ReadWriteWeb

Yes, we all have to deal with IT becoming more consumerized, with BYOD and BYO apps, too. But will we start seeing people hawking apps walking through our halls, as peanut sellers do in ball games? It isn't too far from reality, as the folks who draw the Chief and Chuck cartoons have imagined here.

There's a reason that IDC, Forrester, and Gartner are so big. They offer scale and coverage that small firms can't match, and they attract industry heavyweights who can make or break emerging technologies. But there's a downside to scale. Unless you're a corporate whale, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle, and getting that superstar on the phone in a pinch might take more time than you have.

I'm certainly not suggesting that you throw away your existing subscriptions, particularly if you're a vendor or solution provider. Put some effort into those relationships, and they'll pay themselves back several times over. But there's something to be said for the little guy, and there are hundreds of smaller analysis firms that can provide you with the kind of service and support you need to make informed decisions on a daily basis.

It's hard to pay attention to the business of journalism without hearing about data journalism or data-driven journalism. But despite all the discussion of the topic, there's precious little documentation to guide practicing and future journalists in becoming proficient in it. The Data Journalism Handbook aims to fix that, albeit at a high level.

The conflicting (frequently unsolicited) advice startup entrepreneurs too often hear is enough to make you tune it all out. Either you’re told that you need to go big and grab all the angel or VC money you can get your hands on, or that you should start small, do it on your own, and retain control of your company.

But bootstrapping a startup is not easy, requiring discipline and fortitude, as well as ingenuity. But entrepreneurs who have done it have discovered some best practices to increase the odds of success.

The latest trend in smartphone apps is social video. That's because ever since Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 Billion, attention has focused on video sharing apps and whether one of them will win the next Zuckerberg lottery. The two leading contenders are Socialcam and Viddy. ReadWriteWeb's Alicia Eler profiled those two apps, along with a third called Klip, in a post yesterday.

In the interests of research, I signed up to and played with both Socialcam and Viddy. I uploaded my own amateur video, via my iPhone. I then applied the requisite filters, added some music and - Boom! - I became part of the social video craze. I also had a nosey around the communities of each service, to see if either one can indeed claim to be The Next Instagram. Here's what I discovered...

App stores are frustrating, cluttered places. Even with Apple’s prescreening process of every app that passes through its iOS gates, the App Store, it is often hard to find what you may want or need. This is a problem for consumers - but an even bigger problem for developers that often rely on these apps to make a living. For every successful app that makes millions for its publisher, there are thousands of apps that will not rise above the mess.

So, you are an app developer and you have figured out your next big idea. Dollar signs and millions of downloads float through your head, like so many sugar plum fairies. If you build it, users will come... or so the thought goes. But there is really a lot more to it than that.

Whenever a trendy app comes along, there are people who ask, “What is the point of this?” If millions of people are using something, there has to be a reason. In our What Is the Point of... series, we’ll explain it to you.

This week, we're asking, What is the point of Foursquare?

After several years spent watching angels, super angels and incubators move in on their turf, VCs are flexing back. A new survey of startups shows venture capitalists are reasserting themselves in the funding game.

The reemergence of traditional VCs can make a big difference in how prospective startups look for funding - and could also signify a bubble.

You may have been confused if you read this morning’s Facebook headlines. The Wall Street Journal says some big ad buyers are questioning how effective their Facebook ads are, while CNET is reporting that Facebook won't take some advertisers calls when they try to buy ads.

Which report is right? Or are they both right? And does it matter? Probably not, if you’re thinking about buying shares of Facebook after it goes public later this month. What matters for potential investors is that Facebook once again appears to be having trouble demonstrating that it can sustain growth from advertising which, to date, has accounted for about 85% of Facebook’s $4 billion in annual revenue.

But appearances, according to experts interviewed by ReadWriteWeb Wednesday, can be deceiving.

This past weekend Tumblr President John Maloney resigned. The news comes only a few weeks after the über-popular, yet utterly profitless, image-heavy blogging platform announced that it would begin selling ads. 

This news does not come as a complete surprise. Earlier this year, Mr. Maloney had discussed the idea of moving on, as he is less interested in running a business and more focused on the early phases of building a startup. Tumblr recently upped its size to 100 employees, and brought on additional department executives. 

Tesla thinks knobs are sooo 20th century, and Mercedes wants to put your car in a cloud. After decades of false starts and minor tweaks, connected cars are on their way. While Audi’s gesture-based dashboard is still a few years off, the auto industry is finally making fundamental changes to the way you interact with your car, and they’re available right now. It’s about time.

Last month, Netcraft recorded nearly 677 million websites in its April Web Server Survey. May is a different story, though. This time, Netcraft found a drop of 14 million hostnames, the first decline in nearly two years. Despite the decline, things are still looking very good for the Nginx web server and its continued foothold in the Web's most-used sites.

We are surrounded by failure in the tech world, and some of those failures are big enough to sit in our memories for years. After the latest news from Google, we were reminded of many other shameful moments in tech. We put together our own RWW Hall of Shame to see if we could learn any lessons from these sordid tales of woe.

Today's theme is life forms. We use technology to improve ourselves, but underneath all the gadgets and wires, we're still the same hairy animals.

Is there something special about human beings?