When you look back at the past 12 months, it's almost hard to narrow a list down to only 10 top products, in fact - there's so much innovation happening around mobile today. But we think the list below stands out as representative of the most important products from the year.

In June, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the newest iPhone at a packed press event in San Francisco. The iPhone 4 introduced a number of mobile innovations, including front-facing cameras for the phone's new Facetime video chat feature; gyroscopic controls that let developers create more advanced games and other apps using location and the position of the device in 3D space; an updated OS that introduced multi-tasking; app folders; and more, and perhaps most memorably, an updated design where the antenna wrapped around the outside of the phone, leading to degraded performance.  Ah yes, Antennagate 2010, which only showed that not only can Apple make mistakes, doing so has no impact on its sales whatsoever. iPhone 4 sales reached record numbers, despite the buzz around its signal issues.

"Apple's continued success proves 1) apps and the Web are becoming more important than the ability to make a voice call; 2) consumers have little problem with Apple's heavy handed control of the end-to-end experience, in fact they appreciate it; 3) no one has come close to matching Apple's alchemy of great hardware, software, and marketing," explains Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Next Page: iPad

iPad

Apple's introduction of the iPad in March, to put it simply, has forever reshaped the mobile computing landscape. The iPad is part mobile (it runs the iPhone operating system, now called iOS instead of iPhone OS), and part "real" computer (you can do actual work on it using Apple's office suite). In other words, the iPad is a device that straddles two worlds. Some, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckberberg, have said "iPad isn't mobile" and we mostly agree - it's more computer than smartphone, despite the apps it runs. But to leave it off a year-end list of mobile products? Sacrilege! The iPad has completely changed what mobile computing means to us - it's a worthy replacement to notebooks and netbooks, even eating away at the latter's sales. And it has prompted competitors to make major changes in their own device offerings, too. Next year, we'll see more Android-based tablets, tablets from HP-Palm running HP's newly acquired Palm webOS and even new Microsoft tablets running Windows.

But is the iPad mobile? Maybe, maybe not. Says Michael Mullany, VP of products at mobile app builder Sencha, "The iPad is the Starbucks of computing devices - a third device between your phone and your laptop that you didn't even know you wanted. But once you get that first hit, you're hooked (and it doesn't even have caffeine)."

Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps puts it more simply: "The Pad is the right product for the right time." She also noted its dual uses. "Consumers are primed for mobile media consumption and casual couch computing, and the iPad delivers on both fronts. One-quarter of iPad owners use their iPad for work, too - it's becoming the must-have accessory at meetings and events."

Next Page: Android

Android

This was Android's year. The mobile operating system from Google has seen dramatic increases in terms of phone sales, market share, ad impressions, apps, you name it - any way you measure the mobile landscape, Android is there, climbing higher and higher. In September, analyst firm Gartner made waves with its prediction that Android would become the number two mobile OS worldwide by year-end. By November, Android reached the top spot in the U.S., and yep, number two worldwide based on shipments.

"Android swamped the market in 2010 and in 2011 it will become the share leader via lower cost, entry level smartphones," says Forrester's Golvin.

Next Page: HTML5

HTML5

Although not even a fully ratified standard yet, HTML5 was a booming technology this year. Much of its growth can be attributed to Apple's decision to not support Adobe Flash on its mobile devices, most notably its iPad computer. As the debate over the decision reached a fever pitch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs finally detailed the reasons for his decision in a long missive posted to Apple.com. Flash is proprietary, has poor security and doesn't perform well on mobile devices, Jobs said. By May, 46% of Web users were ready for HTML5, a study revealed, and plenty of major Web properties were too, including YouTube, Vimeo and a host of online publications that Apple touted in its "iPad-Ready" list of websites. Technically, these sites, which included news organizations like CNN, The New York Times, Reuters and others, were HTML5-ready, which made them "iPad-Ready."

"After 5 years of hard work by the working groups, HTML5 hit critical mass, giving developers and designers a slew of rich Web technologies for media, graphics and storage that are built right into the browser," says Mullany. "It's what we've been waiting for since the birth of the Web 20 years ago."

Mozilla's Vice President of Products Jay Sullivan agrees with the impact HTML5 has had on mobile this year, as well. "New, emerging technologies like HTML5 are enabling the Web to bring the same rich, compelling experiences users are used to on their desktop to mobile devices. Users are able to view crisp video and play interactive video games on their mobile devices using HTML5 technologies," he said. "In addition, HTML5 increases innovation by saving developers the time and resources they would spend testing and optimizing their native applications for multiple devices by allowing them to build beautiful applications for one platform - the Web."

Next Page: App Stores

App Stores

Apps Stores are a product, but their proliferation is also a trend - in fact, it even made our list of top trends of 2010. In addition to stores for mobile operating systems (iTunes, Android Market, Ovi, Windows Phone Marketplace), other stores came into their own as well, including carrier app stores, third-party stores like GetJar, device app stores, tablet app stores and more. Some reports even indicate that certain segments of the market are switching from the browser to apps as their primary way to access the Web via mobile devices.

The trend prompted tech publication Wired to publish what may have been one of its most controversial articles this year: "The Web is Dead," a catching headline that immediately prompted a visceral backlash from Web supporters. But some of the article's content was actually right on: the Web is becoming further and further encapsulated into these mobile apps. It's not dead, really. But the way we choose to access it from our phones is definitely changing.

Application stores have succeeded because they make "downloading and purchasing applications easy for consumers," says Distimo, makers of an app store analytics tool for developers. "Combined with the increased capabilities of devices, these application stores accelerated the market in both device sales and application downloads. The Apple App Store, for example, grew from 141,331 applications in January 2010 to 323,859 applications in November 2010 (US)."

Forrester analyst Thomas Husson, also noted the large numbers of app downloads we've seen over the course of the year. "Willing to replicate Apple App Store success with its 7 billion cumulative downloads, a catalogue of 300,000 applications available, application stores flourished in 2010," he said. "Android Market and GetJar both passed the 1 billion download market in 2010 while Nokia's OVI is now delivering 3.5 million downloads a day." But few stores offer publishers the reach they want, he cautioned.

Ouriel Ohayon, co-founder of app discovery platform AppsFire, agreed with that assessment. Although app stores "provide a deep ecosystem of content creation, monetization and distribution," he said, "they fail in being efficient discovery platforms."

But the app movement is far from over. CEO Ben Keighran of the app discovery service Chomp said that the trend of app stores "is linked to the next great technology movement, the 'Appification' of the Web.' All the innovation currently going on is around this present day movement.  The number of IOS apps downloaded per year is 5 billion.  Compare that to the 17.1 billion Web searches a month and it's clear that the demand for apps has exploded at a phenomenal rate."

Next Page: iAd

iAd

Although not registering as high on consumers' radar, Apple's influence on the mobile ad industry was felt this year, too, with the launch of iAd. Announced alongside the new Apple mobile operating system, iOS4, iAd was Apple's attempt to improve the mobile ad experience through the use of rich media and interactive ads. At its best, iAd represented a push for better, more attractive ads, leading others to launch cross-platform solutions that did the same; at its worst, it treaded dangerously between innovation and anti-competitive behavior when it seemed Apple had begun to boot apps using competing products from the App Store. But as the year drew to a close, it was clear iAd was doing well.

Reports found that Apple would end up with 21% of the market by year-end, while Google, with its AdMob acquisition, would drop from 27% to 21% as well.

According to mobile ad firm Medialets' chairman and CEO Eric Litman, "2010 was the year the advertising industry awoke to mobile, with iAd and a host of other innovations driving the change. It set the stage for brands to consider mobile as a separate line item in their advertising budgets for the first time at meaningful scale."

Competing firm Greystripe's Director of Marketing Dane Holewinski agrees that iAd's launch was significant. "Apple's launch of iAds has solidified mobile's place as a critical brand advertising channel by generating much deserved attention to mobile's ability to deliver engagement to the fingertips of a brand's target audience," he said, while noting that "advertiser criticism of iAds has highlighted the importance of being able to reach a cross platform audience, give brands and their agencies creative control and share campaign data."

Crisp Media VP Marketing Tom Limongello, also pointed out that iAd promoted the use of HTML5. "First, the launch of iAd was like a debutante ball, introducing major advertisers to mobile with much pomp and circumstance," he said in explaining its significance. "Second, it validated that the best mobile ad experiences come from self-contained rich media units created in HTML5, rather than in separate micro sites or applications. Previously, advertisers were stuck with building separate sites or apps, which made it harder for brands to reach consumers on their mobile devices."

Next Page: LTE

LTE

While cellular technology advancements aren't a major focus of this blog's coverage area, leaving LTE off this year-end list wouldn't make sense. The technology, described as delivering a 4G network (despite the technical incorrectness of that terminology), delivers faster speeds for mobile users. That's good news for consumers, considering our ever-increasing appetite for mobile data (40 exabytes by 2014!), especially mobile video, which had already reached 90 petabytes per month in February. According to Cisco, mobile video will grow at a compound rate of 131% between 2009 and 2014, a report found, thanks to streaming videos from Netflix, YouTube and others.

Says Michael Manzo, chief marketing officer for subscriber optimization software Openet, "Long-term evolution (LTE) or 4G is absolutely the best mobile innovation of 2010. With wireless networks stretched to capacity, this new infrastructure will increase speed and capabilities of mobile devices, as well as provide some relief to existing networks. Though the technology was discussed some in 2009, LTE has become a vital component of the year as wireless operators made large scale deployment announcements, and 4G devices started becoming available to consumers - expect to see even more LTE news in 2011."

What's more, LTE will succeed over WiMax, says Forrester's Charles Golvin. "2011 will be the year that the WiMAX window of opportunity slams shut, as LTE establishes itself as the default next generation network technology, becoming even more dominant than GSM."

Next Page: Foursquare

Foursquare

Despite report after report after report with actual, hard data proving that location-based check-in services were only used by a niche group of early adopters, this is one trend that couldn't be stopped... from being reported on. And no one service this year generated as many headlines as media darling Foursquare. Representative of the ever-expanding group of check-in apps, Foursquare lets users register their location at a particular venue, earn points, badges and mayorships and sometimes even discounts or rewards. But even as Foursquare grew its numbers over 2010, a second wave of arguably more useful location-based services began to emerge. Services providing things like geo-fencing, travel rewards,  new opportunities for location-based ads, and even services that use location to fight identity theft are now arriving on the scene. Still, a portion of the population remains unconvinced of the power of the checkin. Plus, with privacy advocates tapping into users' fears surrounding location-sharing this year when a site called Please Rob Me launched, the check-in may give way to other location-based services in 2011.

Says CEO and Co-founder of app recommendation site AppStoreHQ, Chris DeVore, services like Foursquare providing 'check-ins-for-check-ins-sake'  have "stalled before crossing over to the mainstream." However, "the idea of location-based CRM and just-in-time local offer delivery have real traction among both consumers and local business owners," he explained. "Groupon-style local offers are the revenue engine that's powering this business right now, but the long-term economic value of Groupon  to SMBs is still in question. The company that can combine high-volume, offer-powered lead generation with a stickier customer value proposition that truly drives repeat business will have a real hit on their hands."

Forrester analyst Melissa Parrish agrees that location-based services are still just hitting their stride. "Although Forrester data from mid-2010 showed that only four percent of US consumers have ever used a Location-Based Social Network, consumer adoption will continue to grow as the services add utility for users through partnerships as well as product development."

Next Page: Barcode Scanners

Barcode Scanners

Barcode scanning using mobile phones was a huge trend this year - even if it's about to be phased out thanks to developments in NFC technology. Consumers apparently craved the technology leading to an increase in its use. Mobile barcode scanning was up 700% in 2010, a report released this fall revealed. But reaching this momentum didn't occur without a few stumbles - Google ran a fairly unsuccessful campaign placing QR codes in newspapers, for example. But later on, magazines like Entertainment Weekly and others had more luck with its embrace of the cross-platform Microsoft Tag to link to movie trailers and ads from the pages of its glossy magazine. Allure magazine also found that their Microsoft Tag campaign resulted in 444,572 scans.

Retailers got in on the action too: both Amazon and eBay launched mobile applications that included barcode scanning features this year, Amazon through an update to its mobile app, and eBay through the acquisition of Red Laser. Best Buy launched its own consumer electronics scanning app, Bing's iPhone app added the functionality in June and Google launched Google Shopper.

Alexander Muse, Co-Founder of mobile scanning app ShopSavvy has seen major growth over 2010 as well. "Our year-over-year growth rate is north of 300% ," he said. "What started as a novelty in 2008 has become a standard way to shop for millions of users across the globe."

Blake Scholl, Co-Founder and CEO of Kima Labs, makers of the barcode-scanning app Barcode Hero, has seen similar trends. "The first generation of barcode scanning apps was all about comparing prices -- but we're already starting to see a smarter, second generation of apps that connects in-store shoppers with their social networks and community experts to help compare products and find the best item -- not just the best price."

Next Page: NFC

NFC

Most of the advances in NFC came at year-end, but they came fast. Apple quietly recruited an NFC expert in August, but hasn't made any announcements about the technology yet. RIM did the same in November. However, Google's Android mobile operating system - the latest version known as Gingerbread - now supports the data transfer technology, short for near-field communications. Although limited for now, full support is arriving soon. Also, over the course of the year, we've seen preliminary initiatives, programs and announcements involving NFC from PayPal (via a partnership with NFC-related startup Bling Nation), Bank of America, Visa and others. As 2010 draws to a close, Visa has officially launched In2Pay, an NFC-enabled mobile payments solution, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have teamed up on Isis, a carrier-led NFC mobile payments service and the technology got an official trademark.

Vishal Jain, a mobile analyst with The 451 Group says that NFC and location-based services "will together drive mobile advertising into an entirely new dimension unlike web based performance advertising that has always focused on generating awareness. The effect would be seen in how loyalty programs, advertisers and POS terminals work in tandem. Availability and understanding of geo-targeted data, and NFC tags will enable the end to end reach and conversion process of a campaign."

And Thomas Husson, a research analyst at Forrester, agrees that NFC means more than mobile payments. "It will enable a range of applications and services from various industries, linking together mobile marketing, mobile CRM, and mobile commerce." He, however, may disagree with it appearing on this list, saying that NFC "had some traction in 2010 but still suffered from the lack of a critical mass of devices," but that next year, "the market will finally move away from the trial stage in regions where NFC infrastructure is in place."

Jeff Miles, director of mobile transactions at NXP, definitely believes this was NXP's year. "Although NXP co-invented NFC jointly with Sony in 2002, 2010 was clearly the year that NFC made its entrée into the heart of the consumer's world," he said. "With almost all the world's top manufacturers and carriers backing the technology and developers accessing open source NFC implementation, 2010 opened the gates for new ways of extending the reach of mobile devices, driving creative applications and adding real value to consumers."]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_mobile_products_of_2010.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_mobile_products_of_2010.php Mobile Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:00:00 -0800 Sarah Perez Last year, when we looked at the top real-time Web products of 2009, we predicted that in 2010 the real-time Web was "likely to become a standard expectation on sites all around the world". Indeed, as we look back on the last year we find that many of the big innovations in terms of the real-time Web come in the form of implementations by companies like Google and Facebook. At the same time, there are still smaller players in the realm that have changed how (and how fast) we expect information on the Web to move and people interact.

Just a year after companies like Facebook started offering a constantly updated stream of real-time content, we expect no less from nearly any site we visit and soon enough, calling something "real-time" will be like identifying something as "social". With that in mind, let's take a look at the top 10 products, innovations and developments in the world of the real-time Web in 2010.

Google is one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet and its most popular product - Google Search - just got faster than ever this year with the introduction of Google Instant. Throughout 2010, Google worked to increase the speed of its search results, both in how quickly results are served and how close they are to real-time. Google incorporated real-time Twitter results, Google Instant. Already, Google would predict your search terms as you typed, but now, each keystroke gives a different set of results. In reality, however, Google Instant is just a surfacing of all the strides Google has made in the world of real-time information.

Google...Everything Else

Looking through the ReadWriteWeb archives for 2010, you can find a litany of articles about Google and its continual addition of real-time information. From sports scores to Myspace updates to weather conditions in Google Earth, Google has worked to add real-time information to products across the board. The company brought real-time discussion to YouTube with Google Moderator, instant notifications to Google Voice, real-time inventory to Google Product Search and real-time news to Google Reader. Heck, Google even turned on automatic captioning for all videos on YouTube and admitted that it was working on completing a real-time translation tool for use in smartphones "in a few years time."

It's because of companies like Google that "real-time" is quickly becoming a term that describes our standard expectations, not the mind-expanding future of the Web that it once was.

Twitter's Streaming API...

Twitter has been a real-time product from its early stages, when it was primarily a tool for updating a website via SMS. What was lacking, however, were the tools for developers to really make use of Twitter's real-time nature. Third-party Twitter applications could only make so many requests during a time period. If an app made too many requests, it would have to wait until that period was up before asking again. To avoid this, apps would poll Twitter periodically, which meant that there was inherently a lag between someone tweeting and it appearing on your screen.

This year, however, Twitter unleased its Streaming API (application programming interface), which gave developers the tools to bring tweets directly to users in real-time. While Twitter.com went through a complete redesign in September, it isn't a fully real-time experience. As new Tweets come in, they queue up for the user to refresh the page. Worry not, because that brings us to our next item.

...Which Gave Birth to Streaming TweetDeck

TweetDeck was already a favorite of many a Twitter power user, including much (if not all) of the ReadWriteWeb staff. Its support of lists with multiple columns and its pop-up notifications make it the perfect tool for consistently monitoring Twitter. Then, this summer, TweetDeck took it one step further by implementing Twitter's Streaming API, bringing its users the tweets as fast as they came in.

Suddenly, there is no lag time. You can tweet something and almost instantaneously get replies from other users. It becomes a real-time communication tool instead of simply a near-time communications tool. For some of us, hitting "refresh" and waiting for Twitter to update every so many seconds just isn't acceptable, and TweetDeck makes sure we don't have to.

Facebook Places: LBS Goes Mainstream

For many of the techie elites and early adopters, 2010 started off with all sorts of talk about the "Location-Based Service Wars". Things seemed to be heating up with location-based check-in apps like Gowalla, Foursquare, MyTown and brightkite. LBS apps are inherently real-time by nature, connecting users with each other by showing who is checked in where, identifying trending locations, and allowing users to communicate with each other - all in real time.

Facebook introduced its "Places" product this summer, bringing all the real-time, location-based fun to the general public. Suddenly, the idea that where you were could be broadcast out to your friends became an idea that was accessible to the smartphone-owning yet not-so-early adopter.

PubSubHubbub Proliferates

PubSubHubbub (PuSH)showed up in no fewer than three of our top 10 lists for 2009 and it's showing up again this year because of its continued role in growing the real-time Web. When Marshall Kirkpatrick listed it as a top 10 real-time technology last year, he noted that the technology, which delivers updated content in real-time from a central hub to all subscribers, was being used by a number of sites such as FeedBurner, Blogger, LiveJournal and Google Alerts. This year, that trend has continued, as PuSH has spread futher around the Web. In March, Wordpress' 10.5 million blogs became PuSH-enabled, meaning that one of the most popular self-publishing platforms out there suddenly became real-time enabled. A month before that, we had broken the news that Google Reader began consuming PuSH feeds in real time. We expect to see this trend continue and watch as PuSH brings real-time updating to even more of the Web.

Chatroulette: Random, Real-Time Interaction

In many ways, 2010 was the year of Chatroulette. This is one of those things where, if you haven't heard of it, people ask which rock you've been under. That said, (the big piece of granite on the corner, yes?) Chatroulette is that site that brings live video streams of complete strangers to your monitor in all their (often naked) glory. The site was created by a 17-year-old kid from Russia and was not only the talk of the town, but spurred a rash of other randomized, real-time websites in its flavor.

In some ways, it's the site's teenaged creator that helps put it on this list. Surely, Chatroulette was much-discussed in the past year for many of its members' transgressions, but the simple fact that a quick bit of coding can bring real-time audio and visual interaction to people across the planet means something when it comes to the real-time Web.

SuperFeedr

SuperFeedr has become of favorite of ReadWriteWeb's own RSS wizard, Marshall Kirkpatrick, who recently wrote that "if the Web of the future is based on real-time data delivery, San Francisco startup Superfeedr hopes to be a big part of the technology that helps it get there. The company takes content feeds in a wide variety of traditional formats and transforms them into real-time feeds pushed to parties interested in consuming data in real-time." According to Kirkpatrick, SuperFeedr has assembled a "dream team" of engineers that makes it "all the more important to keep an eye on."

SuperFeedr's real-time keyword tracking and location handling are perfect features for the data-driven journalist or the data geek that wants multi-sourced information and wants it now.

Boxcar

Over the past year, I've used Boxcar to get notifications about important emails, turned Twitter into an alternative for SMS and kept up with moderator message from Reddit. Beyond that, you can be alerted to all sorts of things while you're out and about and that's how we like our real-time Web - both fast and mobile.

Disqus

In discussing what would make our top 10 list, we knew that real-time commenting had to be on there and it was between Disqus, echo and Livefyre. All are great, full-featured commenting systems, but we had to go with the one we just implemented on ReadWriteWeb this past week. Real-time commenting systems like Disqus add an entire other layer on top of the Web, allowing users once identified simply as "readers" to become involved and interact with each other and with the authors. The entire idea of Web 2.0 (and ReadWriteWeb) is the dissolution of this boundary and systems like Disqus go a long way in that effort.

Is It Really, Really Real Time?

As 2011 goes on, we're sure to see even more sites "go real-time" until it gets to the point that it has with social. The press release will hit the wire, we'll all look up and mumble "Oh, I see so-and-so has decided to joint the party." Pages without real-time elements feel inanimate and dead and that's just not what the Web is about anymore. The Web is in constant motion as are all of its parts.

With so much of the Web moving in this direction, we're sure we've missed something here, so we'd love it if you would jump in on our real-time commenting system below and let us know - what would you have put on your top 10 list of real-time products for 2010?

While Evernote is, at this point, still the more robust product when it comes to supported platforms -the company offers Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android and Blackberry versions in addition to a platform-agnostic "web clipper" - Springpad is starting to catch up. Along with the numerous enhancements launching today, the company now offers their own "web clipper" browser bookmarklet (previously in beta) along with an iPhone application for mobile note-taking and reminders.

Like Evernote's iPhone app, Springpad's app (iTunes link) lets you input text or snap a photo, but it also integrates a barcode scanner which takes advantage of the phone's camera in order to record and save a specific product. In addition, the iPhone app lets you browse items by type in case there's something you want to remember, but don't have it right in front of you. This is ideal for adding things like restaurants or movies - the sort of things that come up in conversation ("You really should rent this movie - it's great!") but are later forgotten as we return to our busy lives.

The Smart Web Clipper Knows What You're Bookmarking

Also new today is the web clipper. Now out of beta, this bookmarking tool lets you save anything you see on the Internet to your notes. This can be a product, a restaurant, a book, a movie, a recipe, a wine, a business or just a simple bookmark of a page which you can choose to annotate if desired.

What's different about this tool is the way it uses semantic technology to understand what it is that you're saving and offer relevant links to other information when you view it again in Springpad. For example, after adding a recipe, you'll be provided with "quick links" for actions like "add to shopping list," "search for coupons," "send to me" (an email option) and "print recipe." You can also add your own notes or personal tags (e.g., "March dinner party") if desired.

The App Store: Do Something with your Notes

Springpad users also have an included app store that helps you do things with the items you save. Although not listed among today's updates, this is arguably one of the company's standout features which should appeal both to new users or those switching from Evernote. Instead of just providing a searchable repository of notes and saved items, Springpad lets you add apps that help you actually do something with the items you collected. There's a wine notebook for those who want to record wine reviews and selections, a weekly meal planner for recipe snippers, a movie tracker for film aficionados, a travel checklist for vacation planning and even a blog post planner for scribes like us. And there are dozens more, too. Additionally, later this year, Springpad will launch an API for developers who want to build their own apps for this directory.

More of What's New: Sharing Tools & a Smart Quick-Add Bar

Other new features today include social sharing option which lets you post to Facebook and Twitter, a personalized email address for sending in thoughts, notes, itineraries and confirmation numbers, and a smart "quick-add bar." This bar lets you type in anything into Springpad's web interface to receive a list of suggestions from across a number of web services and the publicly shared notes from other Springpad users. If you find yourself always coming across suggestions from particular users, you may want to "friend" them on Springpad. The friending model used here is one that mimics Twitter's involving one-way connections betweens followers and "followees." This makes Springpad more social than Evernote without the pressures of having to accept or reject requests like on Facebook.

As of now, Springpad has a lot to offer those interested in a web-based and mobile note-taking application. However, you may find Evernote to be a slightly more stable service. We ran into a couple of slowdowns when using Springpad's website today. In addition, the suggestions displayed in the quick-add bar aren't as speedy as your typical search engine's autosuggest feature is. However, if you're looking to do more with your notes than simply collect them, Springpad is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Evernote. It's no longer a mere note-taking app - it's more of a digital assistant...and who couldn't use one of those?

Another bonus: if you're not actually in a store doing some shopping, you can use the app as a custom interface to Google's Product Search portal. With the provided search box, you can either type in a product name or just speak into the phone's microphone and Google Shopper will retrieve results - much like how Google's standalone mobile application does with web searches.

Why Does Google Need Another Mobile App?

If you own an Android mobile phone, then you've probably already installed one or more mobile shopping companion applications. ShopSavvy, for example, was one of the first barcode scanners on the scene. Designed mainly to scan high-end goods like DVDs, CDs, books, and consumer electronics, after scanning a barcode, you're provided with a list of both local and online prices for that same item.

Amazon, on the other hand, wanted to go beyond the barcode. With its Amazon App for Android, you can scan barcodes but you can also snap a photo of an item using the phone's camera. Amazon then searches through their inventory for that item and displays either the item itself or a similar product if the catalog doesn't have that exact item available.

Then, of course, there's Google Search for mobile and the related downloadable application. From either web interface, the Shopping vertical is easily accessible - only a tap away under the "More" section. So what prompted Google to release a dedicated shopping app like Google Shopper? Perhaps they saw the success of Amazon and ShopSavvy and wanted to redirect mobile users back to their engine and their search results?

While that's obviously a major factor in the decision, it's notable that Google Shopper is only available at launch time as an Android application. If there was ever any doubt that Google plans to favor their own mobile platform over rivals from Apple, Windows Mobile, RIM and others, we can put that to rest now. Whether Google is or is not working on a version of the app for other mobile platforms is almost besides the point. If they are, then how clever of them to launch the Android version first instead of waiting until everyone could use it, and if they aren't...well, then specialized Google apps for Android just became a huge selling point for the phone, didn't it? If we had to guess, it's the former - after all, as much as Google wants to promote their mobile OS, they're more interested in search traffic and multi-platform mobile applications are the way to get more of that.

For Android owners, Google Shopper is available now. You can grab your copy from here.

This is all fine and dandy, but when it was discovered that it worked for porn site previews also, and that it could be easily accessed by kids, it caused quite a bit of concern among parents. Bing had noted on its blog how to use Smart Motion Previews in combination with its SafeSearch feature, but apparently it was still very easy for kids to view explicit adult content on its site. Yesterday Microsoft announced that it has made changes that will make it easier for parents to block and monitor what their kids are watching when they visit Bing.

"First, potentially explicit images and video content will now be coming from a separate single domain, explicit.bing.net. This is invisible to the end customer, but allows for filtering of that content by domain which makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block this content regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be. This makes it much easier for filtering software to block unwanted content if SafeSearch has been turned off.

In addition, Bing will begin returning source url information in the query string for images and video content so that companies who already use this method of filtering will be able to catch explicit content on Bing along with everything else they are already blocking for their customers." An example of such a query string is:

http://ts2.explicit.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=974382499649&id=12ae77a7fed979b0502840bedacd2552&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.explicitsite.com%2fexplicit-picturegoeshere.jpg

CNET News reports "the company has reached out to more than 25 filtering and security vendors to work with them to provide a solution for filtering explicit content while using Bing".

While there are parental controls built into Vista and Mac OS X and software like Safe Eyes to keep kids from viewing porn online, ultimately it is the responsibility of the parents to impose rules and guidelines and to monitor their internet usage. It's also good to have discussions about what you consider is appropriate behavior online and to keep up with the latest trends and technology.

In the call we discussed the highlights of 2008: the top Web companies, the biggest technology trends - including an especially good conversation on open versus closed systems - and finally some predictions for 2009. We also touched on some of the 2008 in Review posts we've published in December:

• Top 100 Products of 2008
• Best LittleCo of 2008 & Most Promising for 2009
• Best BigCo of 2008: Apple

We look forward to doing more RWW Live shows in 2009!

Of course there are far more than 100 great Web products out there, so there are some excellent ones not included in our megalist. Please leave a comment here and tell us what we've missed!

• Best LittleCo of 2008 & Most Promising for 2009
• Best BigCo of 2008: Apple
• Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 International Products of 2008
• Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008
• Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008
• Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 Enterprise Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 Real World Web Apps of 2008
• Top 10 Digital Lifestyle Products of 2008
• Top 10 Alternative Search Engines of 2008
• Top 10 Web Platforms of 2008

Note that seven products made it to more than one of our top 10 lists, so we've noted when that is the case and added some new products that just missed the cut somewhere along the line.

ReadWriteWeb's Top 100 Products

This list is in alphabetical order, with category noted beside each item.

• Adobe AIR; Platforms
• Afrigator; International
• Amazon Web Services; Platforms & Enterprise *
• Android; Platforms & Digital Lifestyle *
• App Store (iPhone); Digital Lifestyle
• Basecamp; Enterprise
• BBC iPlayer; Digital Lifestyle
• BlueOrganizer (AdaptiveBlue); Semantic Web
• BooRah; Semantic Web
• Brightkite; Mobile Web; Most Promising for 2009
• ChaCha; Alternative Search Engines
• Chrome; runner-up Platforms
• Cooliris; Consumer & Alternative Search Engines
• Confluence (Atlassian); Enterprise
• Dapper; RSS/Syndication & MashupAds for Semantic Web *
• Digg; runner-up, Consumer
• DimDim; Enterprise
• Dopplr; International
• Facebook Platform; Platforms
• Faroo; Alternative Search Engines
• Feedburner; RSS/Syndication
• FFtoGo; Mobile Web
• Fire Eagle; Platforms
• Firefox; Consumer
• Flickr; runner-up Consumer
• Force.com (Salesforce); Enterprise
• FreshBooks; International
• FriendFeed; RSS/Syndication
• Fring; Mobile Web
• Gnip; RSS/Syndication
• Google Apps; Enterprise
• Google Maps; Mobile Web
• Google Reader; RSS/Syndication
• Google Reader RSS Subscriber Count Greasemonkey Script; RSS/Syndication
• Hakia; Semantic Web
• Hulu; Digital Lifestyle & Consumer *
• Imeem; runner-up Consumer
• IntenseDebate; Consumer
• iPhone SDK; Platforms
• i.TV; Mobile Web
• KallOut; Alternative Search Engines
• Kiva; Real World
• Kosmix; Alternative Search Engines
• Last.fm; Consumer
• LinkedIn; Enterprise
• Live Mesh; Platforms
• Maxthon; International
• Mednar; Alternative Search Engines
• Meebo; Consumer
• MindTouch Deki; Enterprise
• Mint; Real World
• Mixi; International
• Mogulus; Consumer
• Mozilla Weave; Platforms
• MySpace; runner-up Consumer
• Netbook; Digital Lifestyle
• Netflix; Digital Lifestyle
• Netvibes; International
• Ning; Consumer
• Nokia E71; Digital Lifestyle
• NYTimes iPhone App; Mobile Web
• OpenCongress; Real World
• OpenSocial; Platforms
• Open Calais; Semantic Web
• Opera Mini/Mobile; Mobile Web
• Pandora; Mobile Web
• PatientsLikeMe; Real World
• PlayStation 3; Digital Lifestyle
• PlanetEye; Real World
• Postrank (ex-AideRSS); RSS/Syndication
• Powerset; Semantic Web
• Qik; Consumer
• Quintura; Alternative Search Engines
• Remember The Milk; International
• Rudder; Real World
• SearchMonkey; Semantic Web
• SeeqPod; Alternative Search Engines
• Sermo; Real World
• Shazam; Mobile Web
• Snackr; RSS/Syndication
• Songbird; Digital Lifestyle
• Surf Canyon; Alternative Search Engines
• Taggalaxy.de; Alternative Search Engines
• TeachStreet; Real World
• Techmeme; runner-up RSS/Syndication
• TripIt; Semantic Web
• Twitter; Mobile Web & Consumer; Twitter API, Platforms *
• Twitterfeed; RSS/Syndication
• UpTake; Semantic Web
• UStream; runner-up Consumer
• Wii Fit; Digital Lifestyle
• Wild Apricot; Real World
• Wordpress; Enterprise
• Wuala; International
• Xing; International
• Yahoo! Pipes; RSS/Syndication
• Yapta; Real World
• YouTube; runner-up Consumer
• Zemanta; Semantic Web
• Zoho; Enterprise & International; Best LittleCo *

* products in more than one list. There were seven of these: Amazon Web Services, Android, Cooliris, Dapper, Hulu, Twitter, Zoho

• In 2004 Ludicorp, creators of Flickr, was named Best LittleCo and Feedburner Most Promising. Both of course have since been acquired (by Yahoo! and Google respectively).
• In 2005 37Signals was Best LittleCo and Memeorandum (now Techmeme) and Digg were joint Most Promising.
• In 2006 YouTube was Best LittleCo and Sharpcast Most Promising.
• In 2007 Twitter got Best BigCo and (in a bit of a break from tradition) we named "the open source movement" as most promising - a loose-knit group that aims to make a huge impact by tying all Web companies together. Last year we thought there was no single Web company that was more promising, and we have probably been proven right as our Best Web Platforms 2008 post showed (OpenSocial, Android, Mozilla Weave, Fire Eagle, ...).

Now let's find out who is ReadWriteWeb's Best LittleCo of 2008...

Best LittleCo of 2008: Zoho

We felt that Web Office vendor Zoho best represented the 'LittleCo' ethos this year, due to its David vs Goliath effort in competing head on with products from several very large companies: Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Salesforce.com's core CRM platform.

Zoho not only competed with these bigcos, they were innovative and scrappy about it. And in a year that will be remembered for the economic downturn, Zoho is a reminder to us all that we can work ourselves out of a down economy.

Zoho made two of our year-end Top 10 Products list - in the International category and in the Enterprise catagory. It is an Indian startup that offers a number of office tools, project management software and CRM solutions. It made serious advances with its office productivity suite during 2008, reaching a milestone of 1 million users in August this year.

Some of the specific highlights this year include: updating Writer at the beginning of 2008 to include support for the DocX file format, along with several other features; adding support for Visual Basic compatible macros to Zoho Sheet in April, then macro record and playback four months later; releasing a marketplace in September; Zoho Mail emerging from private beta in October, while offering offline support via Google Gears.

Our one note of caution with Zoho is that, as you can see from the above screenshot, it has so many products that it potentially spreads itself too thin. Some of its products show a lack of depth as a result - we focused on some of those issues in a post in September. So we're not claiming Zoho has the Web Office market cracked, just as Twitter had some issues last year when we chose it as our Best LittleCo. But overall, we applaud Zoho for its continued innovation and for competing effectively against the big guns!

After the jump, ReadWriteWeb's pick for Most Promising for 2009!

Most Promising Company of 2008: Brightkite

Again this was a tough choice. We were impressed with the potential of many apps this year. Open source music app SongBird, micro-lending service Kiva, online finance service Mint, health social network PatientsLikeMe - to name just some. However we ultimately came back to a type of application that made a breakthrough this year: Mobile Web. We named Apple Best BigCo of 2008 due to its iPhone platform, but we think there's still a lot of untapped potential in mobile. In particular no one company has yet broken through with a mobile-native social network. We think mobile social network Brightkite may become that app.

Brightkite was named in our Top 10 Mobile Web Apps of 2008, in which Sarah Perez explained that Brightkite includes an iPhone app, but it's much more than a toy for the exclusive club of iPhone owners. The service - a device agnostic, SMS-based application - lets you "check in" at various locations out in the real world and then see who else is there, has been there, and who is nearby. You can check in via text, web,or iPhone, but text is easiest if you're using a traditional cell phone.

While Brightkite hasn't been hugely successful yet in terms of numbers, we think it has a lot of potential. There's still some debate as to whether consumers really want new and separate social networks for the mobile phone. As we noted back in October, no other social network, including those specialized for mobile devices, had even reached 15% adoption. That means Brightkite and others like it still have a way to go before they become a solid part of the new mobile web.

However, if any of these apps have a chance for success, it's Brightkite. With the service's Twitter integration and live event niche, it offers something unique.

So there you have it: Zoho is our Best LittleCo of 2008 and Brightkite is our Most Promising for 2009. Agree? Or feel like arguing about it? We invite you to let your feelings known in the comments.

This is the second in our series of top products of 2008, the first can be found here:

1. Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008

Note: the products listed below are in no particular order

1. Remember The Milk: Australia

Remember The Milk, the Australian startup that gave us our favorite task management tools, began when Omar Kilani, Emily Boyd and one stuffed monkey got together in 2004 with a simple idea. The idea grew and in 2005 they launched Remember The Milk.

RTM has seen enormous growth over the past couple of years. By October 2006, 100K people had signed up for the service, 200K by May 2007, 500K by March 2008, but it is only within the past year that RTM has had a significant impact on Web users globally. RTM now boasts over one million users, was named one of CNET's Webware 100 Award winners in April, and in May ReadWriteWeb readers chose RTM as one of their favorite Web apps. More recently RTM created a gadget for Gmail and an application for the iPhone, pushing its reach further still.

2. Afrigator: South Africa

Afrigator is a social media aggregator and directory for content from the African blogging community, similar in many ways to Technorati. Anyone in Africa with an RSS feed can use Afrigator to index their content and market it to the world.

Launched in April 2007 (alpha), Afrigator has seen a steady 25% month-on-month growth rate, launching beta in November of the same year. In September 2008 MIH Print Africa acquired a majority stake in Afrigator, giving the startup some breathing room to work on their new project Adgator, Africa's first ad network. Currently tracking 4159 blogs across the continent, Afrigator is a great place to find content from the "Afrosphere."

3. Zoho: India

Zoho is an Indian startup that offers a number of office tools, project management software and CRM solutions. It has made serious advances with its office productivity suite during 2008, reaching a milestone of 1 million users in August this year.

At the beginning of 2008, Zoho updated Writer to include support for the DocX file format along with several other features. In April, support for Visual Basic compatible macros was added to Zoho Sheet; macro record and playback rolled out four months later. October saw Zoho Mail emerge from private beta to being publicly available, offering at the same time offline support via Google Gears.

4. Netvibes: France

Members have created more than 50 million start pages spread across 200 countries on Netvibes since its launch in 2006. Available in 76 languages, Netvibes was named one of Times Best Web Sites 2007; but this hasn't dampened the team's enthusiasm to make Netvibes bigger and better, as evidenced by the launch of Netvibes Ginger in April 2008.

Ginger is a social version of NetVibes that allows you to share your new content from Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, blogs, etc. with friends; it also lets you follow the digital life of your friends. In November, Netvibes added a feature that allows content to be shared via integration with Facebook Connect and Twitter.

5. Dopplr: Finland / U.K.

Dopplr is a startup that lets you share travel plans with your friends, and "highlights coincidence," giving you a heads up of which friends will be in cities you plan to visit. While the company has only been around since 2007, it has big name backers, and according to Compete has shown significant growth.

Last month Dopplr launched its new city pages, which include creative commons images automatically imported from the 'interesting' tag on Flickr - to provide a visualization of visitor activity for cities within the Dopplr database. If you're not using it yet, you soon will be; we think Dopplr shows plenty of promise.

6. Maxthon: China

The browser market has seen many changes in 2008, with the introduction of Google's Chrome in September, Mozilla's Firefox 3 making the Guinness Book of World Records in June, and the slow decline of Internet Explorer as Firefox gains momentum. In Asia however, there's another browser making waves. Maxthon, according to European web metrics company Xiti, is creating problems for its main competitor Firefox. It comes as no surprise then, that Mozilla recently released an edition of Firefox specifically for China.

Maxthon is a browser created in China and reported to be the second most popular browser in China today. While it doesn't show up as a contender in most market share reports, it has had a staggering 174 million downloads at the time of writing this post. Using Internet Explorer's rendering engine, Maxthon has over 1,400 add-ons, proxy switching capability, aggressive ad blocking, split-screen browsing to name a few of its innovative features. We said it two years ago, and we'll say it again: this is one to keep your eye on.

7. Xing: Germany

LinkedIn has over 30 million members, and according to Compete a 179.6% year-to-year change that beats Xing's at 137.6%. It is important however, to note the financials, something we analyzed back in March this year, which may not be completely in LinkedIn's favor. The data of particular interest concerns user engagement; visitors to Xing stay an average of 43.4 minutes on the site, while visitors to LinkedIn stay an average of 7.8 minutes - a whopping difference of 456%. We think Xing has made some good choices this year, especially the recent hire of Stefan Gross-Selbeck, as reported over on ReadWriteWeb's Jobwire.

8. FreshBooks: Canada

FreshBooks, the Canadian online invoicing, time and expense tracking service for individuals and small companies, has been showing steady growth over the past year according to Compete, and claims to have over 500K new users since May 2004.

We compared FreshBooks with other online accounting services in August this year, and decided it was easy to use, includes a host of useful features, has an active forum, and offers benchmark data by industry to its users. More recently, we looked at FreshBooks Report Cards which provide an insight into how your business fares in relation to other businesses in your profession. Selected as one of the PICK 20 top Web 2.0 leaders in Canada in September this year, we think Freshbooks deserves a mention here too.

9. Mixi: Japan

Mixi, Japan's biggest social network (only available in Japanese) was previously known for its closed platform. No more. In August this year, Mixi announced that it is acting as an OpenID provider - therefore bringing the global OpenID to millions of Japanese users.

While Mixi is not acting as a relaying party yet, allowing users to login with OpenID from other networks, the functionality of Mixi user profiles has now increased dramatically. According to the blog Asiajin, this opening up is pretty radical for Mixi standards.

10. Wuala: Switzerland

Swiss startup Wuala offers an unusual online social storage system: it uses the disk space of other members' computers as part of the cloud. Wuala launched in August 2008 - making it the youngest of our international products.

Wuala differs from our other favorite online storage services in several ways. The advantages of this type of storage include no limits on file size and bandwidth. However the main disadvantage is that regardless of the AES-128 and RSA-2048 encryption, the idea of storing data on machines scattered around the world won't appeal to all. Still, with 28 million files uploaded as of writing and growing by the minute, Wuala is definitely worth watching.

So, do you think we've picked the best 10 International Products of 2008? Please let us know what you think about our choices in the comments. Most importantly, let us know which international products you think are worth tracking.

While Techmeme has it all covered when it comes finance and technology trends, product reviews are a rare treat. Here's where Tech NewsJunk steps in. The purpose of the aggregation site is to allow you to find out about products before they hit the big leagues. According to Winer's official post about the site's launch,

"A couple of notes. I'm not just interested in new products, I'm also interested in how the products evolve. So if Flickr were to (for example) add a bunch of new features tomorrow, we would defintely link to that.

I also want to hear about products from the people who design and implement them. Their point of view is very important to not only understanding their work, but to understanding the market."

Various Fixes For Your Addiction

As a frequent user of tools like FriendFeed and Twitter, it's no surprise that Winer has implemented numerous ways to keep up with Tech NewsJunk. You can:

• subscribe via RSS
• follow along on FriendFeed
• follow along on Twitter
• read mobile updates (iPhone or Blackberry
• refresh the site's page manually

Winer also has future plans to include the latest micro-blogging service darling identi.ca and roll out email updates.

Best Product Coverage

Thus far, Tech NewsJunk has decent product coverage from a host of great sites. The featured content ranges from internet apps to mobile technology. Winer also notes that ReadWriteWeb is one of the best sites to find product coverage and even extends some advice to us (we're listening Dave). As of this post, ReadWriteWeb is listed three times in the counts section, with two of our articles coming in at #2 and #3 respectively. All in all, Tech NewsJunk is a must have in anyone's feed reader.

Finding the right apartment to live in can be a daunting and time consuming task. Introin tries to make this process easier by creating a platform where prospective renters can communicate with current residents. Current residents can earn referral bonuses from their rental complex when they convince a prospective renter to move to their complex. Introit also gives renters the opportunity to advertise their own apartments for subleasing.

Introin currently only has listings available for the United States, but there, it does seem to have a relatively complete list of apartment complexes. What makes the site a lot less useful, though, is the fact that the search functions are extremely basic, to say the least. Other sites focused on the rental market like ForRent.com or Rent.com allow you to filter your search by everything from available fireplaces, to pools, and pet policies. Even Apartmentratings.com, which mostly focuses on reviews, allows for searching by number of beds and baths, as well as maximum rent.

Introin, on the other hand, only features a location based search and an option to search by name. That's it. After the search is completed, you are presented with an alphabetical list that can only be sorted by number of referrals. The information Introin displays about apartment complexes is about as spare as its search functions and doesn't go beyond name, address, and phone number. There are no photos, no links to a complex's web site, not even an indication about the cost of renting there. There is a button that says 'show details,' but it's inactive.

Connecting Renters

Even though the search presents a pretty bare list of information, this is the central hub for renters to connect. You can add your own information here to be listed as a referral and you can list your apartment as being available for sublease. At least in the sublease form, you can start entering some information about your place. You can not, however, upload any pictures.

Once a connection between renters has been made, the communication between them is then handled on the site on a message board. If there are no subleases or referrers available yet, you can set an alert and you will get an email once somebody else signs up for referring or subleasing.

Conflict of Interest?

If current renters, though, are mostly motivated by referral bonuses, the question remains if their opinions can be fully trusted. Many complexes offer bonuses close to $300 or a certain number of rent-free weeks. Introin doesn't feature any reputation system. This is problematic in a system that has a conflict of interest built into it by default.

What if Nobody Shows Up?

The problem for Introin right now isn't this potential conflict of interest, though. The problem Introin faces right now is one that many community sites face in its early stages: it's empty. In all my searches, I have yet to come across a single apartment available for sub-lease or a users who registered as a referral.

Introin is probably most useful in areas around college campuses where people move in and out on a regular basis and somebody is always looking to sub-lease apartments for the semester breaks or after dropping out of school. Here, however, Introin also faces stiff competition from long established local sites and, of course, Craigslist.

Verdict

Introin is build upon a very interesting idea. If the developers tackle some of the problems outlined above and start adding more information to the system so that the search function becomes more useful, then this service would have potential. Right now, there is simply a lack of activity on the site and the fact that the search is so limited reduces its usefulness to the point where it would be hard to refer anybody to the site with a clean conscience.

A Great Music Wiki

Sites like Last.fm, Imeem, Myspace, iLike, and more are limited when it comes to music. There's only so much information these sites give about music genres and music as a whole. Their only purpose is to promote material rather an educate the masses on other areas of music outside of just artists and the most popular songs out. WikiAudio does the exact opposite. There's a host of educational information about music and the production of it. The site offers a range of information about the jargon that only serious musicians would use and understand.

Conceived by Bill Turner and co-founded by Lathan Hodge, WikiAudio is essentially one enormous wiki on music. However, it's not about artist. The wiki's sole focus is the "art and science of anything audio or sound related". At WikiAudio you can learn about a new recording technique, build an API preamp from scratch, get tips on how to use features in music production software, and a host of other great things. Using the site is the same as using any other wiki. You just type in what you're looking for to get the information. Though it's necessary to sign-up in order to create or modify a new article or tutorial, registration wasn't necessary for browsing the site and accessing the majority of the site's features.

Education Meets Social Media

WikiAudio does a great job of combining both social networking and "Wiki" landscapes to create a hybrid that incorporates articles, videos, audio files, tutorials, user profiles, forums, blogs, RSS feeds, and more. Producers, musicians, and music majors will find WikiAudio to be a candy store full of free and useful sweets. There are plenty of tutorials available and veterans of audio production are encourage to help the beginners of the site by creating tutorials of their personal productions and techniques.

Swotti aggregates opinions about products from product review sites, forums and discussion boards, web sites and blogs, and then categorizes those reviews as to what feature or aspect of the product is being reviewed, tagging it accordingly, and then rating the review on as positive or negative.

Take the iPhone for example - each review is tagged with keywords like Design, Usability, Display, Reliability, Noise, Battery, Service, Camera, Keypad, Size, etc. Based on the number of positive reviews for a tag, a rating for that feature is given. Bar charts show green bars for good, yellow for average, or red for bad reviews. And they seem to be pretty accurate, at least for the iPhone - "design" is 5 green bars, "speed" is 3 red bars.

There is even a pie chart that summarizes the views. In the iPhone example, 15% said "I Love," 11% said "Too Expensive," 11% said "Worst." (Note to those who hated your iPhones: please send them this way.)

Product images display on the left and the reviews themselves, linked to the original source, display on the right. The reviews can also be sorted to display the best reviews, the worst, or the most relevant. Beneath the sorting options, the number of reviews display.

iPhone Results in Swotti

What's interesting is that this data seems to have been collected, tagged, and rated using only Swotti's technology. This isn't Mahalo - no user-intervention here - it's all automated.

One problem with the site seems to the be with the English spellings of things and wording, like "Adjective" was spelled "Adjetive." Since the site is also offered in Spanish, its likely that the Spanish version was created first and this is an English translation. However, this is only a minor drawback.

Whether it gets it right all the time - that's the real issue. The problems lies in similarly named products, obviously something that is still being sorted out. For example, a search for the Lenovo x300 also returned results for the Dell Latitude x300. I couldn't filter out the Dell results by using -dell in my query a la Google, as that returned a "No enough opinions" result (Yep, that's the English again).

Clicking on "Are you unsatisfied with your results? Help us" gave me a Spanish entry form which returned a bunch of code when I submitted my comments...although at the bottom it did say "Gracias por haber dado tu opinion," so maybe it went through anyway.

Altough these issues would have to be worked out for the site to became mainstream, it doesn't deduct from Swotti's potential - Swotti is reading, categorizing, and rating data from the web on its own. A great concept which hopefully will get better with time. Definitely worth watching.

But don't call Delver a "social search engine."

"That name belongs to services like Mahalo," says Liad Agmon, Delver CEO. "We prefer the term 'socially connected search engine'." That term makes sense because Delver is not a social network built around a search engine, but a search engine who indexes and queries your social network to deliver its results. Instead of just looking at a web site's popularity, Delver looks at information like whether your friends have tagged the site or if it's found on their social network profiles, bookmarking sites, photos and video sharing sites, or on their blogs. The results are more relevant because they account for who a person is and what they find valuable.

Agmon adds, "People want trusted information from their friends, but may not know who in their network is knowledgeable about a given topic. We make Web search more fun and meaningful by prioritizing results based on a user's network, while enabling the user to discover others in their extended network who share common interests."

Even without registering for an account, Delver will try to determine who you are by searching any public social network profiles you may have on sites like Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube. If you do decide to register on the site, though, you can then choose to associate your accounts with Delver in order to obtain even more accurate results. Delver currently indexes the entire web, and specifically indexes people's social connections on flickr, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, hi5, facebook, Blogger, and, they are adding more all the time. When they go into public beta (circa May, 2008), an optional email import process will be provided as well.

Maximizing Your "Whole" Social Network

Many of us have friends, family members, or colleagues on sites like MySpace and facebook who aren't into using all the latest and greatest web apps and technologies. These friends may have a MySpace profile or a blog, but without visiting these sites directly, there was no way to gather information from these people before. Now with Delver, their profiles and contributions to your social graph are indexed.

No one has to sign up for Delver for you to have them included in your search results.

This is a real breakthrough since prior to Delver, the maximum value you would get out of social networks was directly related to how many of your friends would join. I don't know about you, but I still have plenty of friends who are on MySpace and nothing else, and are quite content with that. With each new social network I joined, the number of my non-tech friends that would follow me dwindled down to nearly nothing. Now it doesn't matter. They can stay on MySpace forever and yet the content they create there will be valuable to me.

Privacy Concerns?

It's important to understand that Delver doesn't display anything that isn't already publicly available. "If Google can get to it, so can Delver," says Agmon. But Delver just makes it so much easier to do so. You can access people's social information with such ease that anyone who hasn't been good about setting their profiles to "private" (or who doesn't know to do so), may be surprised to find themselves searchable on Delver.

Using Delver

After claiming your identity in Delver, your social graph is mapped and displayed for you beneath the Delver search box. Dotted lines connect you to your friends and your "friends of friends."

When you perform a query, results from all over your social web display.

You can narrow down your search to just display the people related to your search term or just media results by clicking the links at the top.

Each search result displays, via a  breadcrumb trail, your relationship to the person associated with that result. You can hover your mouse over their name to see their photo and their relationship to you. Even if you and them are not directly related as "friends" on a social network, you can still click the plus sign beneath their picture to add them as a connection. This will then add them into the mix of your search results in the future. This way, you can view the relevant bookmarks, links, blog posts, photos, and videos of people like you even if you don't know them personally...and they don't have to confirm the connection on their end.

Alternately, you can choose to exclude certain connections from your search results as well, which is perfect for eliminating those "who-is-that-guy?" friendships left over from your days of MySpace friend accumulation contests.

When Will It Arrive?

UPDATE: ReadWriteWeb has just received 50 beta accounts to Xobni. Enter the invite code “RWW” at www.xobni.com/download to get instant access to the download of Xobni Insight.

The Xobni software has several features, including fast email search, email analytics, automatic phone number discovery, threaded conversations, and more.

The email search is fast and begins finding the people and/or emails you're looking for as you type. A search for a contact will pull up their profile and every email where you two have corresponded...in 0.3 seconds!

A Xobni profile is created for every person you've emailed with and is displayed on the right side of Microsoft Outlook inside the Xobni sidebar. Each profile displays relationship statistics, contact information, related people, threaded conversations, shared attachments, and the author of the message you are currently looking at.

The relationship statistics show things like the time of day when you receive emails from the contact, the balance of incoming and outgoing messages, and the person's rank out of all of your contacts. These statistics are created by Xobni's powerful analytics engine, which can also be accessed from a menu option to further analyze your email habits with numbers, charts, and graphs.

A contact's phone number is displayed in the Xobni sidebar by automatically extracting that information from your emails. This way, you can see someone's phone number even if you've never actually entered them into your Outlook contacts. If you hover over the phone icon next to the number, you can see the text of the email from which their phone number was extracted.

Further down, the related people section shows other people who are connected to that person in some way, exposing your shared friends as well as your contacts relationships to each other. Clicking on the name of one of the "related people" will take you to their profile in the Xobni sidebar.

Beneath the related people pane, a recent conversations area shows your most recent previous correspondence with that contact. This can be very useful to help jog your memory when replying to a new email, as you can quickly recall what had already been said. It can also save you time because you never have to navigate away from the current conversation to locate previous emails. The conversations are listed by date, and by clicking on them, you can then view the emails themselves. You can also reply or forward one of those emails right in the Xobni sidebar, or you can choose to open the email in Outlook. Attachments they've sent you or you've sent them are underneath the conversations area, again saving you from having to navigate away from the current conversation to find the email with the attachment you need.

Xobni also helps with scheduling. It displays your appointments, schedule, and to-do list, and in the Xobni sidebar, there is a "Schedule Time" link below each contact. Clicking this link opens up a pre-composed email with your availability. This saves you time as you don't need to check your calendar every time you need to schedule a meeting. Xobni knows when you have an opening. Another interesting feature is that Xobni also automatically identifies people you've lost touch with by looking at the dates of your last correspondence with them.

Outlook is Only the Beginning

Although currently for Microsoft Outlook only, Xobni's blog hints that this may just be the beginning by calling Outlook "the first platform we’ve integrated with." They said they chose Outlook because it is used by 350 million people, but they also say that they "don’t want to force our users to change email clients or social networks to use Xobni. Our software seamlessly integrates with the environments and systems that you already use to communicate and build relationships." This makes me think that we will see integration with more platforms in the future.

Xobni's brilliance is in providing you with a true social network filled with information that can help you stay productive and get things done. It will never replace the fun of building a customized profile page on a social network like Facebook or MySpace, but it uncovers the network already present in what is perhaps the main area of your life where you communicate and build the most relationships. This makes Xobni not just useful, but one of those, "how did I ever live without it" kind of things.

Xobni is currently in an invite-only beta, but you can sign up to try it here.

UPDATE: ReadWriteWeb has just received 50 beta accounts to Xobni. Enter the invite code “RWW” at www.xobni.com/download to get instant access to the download of Xobni Insight.