ReadWriteWeb

Later today, Digg will open up its rumored read/write API. Up until now, developers could only read data from Digg. With the new API, web and desktop apps will also be able to contribute data to Digg. This will allow developers to write desktop and web applications that enable users to, for example, interact with Digg without having to go to the site. Digg will use the OAuth protocol to authorize applications. According to Forbes' Taylor Buley, however, the writable API will not allow users to submit stories remotely.

Get your mind out of the gutter. This isn't about distributing your crude weekend photography, it's about being able to upload content outside the parameters of basic community categories. While we all know that YouTube is for video, Flickr is for photography and LinkedIn is for career-related content, it's hard to tell where we should be sharing our important but uncategorizable content. Nincha is a stealthy little community that just may infiltrate the community sharing space.

Amplify, a service for gathering and sharing clips from the Web, has added the ability to subscribe to the clippings of others in a fashion very similar to Twitter's asynchronous following. Amplify is tailored to both public sharing, publishing to a group, or private collection of material; the service occupies an interesting space somewhere between a social network, an enterprise app, and social bookmarking.

With a dead simple interface for selecting text and images from the Web, you've long been able to publish your clips to both Twitter and Facebook. But until now, there was no way to get a stream of clips from those you follow directly within Amplify.

Collaboration tools and online storage applications offer many possibilities: online collaborative editing, synchronizing across computers, sharing multiple files and discussion boards, and sharing windows and documents on the spot, to name a few. The following review of major products in this space will help you choose the right collaboration tools for your needs.

ClikBall is a handsome looking new application built in part by Jesse Andrews, the man responsible for Greasemonkey script repository Userscripts.org. Described literally, ClikBall is a browser plug-in that allows you to share links and messages with friends, groups, privately, on Twitter and on FriendFeed. The service is in Private Beta, but Userscripts visitors were just welcomed in and the Andrews says ReadWriteWeb readers can join (and follow me) via this link.

That description above doesn't really do the service justice - it's the user experience that makes ClikBall stand out. There's something magical about the grace of the app, and there's clearly a premium put on sharing links that lots of other people will want to click on and share.

Two former Microsoft employees, Shan Sinha, a former Microsoft SharePoint and SQL Server strategist, and Alex DeNeui, also a SQL strategist, are attempting to do what (so far) Microsoft has not: compete head-on with Google Docs by transforming Microsoft Office into online collaboration suite. To do so, they've launched a company called DocVerse, an early-stage startup that aims to simply document sharing and collaboration.

We can no longer call Feedly just "an alternative interface for Google Reader" as we once did. Since the launch of Feedly Mini, a new mini bar that hovers at the bottom of the screen as you surf through blogs on the web, the service has become more of blog reading companion than anything else. Today that bar, also known as Feedly Mini, has been updated to better integrate both Twitter and FriendFeed with your blog reading. The experience is incredible and makes Feedly a must-have tool for anyone who uses these services.

Box.net, the popular document hosting and sharing service, announced a major redesign of its user interface today, which also puts a lot more emphasis on social features like profiles and activity streams. The new version of Box.net also focuses on collaboration and effectively turns Box.net into a social network for small to medium-sized businesses and groups.

When we first reviewed Posterous, we called it a 'minimalist blogging service.' All you have to do to start blogging and sharing content on the service is to send an email to post AT posterous.com and it will automatically set up a blog for you. Now, however, Posterous is expanding its service and slightly changing its direction by adding a bookmarklet that puts it on a direct collision course with tumblr, the popular microblogging site.