ReadWriteWeb

New Trend: Web 2.0-controlled malware?

Security researchers at Symantec recently uncovered a backdoor trojan whose spread is being dictated by commands hosted in Google Groups, Google's online discussion forums. The backdoor trojan, named Trojan.Grups, appears to be the first ever malware to use an online newsgroup as the "command and control" center for botnet communications. It's certainly the first time that Google Groups specifically has been compromised in this way. This new discovery points to what appears to be the latest trend in what you could call "Web 2.0 malware," that is, nasty computer programs that don't just spread in social networks, but actually use the infrastructure of the social networks themselves to do the spreading.

This week ReadWriteWeb is running a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest Web trends of 2009. So far we've explored these trends: Structured Data, The Real-Time Web, Personalization, Mobile Web / Augmented Reality. The fifth and final part of our series is about the Internet of Things, when real world objects (such as fridges, lights and toasters) get connected to the Internet. In 2009, this trend has ramped up and is adding a significant amount of new data to the Web.

In this post we'll see how companies as big as IBM and as small as Pachube are building up this new world of Internet data and services.

The "iTunes LP" is just one of the many new iTunes features revealed yesterday during Apple's announcement at their "It's Only Rock and Roll"-themed event. But the iTunes LP, unlike the other new features which get to exist as simple and fun enhancements in iTunes 9, has a heavy burden on its shoulders. It's supposed to revitalize the music industry by encouraging consumers to once again purchase entire albums as opposed to single tracks. With this new digital album format, the idea is to replicate the experience of buying an album, complete with lyrics, liner notes, album art, photos, and more, giving music buyers extra content to peruse while enjoying their new music. The only problem is that this so-called "interactive" format isn't all that interactive. And what's more, innovative artists are already discovering how to monetize their music while engaging fans in new ways that have nothing to do with a re-imagined LP. Instead, the "interactive format" of the future isn't the album, it's the app.

This week ReadWriteWeb is running a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest Web trends of 2009. So far we've explored these trends: Structured Data, The Real-Time Web, Personalization. The fourth part of our series is on Mobile Web. We're including Augmented Reality in this category, as we think it's a key element of where the Mobile Web is heading circa 2009.

In April we reported statistics from browser company Opera showing large growth on the Mobile Web. According to Opera, there was a 157% increase in usage of their Opera Mini web browser from March 2008 to March 2009. What's driving that growth is devices like the iPhone, new mobile operating systems like Android, and hot applications like Augmented Reality.

Yesterday, Nielsen announced that they will make their new "Internet Meter" available by year's end to measure the online television viewing audience. Until now, this ever-increasing demographic has been left out of U.S. television ratings as Nielsen currently focuses only on live and time-shifted (i.e. DVR) TV viewings. Says the company, the Internet Meter software will be deployed by the end of 2009 to their "People Meter" households - the chosen few whose TV-viewing habits function as the representative sample for measuring a show's success. This new addition to the ratings game is bound to have a major impact on TV monetization efforts as both networks and advertisers will see, officially, how many viewers have tuned in to watch this "2nd screen."

This week ReadWriteWeb is running a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest Web trends of 2009. Our first post was about Structured Data, our second about The Real-Time Web. The third part of our series is on Personalization.

Personalization has long been a buzzword on the Internet. With the glut of information on the Web circa 2009, personalization in this era means providing effective filters and recommendations. Ultimately personalization is about web sites and services giving you what you want, when you want it. That's the long-standing dream anyway. Let's see if the products of 2009 are fulfilling it.

One exabyte is a billion gigabytes. It's one quintillion bytes. And yes, "quintillion" is a number so large, it almost seems made-up. But that's how much online video will be consumed by 2017, according to new reports from U.K.-based research firm Coda. Actually, to be precise, they're claiming that mobile broadband users accessing the net via laptops and netbooks will consume 1.8 exabytes of video. Per month.

According to a research report released by Denmark's Strand Consult, the iPhone is not the profit-generating machine that people have made it out to be...that is, unless you're Apple. For carriers, however, gaining the exclusive rights to sell the iPhone isn't exactly a winning situation. The report says that the hidden costs of the phone, which include things like the subsidies and the revenue share Apple demands, have actually hurt rather than helped mobile operators' earnings.

This week ReadWriteWeb will run a series of posts detailing what we think are the 5 biggest, most cutting edge Web trends to come out of 2009. We'll be posting one trend analysis per day. Then at the end of the week we'll publish a major update to our standard presentation about web technology trends.

The first major Web trend we're looking at is Structured Data. In prior presentations, this has sometimes been referred to under the umbrella term of 'Semantic Web'. However the way 2009 has panned out so far, it's become clear that this trend is much more than the Semantic Web. In this post, we'll analyze the developments in Structured Data this year and provide you with 3 product examples: OpenCalais, Google, Wolfram Alpha.

Loopt, a location-aware mobile application and social network, just announced that it will become the first third-party iPhone app that will be able to offer an always-on location service on the iPhone. From what we have seen, AT&T officially sanctioned this feature, which Loopt already offers on other platforms. Normally, apps can't run in the background on the iPhone. This is clearly a severe limitation for a lot of developers, and few developers have the clout to get around this limitation the way Loopt apparently did (Loopt demoed its app at WWDC last year).