ReadWriteWeb

As the cloud is getting more players and interfaces, best and worst practices are emerging. As the market grows and more companies try to plug in, the cloud may benefit from guiding principles.

Similar to new technology movements in the past, a natural process is underway to define "what is good", which, for some in the industry, equates to "what is open". Like religion itself, open can be defined in ways that are uplifting, or on the other side of the coin, restricting. Also, we learn again, nothing is free.

According to internal sources, the New York Times may soon be charging users for its online content.

In a move that would bring the publication parallel to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, the New York Times seems to have settled on a system that would allow online readers to sample a certain amount of content before being prompted to subscribe. This decision would be a landmark in the ongoing cultural debate on whether online content should be free or not and could represent another fundamental shift in how users expect to access and consume news, depending on which news organizations follow suit.

UPDATE: According to a recent iA Twitter update the interactive Web Trend Map 4 will open for beta testers tomorrow if it can solve some server problems.

We were very excited earlier this year when RWW made its way onto the latest edition of the Web Trend Map. For those of you unfamiliar with this map, it "plots the Internet's leading names and domains onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains and personalities are carefully selected through dialogue with map enthusiasts, and every domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, and character". Information architecture company iA built this awesome visualization and we have learned that it is about to roll out an interactive version of its map later this month.

Microblogging has become a very popular way for people to share news and information or even live-blog events in real time, but if you have ever tried to search through services like Twitter using only Google, the Twitter native search or any number of other services, you know how difficult it can be to find exactly what you're after. Today the Google Operating System blog reports that Google will be launching a new microblogging search service that will sort results by relevance and integrate those results with its own web search engine to trigger a "microblog universal search group", closely related to the way Google Blog Search works. If it turns out to be true, this is great news to those of us who constantly search Twitter for the latest news and trends.

Microsoft launched its new search engine Bing earlier this month and one of its great new features is a video search tool called called Smart Motion Previews. It's a preview feature that let you view and listen to part of a video by hovering over it with your mouse.

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.

We continue to be impressed with the direction The New York Times is taking with their Times Open strategy - exposing more and more data from the Gray Lady via a number of APIs. The level of access that the venerable publication has continued to provide has been laudable. There's just been one thing missing: immediacy. But the latest API - one of the most impressive to date - takes care of that concern. Introducing the Times Newswire API, an interface that provides immediate access to articles on NYTimes.com - as they're published.

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we're big fans of the Times Open strategy, the program that focuses on making the data of The New York Times more accessible to the developer community. We heralded the launch of the program, covered the first available API, and marveled at the access to content the APIs have begun to provide. Now the Times has taken another momentous step forward: bringing developers together for Times Open, the publication's inaugural API seminar.

When it comes to venerable publications, few hold as much esteem as The New York Times - and few have as much access to interesting user data. That's why we're excited to hear that the Times' API team has announced the release of its latest API, TimesPeople, which provides developers with access to data on registered NYTimes.com TimesPeople readers' sharing and reading habits.

The New York Times just released an interesting new online product that tries to recreate the experience of spreading out the newspaper on Sunday morning. The new 'article skimmer' gets back to the basics with a streamlined interface that lets you quickly scan the top headlines in every section of the Times. Basically, this is an experimental new interface for reading the Times online, though the links to the actual articles still take you to the standard NYT pages.

Will Web folk of the world get a chance to watch next week's unprecedented and groundbreaking webcast live or were we just deluding ourselves? In what can only be described as a typically predictable move, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has appealed Federal Judge Nancy Gertner's order allowing the hearing of Joel Tenenbaum's copyright infringement trial to be narrowcast over the Web.

Today, the Harvard legal team representing Tenenbaum commented on the appeal pointing out that if the RIAA truly wants to educate people it should be embracing the narrowcast. The appeal really does beg the question: does the RIAA really want its voice heard by the masses?

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service remains vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, in particular insider threats that continue to jeopardize the confidentiality of taxpayer information according to a report (PDF) released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office Friday.

The report points out that the IRS doesn't always enforce strong password management, authorize user access, encrypt sensitive data, effectively monitor mainframe changes or physically protect its computer resources.

At a time when the online world is continually seen as a more trusted source of news, mainstream media outlets find themselves forced into the position of becoming more and more open to keep their readers coming back. Removing "paid subscription" requirements that prevented everyday users from accessing content was one of the first cracks in the walled gardens. Opening APIs to other developers has been gaining favor. And now, another trend is coming to light: incorporating third-party content to supplement the original content the sites are offering. Today, the Gray Lady joined those ranks as the The New York Times launched Times Extra, a view of its front page supplemented with content from other news sources and blogs.

The race to find a single sign-on and synchronization service has been on since social networking sites hit global acceptance several years ago. Today, after working under the radar for the past year, and with a member base of 5 million users, Power.com announced its global launch with a mighty claim: "Our platform will break down the boundaries between social sites and allow users to synchronize their logins, content, messages and friends."

Calling it a 'social inter-networking' service, CEO Steve Vachani today explained: "Social is about people, not about place; we're making 'where' irrelevant."

A rapidly spreading network worm, known as Agent BTZ, has prompted the U.S. army to put the use of USB drives and all removable data storage devices on hold temporarily, according to Wired's Noah Shachtman.

Given the worm is based on SillyFDC, which has been around for several years and has a low risk factor, the question has to be asked: is this over-kill by the Defense Department?

Walter Mossberg, who has been reviewing technology since 1991 for the Wall Street Journal in his weekly "Personal Technology" column, is convinced the companies that succeed in this type of econaclypse, as AllThingsD has dubbed the economy, will be those that focus on innovation. "It has been my observation that while things do slow down in bad times, they don't stop," Mossberg said.

Speaking to a packed room this week at the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase in Redwood City CA, Mossberg, the "Most Influential Computer Journalist" according to Time Magazine, described the trends that excite him right now as happening both in computer hardware and computer software: outside the browser Web applications, service in the cloud, and hand held computers.

With the upcoming U.S. elections only 12 days away, Google has released a new web site to help simply and centralize information about voting locations and voter registration. According to a blog post about the new U.S. Voter Info site, Google found it hard to believe that in 2008, this type of important information isn't better organized on the web. Because organizing info is what Google is all about, they took it on themselves to step in where government has not and have created an incredibly useful site for all U.S. citizens.

In its first major upgrade ever, Google Blogsearch just relaunched and looks radically different. Instead of the blank page look of Google.com, Blogsearch now looks like Google News (but uglier) - with the hottest topics from the blogosphere aggregated on the front page. Readers can drill down in 11 different categories, from technology, business, sports and entertainment. Google says you can use Blogsearch to see what the world is talking about.

The user interface isn't nearly as nice as leading tech blog memetracker Techmeme, but the new Blogsearch has some major advantages.