ReadWriteWeb

Ohpan is a news ticker. OK, that's one way of describing it, but it's about as far removed from what Ohpan does - and has the potential to do - as calling a Tivo a VCR. Unveiled today in invite-only beta (don't worry, we've got access codes for you), Ohpan takes the concept of a scrolling feed and tricks it out until it's hardly recognizable. Atype Studios, the creator, calls it a dynamic side-scrolling infostream.

Whether you call it "social networking," "social media," or "online collaboration" depends on your point of view. In business, the term tends to be "online collaboration," which suggests complex jobs getting done more efficiently by teams of people wherever they are located. The productivity gains - which are substantial, albeit often hard to measure - have drawn lots of companies into the market. As the market matures, we will see consolidation. And we're interested in seeing what form this consolidation will take.

Why is the Enterprise 2.0 market not taking off more strongly? The reason has to do partly with ill-conceived pricing structures: volume-discount (VD) schemes. Fix them, and you fix one of the obstacles preventing the market from expanding rapidly. And by fixing them is meant reversing them, in particular by using volume-increasing schemes.

We can no longer call Feedly just "an alternative interface for Google Reader" as we once did. Since the launch of Feedly Mini, a new mini bar that hovers at the bottom of the screen as you surf through blogs on the web, the service has become more of blog reading companion than anything else. Today that bar, also known as Feedly Mini, has been updated to better integrate both Twitter and FriendFeed with your blog reading. The experience is incredible and makes Feedly a must-have tool for anyone who uses these services.

Remember the Google-led OpenSocial project? Google FriendConnect? For some period of time last year, Google was talked about as a leading innovator in the new "social web." Facebook, and to some degree OpenID, stole Google's thunder as 2008 came to an end. Now in order to get back into the conversation, Google has launched its 80th official blog - the Google Social Web Blog.

The social Web has given users great power: the ability to create and share content with people around the world - easily and quickly. The problem of course, is that power is often not compatible with effective and clear thinking. The thought that germinated in an instant can be immortalized in perpetuity on the Web.

With the extraordinary growth of the Internet and the interlinking of information that the social Web has brought with it, it's time to examine the footprints we leave on the Web as we move into the future that promises to "throttle the 'wisdom of the crowds' from turning into the 'madness of the mobs,'" as described so eloquently by Jason Calacanis.

Today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. As several million people attended the inauguration in Washington D.C., Facebook and CNN invited the rest of the world to watch the moment online. Online visitors to CNN.com were able to use its video player to watch the live broadcast coverage of the event. We also saw what has be one of the most brilliant examples of the real-time web in action: next to the video, the Facebook status updates of those watching streamed by in the sidebar.

On Tuesday, January 20th, 2009, America and the whole world will gather to watch Barack Obama be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. Many have called Mr. Obama the Internet President because of the unprecedented way his campaign used the medium to raise funds, raise awareness, and ultimately outmaneuver John McCain. But what can we do now to help turn this country around? Read on for 7 things every one of us can do on the Internet to help Obama restore America.

FriendDeck is a new web-based interface designed for performing searches across the social web aggregation service, FriendFeed. Having obviously taken inspiration from the popular Twitter desktop application, TweetDeck, FriendDeck displays information in columns that spread across your screen, allowing you to track multiple search terms within the same window. As the individual items appear, you have the option of clicking "like" or commenting inline on the postings.

It was two years ago that we first heard of Zigtag, a service that promised to "transform how people search, save and share knowledge & information." Now, after a nine-month private beta, this semantic tagging service has finally launched. But is Zigtag's bookmarking tool intelligent enough for 2009?