ReadWriteWeb

Rare is the business owner that doesn't dream of their product or content going viral on the Web and bringing in hordes of traffic and cash.

While such pipe dreams are too rare and unpredictable to bank on, it is very important for any business to make it easy for visitors to share their Website's content via email and social media.

Boss: Great demo. Now put it on this laptop for Bob in sales.
(hands you something from BestBuy that was an open box special)
Developer: Uhhh. That might be a problem. We're using 4 VMs behind the corporate firewall. One is Rails on Linux and the others are Windows and one is running Oracle.
Boss: So... are you saying I need to get 3 more laptops?
Developer: *facepalm*

Let's take a look at another way keep your manager from having to buy more laptops.

"Sharing" may be one of the key elements of our digital world - sharing files, sharing links, sharing content. But has the emphasis on sharing online changed the way in which we share offline?

Results of a study by Shareable Magazine and Latitude Research (led by Kim Gaskins) contend that indeed it has. A survey of over 500 Web users finds that people who share online are more apt to share offline, in part the study argues, because they've learned to trust each other online.

Sometimes, the best and most relevant part of a video is three minutes and forty two seconds in and it only lasts for 33 seconds - how do you convey that to your friends when you share it on Facebook? How about if you want to share it with your classmates or coworkers?

Interactive video transcription and captioning service 3Play Media has an answer with a video clipping feature it announced today that "allows users to quickly create and share specific portions of a video simply by highlighting the spoken words in the transcript."

AddThis, one of the most popular bookmarking and sharing buttons on the Web, has today released a new version of its sharing menu for the Apple iPad, the iPhone and Google Android. Now, when you visit a site from one of these mobile devices, tapping the button will present a sharing menu that's been built to specifically work with the touch interface of your mobile device and better integrate with its functions, like the built-in email client.

The joy over wide-spectrum sharing has grown more muted even as it has become easier. The brouhaha over privacy issues, ranging from Facebook to Google to the U.S. Congress, has put the frighteners on some users.

For those who wish to share videos, but not with the whole of mankind, VidMe hopes with today's launch to offer an alternative to YouTube both online and with its iPhone app.

When asked if he would mind his startup being described as "a Tumblr for designers and developers," Forrst founder and developer Kyle Bragger said he wasn't sure, but that he probably wouldn't mind. After all, that is precisely what his product is - a community where users can share their links, pictures and text in a micro-blog format, with a little Stack Overflow-style Q&A thrown in. This budding startup has quickly gathered a unique and loyal community of designers and developers that are sharing thousands of posts and comments each day, and today I had to chance to chat with its founder.

As Microsoft moves into the cloud with Web-based versions of its Office suite of applications, Google has been beefing up Google Docs to stay one step ahead. The Big G has just made it much easier to share documents online through the service's online document editor, Google Docs. Previously, users who wished to share documents with others had to send a formal invitation through email, but now sharing can be as easy as sharing a link. These changes come on the heels of enhanced collaboration features which were recently added to Docs to give it more of a Google Wave feel.

SlideShare just announced that it now offers businesses the ability to create their own custom channels on the popular document sharing service. These channels allow businesses and enterprises to share their presentations, e-books and whitepapers with a wider audience. Microsoft, Ogilvy, Adobe and Razorfish Marketing are among today's launch partners. The White House also now uses a SlideShare channel to share over 1,000 documents with the public. In addition, you can also find a our own custom ReadWriteWeb channel here.

Starting today, the popular light blogging platform Tumblr will publish its users' feeds in real time. Tumblr will use the increasingly popular PubSubHubbub format to announce updates. Tumblr's real-time hub will be powered by Superfeedr. Thanks to today's updates, Tumblr - which has close to 2.5 million users - will now be able to send out real-time alerts to any service that supports the PubSubHubbub format.