Tinker lets you get the word out on your event by allowing you to embed a widget with recent activity around your event. The widget they allow you to use, however, uses an iframe, which may not appeal to everyone. Each event does have its own RSS feed though, so a generic RSS feed widget can be used.

We spent some time tinkering with the new service and we have some reservations. The big one: You can search for hashtags or keywords directly on Twitter's search portal. Since Tinker does not actually have its own comment engine, all contributions made via the Tinker interface go straight back in to Twitter and, more importantly, have the same issue as Twitter posts, which is simply that there is no 'conversation'. Your posts, either on Tinker or Twitter simply serve to enlarge the buzz on those topics, but nothing to really connect Tinker users together through conversation. This can be plainly seen on the most active events where it's impossible to keep up with all the updates happening at any given time.

Tinker has other problems too, like the standard 'free' accounts only allow creating events around a single keyword or hashtag. Apparently, more powerful searches are reserved for paying customers or site partners. Again, this severely limits what an average user can do, to the point where making a new event seems almost redundant. Finally, maybe it is because the service is new, but when I tried to create an event (using the occasionally used hashtag #sleep, you can see it here), it took quite a while for Tinker to show relevant tweets, then it decided to double all the tweets in the listing. On top of that, it allowed me to send several updates without confirming that they were actually posted to Twitter. As a result, I ended up spamming my Twitter friends with a bunch of duplicate tweets.

Update: Samir Arora (@samirarora), founder of Glam Media sent me a tweet stating that they are looking in to the duplicate issue. Thanks Samir!

Quite right. Although I like the Wikipedia definition, Brett makes a great point. Web 2.0 is just as much about the business effects as the technical underpinnings.

Web 2.0 is also about the people aspects. Josh Petersen from 43 Things puts it well:

Don't get me started on avatars! :-)

NB: it seems the techy Wikipedia definition of Web 2.0 is under debate. Boris Mann takes issue with the "implementation" section pointing to companies - he says "let's not have this page be a commercial advertisement, but rather an evolving definition of Web 2.0." Then Aaron Swartz weighs in by saying it's "a vague article promoting a bunch of the author's favorite technologies and psuedo-tech-blabber."

Both reasonable objections, although I'd like to see the author of the original definition respond. Also I'd like to see a more business-focused definition added, to complement the techy one. If I get any free time in the coming weeks (unlikely!) I may even pen it myself.

In the meantime, a reminder once again to contribute your Feedburner stats to the collaborative project I'm running. A lot of people have linked to this, but not enough people have posted their stats (or emailed them to me if they want to be anon). So come on peeps, if you're a Feedburner user then join us in this collaborative effort to get some decent RSS subscription statistics.

Well this week has been a blur of activity for me and my server. First off I launched an RSS statistics project with Jon Udell and Feedburner, then later in the week I had fun riffing on what Microsoft was up to with start.com, their sandbox development of a web-based RSS Aggregator. 

Microsoft Makes A Start On RSS

When I read the short SiliconBeat post about Microsoft's sandbox development of a web-based RSS Aggregator, I immediately blogged it and took screenshots (which became a popular attraction when Microsoft briefly pulled the site). I thought it was big news, and still do, because of what the prototype revealed - Microsoft intends to integrate an RSS Aggregator with its MSN Search product. That's important because their main rivals, Google and Yahoo, are primarily search companies.

We all knew Microsoft would eventually come out with an RSS Aggregator product, but most of us thought it would be integrated into Outlook. Well it seems that search is instead going to be the platform from which Microsoft will challenge its main rivals in the RSS war.

I updated my post about start.com 5 times during the week, so my other thoughts are there if you're interested.

Mobile Web 2.0

Scott Gatz, senior director of personalization products for Yahoo, emailed me (and others) during the week to break the news about Yahoo's new mobile RSS service. This is an extension of the My Yahoo! re-design which was launched in November. Scott said: "Basically we redesigned My Yahoo around RSS and now we brought it to the mobile world (and we have a desktop ticker too). Really all about getting whatever you want wherever you want." Interesting stuff and Russ Beattie has more details about how to actually use the mobile service.

Who else is doing mobile RSS? I've been aware of Bloglines mobile service for a while now and I've even tried to use it on my mobile phone. And I read in Susan Mernit's blog today that Google has a new mobile service. Susan says: "the deal is that Google's put up a new mobile start page with links to all their current mobile services--SMS, web and image search, imode interface."

No mention of RSS, but it wouldn't surprise me to see it introduced soon (ditto Google News).

Open Source Web 2.0

Bit of talk about open source things in the Web 2.0 world this week. Most importantly of course, there is my open source RSS statistics effort :-) But also Jeff Jarvis has a great idea for an open source ad network. And Marc Canter has been writing inspiring stuff about Open Topics. Plus for the geekier amongst us, there are now a heap of resources for Ajax web development (how GMail and other great web apps like it were developed). My favourite resource, for its claim to handle 99% of the development work for you, is SAJAX - Simple Ajax Toolkit.

Structured Blogging

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Bob Wyman's (of PubSub) post on what he calls "structured blogging". As he described it then: "The basic idea is to go beyond "mere" text in blogs and include structured XML that describes job-openings, events, new prices, press releases, updates to phone numbers and contact info, requests for proposals, etc."

Now PubSub has come up with a new weblog called structuredblogging.org. It currently offers a WordPress plug-in to carry out structured blogging. It also has some XML schemas and further technical resources. Looks pretty interesting and I'll be following its progress. Would be great to get a Movable Type plug-in for this.

Etech

Finally, the coming week promises to be a good one for Web 2.0. The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference is being held March 14-17 and the sessions sound like Web 2.0 Geek Nirvana to me :-) What a pity I can't be there... sob! However I look forward to lots of reports from the bloggers who do attend and I sure hope Heath Row (or someone as thorough as him) will be there to transcribe the sessions. Better yet, I hope IT Conversations records them and publishes them soon after. C'mon, I'm relying on the blogosphere to be my ears and eyes for ETech - don't let me down people!