Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is read by a sophisticated audience of thought leaders and decision-makers. We have several innovative new features in our sponsor packages that we'd love to tell you about. Email our COO Bernard Lunn for all the details.

Skip to info about: Calais: semantic Web API | Socialtext: enterprise 2.0 | Adobe: Flash media server | Wistia: video for business | Mashery: API management services | TaxACT: online tax filing | Rackspace: cloud computing experts | Aplus.net: Web hosting | Crowd Science: demographic data | Eurekster: custom topic portals | Smub: mobile sharing | Media Temple and SixApart: our hosts and blogging software

Calais

Calais, powered by Thomson Reuters, brings state-of-the-art semantic functionality into your blog, content management system, site or application. Calais 4.0 was released in January, for the first time allowing publishers to connect to the Linked Data Web standard. Calais 4.0 goes beyond meta-tagging and enables publishers to integrate their content with Linked Data assets from Wikipedia, GeoNames, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), Shopping.com, and others. Calais 4.0 also lets publishers share semantic meta-data about their content with "content consumers" such as search engines, news aggregators, related stories recommendation services, and more.

Check out the incredible work being done at Calais and let us know what you think.

Socialtext

Socialtext provides an enterprise wiki platform for organizations who want to accelerate knowledge sharing, foster collaboration, or build online communities.

Socialtext is currently offering a free white paper entitled "5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration." It explains how collaboration solutions (a.k.a. Enterprise 2.0) can "dramatically reduce enterprise cycle times and costs. These results may be critical to survival in difficult economic times, and the right collaboration solution is the easiest, most cost effective way to achieve them."

Download Socialtext's free white paper at http://socialtext.com.

Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we've struggled to get in the past. It's important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

You can sign up to get demographic data by clicking here.

Mashery

Mashery is a platform for Web services, allowing companies to manage their APIs using Mashery's expertise. At the "Business of APIs" conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery has helped customers such as WhitePages.com, Thumbplay, Compete.com, and Calais. Check out the white paper "Five steps to scaling your business development using Web services" to discover how you can use APIs for your business.

You can find out more about APIs and their business use at www.mashery.com.

TaxACT

TaxACT is an efficient way to file your taxes online, in either desktop or web-based versions. It offers two ways to enter data: the interview format, or the forms-based entry method. TaxACT also provides its users a highly reliable and robust alerts system to prevent costly mistakes generally caused by omissions or missed opportunities to maximize deductions. Regardless of the TaxACT version, all forms are IRS and State approved. The software was developed by professional accountants and CPAs.

You can see a tour of TaxACT online by clicking here.

Rackspace

Rackspace is one of the world's largest hosting providers, but it's also competing in the cloud computing arena. In October Rackspace announced two major acquisitions: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while JungleDisk is one of our favorite online backup services. JungleDisk used to rely on Amazon's S3 storage solution, but it now also supports Rackspace's cloud storage solution. At the same time, Rackspace also announced a new suite of services, Rackspace Cloud Hosting, which combines a hosting platform (CloudSites) with a cloud storage solution (CloudFS), and, in the long run, a tight integration with Slicehost's services.

Click here to explore Rackspace's hosting and cloud computing solutions.

Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5

Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 offers powerful streaming with a flexible environment for creating and delivering rich, interactive, multi-way social media experiences to a broad audience. You'll find a superior video experience, with new features such as Dynamic Streaming, DVR functionality, HTTP delivery support, and H.264 enhancements.

Check out the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 to add interactivity and media streaming to your social media applications.

Wistia

Wistia is a provider of secure video sharing and collaboration tools for business. The company says that "the use of video in business has grown immensely as cameras and video production have become significantly more accessible. However, sharing and collaborating on this content with your team still has many challenges, including large file sizes, numerous video formats, privacy and security, and lack of collaboration environment." Wistia aims to solve those challenges.

You can get a free 15-day trial of Wistia by clicking here.

Aplus.net

Aplus.net offers a variety of services relating to Web hosting, including shared hosting, dedicated server, managed hosting, Web design, marketing and online advertising services, search engine optimization, e-commerce solutions, and domain registration.

You can register for Aplus.net here.

Eurekster

Eurekster is developer of the swicki that we use on ReadWriteWeb, a custom social search portal on the topic of your choice (in our case, Web tech), powered by the community.

People build swickis on all kinds of topics, some people build a lot of them. Alex Holmes, for example, builds really nice looking swickis on topics like the 2008 Election, Ocean Animals and Home Buying.

Smub

Smub is the first truly mobile bookmarking, link-sharing tool. Smub lets you share and save any link easily from your iPhone, Mac, or PC without a plugin or application.

Type smub.it/ to the left of http:// on any link to save or share, and Smub will automatically take you through the process. Make the link public to share with others, or keep it private just for yourself. Smub has built-in sharing to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and more.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

ReadWriteWeb is hosted by Media Temple and is published using SixApart's Movable Type.

If you've ever wondered what ReadWriteWeb looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the Movable Type publishing interface - that's it on the left. We recently upgraded to MT 4.23, which is the latest version. We got onto this release as soon as it was available - in fact our contacts at Six Apart emailed the actual code to us before it was up on their website. That's customer service for you!

The companies above pay our rents or mortgages and we appreciate it. We hope you'll stop by their sites and see what they've got to offer.

Have you got a smart company that could use some more visits by the sophisticated readers of a blog like ReadWriteWeb's? Drop us a line and let's talk.

Thanks to all our sponsors and our readers for your support!

If you still need to do your US tax returns, you had better get a move on. The April 15th deadline is fast approaching. If you don't already have a favorite tax return package, and you don't pay somebody else to prepare your returns, check out TaxACT. There is a free version that handles simple and complex returns, and you can do it all online or via a downloadable package.

How Long Does It Take to Prepare a US Tax Return?

The short answer is, longer than you would like. The long answer is, it depends, specifically on:

• Your knowledge of the tax code,
• The complexity of your situation,
• How organized you are.

How Using TaxACT Helps

TaxACT can make the job faster and easier by automatically completing the appropriate tax forms using your answers to questions generated by the software. Unless you have dedicated your life to understanding the tax code, this can be a real time-saver. The expertise built into the software helps you:

• Find all deductions and credits,
• Account for the latest changes in the tax code,
• Do the math correctly (one of the more common reasons the IRS rejects returns),
• Identify possible errors through an alert system,
• Find several options on how to pay your taxes and receive your refund,
• E-file your return (which speeds up the receipt of your refund),
• Complete a state return quickly at the same time by transferring all your federal information to state forms.

Getting it done fast is important. Getting it done right -- so that you don't over-pay or under-report -- is even more important.

About an Hour and Free

With TaxACT, those who have just one W-2 with zero to few deductions could easily finish their return in less than an hour. Those with two to four W-2s and a few deductions would likely finish their return in about an hour.

TaxACT follows a "freemium" strategy. The TaxACT Standard package is free for all taxpayers, regardless of income; it provides solutions for preparing, printing and e-filing your return and can handle both simple and complex returns.

Check out TaxACT's online tax filing solution.