ReadWriteWeb

Akshay Patil became a software engineer at Google almost seven years ago. Now the product manager for Google Realtime, the Google tool to search Tweets and other real-time updates from around the Web, Patil announced this morning that he's leaving Google to become the new Platform Evangelist for location-based social network Foursquare.

That's a huge coup for Foursquare and a sign the startup will likely put a major new focus on working with outside companies and services to build on top of the set of check-ins and tips it's amassing about venues around the world, people who patronize them and their interests. The social software developer ecosystem could really use a strong show of support, after Twitter's recent moves have left many independent developers feeling burned.

Techcrunch has obtained a copy of SV Angel's list of "Tech Megatrends." The document lists the 7 trends that SV Angel, led by investor Ron Conway, is eyeing.

Having your service on this trend list doesn't guarantee funding; nor does being absent from the list mean you necessarily have a bad or out-dated idea. But the trends list is likely to be taken into consideration by SV Angel, at the least, when assessing "what's hot."

On June 11 in New York City, Team ReadWriteWeb will convene some of the smartest people on the Web to talk about the state and future of real-time technology at the ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Summit East. As part of the value-packed activities that day, we'll have a post-lunch demo hour organized in an innovative format called Speed Geeking.

This event is a follow-up to our successful ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit in October in Mountain View, California. Leading real-time Web startup investor John Borthwick had this to say of that event: " [It] was excellent - friggin' great in fact. I hauled a handful members of my team across country for it and my only regret was that I didn't bring more of them. I'm looking forward to the next one." Don't you want to demo your startup at an event like that?

Although the popularity of games like Farmville has caused social gaming to be associated primarily with Facebook, UK gaming startup Failbetter Games demonstrates that Twitter can also be a viable platform for game developers.

In early April, investor Fred Wilson wrote on his blog that Twitter was at an "inflection point," and pointed to the potential for "killer apps" to emerge in several areas, including social gaming. Dan Porter, CEO of the gaming site www.omgpop.com responded in an article in Business Insider, arguing that "Twitter is not (yet) a Game Platform."

As of today, Facebook Fan Page status updates will begin appearing in Google search results, according to a tweet by Google. The announcement means that we will begin seeing results from the nearly 3 million fan pages, but not from the more than 400 million users.

Google currently controls around 90% of the search engine market, according to StatCounter, with Yahoo and Bing its closest competitors. Will Bing's exclusive access to Facebook user updates change this at all?

Hey, RWW friends and fans! As some of you may have noticed, we've been tinkering around with our new team Buzz account today. We've decided to do something a little bit different with this network, and we really hope you'll like it.

We know that a lot of you follow us on Twitter or are our Facebook fans, and sometimes the constant streams of blog posts and observations can be as impersonal as they are informative or interesting.

We've decided that the last thing we need to do with Buzz is use it to promote the same stream of blog content - we're not that desperate, and we know you get that news elsewhere. Here's how we're using Google Buzz instead.

Earlier this month Amy Sample Ward interviewed ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick about our report on the real-time Web and how real time impacts the world of nonprofit organizations. Sample Ward helps nonprofits, community groups and those in the social change sector use new technologies, and is the co-author of Social by Social, a handbook in using social technologies for social impact.

Her conversation with Kirkpatrick started with the basics of what real time is, and then moved to the big question: How can nonprofits or social impact groups take advantage of the real-time Web?

MySpace and Google just announced that starting today, status updates from MySpace users will appear in Google's real-time search. MySpace announced its real-time Stream API in December and Google launched its real-time search feature just a day before the MySpace announcement. While Google was one of MySpace's launch partners (together with OneRiot), it took Google until today to include MySpace updates in its real-time search.

As more and more of our friends and favorite organizations start publishing updates online, being able to organize them well is becoming even more important. Niche-popular desktop social media stream-reader Tweetdeck issued a software update this morning and the most striking change is in its handling of user groups. It's beautiful. The new Tweetdeck is faster, more flexible and easier to navigate.

Groups, we have argued, are the secret weapon of the social Web. Here are five ways that the new Tweetdeck gets groups right, and that Facebook, the world's dominant social-media-stream reader by a long-shot, could learn from what Tweetdeck is doing. That would drastically improve Facebook's own user experience.

If you're a creative design professional, you'll want to check out a just-launched service called Black Tonic; it's a remarkably simple, easy, fast and enjoyable way to share presentations remotely without Flash or browser plug-ins and while maintaining full control over the pace of the presentation to clients.

Using only HTML5 and Javascript, the service syncs your browser window with the browsers of viewers whether they're using IE6, Chrome, an iPhone or almost anything else. Transitions between images are super-fast and the service is a joy to use. It doesn't include things like markup or native voice support (you'll have to get on the phone) but for $15 per month, we think it looks like a great deal.