InSTEDD has built a product called InSTEDD Geochat, which is a service combining SMS, Twitter and email. However it is SMS-only interaction for users, as most don't have browsers. Driving the system is a "semi-structured" API with an extensible pipeline. However the idea of this system is that the participants don't need to be concerned with all the technology behind it, they can just interact with the system using SMS.

Interoperability is an issue, but this is being addressed with an InSTEDD service called Mesh4x. It syncs data from diverse applications, sources and devices. It works via HTTP, files and SMS. It supports open standards, such as FeedSync - an open protocol that describes data formats and algorithms used to version information in a mesh. Interestingly this is a Semantic Web application, with RDF as the default data representation.

The next challenge is using this data for collective action. "Today it takes a lot of coordination to get two organizations working together", said Jezierski. So they have been working on a system called Evolve - described as an RSS Reader for groups by Jezierski. It aims to provide collaborative decision support around streams of information. The service tries to sift through data and identify emerging health-related events. It also has an automatic feature extraction, for data classification and tagging. There is a human input and review module that "allows users to comment, tag, and semantically rank the elements (positive, neutral, or negative)." The overall theme is that it is a mix of machine and human intelligence - the machine can recommend a course of action, but people trigger the actions.

Jezierski has worked in the commercial sector before and he noted that "doing stuff to help people in Cambodia is way harder than running the London Stock Exchange". He said for example that for Twitter to reach wide adoption in these places, much work needs to be done to enable it. In particular he thinks a "better shared language" for technologies is needed for third world work - much in the same way that web 2.0 evolved a specific language in the tech world (tagging, user-generated content, etc).

The InSTEDD Innovation Lab is another project. It's a "socio-technical" lab in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and mixes InSTEDD's own team with various other organizations, to work on technologies that help society.

Overall it's clear that InSTEDD is doing some great work to bring collaborative software and systems into countries that need it the most - for disaster prevention and recovery, healthcare, and other essential needs.

As noted earlier, I had the opportunity to put e-business cards to a real-world test this past week at the DEMO conference. While I found a somewhat workable solution for sending out my contact info to others, I still collected a large stack of paper business cards from the people I met. These cards had to be digitized in order for them to be of any use to me. While people with administrative assistants are fortunate to have this tiresome data entry process handled for them, those of us without are stuck doing it ourselves. We can either sit at the keyboard for hours or use a scanner. Shouldn't there be a better way?

Surprisingly, there haven't been many options for getting our paper cards to digital format outside of using a business card scanner until now. While it's true that many people use these small, portable scanners to update their email or CRM contact lists, it's hard to believe that folks are truly satisfied with this solution.

Now, scanning in a card or two by themselves is not a big deal, but after returning from a trade show or conference, you'll often have a much larger stack of cards to deal with. What before was a quick few-minutes task now requires you to carve out a much larger chunk of your day. Since you've likely been out of the office for some time, you probably have much more pressing issues than dealing with those cards upon your return. That task goes immediately to the bottom of your priority list. Eventually the cards end up in a shoebox somewhere never to be seen again.

Today, however, we have a couple of new options for dealing with this situation. The first involves a company called Shoeboxed. Primarily a service which digitizes and categorizes receipts, they now do business card scanning, too. You can mail your cards to them (they can even send you an envelope!) and they will scan them in for you. The output is provided in a format which can be imported into Outlook, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Gmail, and most other contact programs.

More recently, Shoeboxed teamed up with note taking application Evernote to provide a solution that's a must-have for any active Evernote users. Through the new partnership, you're able to send any Shoeboxed content directly to Evernote where it then becomes searchable.

Option Two: CloudContacts

For those already ingrained in Evernote, the above is a great solution, but if you're starting fresh you might be interested in a single company instead of a combination service. A new option is CloudContacts, a service create by Allen Stern of Center Networks.

Like Shoeboxed, with CloudContacts you also have the option of mailing in your cards, either with your own envelope or the company can send you one.

If you work in an office, access to things like manila envelopes and stamps or postage machines is easy, but for home workers it often still requires an extra errand to the office supplies store and the Post Office. That's why when CloudContacts announced they would now accept emailed images sent from your camera phone, it finally became a reasonable option for me. This email service starts at $4.95 per month for 20 cards and $8.95 per month for 40 cards. To use the snail-mail CloudContacts service, it's an additional $29.95 to upload up to 100 business cards, $79.95 for up to 300 cards and $124.95 for up to 500 cards. You can go with just the email-only package, though. I did both.

Via Snail Mail

The postal mail option is really no harder than stuffing the cards in an envelope and putting them in the mailbox. However, there is a piece of paper you have to print out and put in the envelope, too, and that means you'll need to keep ink in your printer. (There's another trip to the office supplies store!) Again, unless you have a fully functional home office complete with envelopes, stamps, a printer, ink, etc., the snail mail option isn't ideal.

Via Email

Instead, taking a camera phone photo and emailing it is much easier and faster. You're provided with a special email address which you can add to your contact list in your phone for speedy access. As you're out and about, you can snap photos and email them right away so you don't end up with a stack of cards at the end of the day that need to be dealt with.

There was only one problem with the email option in my case. I'm an iPhone owner and the iPhone has a terrible camera. In fact, it's downright unusable with this service. But there is a workaround for that. It's called the Griffin Clarfi case for iPhone and it was recommended by numerous people I ran into this past week. This iPhone case comes with a built-in macro lens for close-up photography, allowing you to shoot what you want in incredible detail - like business cards, for example. At only $15 (US) on Amazon, the purchase was a no-brainer.

In the meantime, though, I had to use a regular camera to take the photos. Fortunately, CloudContacts let me send in a batch instead of one at a time.

Once the photos are received and digitized, you'll receive an email from the service (from Allen himself, actually). I asked if the personal attention I received was typical and surprisingly, it is. Allen says he believes that support can make or break a company.

The CloudContacts Web Site

When you log in to CloudContacts to see your data, the initial interface is no-frills - but in a good way. It's just a list of your contacts displaying their name, company, address, and phone number. A search box sits at the top of the screen if you need to look for a specific person.

Click on the view button for any contact and you'll be taken to a page where all their information is saved, including the photo of their business card. Also on this page is a Google map showing their address, links to their info on LinkedIn and Facebook, and, if known, their IM/chat networks are provided, too.

The data entered was entirely accurate. Apparently, that's because CloudContacts isn't doing OCR (Optical Character Recognition), or so reports VentureBeat. For data to be this accurate, it's easy to assume there are human editors on the other end, but Allen won't confirm this, calling it his "secret sauce." We're curious, of course, but as long as the data remains accurate, we suppose the magic can remain a mystery.

From any contact's page or from the main page of the site, you can click "edit" to add more details to the contact info including how you know them or other personal notes. There are also links for downloading an individual vCard or printing out a single contact's info.

Importing into Your Email

Again like Shoeboxed, you entire contact list can be exported into Standard CSV format, vCard format, Highrise CSV format, or in Yahoo/Gmail Contacts CSV format. Doing so provides a file which you can then import into your preferred program. Since Gmail merges duplicate contacts upon import, you can continue to use this option every time without worries of creating multiple versions of the same contact. Other programs may vary.

In Gmail, you're also able to tag your contacts upon import by adding them to a group. I've begun to use this option to group people by business and/or where we met (CES, DEMO, etc.). But with CloudContacts, I can't categorize or tag subsets of my contact list for selective import into Gmail. That would be a great feature. (Perhaps it will be added later - Allen seems open to feedback about the service.)

Conclusion: Worth It

When the iPhone case arrives, I'll probably turn off the snail mail service - I doubt I'll ever use it again at that point. But overall, the CloudContacts service was useful and worth the money spent - especially since I was able to get a backlog of cards into the system quickly. Now if they would just do an iPhone app too, I'd have a complete solution!

Image Credit: Andrew Turner

This past week, I had the opportunity to put e-business cards to a real-world test thanks to a recent trip to the DEMO 09 conference in Palm Desert, California. You would think that if any group of people would have adopted the electronic business card model for exchanging their contact data, it would be the technology community. Yet at conferences like DEMO and all the others, printed paper cards are still exchanged. Why is that?

The first step to going paperless is easy: don't pack your business cards when heading out to an event. Old habits die hard and if you have even a handful of cards in your possession, I guarantee you that you'll use them at some point. Exchanging paper cards is much faster than tapping away at a mobile phone, so there will be several times where you'll be tempted to just break out the paper product if it's at hand. Better to go "cold turkey" and not give yourself any other options.

SnapDat: An iPhone App for e-Business Cards

Next, you'll need to choose a mobile application for exchanging cards. As an iPhone owner, I went straight to the iTunes Store to find my app. Other smartphone owners may not have as large a selection since the other app stores - like those for Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile - are just getting started.

In iTunes, you'll encounter a number of e-business card applications, so picking one can be difficult. To find the one right for you, you'll need to pay close attention to the details. On the surface, many of these apps may sound like they would do, but in real-world scenarios, you'll quickly encounter their limitations.

For example, apps like myCard, FriendBook, and Nameo (iTunes URLs) let you exchange contact information over the air with other iPhone users. This feature is called a "handshake." While this is indeed a nifty trick, in the real world you're still going to encounter enough non-iPhone users to make these types of apps a non-starter.

Another application called DropCard lets you text their service with an email address. It will then send your contact info via email to the recipient. I skipped this option as well because I don't have a mobile plan with unlimited text messages and didn't want to go over my limit.

Instead, while at DEMO, I put an iPhone application called SnapDat to the test. The application was "serviceable," but was still not the ideal solution.

Using SnapDat

What drew me to this app initially was the price tag: free. Whenever possible, I try to find a decent free application before forking out cash for a Pro version.

SnapDat also met my number one requirement which was that it provided a way for me to send cards to others who didn't use the service. Although another application called beamMe is more popular, what intrigued me about SnapDat was that it allows me to create multiple business cards. BeamMe's free application did not permit this. While I could have just entered all my contact info into beamMe, I prefer to keep my identities separate - no need to confuse the recipients.

With SnapDat, the process of setting up your business card is straightforward and it can all be done on the phone. You just enter your contact information, upload a picture (if desired), and pick a theme. That last step, however, was the most disappointing. The themes offered were far from modern, most looking like bad clip art circa Microsoft Office 2003. I found one of the least offensive options (there was no way to create a custom theme) and then proceeded to test the service.

Unfortunately, SnapDat is yet another application which is far too concerned with gathering more users than it is with providing you with a useful tool. Upon launching the app, you're first presented with the option to enter in a user's SnapDat ID. No one I encountered had a SnapDat ID, so from the get-go, I'm having to press a button to bypass this option. It's additional time-wasters like this that make the process of using SnapDat slower than it needs to be.

On the next screen, you can enter in an email address and hit "send." The recipient gets an email with your contact info both in the body of the email and as a vCard attachment which they can then add to their email address book or phone. The sending process was easy but upon completion, SnapDat pops up a message reminding you to inform your new business contact to check their junk mail if they didn't get the email. That's a useful tip for the first time you send a card, but it appears every time you use SnapDat which is more than an annoyance - it's an inconvenience - especially since there's no option to shut the reminder off.

The service also comes with a "SnapDirectory" where you can store the SnapCards others send you, but - let's be honest - this is not a feature you'll use much...if at all. The primary reason for using an e-card app is to send a vCard to someone's email where it can then be stored in their contacts database, not in some niche iPhone application.

OK, But Not Perfect

In the end, SnapDat was, like I said, "serviceable," but the terrible themes and bothersome pop-ups took away from what could have been a much more useful application. However, for anyone who wants to create more than one business card, it's worth a look.

SnapDat is available from the iTunes store here.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll tell you what to do with that stack of paper cards you've collected.

When going out to eat, there's nothing worse than being told the wait time is 45 - 60 minutes and the restaurant is so over-crowded with customers that you can't even make your way to the bar. Unfortunately, the only choice customers have today is to crowd in and bear it since the paging systems used by restaurants have such a limited range. This is especially trying when you're at a restaurant that's in a mall plaza where other shops, bars, or coffeehouses are only steps away. But instead of being able to kill time in the bookstore, for example, customers have to wait, bored and crowded, in the restaurant's entry way.

ReadyPing solves this problem and does so without the need for restaurants to invest in additional hardware or software. Instead, the system allows for text messages to be sent to the waiting dinner guests. To use the system, a host or hostess enters in the party's name, number of guests, and a mobile number. When a table becomes available, the host clicks a button to send out a customized text message.

The cost of using the system is a flat $34.95 per month for unlimited messaging and there are no setup fees. At the moment, ReadyPing is U.S.-only, but there's no reason why they couldn't expand to other parts of the world at a later point.

Potential Issues

There is a potential drawback to using a system like this - and that's the restaurant customers themselves. Given free range, people will likely wander off much farther away from the restaurant than before and that could delay the time between the text's delivery and their return by several minutes, possibly even five or ten. This would dramatically slow down the seating process and would frustrate those on the list behind them.

Before a restaurant implemented such a system as this, it would be necessary to retrain hosting staff so they understood the potential issues. Perhaps instead of waiting until a table was actually ready before alerts were sent, ReadyPing users could anticipate ahead of time that a table was about to become ready. This would give customers the additional time needed to return to the restaurant from wherever they had ventured off to. Perhaps staff could even work out a system where awaiting customers were pinged as current customers were brought their checks. Further integration with restaurant POS systems to do so would be even better, but something like that may be beyond ReadyPing's capabilities.

Another potential drawback to ReadyPing is that some customers would be hesitant to give out their phone number, despite assurances that data is secured. For those customers, backup pagers may still need to be used or they may need to wait the old-fashioned way - listening for the hostess to call their name aloud.

Real-World Mobile Technology

In any event, the ReadyPing system is a great example of an application that solves a real-world problem which so many of us can relate to. Thanks to mobile technology, we expect to see more everyday, useful solutions like this in the near future.

This is the seventh in our series of top products of 2008:

1. Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008
2. Top 10 International Products of 2008
3. Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008
4. Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008
5. Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2008
6. Top 10 Enterprise Web Products of 2008

Finance

Mint

Mint single-handedly changed the market for personal finance tools on the Internet in 2008 and forced Quicken, its closest competitor, to start offering its own online tools for free as well. Mint aggregates personal finance data from across the web and displays a consolidated view of all of your accounts in a very well designed and easy to use user interface. Mint also uses this data to recommend better credit cards and savings accounts to its users.

Mint launched its beta program in late 2007 and came out of beta in October 2008.  By October, Mint already had close to half a million users and had managed over $12 billion in transactions. In the course of 2008, Mint added a substantial number of new features to its lineup, including the ability to get an overview of your investment accounts. Mint also launched a major redesign of its user interface in August.

Rudder

While Rudder might look similar to Mint at first, this personal finance tool has a very different focus. While Rudder also aggregates your banking and credit card accounts, it does not focus on analyzing your past spending habits in the way Mint does. Instead, its focuse is on the letting you know how much money you still have to pay your monthly bills. One of the great advantages of Rudder is that it sends all your updates to your inbox, so that you don't even have to log in to the service to keep up to date.

Rudder debuted at this year's DEMOfall conference in San Diego and, given the current economic situation, couldn't have launched at a more opportune time. Rudder also features a large number of useful finance planning tools and a great mobile site.

Health

PatientsLikeMe

PatientsLikeMe is an online community for people with life-changing medical conditions like Multiple Sclerosis, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Fibromyalgia. Even though the site is still relatively now, it already provides on of the largest patient communities, and also features a wide range of research tools for symptoms and treatments.

PatientsLikeMe was founded in 2004 and defines its mission as providing a platform for sharing real world medical data. Members of the site often share data about their individual health experiences like symptoms, weight, mood swings, or drugs they have taken. Thanks to this, you can easily find others who are in the same situation as you and see what treatments are working for them.

Earlier this year, we named PatiensLikeMe as one of our favorite Web 2.0 health apps.

Sermo

Our second top health app is also a social network, but this time for physicians. Sermo has over 90,000 members who exchange information about both medical and non-medical issues. As Matthew Holt from the Health Care Blog pointed out to us, the site also features some highly sophisticated survey and ratings tools, though it is only open to registered physicians.

This year, Sermo also rolled out a partnership with Bloomberg that provides healthcare investors with access to medical information compiled by the site's members.

Education

TeachStreet

TeachStreet is not an educational site in the traditional sense. Instead, it provides a marketplace for teachers and students to meet. TeachStreet, whose motto is 'Learn New Things,' focuses mostly on teaching adults anything from arts and crafts, to bagpiping and foreign languages. TeachStreet started out in Seattle, WA, but expanded to Portland, OR and the Bay Area this year. The site already lists over 60,000 different classes and instructors.

TeachStreet is an interesting tool, both for teachers to gain more visibility, and for students to find the right classes and teachers. Thanks to its excellent search functions and well-designed layout, TeachStreet has already made a name for itself in the regions where it has officially launched and is poised for more growth in 2009.

After the jump: Politics, Non-Profits, Travel

Politics

OpenCongress

While the U.S. election surely dominated the news this year, one non-election related web app that we really came to appreciate this year was OpenCongress. OpenCongress is a project by the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation and is definitely a must for political junkies. The site tracks all the news and votes in the U.S. Congress through an easy to use interface that features a lot of AJAX and RSS. The site even supports OpenID and also provides its users with a large number of widgets they can implement on their own sites.

As our own Marshall Kirkpatrick pointed out in his review of the site, it makes users "want to pay attention to politics because the user experience is so smooth and compelling."

Non-Profits

Kiva

Kiva is a micro-lending service that was founded in 2005 and at that time, it was the first person-to-person micro-ending site on the net. Kiva allows its users to lend small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in developing nations. The loans typically go towards starting up or expanding small, local businesses, ranging from a motorcycle repair shop in Lebanon to tailors in Pakistan.

In November, Kiva announced that over $50 million have now been lend by Kiva's over 330,000 members. This is a major success for the organization, especially given that Kiva had only loaned $11 million by September 2007. Kiva also ran a successful billboard campaign in California thanks to the help of PayPal.

The current financial crisis is obviously affecting Kiva and the organization is already seeing fewer lenders. Hopefully, this trend will reverse in 2009.

Wild Apricot

Wild Apricot provides software-as-a-service solutions to small and medium sized associations, clubs, and non-profits. It has created tightly integrated solutions for membership management, event registration, and creating customized web sites, with a focus on the non-profit sector. Service plans range from free to a flat fee of $200 a month, depending on the size of the contact database you plan to manage on the service.

In 2008, Wild Apricot rolled out a number of updates to its software, including support for Google Checkout, custom URLs, and better group management. Currently, Wild Apricot has more than 10,000 non-profit organizations as clients. We also like the company's well-written and informative blog about technology for non-profits.

Disclosure: Wild Apricot is a RWW sponsor.

Travel

Yapta

The web clearly revolutionized the travel industry. Booking flights and vacations online has quickly become a routine activity, even for less savvy web users. While Yapta launched in 2006, it was really only in 2008 that the site was able to differentiate itself from larger competitors like Kayak, FareCompare,  or Farecast. In June, Yapta announced a new feature that allows you to track airfare changes, and in November, Yapta unveiled a unique service that also allows you to track when and where you can use you frequent flier miles to book a flight.

While it's probably best to take this data with a grain of salt, Yapta claims to have saved its users over $91 million in airfare since May 2007.

PlanetEye

PlanetEye is a social travel site with a strong focus on providing both user-generated content, as well as stories from local editors all over the world. One of the core features of PlanetEye are its Travel Packs, which let you clip content from the site while you are planning your trip. This allows you to easily create your own personalized travel guides. PlanetEye came out of beta in the middle of 2008 and has already managed to established a loyal community of users on its service. PlanetEye also partnered with Travelocity, OpenTable, and StubHub.

Besides giving you great info for planning your trip, PlanetEye also lets you share geotagged photos with the rest of the PlanetEye community. The highlight of the service, however, is the content added by PlanetEye's local experts which ranges from blog posts to reviews of restaurants and local sights.

That's our list of 'real world' web apps that we think have made a difference to mainstream people in 2008. Let us know in the comments what your favorites are.

Some are saying Morson took reporting to an all-time low and found his technique to be repulsive. The U.K. newspaper Guardian has stated that Morson is a prime example of its "'Inappropriate Use of Technology' chart." Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism professor Samuel Freedman told ABCnews.com that,

"I think that reporters are often in the uncomfortable position of reporting from settings where people are in great grief. These situations call for the greatest understanding and discretion on the part of the reporter.To be putting real-time notes out there as opposed to waiting until the ceremony is over; there's an element of pillaging a private moment of grief that I'm uncomfortable with."

Freedman also equates the event to "a TV journalist doing a stand-up in the middle of a funeral." Unfortunately, most are finding the technique Morson used to be downright unethical and disrespectful to the the Kudlis family. But was it?

Over Reacting

Rabbi David J. Zucker who officiated service disagrees with those in outrage over the event.

"I don't see anything on this [Web site] -- that Berny did -- is in anyway offensive," he said, adding that the coverage was professional and compassionate. "The way I see it is that it's somebody sharing to a wider community [that was] interested and felt connected to this sad event."

To some extent it can be said that there was nothing wrong with Morson's use of Twitter to keep interested sympathizers informed. The updates are still available on the Twitter account RMN_Berny. Upon viewing the updates, you notice that there's absolutely nothing humiliating or disrespectful about what Morson sent to the Twitter account. The updates are short, simple, and do not divulge any unnecessary information about the funeral. The updates served more as service guides than anything else.

Ethics or Techniques?

If it's Morson's ethics that are in question, I see nothing wrong with the way he reported the event. However, a funeral that is twittered may be a little too much for others to stomach. If it is a question of respect, the parents of Marten haven't said anything about Morson's "tweets". After all, it was their choice to allow him to report the funeral service. What difference does it really make if he chooses to report via Twitter?

This incident also brings up a very touchy topic: privacy. Morson has only helped to blur the line of what's meant to be public and what's meant to be private when it comes to the use of technology. Are we making too much information readily accessible online? Maybe so. However, the choice is always ours to make.

a) Are we about to enter into a recession, and if so does that mean an end to the current 'web 2.0' era of innovation in web technology?;
b) Why aren't we (meaning startups) tackling the "big, hard problems" with web technologies?

The "big, hard problems" quote is taken from Tim O'Reilly's keynote speech at the Expo. In it O'Reilly passionately urged us to "not follow the headlines" and the hot things, but go after "big, hard problems".

Sarah Perez followed up earlier today with a post entitled Wanted: 5 Startups To Change the World, in which she commented on Umair Haque's open challenge to Silicon Valley: find a problem to fix that will change the world for the better and he will help you do it.

This is all very inspiring, and we at ReadWriteWeb have made a conscious effort over the years to focus on meaningful web technologies. OK, we blog about Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and other time-wasting, info-overloading consumer apps a lot. But we also blog about health 2.0, semantic web, non-profits, 'real world' apps such as financial web apps, and so on. We like to think we cover the whole spectrum.

But it seems like the big, hard apps may become more of a focus over the next year or two. If you've been following Bernard Lunn's long but insightful 3-part series on the new Web era, which culminated tonight with Dancing With Gorillas, you'll have noted that Bernard's key point is that making revenue will become more important. Up till now, argues Bernard, the M&A market has mopped up a number of web 2.0 plays that had little revenue (think del.icio.us and last.fm). But in the new Web era, success will come from startups that provide a "spark of innovation that will solve problems for millions of people in the real world, helping people in Main Street to make a living." That's where the revenue will be.

To hammer home this point, let me quote something from Bernard's second post in his series, The Emerging Main Street Web. Channeling Clay Shirky, Bernard wrote:

"The basic tools of Web 2.0, such as forums, blogs, Skype, SMS, RSS and social networking have now passed the early adopter phase and crossed into the mainstream. Ordinary people are using social media to change their world."

I couldn't agree more - what's exciting about this new, coming, era of the Web is that we'll have the opportunity to use web 2.0 technologies to improve the daily lives of real people. And, as Tim O'Reilly urged, to solve some truly big problems such as the environment, health and changing government structure.

I think this new era of the Web will be very exciting. Innovation won't stop, because we've hardly started solving the real problems. But Bernard is right that integrating all the Web pieces from web 2.0 (including using open web standards) will be a key driver to this new innovation.

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