Features

The app color codes all the differences between the versions of the document. Hovering over one of the boxes with a different version of a part of the text gives you the option to accept or reject a change. You can also add new text to a document within the app and make minor formatting changes to the text (bulleted lists, italics, bold, etc.). At the end of this process, you can save the newly compiled document for further editing in your word processor. 

CompareMyDocs does have quite a few limitations. It can't handle images and tables, for example, and footnotes simply become part of the text. Because of this, the service works best for relatively straightforward documents as you will have to add all of these assets back into the text after you finish your comparison.

API

TextFlow also launched its new API today. This API, which will be available free of charge, allows developers to integrate TextFlow's document comparison service into their own applications. This would be a great addition to other online office suites and online storage services like DropBox and Box.net, as Josh Lowensohn points out on CNet.

Lots of New Features

For now, only developers will have access to Android 2.0. Regular users won't be able to get their hands on this update until later this year.

The update features some impressive new functions, including support for synchronizing and managing multiple email accounts, an improved keyboard with a smarter dictionary and a browser that will be more like Safari on the iPhone, with support for double-tap zoom and HTML5.

Here are some of the new features that users can expect to see in Android 2.0:

Contacts and accounts

• Multiple accounts can be added to a device for email and contact synchronization, including Exchange accounts. (Handset manufacturers can choose whether to include Exchange support in their devices.)
• Developers can create sync adapters that provide synchronization with additional data sources.
• Quick Contact for Android provides instant access to a contact's information and communication modes. For example, a user can tap a contact photo and select to call, SMS, or email the person. Other applications such as Email, Messaging, and Calendar can also reveal the Quick Contact widget when you touch a contact photo or status icon.

Email

• Exchange support.
• Combined inbox to browse email from multiple accounts in one page.

Messaging

• Search functionality for all saved SMS and MMS messages.
• Auto delete the oldest messages in a conversation when a defined limit is reached.

Camera

• Built-in flash support
• Digital zoom
• Scene mode
• White balance
• Color effect
• Macro focus

Android virtual keyboard

• An improved keyboard layout makes it easier to hit the correct characters and improve typing speed.
• The framework's multi-touch support ensures that key presses aren't missed while typing rapidly with two fingers.
• A smarter dictionary learns from word usage and automatically includes contact names as suggestions.

Browser

• Refreshed UI with actionable browser URL bar enables users to directly tap the address bar for instant searches and navigation.
• Bookmarks with web page thumbnails.
• Support for double-tap zoom.
• Support for HTML5.

Calendar

• Agenda view provides infinite scrolling.
• Events indicate the attending status for each invitee.
• Invite new guests to events.

With the release of a new API, announced today, Google is allowing site owners to conduct multivariate and A/B testing from their own platforms. Part of Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer (GWO) is a free tool that "handles splitting a website's traffic, serving different variations and crunching the numbers to find statistical significance." For site owners, these minute variations can widen conversion funnels and lead to exponentially greater engagement and profit if changes are executed correctly.

According to a post by Googlers Gary Kačmarčík and Erika Rice Scherpelz, "Creating experiments with Website Optimizer usually involves a lot of back and forth between your website and the Website Optimizer interface. Using the API, you can integrate Website Optimizer into your platform. In short, you can create and launch experiments from whatever tool you use to edit your site."

The GWO API does not provide access to testing results. To see the experiment results, users must visit the experiment report page.

In addition to simplifying the site optimization process, the API might also make it simpler for companies to conduct in-house testing, reducing both the cost and time of optimization. Site owners and others can register for the GWO API webinar, which will take place on October 28th at 10 a.m. PDT. During the webinar, Website Optimizer engineers will walk users through how the API works, and two platforms that have already integrated GWO using the API will demonstrate their products.

For Users: Flexible Queries

One of the most interesting aspects of this library is that it gives users a lot of flexibility when they structure their queries. Ident Engine will happily accept full URLs like http://www.twitter.com/rww or just simply 'twitter.com rww' or the Webfinger email structure ('rww@twitter.com').

Not a Developer? Try these Demos

While Ident Engine is mainly aimed at developers, the team has made a number of cool demos available on its server. The Combined Profile Demo, for example, looks at a user's profiles on multiple services and then builds an aggregate profile for the user, based on commonalities it finds in these profiles. The Lifestream demo goes a step further and discovers a user's profiles on a variety of services and pulls in the latest updates. The project's homepage also features a number of additional demos.

Glenn Jones also recently released a Firefox plugin, Identify (our review), which builds on the same premises and allows users to quickly bring up the aggregate profile of any user while looking at one of their regular social network profiles.

One advantage over SharePoint is that Google Sites does not require users to maintain software on PCs. Google Sites builds on the company's already well-established strengths - including cloud-based office tools and impeccable search. With the new API, if users choose to switch from SharePoint to Google Sites, they've now got an easy way to migrate their content.

The lesson here is that while we're meant to "embrace the chaos" of audience feedback, it's best to look at the forest (or overall reactions) rather than the individual (and sometimes spiteful) trees.

While competitor Infegy displays relevant web chatter, UberVU goes one step further by offering developers a chance to create their own mash up and filtering tools. The ContextVoice API's new search functionality allows developers to measure public reactions within specified time frames. Explains the company, "A conversation with 10 reactions in the last minute may be hotter than one with 1500 reactions distributed over a month. But the hot conversation matters more, because that's the one that has the attention and momentum."

Suggested mashups include social media dashboards to measure outreach, memetrackers to get the lowdown on entire industries, community dialogue tools to pull comments back onto your site and comment tracking for stock trading purposes. To check out the search API visit the ContextVoice developer page.

At first we thought Evri's API would simply rank things as positive or negative, much like the Twitter tracker twendz does today, highlighting positive, negative, and neutral items. However, the sentiment API does so much more, allowing you deeper insight into the "who's," and "what's," and "why's" associated with the particular expression or feeling.

To be more specific, according to the announcement, Evri lets you:

• Find the percentage of positive and negative expressions of sentiment made by an entity, or about an entity. For example, find out what percentage of things being written about the iPhone are positive and which percent are negative.
• Discover who is criticizing and who is praising a particular person, place or thing. For example, see who is criticizing and praising Microsoft right now.
• Read what praisers and critics are saying about an entity. For example, see what the GOP are saying about the Democrats.
• Discover who or what your favorite entity is bashing and why. For example, see who Lance Armstrong is complaining about.
• Discover who or what your favorite entity is praising and why. For example, see who the World Health Organization is commending and why.

When unleashed upon the web as a whole, this could unearth a veritable goldmine of information. Just thinking of how many different ways it could be used is enough to blow anyone's mind. Of course, marketers will be the first to jump on board, looking for practical ways to track the feelings about their companies, clients, and brands and why they're changing, but an engine that understands sentiment could do so much more than just this. It can literally take the pulse of the web the way we take the pulse of Twitter using apps like the above-mentioned twendz to rank trends as positive or negative.

Demo: The "Vibology Meter"

To demonstrate what Evri can do, the company created a widget called the "Vibology Meter." (Sadly, no link is provided). The widget not only ranks the good or bad "vibes" about a particular entity (in the example, Barack Obama), but also explores topics associated with that entity and whether or not the primary entity feels positively or negatively towards them. For example, the widget shows Obama is negative towards the GOP and Rush Limbaugh but feels positive about Michele Obama. (Well, that's good!)

When you click on any one of the associated topics (or click on "anything" to see all topics of either positive or negative slant), you're then presented with a sidebar of information. Here, snippets from articles found on the web display along with a title, link, and timestamp.

Of course, this is just a simple example of the Evri API in action. We're sure the developers out there can think up even better ideas than this.

Challenges Ahead

The challenge now for Evri is to keep expanding its index in order to track more sources to rank. At the moment, the engine doesn't track a large slice of the web the way a typical search engine like Google does - in fact they don't even claim to be a search engine...despite what that "Go to" box on their homepage would have you believe. Instead, Evri looks specifically at the people, places, and things on the web and maps the connections between them.

To determine these connections - and now, the associated sentiments as well - Evri pulls from a limited number of "highly regarded" sources. That means you'll definitely see a site like CNN used to rank a person like Obama, but the myriad of tiny politico blogs will be ignored. That's actually a shame, since delving into this "long tail" of the web could give a better overall picture of how all people really feel, not just the sentiments expressed on high-profile sites written by top bloggers and journalists. Still, we know indexing and parsing this long tail is something that's much easier said than done.

In the end, what Evri's doing, even on this smaller scale, is definitely interesting. We hope to see the new API put to good use in the near future.

As we now roll into day two of the "great social media outage of 2009," you may be surprised to learn that it's not over yet. Although Facebook and LJ have recovered, Twitter is still having issues. Not only was the site down once again early this morning, Twitter developers using the API are complaining that the company is sending mixed messages by reporting that they're "back up" - when in reality many Twitter applications are still unusable.

Twitter Developers Want Communication, Too

In a recent discussion thread in the Twitter Development Group, Twitter developer Jesse Stay of the popular SocialToo application asked:

Other developers quickly chimed in agreeing, noting that Twitter has yet to communicate the API status to developers, leaving them in the dark as to when their apps will work again. It seems that some developers have been experiencing issues with everything from oAuth sign-ins to timeouts to applications being completely down. Paul Kinlan, developer of the Twollo application, an app that helps you find followers with similar interests, even said that he had to refund a paying customer because of the situation. No doubt he is not alone.

While the developers are generally sympathetic to the situation and understand that fighting off the attack is priority number one, what they're finding hard to deal with is the lack of communication. Throughout the attack, Twitter has updated their Status Blog with notes about the service itself, but nothing about the API. Developers are frustrated and unsure of how to address the situation with their users given that Twitter has not provided any official information to them either through the blog or their own Twitter account.

We know that Twitter's architecture has made it more vulnerable to this type of attack than Google or even Facebook, but in situations like this, communication is key. Hopefully today Twitter will do one of two things: either (preferably) stabilize its service and API or (at the very least) let developers know the status.

Update: Looks like Twitter listened: http://status.twitter.com/post/157979213/restoring-api-and-sms.

Update 2: See also our coverage of Cyxymu, the apparent target for these attacks.

The implications of this decision are huge. Whereas before Digg was the place to find and share interesting links from around the web, that role has, as of late, been taken on by microblogging site Twitter.com. To combat Twitter's threat, Digg has tried launching new features like the DiggBar and their own URL-shortening service, but nothing they've done so far could have as big an impact on their future as the new API.

To drive traffic to their service, Digg launched a couple of different initiatives this past year including a browser toolbar and a URL-shortening service. First, there was the controversial "DiggBar" which initially drove traffic to Digg.com via a short URL service that displayed the news story within an iframe wrapper. Later, they changed the way their short URL service operated to redirect anyone clicking the URL directly to Digg.com - even if they weren't currently logged into the Digg website. This quickly became known as Digg's attempt to "bait and switch" its users. Instead of being sent to the news story as expected, users unwittingly wound up on Digg.com. Despite the outcry (and a confused founder Kevin Rose who wasn't aware of the change), the site continues to operate their URL service in this way. And why is that? Because, at the end of the day, Digg.com needs traffic to stay competitive. The soon-to-launch read/write API will simply be another way to get those valuable clicks.

With a read/write API, developers will be able to add "Digg This" functionality to their third-party applications. Adam DuVander on ProgrammableWeb notes this means developers could do a number of things like "automate posting stories and incorporate it into a publishing system,... save a link once and have it go to Digg, your bookmark service and Twitter... allow anyone to create their own interface to Digg, which would also provide Digg itself with additional content." The potential is nearly limitless. Heck, you could even incorporate a "Digg This" button into a Twitter client app like TweetDeck, for example.

To encourage developers to actually build apps or integrate Digg functionality within their existing applications, Digg recently allowed commercial use of their API. That means developers can actually monetize their applications "with full ownership and free of fees," says the Digg API license agreement. That gives the developer community even more incentive to put the API to use.

Digg Needs Traffic to Fight the Real-Time Web

The API change is arguably a brilliant move by the (potentially) fading social news site to combat the threat that comes from the real-time web.

There was a time when Digg.com was the king of link-sharing on the social web. Getting "dugg" sent massive amounts of traffic to your website, often overwhelming servers and bringing the site down - a problem that soon became known as the "Digg effect." While Digg still has that power today, Twitter is quickly becoming the link-sharing site of choice for many users. The reasons for that are many, but one key reason is that Twitter levels the playing field a bit - getting "dugg" is notoriously hard and getting something to the front page seems to be controlled by an elite crowd of diggers... no matter how hard Digg tries to combat that problem. Twitter, on the other hand, is easy. Anyone can share links, and through the power of "re-tweets" large amounts of traffic can be driven to websites, too. Although there's no "Twitter effect" just yet, its time may be coming soon.

With Twitter. we've seen the dispersal of information sped up. Where it can still take hours - and sometimes even days - to see a hot story make the front page of Digg.com, breaking news on Twitter moves at a much more rapid pace. Within minutes, the news spreads like wildfire, overtaking people's timelines and making its presence known in the Twitter trends. Although today Digg is still going strong, if they can't transform their service into more of a real-time news site where information isn't "old news" by the time it reaches an audience, then they will eventually find themselves outpaced by other services.

By opening up their API, Digg could deliver even more traffic to their site than they've ever done before. And with the additional traffic, stories could move through their system faster. Getting the necessary number of diggs needed to make a story "go popular" could, in theory, take minutes instead of hours if enough diggs came though. With additional traffic speeding up front page turnover, Digg could remain competitive with other real-time services that are attempting to steal their glory. Soon, one of those services may be bit.ly, whose URL shortening service is now the default for the Twitter community. According to recent news, bit.ly plans to mine links it collects to create a real-time news service a lot like Digg's, but based on Twitter instead. There's no doubt that Digg is aware of this potential threat, and that has at least partially influenced their decision to open up.

Still, despite Digg's plans, we have to wonder: will the read/write API be enough for Digg to compete further down the road? Let us know what you think in the comments.

The MiFi portable multi-person wireless router that we first wrote about in December and joined a chorus of positive reviews for in June now allows outside developers to write network-leveraging applications for the battery powered device.

The company hopes that both business and consumer users, developers both novice and advanced, will build MiFi applications as part of the new developer program.

The device may not see an iPhone store's worth of apps, but software that's location, network and socially aware could enable some interesting small-group computing activities on the go. More traditional mobile internet solutions like one-person EVDO could quickly feel shockingly unsophisticated.

On the other hand, the MiFi's small group limitations and web-centric nature may make it a challenge for developers to really come up with a substantial number of exciting applications. None were showcased in the announcement of the API's availability.

A secure, collaborative, shared workspace with local access only by MiFi? That seems like the low hanging fruit. What else would you like to see running on a hotspot in your pocket?

Stay's main beef with the changes is that no one was notified of these changes (to verify_credentials(), incidentally). Stay further reported that an email response from a Twitter rep stated that the company "assumed (apparently incorrectly) that people were only using this method occasionally."

Granted, Twitter has had a bit of a media tsunami on its hands lately, but we still must note that no official announcement has been made about the API changes. This seems to be the case with other API changes, as well. For example, earlier this month, API request limits were increased from 100 to 150, as several blogs and end users noted at that time. No official announcement was made; the information was confirmed, as with this most recent change, through an update to the API wiki.

Although the company is usually tight-lipped, do you think developers whose apps and livelihoods rely on the service and the API deserve a dedicated blog? Google Code is a great resource that acknowledges the ecosystem of apps built around that company's APIs.

Even if Twitter can't afford to support developers with resources of a Googlesque stature, we do tend to feel that developers who rely on the API deserve advance warning of certain changes, even ones the company might consider minor. As it stands, app developers are subjected to a string of pleasant surprises followed by sucker punches.

But the bigger news from this company is the release of an API that will allow anyone to build their own Read It Later applications - and not just for mobile, but for any platform.

The Read It Later application on the iPhone, available in both a free and paid version, lets you mark articles you're reading in Safari using a customized bookmarklet. Originally, the installation of this bookmarklet was a bit of a challenge as you first have to save a link then edit it, but thanks to iPhone OS 3.0's introduction of copy-and-paste, the process is much simpler.

With the update to Read It Later version 1.3, iPhone users will have access to a number of new features. Although each one is a minor tweak or upgrade, when combined, the overall experience of using the application is greatly improved.

1) Better Access to Articles: The first of the many changes includes support for multi-page articles. These articles will be detected by the application and combined into offline web and text modes. Also supported are articles that sit behind a paywall or are password-protected in some way - such as those on the Wall Street Journal's site, for example. Now Read It Later can store that content by caching your login credentials so you don't have to enter them again when the app needs to download that content. And while you're reading these saved articles, a new scroll bar makes it easier to navigate.

2) Reading List Improvements: To keep track of your reading list, the new app introduces a "Currently Reading" section where your list of "to-read" articles are tracked. It even remembers your position in every article you're reading! When you finish an article, it's moved to the newly created archive (the "Recently Read" section).

3) More Sharing, Rotation Lock (Pro Users Only): For users of the Pro (paid) version, you'll now be able to share articles to other iPhone Twitter applications like Twitterlator, TwitterFon, and Tweetie. Also added is Evernote, which complements the current list of sharing methods that already included Facebook, Delicious, and email.

Another new feature for Pro users is the ability to lock the rotation of the phone so that it stays put in the viewing mode you want (portrait or landscape) - a feature we wish the iPhone itself would include, to be honest!

The Read It Later API

As developer Nate Weiner explains on his blog, "as a solo developer, it's just not possible for me to develop for every mobile device and browser." That's why he decided to open up his API so others could build apps that do everything his does including tagging, syncing, account management, and more.

Hopefully, this new openness will encourage other developers to step in and help build applications for Palm, Android, Blackberry, and Chrome or implement the good features he hears suggested to him on a regular basis.

There's a good chance that developers will jump on this opportunity - and not just because Read It Later already has a user base of 1 million that grows by 5000 new users per day - that's just one incentive. The other is that API is open for both free and commercial applications, meaning the first (or best) apps developed for new platforms can actually earn money for their creators, just as Read It Later has done for Nate on the iPhone.

To access the API, sign up for an API key here.

For the new iPhone applications, you can download Read It Later Free here or Pro here ($2.99).

The mind reels at the possible use cases for such an API: Blogs and news sites could track and serve real-time, hot-topic links. Businesses could turn out impressive buzz-monitoring applications. Social action networks could use it to spread the word on civic engagement. Almost any site or organization could imaginatively and profitably employ OneRiot's instant link-indexing algorithm (which we think actually works better than many similar products). It just happens that TwitterBar was the first.

Peggs continued, "The real-time results are much more buzzy than static results, which pushes user adoption much more because the results resonate with what users want. Real-time search results can inform a discussion users are having with their friends."

TwitterBar, the first OneRiot partner, is a Firefox add-on that allows users to send Twitter updates directly from the Firefox address bar. Although the TwitterBar functionality is currently "very alpha" (to coin a kind, new term for early-launching tech) the implications of instantly gleaning and sharing real-time results are fascinating, especially considering that social web sharing boosts a link's OneRiot score.

"If you look at the real-time search players out there," said Peggs, "the key for them is to get distribution. Clearly, a number of users are going to turn up at MyRealTimeSearchEnginge.com, but the way to drive user adoption is to distribute. You need to be very confident that you can scale. What the API does is prove that OneRiot is a company that believes they can scale."

Why is OneRiot so confident in its ability to scale? While Peggs wouldn't comment on back-end server tech specifics, he did say, "We have got a world-class team of search experts. We have more PhDs than you can shake a stick at. They have invented some really smart ways to process an incredible amount of social signals in real time and deliver results back. It's a combination of team and technology that's backed up by internal testing. We know what we can support, and we're excited for other partners to adopt it and start hammering away."

The OneRiot API is for developers of looking to enhance their user experience with realtime web search powered by OneRiot. The OneRiot API is free and available by request.

We look forward to seeing who takes on this opportunity. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots of the OneRiot API in action:

Google already gave a number of developers a preview of the API and you can see the fruits of their labor here. These tools, for example, include integration with content management systems and other analytics suites. One easy to install example for an app that uses the Google Analytics API is Polaris, an Adobe AIR widget from Desktop Reporting that displays basic information about your site.

Of course, Google Analytics, even with this API, does not give you real-time information about the traffic on your site. For that, you will still have to resort to other tools like Woopra, which uses a desktop application as it default interface, and which also offers an API.

About 75% of Super Rewards' income is currently derived from advertising offers, while the other 25% come from direct sales of in-game points that bypass the advertising solution. Super Rewards has about 40 million users worldwide, a majority of which can be found in English-speaking countries. Super Rewards currently features about 3,000 different offers in its database.

Developers can now implement the Super Rewards system relatively easily into their own games and apps. For relatively simple applications, this can be as easy as copying and pasting Super Rewards code into their own programs. While Bailey couldn't quite divulge all the details in the agreements that the company has signed with developers, he stressed that Super Rewards would take less than the 30% cut that Apple currently gets from apps sold in the App Store.

Walking a Fine Line

Overall, this looks like an interesting solution for developers to monetize their games and social network apps, though they will clearly have to walk a fine line between creating a compelling reason for users to engage with advertisers, and looking like they are exploiting their users and annoying them with ads and offers from Super Rewards. Some of the games are obviously also targeted at younger kids, which could potentially introduce a number of ethical problems for developers who want to implement Super Rewards in their apps.