But "Web Applications" is just the first of many new StackOverflow-like sites on the horizon, and surprisingly, the next sites to launch may not be tech-focused at all. ]]> Stack Exchange Uses Crowd-Sourcing to Launch New Sites

StackOverflow, the original site that led to the Stack Exchange network's creation was founded by Joel Spolsky, author and CEO of bug-tracking software company Fog Creek Software, and respected developer Jeff Atwood back in 2008. The idea was to create an alternative to the market leader at the time, Experts-Exchange (EE). Where EE was a fee-based site, the vision for StackOverflow was to offer a simpler, entirely free site where you could get the same type of assistance from knowledgeable users. To encourage participation, site users vote up the best answers to questions and those whose answers are voted on receive boosts in their "reputation" scores.

Earlier this year, the company raised $6 million from Union Square Ventures and announced plans to launch a handful of targeted sites running the same software. Spolsky said that the future sites would be determined by an automated process where community members propose a site, establish the site's ground rules and gather a team of core experts who commit to the site. When a critical mass has been built up (the boiling point determined by algorithms alone), the site opens. You can see this process in action now in StackExchange's new staging area, dubbed "Area51." Here, you can track the proposed sites, how many people have committed to them, details about the site's plans and goals, and, once launched, stats on number of users, questions, answers, views and more.

Web Applications, the Q&A site for "expert and advanced users of Web applications" was the first site to go through this automated launch process and a site for "Gaming" is now hot on its heels.

While the newest addition to the network is certainly a handy resource (we already learned how to print a Google Wave and organize Gmail labels), it's the site staging area that's the most impressive part of this whole venture. Instead of the company having to think up ideas, gather interest, entice experts to sign up and encourage people to join, the entire process has been offloaded to the community itself to handle. It's crowd-sourcing at its best.

Beyond Tech: StackOverflow's for Cooking, Guitar and Grammar?

The site staging area will allow Stack Exchange to extend beyond its tech roots, assuming the future proposals in Area51 prove popular enough to reach the launch stage. Sites for food and cooking, English language and its usage, home improvement, photography, board games, coffee, guitars and other less-technical hobbies are listed among the geekier topics like SEO, game development, GIS, user interface design, healthcare IT and more.

The question now is how will these niche Stack Exchange sites compete with the one-stop shops, like the recently launched Question and Answer service Quora, which provides a single destination to ask questions about anything? Or the more personal Q&A offering from Formspring, which lets individuals share answers with a community on conversational topics. Plus, we can't ignore the fact that Facebook, too, is planning a Q&A app called "Questions." Can anything complete when Facebook - and its nearly half a billion users - get involved? And will Stack Exchange's niche answers fare as well as Yahoo Answers when it comes to being highly ranked by Google's algorithms?

Stack Exchange's move from a tech-related resource to a network of sites with broader appeal is a smart move, given the interest in the question-and-answer space at this time. But it also opens it up to bigger competition as well. It was one thing to take down Experts Exchange, but can it do the same with Facebook and Yahoo?

Smell sensors are essential to the future of the Internet of Things. From RFID stickers capable of smelling food through the package and updating the food's status to the Web, to our next phone being a "smell phone", engineers are finding innovative ways to help protect our families from being exposed to toxic hazards.

Sensors that measure blood alcohol content by smelling your breath have been around since 1938 when a professor named Rolla Harger invented the Drunkometer. His success in marketing the device was due in part to his work with the National Safety Council to legislate alcohol limits - as well as legitimize his sensor data as evidence in a court of law. Today, the innovation that's occurring with these sensors is the dramatic decline in cost. So next time you want to know if you're legal to drive after you drink, you can just blow into a Mini-Key chain Breathalyser, a device that will set you back less than $10.

In Israel, Russell Berrie of the Nanotechnology Institute at Technion developed a sensor that can verify lung cancer by smelling a patient's breath. The sensor searches 42 different lung cancer biomarkers, and is built out of nine cross-reactive chemiresistors. These resistors are built out of gold nanoparticles, each with different organic functionalities. A similar sensor from the same institute can be used to detect kidney disease sooner than traditional urine tests can. The research for that particular sensor system is titled Sniffing Chronic Renal Failure in Rat Model by an Array of Random Networks of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes.

Michael Sailor, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at U.C. San Diego is working with startup Rhevision to develop a smelling device that will attach to your cell phone. The system is based on a camera that takes a picture of porous silicon. Each of these microscopic pores are individually shaped, or tuned, to change color when a specific chemical is encountered. Thanks to the current megapixel resolution of today's phone cameras you can take a single picture of these pores, or sensors, and load it to the Web where it can be analyzed in real time. One application would be that these smell phones could rapidly map out chemical spills and other exposure threats.

General Electric is currently testing RFID-configured smell sensors. These small stickers can not only detect the presence of hazardous waste, they can also detect and report food spoilage. One example is a milk carton with an RFID sticker attached to the outside. The sticker periodically smells the milk through the packaging, and as soon as the milk goes bad the RFID sends a wireless alert.

Ion Mobility Spectrometry machines are currently the most common bomb-smelling sensors in U.S. airports. Austrian manufacturer Ionicon Analytik was recently featured in Scientific America because of its new Ionicon Analytik's Proton-Transfer-Reaction Mass Spectrometry (PTR-MS) machine. This machine is about the size of a refrigerator and is so sensitive that it can distinguish between molecules that are nearly identical. The device works by creating "protonated" water vapor, which is essentially water vapor with extra protons. Many organic compounds, including explosives, have an affinity to grab those extra protons and in turn become positive themselves.The positive ions produced can be extracted and analyzed to reveal their chemical composition.

Traditional carbon dating methods required that a small piece of the object must be destroyed through burning. The carbon is then measured for age based on degeneration of the radioactive isotope Carbon 14. Yet with many artifacts the destruction of even small portions of it is sometimes prohibitive. A new non-destructive method allows the object to be placed a container that is filled with an electrically charged plasma gas similar to the plasma found in a high-definition TV. The plasma gently oxidizes the artifact, which will release trace amounts of carbon dioxide that can then be used for Carbon14-decay analysis.

These six ways are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's currently being developed. For example, perspective search service GlobalSpec lists thousands of companies designing gas and chemical sensors. How many of these sensors will one day generate data for the Web? If you have a sense of scenarios that will make this happen, please post your comments below.

Image by Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator

According to a 5,595-person, 13-country survey from tech consultancy Accenture, since this generation has grown up with daily doses of technology in one form or another, "They don't see bright lines between work
and personal, virtual and physical, sanctioned and prohibited. It's not, 'Would you approve this, boss?' but, 'Whatever gets the job done.'"

IT managers often see these behaviors as weaknesses - loopholes that allow for security breaches and loss of productivity due to distractions and heavy multitasking. But they might also be allowing millenials to work smarter, not harder.

For example, more young people are using real-time communication methods such as IM, thus reducing the amount of time checking email and waiting for an asynchronous response. In fact, 10 percent of respondents said supervisors used SMS and chat to communicate with them, and 20 percent more said they wished their bosses would use these media more.

Web apps are also gaining favor in the young workplace. Around 75 percent of respondents said they used online collaboration tools and applications for work purposes; many of these millenials also thought that workplaces should be improving their use of emerging technologies. "Globally," states the report, "about one-half of millennials have accessed online collaborative tools, online applications and open-source technologies from free public websites when those technologies are not available at work or when the versions offered at work don't meet millennials' expectations."

Young people's expectations are also high when it comes to selecting their next employer. Not only did 37 percent of respondents say they want to see state-of-the-art technology being used in their prospective workplace; just as recruiters and hiring managers often snoop around search and social sites to investigate a potential hire's character, the millenial job-hunter will check up on prospective companies, peers and bosses, as well.

To hear some respondents explaining their attitudes and behaviors in their own words, check out this video from Accenture:

Although these attitudes and work styles can clash with older managers' expectations, they can also provide great benefits to a workplace and team. "Millennials are more intimate with technology than any previous generation," the report states. "Even high school interns can now add value. Companies that figure out how to tap younger workers' tech savvy and listen to their ideas in a productive way will likely enjoy an increasingly strong innovation-based competitive advantage.

"Listen and learn. Millenials are a resource to be tapped, not a problem to be solved.:

What do you think of these results? Do they line up with your experiences using tech in the workplace and the attitudes and behaviors of your colleagues? Let us know in the comments.

Our site ReadWriteHire covers new hires in tech and new media. Today we're publishing our aggregate numbers for the first 3 months of 2009. Who's hiring? Software and IT companies, social media and social networking companies and marketing and advertising firms.

We've reported on a total of 420 hires since the first of January. The top 10 sector categories have been:

1. Software/IT (24%)
2. Social Media/Social Networking (15%)
3. Marketing/Advertising (11%)
4. Publishing/New Media (7%)
5. Hardware (6%)
6. Mobile (4%)
7. Gaming/Entertainment (3%)
8. Search (3%)
9. Government (2%)
10. Security (2%)

News of those positions getting filled came from press releases and personal tips, but also from mentions of new jobs on Twitter and blog posts. We scour the web daily for cool news about people getting cool new jobs.

There are far more hires going on in total than we can currently report on, but we're working on expanding our capacity and we believe that this is a valuable data point as a semi-representative snapshot at least. We hope that the particular hires reported on ReadWriteHire will also be of interest to companies in each of these sectors. Knowing who your competitors have hired is valuable information.

If you've made a new hire or gotten a new job recently, drop us a line to let us know! You can reach us by email at jobwire@readwriteweb.com.

Congratulations to everyone who secured these increasingly difficult positions to land. Join us over at ReadWriteHire for more stories of exciting new hires every day of the week.

The attack, posted online here, first displays a warning message and then posts Secure Science's test code "@XSSExploits I just got owned!" to the victim's profile. But if a hacker wanted to use this technique to compromise users' PCs, they could remove the warning screen and combine the link with a sensational message which users couldn't help but click. Add in some browser attack code, and before you know it, clicking a Twitter link could allow a hacker access to your computer. This, says James, "would just tear the cr*p out of Twitter." He adds, "I'm holding my breath, hoping no one does something stupid at this moment."

According to Secure Science researchers, this particular bug can be eliminated by fixing the cross-site scripting flaw, but if another similar bug were to show up on the site, users would soon face the same problem all over again.

Still, one has to wonder, why are they publishing this information publicly instead of alerting Twitter directly? Apparently, it's because the research company is concerned Twitter is not taking security seriously enough. James says he hopes this demonstration will push Twitter into making it more of a priority.

The State of Twitter Security

It's easy to see why security professionals may be worrying about the state of security at Twitter - the company has had some rather high-profile incidents as of late. Only last month, a second clickjacking attack was revealed after the company had just finished patching one that was unveiled in January. Also in January, the accounts of 33 high profile Twitter users including Britney Spears, CNN news reporter Rick Sanchez, and Barack Obama, were compromised by hackers who defaced their accounts with embarrassing and offensive messages.

At the time, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos advised Twitter "to take a long hard look at its security to ensure that this never happens again, and regain the confidence of its members." Yet since then, more potential attack vectors have been revealed.

Staying Safe on Twitter Keeps Getting Harder

If Twitter is indeed replacing, or at the very least, augmenting email for interpersonal communications, then perhaps it's time for us to apply those same age-old rules that once applied to email - be careful what you click. Now that it's finally been drilled into people's heads that email attachments aren't always safe, it seems like we have to start again educating Twitter users that the same goes for links.

But when a service goes mainstream - like Twitter is doing now - it's going to become filled with people who won't give a second thought to security concerns such as these. Instead, without intervention on the part of Twitter to address these issues, consumers are going to end up learning "the hard way" - by becoming victims.

The security problem only gets worse when you think about how easy it is for people to create fake celebrity accounts not to mention how easy it is for Twitter spammers to join the service. Since Twitter doesn't authenticate new accounts via email, anyone can post any message from any address, real or fake. There are even opt-in services that Twitter spammers can join to quickly accumulate large numbers of followers quickly in an attempt to appear more legit.

Although Twitter is attempting to fight spam on several fronts (they're now disabling accounts that automate re-following for instance), it seems as if more and more Twitter spammers are creating accounts every day. (How many of those SEO advisors and 'life coaches' are for real, I wonder?)

As Twitter explodes into the mainstream, it may be time for them to work on addressing some of these issues before they focus on enhancements to the site like the relatively new "suggested users" section or the in-house ads - features which a few folks suspect may have something to do with Twitter's supposedly soon-to-be-revealed business model. While we understand the service needs to develop their business plan, they recently closed a $35-million financing round, which added even more cash to their previous round ($15 million). Given that they only have 20 employees, they're (in theory) only burning through around $5 million a year. We're not sure what Twitter is doing with all that money, but we would like to suggest that they use some of it to hire security professionals to help make the service safer...before it's too late. 

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 which 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 Our Hosts and Blogging Software: Media Temple and SixApart

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 metatagging 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 metadata 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 whitepaper 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. In 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, multiway 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, ecommerce solutions, and domain registration.

You can register for Aplus.net here.

Eurekster

Eurekster is developer of the swicki that we use on RWW, 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.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

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

If you've ever wondered what RWW looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the MovableType 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? Drop us a line and let's talk.

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

You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapup by RSS or by email (form below, for those of you reading this via our website).

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Web Trends

MySpace's Former Owner: Facebook Will Win - for Now

Brett Brewer, who co-founded InterMix Media - the company that developed MySpace - and turned a tidy profit when that company and MySpace were sold to NewsCorp for $580 million, says MySpace's ongoing battle for social network supremacy with Facebook won't last much longer. In his opinion, Facebook has already won - but it won't remain a winner for long.

See also: MySpace: User Engagement Up, Unique Users Flat

25 Random Things Meme Is a Boon for Facebook

According to the latest data from Compete, the '25 Random Things About Me' meme has not only given us access to a plethora of random facts about people we barely know, but this digital fad has also been good for Facebook. According to the latest data from Compete, four times more people than usual visited the 'Notes' section on Facebook in January. Compete estimates that close to 20 million users used 'Notes' in January, while only about 4 million used it in October 2008.

Comcast Property Sees 92% Success Rate With New OpenID Method

The most-watched geek event of the week may have been the OpenID UX (User Experience) Summit, hosted at the Facebook headquaters. The most discussed moment of the day will surely be the presentation by Comcast's Plaxo team.

Plaxo and Google have collaborated on an OpenID method that may represent the solution to OpenID's biggest problems: it's too unknown, it's too complicated and it's too arduous. Today at the User Experience Summit, Plaxo announced that early tests of its new OpenID login system had a 92% success rate - unheard of in the industry. OpenID's usability problems appear closer than ever to being solved for good.

A-Team Update: Series A Funding Growth Is Strong

We first reported on VC Series A deals in the web-tech sector in October 2008, following the financial meltdown, and we updated our coverage in November, reporting some improvement. Now it is time for the good news from December and January. The amount invested by VCs in Series A deals for web-tech ventures went up from $19.1 million in November to $28.8 million in December, and up another notch to $30.3 million in January. Looking very good.

Craig Newmark's Keynote Unlocks the Secrets to Building a Community

In an era where user generated content is changing our entire culture, rare is the company that can successfully harness the collective creativeness of its community, cultivate loyalty, make money consistently, and continue to flourish. Enter Craigslist. Listed as the tenth top site in America on Alexa and with close to 50 million unique visitors a month according to Compete, Craigslist is one of the few companies that appears to have worked it out. This week at the User Generated Conference in San Jose, CA, founder Craig Newmark gave us an insight into what has and what hasn't worked for the privately held company.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

A Word from Our Sponsors

We'd like to thank ReadWriteWeb's sponsors, without whom we couldn't bring you all these stories every week!

• Mashery is the leading provider of API management services.
• Socialtext brings you 5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration Success
• Crowd Science gives you detailed visitor demographics.
• Discover the Semantic Web, at a Dow Jones Webinar.
• Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
• TaxACT lets you file your taxes online.
• Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 allows you to create interactive social media experiences.
• WildApricot is Membership Management Software.
• DEMO09 is the launchpad for emerging technology.
• MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
• VisualCV lets you stand out from the crowd when job-hunting.
• Eurekster is a custom social search portal.
• SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

Jobwire

Obama Names Former Bush Aide to Review US Cybersecurity Efforts

Former Bush administration official Melissa Hathaway has been named by President Obama to lead a 60-day review of the government's cybersecurity efforts. Hathaway was named acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for the National Security Council as well as the Homeland Security Council. While with the Bush administration she was "credited with helping to develop a multibillion-dollar classified initiative aimed at better securing federal systems and critical-infrastructure networks against online threats".

SUBSCRIBE TO READWRITEWEB'S JOBWIRE FOR THE LATEST NEWS ON JOB HIRES IN TECH

Web Products

richrelevance: Is its Adaptive Recommender System the Next Generation?

Last week we looked at Baynote, a recommendations company that focuses on real-time community behavior instead of personalization. This week we looked at a company that takes a broader approach: richrelevance uses personalization extensively, plus the wisdom of the crowds when relevant. richrelevance claims that its approach is "adaptive AI" and that customers such as Sears and KMart are using its technology. We spoke to richrelevance founder and CEO David Selinger (ex-Amazon), to find out more about the product and what makes it different to Baynote and others.

See other posts in ReadWriteWeb's special series on Recommendation Engines

Amazon's Kindle Gets an Update, But Doesn't Wow

This week Amazon announced a new version of its highly successful Kindle eBook reader. The new Kindle now features 2GB of memory, and a new 5-way controller for easier navigation. Amazon has also upgraded the screen, which can now show sixteen shades of gray instead of just four, and the battery, which now lasts about 25% longer. The old retro look of the Kindle 1 has given away to a far sleeker, more high-tech looking device, but nothing about the new Kindle is really more than an minor evolutionary step forward. Even the price ($359) has stayed the same.

Beyond Latitude: 4 Innovative Location-Based Apps

Google's new geo-aware mobile application Latitude which lets you share your location with friends may have received all the hype, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best or the most innovative app out there. We've recently come across some smaller, lesser-known services that could give Google a run for their money - that is, if anyone knew they existed.

New Tweetdeck Out, Here's What It Includes

Popular Twitter desktop app Tweetdeck released a new version this week and we're pretty excited about what's been added. If you've never used Tweetdeck, it's the most powerful application available for sending and receiving Twitter messages. In the new version there is language translation, StockTwits integration, forwarding by email, switching to one column view and extensive support for conversation topics by hashtag. It's quite an impressive upgrade for an already very feature-rich application.

The iPhone Becomes a Web Server

When those Apple advertisements tout "there's an app for just about anything," they aren't kidding. The latest example? A new iPhone application which just debuted in Japan's App Store transforms the handheld into a full-blown web server. Called "ServersMan@iPhone", the application allows your iPhone to appear just like any other web server on the internet.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Enterprise

Kashflow vs Sage: SaaS Battles in the Tornado

If you sell SaaS, security is the big concern you have to deal with. Get past that one and you'll draw serious attention from potential customers. Stumble on the issue and you're in deep doo-doo. That is ever truer when money is involved. Who wants a leak in their accounting data? When a big vendor slips up with security, David is given a clear shot at Goliath. And when a market is in the "tornado" growth phase, vendors do what it takes to highlight their competitors' weaknesses. This is the story behind the emerging battle between two UK accounting vendors, Kashflow and Sage.

Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.

SEE MORE ENTERPRISE COVERAGE IN OUR ENTERPRISE CHANNEL

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

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 which we'd love to tell you about. Email our COO Bernard Lunn for all the details.

Skip to info about... Socialtext: Enterprise 2.0 Adobe: Flash media server Dow Jones: Semantic Web webinar Mashery: API management services TaxACT: online tax filing Rackspace: cloud computing experts DEMO09: launchpad for innovative products Crowd Science: demographic data Wild Apricot: membership management Eurekster: custom topic portals Our Hosts and Blogging Software: Media Temple and SixApart

Semantic Web Weminar by Dow Jones

Dow Jones is hosting a webinar about the Semantic Web, on Thursday, February 12, 2009. Dow Jones notes that "these days it's critical for organizations to consume, digest, and share news and information. The Semantic Web is no longer ahead of its time and is rapidly changing how organizations keep up with information overload." This webinar is Part I of a series and in it you will learn how Semantic Web Technologies enable you to re-use valuable information to save costs, facilitate easier collaboration and sharing of critical information across your business, and increase search relevancy and surface the most valuable information needed to remain competitive

You can register for the Semantic Web webinar by clicking here.

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 whitepaper 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. In 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, multiway 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.

DEMO09

DEMO09 is on March 1-3, 2009, at Desert Springs. With more than 20,000 technologies reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 19 years, DEMO remains one of the best places to launch your new product. The show is made up of 70 six-minute presentations in two days and you'll see a lot of innovative products unveiled for the first time. In the past four years, DEMO companies have raised well over $2.5 billion dollars in the months/years following their debut at DEMO.

You can register for DEMO09 here.

Wild Apricot

WildApricot enables clubs, associations and communities to automate and streamline administrative tasks, using their online membership management software.

The company has an active and well written blog, focusing on issues and trends in web technologies that help your organization achieve more with less. Example posts include Show, Don't Tell: Google Earth Outreach for Nonprofits and How to Learn More About Your Website Audience.

Wild Apricot gets lots of love in the social media; book sales pro Ann Kingman, for example, says she has "been very happy with Wild Apricot in the past few months we've been using it. Great customer support."

See for yourself what Wild Apricot can do at http://wildapricot.com.

Eurekster

Eurekster is developer of the swicki that we use on RWW, 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.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

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

If you've ever wondered what RWW looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the MovableType 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? Drop us a line and let's talk.

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

We don't think the sky is falling, but there may be an earthquake on the horizon as the tech industry begins to feel the economic turbulence. Best known in some circles for hiring Robert Scoble for the Fast Company TV online site, Mansueto Ventures is laying off 20 of their employees in their online and marketing department.

Other cuts the company will make include:

• Shelving Upstart, a planned magazine devoted to new businesses
• Closing the Atlanta office except for sales
• Cutting IT help desk coverage
• Curtailing perks like tuition reimbursement and free snacks

As to why the such measures are being taken, it is being reported:"

"CEO John Koten said in a staff memo that despite Fast Company's growth, expenses were rising faster than revenue as the publishing industry business has softened."

Seesmic Lays Off 7

On a smaller scale, video-commenting startup Seesmic will also layoff several of its employees. In order to prepare for "what most are anticipating to be a bleak economic outlook for the considerable time going forward," Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur will cut 7, or 1/3, of Seesmic's employees. Allen Stern noted that this will be in addition to 3 employees that were let go last month.

What's Next?

While these companies will still move forward with their products and services, we can't help but wonder if more layoffs will be seen in the future and from who. We certainly hope the tech industry doesn't see too much news like this future, but there's no denying these situations as fair warnings that the tech industry is not as invincible as it seems.

But then I get distracted by a cool new web application, and the feeling goes away.

More Noise to Signal

Top Apple image: SeenyaRita

Before looking at the speed bumps, here are three reasons why New York should be the center of tech/media startup scene:

1. New York is cool.
2. New York has the clients.
3. New York has the money.

Lets look at why these three things matter, and in particular, why they matter to the next phase of web technology.

New York Advantage #1 - cool. Do I need to be so uncool as to list all the reasons why New York is cool? It is cool in a way that Los Angeles, with its movies and music scene misses. It's the edgy edge. London has it as well. Berlin has it. It's a city thing. Sorry, San Jose and Palo Alto, suburbs are not cool. Provincial cities like Austin and Boston are also not cool. Why does this matter to web technology? Web 2.0 is a consumer wave. The web really is replacing, surrounding, augmenting and extending all traditional forms of entertainment. And to make it in entertainment, you have to be cool, or hot, or whatever is the cool or hot word. Cool is a sustainable competitive advantage. No person can be cool for very long, but a city can be cool for a long time. New York is as cool today as it was when Frank Sinatra was doing his thing or when the New York Dolls were inventing punk music. New York has that unique mix of media, fashion, and money that enables cool to thrive.

To see the difference, look at two contenders in what is possibly the hottest consumer web technology wave right now - live online video - Ustream.TV from the Valley and Mogulus.com from New York.

Ustream.TV seems to have the edge if you look at the numbers. But, it just looks so corporate. It lists all these stars that have channels and you cannot even click on them. The traditional big money institutional VCs are pitching at the already established online stars, such as Chris Pirillo. Yes I know it sounds absurd, outside of The Kingdom of Geek, to talk of Chris Pirillo as an established star. But in this very, very early phase of live video online, his niche audience of early adopters does matter. But, as Hollywood knows, stars are fickle, they move to whatever channel, studio, network or whatever that gives them the best deal, as they should.

The "network" matters. It has to have an identity. People have to make a decision about which URL to visit. Live video is a totally different medium from archive video, where YouTube reigns supreme. You "tune in" to a network that suits your style. Just like you hang out in MySpace or Facebook or Bebo or whatever depending on what suits your style. This is about making a fashion statement.

You can see the difference when you look at Mogulus.com, New York's entry in the live video space. It has that rough, street feel - and all cool fashion comes from the street. But don't confuse that with lack of design. This is a very carefully thought out, well executed design. They don't say anything about their funding other than that it comes from "private investors." I mean, who cares? It also has a sense of humor and personality.

So cool does matter and New York has it.

But somebody has to pay for cool and that brings us to New York Advantage #2 - clients. Specifically the big consumer advertising budgets, which in America means Finance, Fashion, and Pharma and all three are found in New York. OK, Pharma is across the tunnel into decidedly uncool New Jersey, but that's a short hop for an entrepreneur and the Pharma guys want to make the trip to Manhattan (to catch a show and try the latest restaurant). Madison Avenue, in all its old and new guises, serves these big consumer advertising clients and Madison Avenue is in New York - but then you knew that right?

And finally - New York Advantage #3 - money. Or as the Grateful Dead put it - "New York has the ways and means." Yes, startups flock to Sand Hill Road when they want the money. But guess where the Sand Hill Road crowd comes when they want money? Yes, New York, that's right. This is the big money place. This is where you go through the likes of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley to tap the biggest, deepest, most liquid equity markets in the world. This is where you find the guys who look after pension funds, who put the money into those Sand Hill Road funds. This - or maybe Greenwich, an hour away from Manhattan - is where the Hedge Funds trade the world.

The odd thing here, is that big money currently makes a bi-coastal round trip. It starts in New York, gets sent to Sand Hill Road, where the top tier VC funds distribute it to a few startups who, when they make it big, make the pilgrimage back to New York to meet with Goldman Sachs/Morgan Stanley who will give them their golden ticket, otherwise known as the IPO. Yes, I know that last part of the circuit has been unwired recently, but that will change. Wall Street just needs some Web 2.0 ventures that are pulling in profits.

This bi-coastal round trip may be about to change. The reason is that this wave is more about media and less about tech. We tend to bang those two words together now as tech is going consumer and is funded by advertising - which sounds like media. In the tech venture world, the Valley reigned supreme because the ecosystem was there. You built a chip that went into a computer that made it big because of the operating system and all the people who mattered in that ecosystem hung around in the same zip code.

In a more open standards, API-driven world, that physical proximity matters less. In a media world, where "let's do lunch" is the social lubricant, proximity does still matter and New York (and Los Angeles) has that ecosystem - Ad Agencies, Fashion, Consumer Advertisers, Media.

So you get it? I love New York. So, just what's the problem?

1. Tech Talent. Wall Street sucks it in. The big Wall Street firms just pay too much. A nice Wall Street crash with lots of layoffs would solve that problem (unfortunately that may coincide with a Main Street recession, which stops the party for everybody for a while).
2. Patient Capital. New York is a "hot money" town. New York investors just love liquidity. They worship it. "What's your exit route?" means, "could I sell today?" So angel and VC options are weak compared to the Valley and even compared to say Boston or Austin. There are great and honorable exceptions. The New York VC with the most brand recognition and track record in web technology is almost certainly Union Square Ventures and they are New Yorkers through and through. But they are far from the only game in town. It is now possible to build a reasonable short-list of early stage VC firms in New York or very close by. But, this is still far from the Valley funding ecosystem. It's not even close.

I believe that the New York venture capital situation is improving for the next wave of technology-driven media companies, though. You can see that when you look at Mogulus. They have raised $1.2m from angels. They don't say who the angels are (New Yorkers like a bit of privacy) but I suspect that they are comfortable with a media venture in a way that they would not be with a tech venture. "TV?" "Yep, I get that." Media of all types has always been funded out of New York. Now that the web is officially media, the web will get funded out of New York.

And on the talent front, Mogulus has an interesting one-liner at the bottom of their Corporate Facts:

Corporate Facts

• Mogulus LLC is Based in New York
• Founder and CEO - Max Haot
• Funded by Private Angel Investors
• Development Office Out of Bangalore, India

This is not about India, it is about the ability to build software using virtual teams. If that hot developer rejects your offer to join for $100k base because Morgan Stanley offered $140k plus cash bonuses, find the guy/gal in Boise, Idaho who thinks $100k is more than enough for a nice outdoorsy lifestyle, and your stock options give a shot at real money down the line. Yes, you may need a core team that's local, but you need less people.

Of course, if you want to know "The Secret to Hiring Great Developers," go to a Mogulus channel called "What's Up Silicon Alley." (Embedded below.)

What would really change the game would be if the NASDAQ IPO market opened up again for tech/media startups. It has been closed since Google came out. If ventures can get funded in New York all the way to profitability, the investment bankers can take over the next step, without any hand-over to the Valley. This is when the New York Hedge Funds and Private Equity players come in to fund from the venture phase through expansion to the stage where public market investors get interested. Then the Valley VC funds will set up offices in New York, just like they are doing in Israel, India, and China.