adobe (Apollo, browser/desktop) 22% (102 votes)
Microsoft (Silverlight, DotNet, browser/desktop) 11% (50 votes)
Sun (JavaFX, alternative to Ajax, browser/desktop) 2% (10 votes)
Other (please note in comments) 1% (7 votes)
This week's poll is based on our current feature post, Understanding Apollo. In that post, I attempted to provide an overview of Apollo for non-developers. At the end, I looked at the high level of how the big Internet companies are deploying web apps nowadays. Here's what I wrote:
It is a fiercely competitive market, with Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Google and others all active - and each has a differing vision for web app deployment. Google is still very much focused inside the browser, whereas Adobe and Microsoft have made divergent moves to go outside the browser (but both with one foot still planted firmly in the browser). Let's not forget that Mozilla and the other browsers are enhancing their products at a furious rate. It's a key point in the evolution of web apps - so who do you think has the inside running at this stage?
I'd like to pose that question as a poll. I've noted down the main players in this market - along with (probably over-simplified) summaries of their web app deployment strategies.
Today we published a detailed analysis of search innovation techniques by Nitin Karandikar. The post is long, but well worth reading if you are interested in where search is headed. To complement the post, we're running a poll asking which of the 4 categories of search innovation that Nitin identified, do you think is key to the next generation of search? The 4 categories are:
Here is the poll:
