"It's been exciting to see font designers and vendors come together with browser developers and other industry experts to create a standard that will open up new typographic possibilities for web authors," says Jonathan Kew of Mozilla. "I anticipate that in the coming few years, the Web will be greatly enriched by the availability of a wide range of high-quality typefaces for many languages and all kinds of design needs."

Language support is just one of the many benefits of expanded font choice on the Web aside from making text prettier, clearer and in-line with branding. Since unique typefaces require the use of images to be displayed properly across the Web, the text is largely invisible to search engines. Removing the crutch of image-based typography will have a significant impact on to improving typographic search engine optimization (SEO).

Eliminating typographic images also opens to the door to increased accessibility to the blind, who rely on text-to-speech programs. Members of the Web Fonts Working Group will be participating in a panel discussion on the WOFF at the end of the week at TypeCon 2010 - a conference for typographic enthusiasts. If the current state of testing and interest says anything, we could see a much broader set of fonts throughout the Web very soon.

Photo by Flickr user stevekeys.

Readability doesn't work on every site, but we tested it on most popular news sites and blogs, and it worked almost everywhere. Most of the time, Readability will also display comments when you are reading a blog post. While it displays most images, however, the bookmarklet sadly deletes every embedded video.

What About Those Ads?

Removing the clutter, of course, also means removing the advertising that a lot of sites need to run to make a living. For sites that rely on click-through ads, Readability is just about as bad as AdBlock Plus (or the more anarchic Add-Art), but sites that get paid per ad impression probably won't care too much about this, as the regular page still has to be loaded before you can activate the Readability bookmarklet.

Instapaper, which Arc90 credits as an inspiration, of course, also has a text-only reading mode for saved pages, but its focus is less on making the text readable and more on saving a copy of the page. Unlike Readability, Instapaper also doesn't display any of the images embedded in a text.

Raising Social Awareness Through Facebook

Generation Y is arguably the most socially conscious generation in existence. They're well aware of how social changes affect them and use the internet as a tool to keep them aware of what's going on. Gen Yers are making their stances well known on Facebook. In 2006, the top 10 advocacy groups on Facebook were:

1. Reduce the Drinking Age to 18! - 111,275


2. Legalize Same-Sex Marriage - 80,458


3. Americans for Alternative Energy - 69,465


4. Support a Woman's Right to Choose - 66,806


5. Support Stem Cell Research - 55,219


6. Abolish Abstinence Only Sex Education - 54,712


7. Government + Religion = Disaster - 47,949


8. AIDS / HIV research - 24,789


9. Equal Rights for Gays - 24,013


10. Pro-Life - 22,409

While Gen Y still participates in rallies, protests, and group meetings, for them it's a lot easier to start a movement with a Facebook group and let the masses join in. These groups are not being ignored either. Money is donated daily, boycotts are being arranged quicker, and news is spreading faster. Gen Y is taking technology and advocacy to another level.

Adopting New Mediums of Information

Generation Y doesn't read books. Well, a lot of people aren't reading books these days. However, one should always factor in the following: technology is very important to Generation Y. They may not always read books because there are newer mediums of information to utilize. Looking at the old medium such as books from libraries, according to a study done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

"Gen Y are the leading users of libraries for help solving problems and in more general patronage.

Libraries drew visits by more than half of Americans (53%) in the past year for all kinds of purposes, not just the problems mentioned in this survey. And it was the young adults in tech-loving Generation Y (age 18-30) who led the pack. Compared to their elders, Gen Y members were the most likely to use libraries for problem-solving information and in general patronage for any purpose.

Furthermore, it is young adults who are the most likely to say they will use libraries in the future when they encounter problems: 40% of Gen Y said they would do that, compared with 20% of those above age 30 who say they would go to a library."

However, Gen Y is a technologically advanced generation. So, of course Gen Y won't read books or newspapers in the way that previous generations did. Gen Y goes online to get information. They read more blogs than any other generation. They receive the news from online sources and they may even venture into buying an eBook or two. Gen Y certainly won't write off traditional mediums of information. However, they've adopted and embraced the technological advancements that are taking place to better receive information.

A Real P2P Network

Generation Y is full of lazy and self-indulgent kids. If only I had a dollar for every time I heard that statement. This is probably the most ridiculously perpetuated stereotype of Generation Y. Gen Y expects to be rewarded for doing the smallest amount of work. They're only in it for themselves. However, they can't be too bad if they're the most marketed to generation. While they're occasionally self-indulgent (who isn't?), Gen Yers do their part when it comes to helping others.

For example, when entering college, peers amongst Gen Y are more than willing to go out of their way to help the incoming class of students. On my college campus, groups are set up on Facebook and Myspace to help students get to and from Walmart. Web site addresses are exchanged for students to find out the campus ratings for their professors. Tutoring sessions are done online and offline by Juniors and Seniors, not the faculty, and these are activities that are seen across college campuses nationwide. They've advanced the real-life version of peer-2-peer systems using social networks and more.

Moving Above and Beyond

This is only a glimpse into the world of Generation Y. While Generation Y is very technologically advanced, they're more likely to adopt technologies that help themselves and others whether it's for organizing boycotts, keeping up with the news, or helping peers. They don't just adopt these technologies just because they're out there. They adopt them because of what they can do with them. To conclude, ad agency executive Marian Salzman, states:

"Some of them are the greatest generation. They're more hardworking. They have these tools to get things done. They are enormously clever and resourceful. Some of the others are absolutely incorrigible."

When YouTube Live launches later this year, this medium is only going to get bigger.

The company says that these 10 million uniques come from the whole UStream network, which presumably includes embedded players. Third party traffic analysts Quantcast says that UStream participates in its traffic monitoring program (using embed codes) and reports that the UStream global network gets just under 8 million uniques as far as it's concerned. UStream says Quantcast is new to them and will take some time to catch up in its reporting. That may be a viable explanation, but the numbers are close enough. UStream also reports that their number equals 10 million people actually playing a live video stream - not people who have loaded pages that happen to have an unplayed UStream player embedded in them. It also doesn't include views of recorded videos. That's impressive.

Competitor Mogulus also uses Quantcast, and Quantcast says they have a global network that sees 4.5 million uniques.

Those are serious numbers. We've argued for some time that live video was going to be big, but the pace of growth is a little bit surprising. Note also that UStream was established just over a year ago, in March of 2007. When we reported this week that social news site Mixx hasn't been able to surpass 1 million unique visitors per month in their first year despite links from every story on CNN.com, USAToday, Weather.com and a list of other major media sites - we said there was an integration or audience targeting problem. UStream's 10 million and Mogulus's 4.5 million monthly uniques are what new media technologies look like when they really start to catch on.