Read on for a glimpse of what the site now looks and feels like, as well as an exhaustive list of new features and improvements.

Other improvements include the following:

New Friendship Model

Instead of a "friend" model where users must approve friendship requests in order to see one another's updates, Brightkite 2.0 has allowed for a more asymmetrical relationship. "This means that you can add someone to your friends without them having to approve you or friend you back," says the site. "This lets people you may not actually be friends with receive your updates while keeping your friends list manageable and relevant." The follower/fan model Brightkite is adopting here is comparable to what one sees on sites such as Digg and Twitter, and will likely make the whole experience more fun for more users.

And also, users can choose notification options for individual friends:

Get Satisfaction Gets Dumped

"Get Satisfaction was a great start for us," states the Brightkite website, "but we sorely needed more features without the hefty price tag." User support, bug reporting, and the like will now be handled through a Tender Support site.

Non Geo-Tagged Posts
With the new "Somewhere in the world" option, users are now free to post notes and photos that are not associated with a geographical location by clicking the X button in the "Pick a Place" section of the post form. Non geo-tagged posts will show the location as "somewhere in the world."

New Stream and Navigation

Brightkite has taken their three-pronged stream (Me & My Friends, Around Me, Universe) and condensed them into a single stream with drop-down menus for filtering options, including filtering by location and type of post.

Messages, Comments, Mentions, Friends, and Account Settings are now at the bottom of the page.

The Check-In button also got a makeover:

Adding Places

On the new Brightkite, or Brightkite 2.0, users can add a place if it doesn't show up in search results. To do so, users simply click the "Not in this list?" button at the bottom of the list, then add all necessary details.

Authorized Apps

Users can see all of the third party apps with access their accounts. Then can also choose to revoke access to any of these apps as desired.

Browsing People

Users can now easily browse through other Brightkite users based on a number of different filter options, including age, gender, location, and relationship to the user (friends, fans, or everyone).

Likes/Dislikes

Users will also see a small thumbs up/thumbs down icon set in the top right corner of each post. Although expression of approval for users' posts is encouraged, the site gives a common-sense caveat. "Be careful how you use the thumbs down, nobody likes to be handed a turd." Eww.

Privacy

Brighkite 2.0 brings users a kinder, simpler privacy option. According to the site, "You have the option to share your check ins and posts with just your friends or with everybody. This option is available on every post you make and it can be changed on a per post basis." Also, within the post or check-in, a user can be street-address specific or metro-area vague, depending on personal preference.

And that's the new Brightkite, folks! What do you think so far? Will the asymmetrical friendship model, enhanced browsing capabilities, and simpler interface keep you - and other users - coming back?

Garage sales are no longer just for blue-haired grandmothers with teacup fetishes. While eBay and Etsy are great for selling rare or specialty items, setting up an auction or store for your mismatched cutlery might not get you the results you need. One blessing in this down economy is that we're learning to reclaim and recycle in a way that our grandmothers have been doing for years. Whether you like haggling over weird items on a Sunday or you'd simply like to list your own sale, here are some great resources.

2. GSALR: This site improves where Craigslist leaves off. While it does not offer images from sales, it does offer a map of the region, an RSS feed on new listings and a trip planner for multi-sale routes. Garage Sale Nation offers a similar tool, and the most results seem to appear in Massachusetts, Virginia, New York and Michigan.

Yard Sale Search: This site is extremely bare bones, but if you're just looking for a site to list all of the multi-family sales in your area, the results are quick and plentiful.

3. ZipGarage: ZipGarage is a site where garage sale hunters type in their postal code and receive results on sales in their area. RWW first wrote about ZipGarage in 2007. While this site is perhaps one of the best designed garage sale sites, it still lacks the users. If you're having a sale, you might still want to embed the widget to give directions to your users.

4. Upcoming and Facebook Events: Your friends DO want to buy your junk, or at the very least they want to spend Sunday drinking beer on your lawn. A great way to kick start a yard sale is to reach out to your online networks, prepare some sandwiches and treat the event like a lawn party. Upcoming and Facebook events offer great ways to announce localized events and the best part is that your friends are likely to get calendar reminders for your sale.

5. Twitter, Loopt: These location-based services are great for that last minute sale push or reminder. While nearby followers might not have planned to buy anything, if they're in the area, they just might stop by for an impulse purchase.

6.The Local Paper and Craigslist: We're sure you already know about these options, but if you're having a sale, it would be silly not to list here. With Craigslist, users can narrow their search by neighborhood and keyword, and choose to specify only those results that contain images.

*Final Tips for Sellers: After you've tweeted, listed and advertised your yard sale, remember that old school rules still apply. Some of the must-haves of a garage sales include ample signage, properly labeled tables, extra boxes and bags, a measuring tape for furniture and about $100 in small bills and quarters for change.

SHARED TRAVEL PLANNING: Both Tripit and Dopplr are fantastic tools for keeping track of itineraries and sharing travel plans with friends. Meanwhile Gliider is a great tool for saving large blocks of trip-related text and syncing them to offline folders.

gliider from jared richardson on Vimeo.

DIRECTIONS: TeleNav provides GPS services for a number of mobile devices including the iPhone. The tool offers voice driving directions, spoken address recognition, rerouting for accidents and traffic jams, and locates wireless hotspots, the lowest gas prices, parking lots and ATMs. TomTom for iPhone is also expected to be a great tool as the docking station doubles as a charger.

FOOD: Many of us are familiar finding food with the Yelp and Urbanspoon iPhone apps; however, if you want an authentic road trip experience you might want to consult Roadfood. This site lays claim to the "most memorable local eateries along the highways and back roads of America." We get heart palpitations just looking at the heaping plates of pulled pork, burgers and ribs. Meanwhile, if you're looking to picnic with something more healthy and sustainable, Local Harvest's farmer's market finder coupled with the Locavore iPhone app offer users the chance to find local in-season produce. Locallectual offers a similar tool with their iLocavore app.

VIDEOS & PHOTOS: One way to get images up quickly is to stream them directly from your camera. Eye-Fi uses a wireless connection to upload photos and videos directly to your Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Picassa accounts. If you want to live stream sans touch ups or editing, Eye-Fi is an extremely useful cordless solution. Other mobile streaming video and image options include Qik, Flixwagon, Stickam, Justin.tv and Kyte Producer.

GEO-TAGGING: AroundShare is a mobile application that allows users to publish photos to Google Maps. Meanwhile, Flickr's users can also organize their videos and photos on a map via the site's geo-tagging features. As for geo-based discovery, Flickr mobile utilizes the locational features of the Android and iPhone and allows members to explore public photos from nearby sites.

TRACKING:Google Latitude lets users share their location on a map in real time from their phones or computers. Maps can be embedded in public websites and road trippers appear as moving dots on the map. Imagine your best friend surprising you with Thai food just as you pull up to your hotel. Services like Brightkite and Loopt also broadcast your location; however, these services are based on push notifications rather than real time tracking.

TELLING THE STORY: The Whuffaoke group is using Dipity to aggregate their media. The service allows users to upload their Tweets, blog posts and photo sets to a map, time line and flip book interface. The nice thing about this tool is that it can either be embedded (as seen here) or shared via Facebook, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit or Digg. Other tools to aggregate road trip-related media include JS-Kit's Echo, Disqus or an embedded hashtag feed.

Twitter has acquired two other companies so far, that we know of. Search engine and sentiment analysis service Summize became Twitter's own search engine and Values of N sold its assets so engineer Rael Dornfest could be brought into the company. Here are ten other startups we think that Twitter should consider acquiring next. Which kind of company would you most like to see become part of Twitter itself? We've got a poll below.

Some of these we think are likely acquisitions, some less so. In making this list we considered both functionality that would be helpful to have added to Twitter's own site and technology that would be worth buying instead of just building in-house. Whenever a platform company builds technology that a number of other startups offer, there is a risk of scaring other people away from investing in development that the platform could just reproduce. Acquisitions of startups on a platform probably increase the appeal of development though, as it's a chance to get in on the game.

Quite Likely, if It Hasn't Happened Already

Bit.ly is the most full-featured and popular URL shortener on the market right now and was recently selected as Twitter's own shortener of choice, dethroning TinyURL. Bit.ly offers all kinds of smart analytics, from real-time click tracking to semantic analysis of topic keywords from the links that people tweet.

One trusted industry source speaking on the condition of anonymity told us that Bit.ly servers "were moved into Twitter's racks months ago in preparation for this change" [of becoming the default shortener]. Bit.ly is becoming too important to Twitter to keep that functionality outside the company's own shop and the two companies share some investors. We will not be surprised at all if a Bit.ly acquisition by Twitter is announced sometime in the near future.

Could Happen...

Tweetmeme is another fast growing Twitter analytics service that tracks sharing on the service. With another chunk of new features just added today, the service is looking a whole lot like "Feedburner for Twitter" but with even more viral distribution possibilities. The Tweetmeme API is quite interesting and could complement Bit.ly quite well.

Twitpic is a popular way to share images on Twitter. The site faces a strong challenge from ImageShack's YFrog, but independent Twitpic would be a cheaper acquisition and is already well known among Twitter users. (Twitter should probably look at Enjoysthin.gs; it's got the best user experience.) An increase in imagery on Twitter would probably offer the company a lot more advertising real-estate.

Tweepz is a fascinating Twitter search engine that acts like a directory that lets you parse your results using various metrics gleaned from Twitter. Check out this search, for example. Twitter could benefit from making this kind of search available to users, advertisers and researchers - and Tweepz has already built it. See also Twazzup, another company doing interesting things with Twitter data.

Longer Shots

An iPhone app company could be a good buy for Twitter; there's certainly plenty of options. M.Twitter.com is a good mobile service already but someone specializing in super high-quality Twitter apps for the iPhone, Android and Pre could be good to bring in house. It could be AteBits, makers of Tweetie. There may not be enough reason for Twitter to buy one of these companies, though.

A desktop Twitter app company could help Twitter increase user engagement. Many of the most serious Twitter users (though not all) swear by desktop access. Twitter could acquire the most popular and arguably most innovative desktop app, Tweetdeck, or it could bring Seesmic in house. Tweetdeck would be cheap and shares investors with Twitter. Desktop apps may be too limited in appeal to be a compelling acquisition target.

Geo-location could be a good feature to add to Twitter. Search by user location could be made much more meaningful and the list of things that could be done with it is very long. Brightkite is popular and well developed, Shizzow is pretty and wouldn't be expensive. On the other hand, browsers themselves will likely all become more location aware in the near future and Twitter may be satisfied with its current location data.

A semantics company could bring structure to the Tweets, making them more useful and easier to advertise against. Right now links Tweeted are semantically analyzed by Reuters' Calais and sent to Bit.ly, but we wouldn't be surprised if Twitter was interested in scooping up a small semantics shop and helping it scale so that analysis was being done in house. Twitter may feel like semantics don't need to get that close to consumer users, though. (Disclosure, Calais is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.)

Topify is a widely loved service that intercepts your new Twitter follower notification emails and sends you much more useful ones. It's great but probably too easy for Twitter to just reproduce itself.

FriendFeed plus Twitter would be a match made in heaven. It would be an engineering powerhouse. It would be a step towards mainstream user adoption of FriendFeed, a service that can't make up its mind which end of the sophistication spectrum it's targeting. It's also quite unlikely to happen. If there's one related startup we can imagine turning down a Twitter acquisition offer, it's probably FriendFeed. (Though the investment-laden and highly ambitious OneRiot is a close second.) Nonetheless, it would be awesome if FriendFeed's cross-network aggregation, threaded conversations, groups, media support, search and more joined forces with Twitter.

Ultimately, it may be most likely that Twitter's next acquisition will be something vapid. A service that aggregates shopping Tweets, or celebrity Tweets, or something else that will fall short of taking advantage of the Twitter platform's huge potential to change the world. Twitter staff makes relatively simple use of its own service, so hoping that it will acquire companies that make it all the more powerfully sophisticated may be an early adopter's pipe dream. [Update: After some discussion this afternoon, I am thinking it's time to reconsider this position I've held for some time. Twitter staff is not full of dummies, I'm sure, and it has probably been inappropriate of me to write as if that's the case.]

Maybe not, though. We wouldn't be shocked to see Twitter pick up at least a few of the companies above. What do you think? Are there other services you'd like to see become part of the Twitter team even more than the above? It's a wild and woolly micro-content ecosystem out there - anything could happen.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Doug Coleman, Jolie O'Dell, Dana Oshiro , Lidija Davis and Steven Walling.

With the rise of smartphone-based computing, applications like Brightkite, Loopt, and others were slowly growing their user base, letting friends share posts, photos, and other information with each other as they moved from place to place out in the real world. Accessed via mobile applications or SMS, these sorts of networks provided the framework for connecting people to the places they visit.

However, it was too soon to determine whether mobile social networking was a space that would ever really take off. As studies showed, the social networks that most people accessed on the go were not specialized "mobile" networks, but the usual ones - Facebook and MySpace. Having to recreate a friend graph on new mobile social networks was not something everyone was up for...at least it hadn't been not so far.

Without any easy way to import MySpace and Facebook friends to these newer mobile networks (like via Facebook Connect for example), our mobile social networks were filled only with an odd mix of friends: some early adopters and maybe a handful of tech-obsessed locals. But that being said, the networks still had potential assuming they could have ever gotten over the initial hump to gather critical mass. They were offering something unique, and that boded well for them. Being able to tune into the world around you and see who was there, who had been there, and what was going on was a type of augmented reality that was never possible before the advent of modern mobile computing.

Google's Potential to Dominate

Now that Google has come onto the scene, friend graphs already intact, one has to wonder about the impact this will have on these smaller networks. How will they survive? Google is already a mainstream service and Latitude was just covered by the Wall Street Journal. Needless to say, any mainstream users out there intrigued by mobile social networking will now just go try Google's service.

Yet where the smaller networks had the cozy feel of you and handful of friends, any service maintained by a behemoth such as Google immediately has a "Big Brother" feel to it. No matter how many opt-out features and privacy controls they offer, some people just won't be able to shake that feeling that Google is just a little too omnipresent in our lives. But will "fear of Google" alone be enough to keep people from leaving the small mobile networks in favor of the larger one?

According to Martin May, Brightkite founder, though, Google didn't even come close to killing his service. "With Brightkite," he says, "we are primarily focused making meaningful connections with people you didn't necessarily know yet, around places. Latitude seems focused on showing you where your existing friends are at. Functionality-wise, Latitude does very little beyond sharing a latitude, longitude and accuracy with friends at the moment." But even May admits that may change down the road.

Wait...Our Real Friends Aren't on Google

What's strange about the mobile social networking market, though, are the missing players. The major missing players. Where is Facebook? Where is MySpace? Why is it that the biggest social networks on the planet have decidedly shunned any attempt to add proximity and mapping to their mobile services?

If anything our real friends are here, not on Google, whose friend network includes random people from our Gmail accounts, interesting folks from our RSS readers, and the occasional visitors to our blogs (thanks to the Google Friend Connect widget). Those may be people who we work with, people who wanted to share feeds with us, or fellow bloggers, but they aren't necessarily our real-life friends. And since they're not, why on earth would we want to share our locations with them?

The ability to connect to all our real-life, real-world friends and family - friends that include mainstream web users, mom, dad, and the kids - is something that just isn't here yet. No matter which mobile social network you end up using, including Google's, you're only going to see a slice of your actual social network. A true mobile social network would integrate friends from all the major social networks we participate in, plus our bevy of work colleagues from the social network hidden in our email, and, for all those non-participants out there, it would let us add them via their mobile phone number. But that really would be creepy, so we sort of hope it never happens.

Brightkite users can choose to have their Facebook status updated and/or publish their location, notes, and photos directly into their Facebook News Feed.

To turn this new feature on, do the following:

1. On Brightkite visit your Account Settings, click on the Sharing tab.
2. Authorize Facebook by clicking the link next to all 3 steps.
3. Choose your Facebook cross-posting options and click save.

Brightkite promises this is only the beginning and that's there's more in store in terms of Brightkite/Facebook integration. We imagine that means they'll soon allow us to bring our Facebook friend list into Brightkite and vice versa.

The power of this integration is precisely why Facebook Connect is rapidly being adopted by web sites across the internet. That, and the fact that regular internet users immediately understand what "Connect with Facebook" means. Unfortunately, "Login with your OpenID" still has them scratching their heads.

Using the Wall

To get started, simply browse to the desired place and click the new Wall tab. Then click on the embedded Brightkite Wall to go full screen. Organizers can even customize the Wall beforehand, if desired. The message and location name can be modified, the shortcode can be selected for use within the U.S. or outside the U.S., and checkins can be turned on or off.

Of course, Brightkite has a much smaller user base than Twitter, which could have made this new feature a non-starter. However, Brightkite has that problem covered. With the Brightkite Wall, anyone can participate by texting a pre-defined shortcode provided for you by the service.

Better Than Live Blogging?

Brightkite's Wall may soon beat Twitter to become the microblogging platform of choice for live events because it offers a much richer stream of information. Instead of just displaying 140-character notes, Brightkite's Wall also displays photos. Combined with notes and checkins, this makes the Wall a much more engaging experience.

For those virtually attending the event, watching the Brightkite Wall could end up being even better than refreshing a blogger's post featuring their "live" coverage of the event. A live blog only gives you one point of view and set of images. Even if it's a group effort, it's not the same as being immediately tapped into the thoughts and reactions of all the event's attendees as you are with Brightkite.

Potential Problems

Our only concern for this new feature is that it doesn't appear to be any sort of administrative control over who can configure what. If some rogue conference attendee wanted to, he or she could highjack the Wall by customizing their own personalized greeting for all to see. That could lead to problems, especially if the message was profane or offensive.

Another concern is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of archiving system in place, so while the Wall may be a great real-time view into the thoughts and activities that are taking place at a particular point in time, going back to view older images and notes could be a challenge if the same locale (address) is used over and over again for subsequent events.

The Wall feature is still in beta, though, so as people begin to use it and submit feedback, it may be updated to even better reflect people's needs than it does now.

There are lots of location based social networks available, but this one is refreshingly simple. Is that enough to effectively differentiate Shizzow? It's going to have to be, because there's not much else about the service that's unique. Most features are easily reproduced, however, and usability may be the key point of competition in this market.

Shizzow let's you "shout" about where you are, based on the name of the place instead of its address (that's figured out in the back end), and listen to the shouts of friends' locations. You can see who hangs out at particular locations and what locations your friends hang out at most often. Ultimately, the service should help your lonely self connect with people in public more often, if that's something you're looking for.

Posting can be done through a mobile interface, a Google Gadget or the Shizzow web page. There's some IM and SMS integration as well.

Is there an API? Not yet. When will it open for general availability? Just before the SXSW conference - that's pretty cliche, but it could work.

Why would you use this instead of Brightkite, Loopt, something built on top of Yahoo Fire Eagle? If you're comfortable using any of those services already, you probably have no need to use Shizzow. The company's attempts to explain how different their service is haven't been particularly convincing.

The Upside

If you're looking for a less geeky, attractive, easy to use location based network to use with a wider circle of people than just early adopters - Shizzow will likely play well with that crowd (the rest of the world). If we told you three years ago that a simple service that let you broadcast 140 characters or less about "what you're doing" was going to take the world by storm, you'd probably have called us crazy. Similarly, comparing location based social networks on features may not be the best criterion.

Usability is key to adoption beyond the relatively small number of people who obsess over every feature and Shizzow is simple, clean looking and usable. Location based social networking sometimes feels so bleeding edge pretentious that you wonder whether these communities even want more users. That's not the feeling you'll likely get looking around Shizzow.

Does the the world at large want to find friends and be found via short messages? We're not sure, but it's possible. Can Shizzow take its simple, useful tool out into the world successfully? We'll see, location based social networking is a new paradigm and given privacy concerns (even if they're not rationally "valid") it could be a hard sell to mainstream users.

Shizzow is now available for users in California. Drop by, give it a try and let us know what you think. See also WebMonkey's interview with the Shizzow CEO this morning, it's an interesting discussion about side projects, simplicity and mobile communication.

We're already fans of the iPhone optimized version of Brightkite. However, it does leave room for some improvements. This is where the iPhone app picks up the slack. Once you login with your credentials you're greeted with the "I am..." screen. Here you can check in to another place, post a note or photo, or allow Brightkite to locate you via the Location Service feature on the iPhone. Locating a user is where Brightkite shines! The "Find Me" feature was extremely accurate with locating my location and also offered several other options of where I might be for me to pick. Brightkite also has a "place snapping" button that lets you allow the app to automatically update your location while you're on the go. It keeps tabs on how long it's been since your last update and the accuracy of your location.

You can also view your friend's activities, the activities of the Brightkite universe, view your address book of friends, see who's nearby, check your messages, accept or deny requests, and tons more. The Brightkite app also plays nicely with Google Maps on the iPhone so that you can get directions to where your friends are on the fly by simply touching the map of your friend's latest location. All in all, this app rocks!

Better Than Its Web Counterpart

If you have any room left on your iPhone for another application, Brightkite is worth the space. Though some users will still be haunted with the various problems that plague most mobile social networks, Brightkite's iPhone app makes the service seem a little more convenient and could cause many to use it a lot more. We only warn you to be careful with leaving the "locate me" feature on as this can be a battery life drainer on the iPhone, but is necessary to turn on if you want to use the app. Check out this awesome video of the Brightkite iPhone app in action just below:

Brightkite for the iPhone from Brightkite on Vimeo.

Participants in today's RWW Live were: ReadWriteTalk host Sean Ammirati, Steve O'Hear from our network blog last100, myself, Bernard Lunn and Marshall Kirkpatrick. You can listen to the podcast below.

One of the players, SugarSync (RWW review here), today announced a development that further blurs the lines between synchronisation and collaboration services. With SugarSync's new functionality users can send any file from their desktop, web or mobile SugarSync application, regardless of the size of the file or number of recipients.

Once recipients have started downloading the files, the sender receives a notification advising them of the fact. SugarSync also time limits the email to 1 day to further enhance security.

Why this changes the synchronisation game

Previously synchronisation services were primarily about multiple device access and backup. LiveMesh has promised collaboration but this has been Windows-centric. SugarSync solution is cross-platform and as such heralds something of a game-change.

SugarSync in action

I've been using SugarSync for around six months now to back-up and sync files between multiple machines and the web. My experience has been exactly what one would hope for with a service like this - seamless and silent. SugarSync works in the background and keeps everything beautifully up to date. Every now and then I find myself taking a peek to make sure that the product has done what it's meant to and, as yet, I haven't been let down.

The changes rolled out today give SugarSync a point of difference over some of the other sync providers, while taking a large step into the domain of the collaboration solution providers.

A guest post by Ben Kepes of diversity.net.nz, a blog that focuses on SaaS, cloud-computing and Web 2.0 for the real world

According to FriendFeed's Bret Taylor, the problem was caused by an malfunctioning API client. At the time, he didn't know whether the problem was accidental or intentional, so they disabled the API client and researched the IP address to determine where these messages were coming from. They then got in touch with the developer to let him know what was going on.

As it turned out, the service at fault was Gridjit, a social portal service still in alpha that uses both Twitter's and FriendFeed's APIs to allow you to view and interact with both services from Gridjit's web site.

As soon as FriendFeed got in touch with Gridjit, Gridjit's founder, Ray Grieselhuber, disabled the service's ability to post statuses, comments, and likes from within Gridjit and shut off access to the account management screens. After a day's worth of research, the problem was discovered - it wasn't a security issue, just a bug in the code. The issues is being addressed now and the affected users who had comments posted under their name were contacted via an email that read:

I'm sending this to let you know about a bug in Gridjit's code that caused a comment to be posted to FriendFeed in your name.

I spent the day reviewing the system and performing security audits to ensure that that this was not a security violation - it was not.

Rather, it was a bug in the system that caused the extra comments to be posted based on some obscure query patterns. I'm taking steps to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

If you would like to see the comments and delete them, the FriendFeed links can be found here:

http://friendfeed.com/e/6def167a-f3d2-4711-aebd-6f8171919178/http-www-geeky-gadgets-com/

http://friendfeed.com/e/8be20617-8d57-478c-a367-98da5d02a8a0/Not-a-complete-list-of-top-diggers/

I sincerely apologize for this. The quality of your experience with Gridjit is very important to me.

Additional details and updates will be posted on the Gridjit blog (http://blog.gridjit.com).

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Ray Grieselhuber

Write APIs - A Cause For Concern?

While in this particular case, the issue was relatively minor and more of a strange occurrence than anything, it was only through FriendFeed's quick action that the entire service was not affected by this programming bug. Of course, it was also helpful that Gridjit is still in private alpha testing at the moment, so there aren't a lot of users currently using their service.

But what if this bug had come from another service that was heavily used? And what if it had been a web app that's far more mission-critical than FriendFeed?

The problem with providing an open API (that is, a write API) is that all it takes is one programmer to have a big impact on a service. Like in the case of Gridjit, it may be an accidental bug in their code, but it could have just as easily been someone with a more malicious intent.

So instead, via the BONDI initiative, OMTP will define what interfaces developers need to access when writing apps that tap into more sensitive functions on the mobile device. BONDI will expose those handset features to the developers while also protecting the users from any fraudulent or malicious activity.

In addition, the web services that result from the BONDI initiative will incorporate the various open and proprietary work currently in progress in this area of mobile development so as not to cause more fragmentation.

As today's mobile phones become more like mini-computers, the need for standards and security is paramount. The members of OMTP agree. Having standards will "encourage more developers to create unique, exciting applications for mobile web 2.0," says Arnd Gallmann SVP Terminal Technology at T-Mobile.

We couldn't agree more and are now eagerly awaiting the plethora of services that are sure to result from this move.

But email faces increasing competition. Chat, text messages, Twitter, social networks and even lifestreaming tools are chipping away at email usage. In this post we take a look at what's happening and assess if email is in danger.

Twitter was invented because there was a gap in public broadcast communication. Doing Twitter over email would be clunky, if not impossible. The ability to post your personal statuses, decoupled from the ability to subscribe to people you're interested in, put Twitter on the map. People are sending direct messages via Twitter instead of sending an email.

Email is perceived as work, while Twitter is still thought of as fun. Twitter messages are short, use is casual, and Twitter is a cute piece of technology loved by the earlier adopter crowd. People send Tweets complaining their Inbox is full.

The Twitter experience is lighter because of the user interface. With Twitter, we're presented with a scrollable list of messages.

With email we need to select the message and drill into it. Traditionally email clients show only the subject line, so even if the message is short, the user needs to click. And all these clicks add up.

The Outlook Problem

Email is a workhorse. Microsoft realised that business people want one tool to do it all, so email was enhanced with calendar, to do lists and other features.

The problem: all this was slammed on top of email, which became the entry point into a black hole known as My Inbox. Short and long messages, business and personal emails, tasks, events - all stacked on top of each other.

Outlook is a powerful piece of software that lets you organise and sort, but you have to drive it. For many, email is hard work and a mess that needs to be dealt with.

Simpler email clients, like Gmail, focus on how to be a better email client instead of being a hammer for all problems. An innovation like aggregating conversations has huge impact on productivity.

In the years Microsoft was adding more buttons to the toolbar, they should have invested more on the core innovation around email and productivity. Wiring in NLP and semantics to extract things like People, Events and Places would be a good start. Designing emails around use cases like "this is a meeting, this is a project, this is a friend" would go a long way towards helping avoid the Inbox clutter.

Breaking Down Email

Since email was the first killer app for the web, it's used for everything. We're now observing a fragmentation cycle where we're discovering better ways of passing around information and getting things done.

Email is fundamentally great at substantial person-to-person communication. The following diagram illustrates why email is facing competition. It cannot effectively support broadcast (except for spam) and it's still poor at helping with tasks and projects.

Tools like Basecamp and Highrise from 37Signals are showing there's a way to better project management and CRM while leveraging information in emails. If the Twitter service stabilises it's likely to win over people permanently because of its simplicity and playfulness.

Social networks incorporate direct messaging and chats, making it easy for people to talk directly, bypassing email. These communications are easier than email; they're integrated into the flow and more accessible. To be fair, they're aimed for brief messages.

The increasing speed of our lives and global connectivity reduces the need for lengthy emails. If we're in touch more often, then we reveal less every time we talk. Shorter, more frequent exchanges are replacing the lengthier communication of the past.

Corporate Safe Haven?

Even if consumers shift away from email, it is difficult to see how enterprises could. Microsoft has done a wonderful job winning that market and ensuring companies would not function without an Exchange server. A typical proprietary bloatware, Exchange and Outlook handle it all. It doesn't seem feasible for companies to shift away from email anytime soon.

Likely we will see two trends. Google will continue to champion its solution, which, if successful, will bring much needed simplicity to email.

The second trend is simpler project management tools to reduce the functions needing to be done with email. The challenge is that they need to be seamlessly integrated with the email, ideally leveraging its content and automatically generating tasks, events, contacts, etc.

Conclusion

Email has been the blockbuster and the Internet killer app for the past few decades, but it doesn't have a monopoly. New more contextual ways to communicate are emerging and slicing pieces of the email pie, particularly in the consumer market.

We're likely to see a consumer shift from email towards more compact forms of communication, but in the enterprise the email hold is strong and unlikely to be replaced any time soon.

What do you think about the future of email? How have your communication patterns been evolving? What communication tools do you prefer to email?

Anton Talks About The Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.

Not all the users have these features enabled yet, but those of you who do can check by going to upcoming and checking for a red BETA label. The new upcoming system has three ways to sort it and the third option in the list, Most Diggs, is the one you're used to seeing, where all stories are presented in order of decreasing Diggs.

The first new option, Most Matches, looks at your history of Digging, compares it with other community members, and shows the stories in order of number of matches. In the case of the first story, you see the expanded view of the 'Recommendations via' list, and in the case of the second story, you see it in the compact version, not showing the user names and percentages, rather only the total number. For example:

The second new option, Most Recent, shows you the stories recommended by community members compatible with you, in reverse chronological order. You can also see why a story was recommended to you (via user name and percentage of compatibility with that user).

A new section in the sidebar, entitled 'Diggers Like You' shows you Diggers that are most like you in their Digging and submitting habits.

And finally, you can click on a user and compare exactly how much you overlap. In the screenshot you see below you can see the overlap between my profile and thediggboss's profile. In total we had 3864 overlapping Diggs in the past 30 days, which means our compatibility score over all our Digg activity is 38%.

Overall the design is great and there is a decent feature set. As far as what it is designed to do, it seems to function well. At the same time however, whether the engine will help content submitted by a fairly obscure user, remains to be seen. In the beginning, all your compatibilities are going to be with the people that you have been Digging and the people that have been Digging you back, i.e. your friends. It will require widespread use of the feature 'Diggers Like You' to help more obscure submissions travel to a lot of people.

It is also important to note that the recommendation engine will be a boon to advertisers as well (and of course Digg). By sending the most relevant links to the most relevant people, you can also send the most relevant advertisements to the right people (and ensure high-quality clickthroughs). Users get good content and related, hopefully non-intrusive ads, advertisers get the right potential customers, and Digg gets the money.

This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. You can follow Muhammad on Twitter.

Special thanks to thediggboss for providing the images.