ReadWriteWeb

We live in a technologically rich and increasingly Web-savvy world. In this post, we celebrate the World Wide Web by selecting our top 10 international products of 2008. What do we mean by 'international'? We looked for products that were developed outside the U.S., which showed innovation and support for global Web standards. We also tried to choose from a cross-section of countries, although obviously we couldn't cover all the major countries. That said, we hope you enjoy our selections!

Always wanted to play in a symphony? Here's your chance - without even leaving your living room. YouTube has just announced the "world's first collaborative online orchestra" - the YouTube Symphony Orchestra - a one-of-a-kind experiment that provides individual musicians with an opportunity to collaborate with other musicians all over the world.

But that's not all. If you play well enough, show some creativity, and exude passion, you may find yourself seated in the famed Carnegie Hall, performing live with other YouTube musicians.

After it had been unavailable in Germany for more than two days, the Wikipedia's German portal is finally back online. The local German version of the Wikipedia had become unavailable after a member of the German parliament, Lutz Heilmann, pressed charges against the German Wikipedia because of defamatory statements in his biography on the site. Heilmann argued that the article was "false and slanderous." A German judge then ordered the closure of the German portal for the Wikipedia, wikipedia.de.

Parlez-vous français? No neither do I, apart from the smattering of French I learnt at the beginning of high school. But to cater to our friends in Europe, we've just opened a French language version of ReadWriteWeb. The idea was suggested by Romain Péchard, who approached us about translating our articles into French and also writing unique content about the Europe web scene. Romain and his team have basically taken the ball and rolled with it (prendre le ballon et a roulé avec lui), designing and organizing the new site.

RWW France will be covering the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2008 next week and they have tickets to give away if you're one of our European readers.

In Amsterdam the social media technology conference PICNIC2008 wrapped up last week after devoting an entire day of scheduling to the innovations coming out of Africa. Dubbed 'Surprising Africa', the conference featured prolific social entrepreneurs and technology developers from around the world who offered insight into various projects from the African continent.

In this post we look at the state of the fast-growing mobile industry in Africa. This is the second post in our series on Africa's Web (Part 1 is here).

Contrary to popular belief, Africa is not completely absent from the Internet. In fact, the continent at large is undergoing a connectivity revolution unlike anything it has ever seen. Mobile phones in particular are propagating at an incredible rate, with penetration ranging from 30% to 100%. The average is 30.4% and there are 280 million subscribers in total, making Africa the fastest growing mobile market in the world.

The point of this series is to highlight African contributions to social media and, in turn, reveal how social media is changing Africa.

The king of YouTube's All Time Most Viewed Leaderboard, Judson Laipply, creator of the Evolution of Dance, has been unseated. The new leader is a fast climbing Italian video on top of a remix of a Brazilian song popularized by an iPod Touch commercial and titled "CANSEI DE SER SEXY Music is My Hot Hot Sex". Foul play is suspected, however, as the new leader displays a number of statistical anomalies in viewership numbers.

It's a new era for YouTube. No longer is the number one video of all time a plucky American dancing to 50 years of this country's greatest hits. The new leader is a video made and viewed primarily from outside the U.S., explicitly tied to a current commercial campaign and suspected to be part of the now widespread cheating on the site.