Social network software

So Google has released Chrome, its entry in the browser wars (bonus points, Google, for promoting it with a Scott McCloud comic).

I know, I know, it uses the same rendering engine as Safari... but even still, Murphy's Law of Browsers dictates that weird little quirks and idiosyncrasies will somehow find their way in. And in a world where we have to test web pages against Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Konqueror, old versions of Netscape, various mobile browsers and that web-enabled toaster oven in your client's office kitchen, well... oy.

That said, am I itching to install it the moment the first suicidally-alpha version is available for the Mac? You betcha.

The Office 2.0 conference took place in San Francisco this week and I attended and took notes for ReadWriteWeb. The Day 1 recap is here and Day 2 is below.

The sessions highlighted in this post are Going 100% SaaS and Meeting without traveling. I also reviewed Joblogs, a CRM "relationship and management lite".

Going 100% SaaS

This was the session I really wanted to see the roll call of panelists was;

• Gadi Shamia (Revongo)
• Daniel Druker (Intacct)
• Doug Harr (Ingres)
• Robert Hull (Adaptive Planning)
• Jeff Schultz (Bill.com)

Not surprisingly the recent Debes article came up - the crowd, again not surprisingly, was dismissive of Debes contentions about the imminent demise of SaaS as a model.

First question was why aspire for 100% SaaS?

The panelists agreed that SaaS gives functionality to SMBs that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to access. There was also agreement around the enabling benefits of SaaS apps. Why build a data center or expensive traditional software when it's so much more readily accessible and cheaper via SaaS?

In response to a question from the floor about whether or not SaaS is actually cheaper or whether that is just a marketing spin, Doug Harr from Ingres gave the example of a Siebel implementation for 150 salespeople that cost $1.5million. His new company implemented Salesforce.com which cost $140k/year for 130 users.

Another question from the floor raised security concerns for large businesses - the panelists agreed that they had no real concerns about their data being in the cloud.

What sort of business is more likely to adopt SaaS? - not surprisingly the panelists felt technology companies were prime candidates, also service companies, young companies and rapidly growing organizations. Phil Wainewright brought up the issues around large businesses not going with SaaS due to their already sunken costs - again Doug Harr gave a great example where true total cost of ownership analysis can bring up surprising results - the costs and hassles with the old school behemoth software offerings are often sufficiently high to outweigh the monthly costs of a SaaS alternative.

Discussion around integration - feeling was at this point in time it's acceptable but this is where the growth will come from  - creating pseudo best-of-breed total solutions via integration of diverse offerings.

To be honest, given the fact that this conference is meant to be about visioning the future - it was a surprise that so much time was taken in justifying SaaS as a model - it would have been nice to see more time spent on a picture of what a truly 100% SaaS ecosystem would look and feel like - maybe next year....

Meeting without traveling

A panel discussion that the Twitterverse was no doubt interested in - check out the Twitter cred of the participants;

• Robert Scoble (Fast Company)
• Guillaume Cohen (Veodia)
• Gary Griffiths (LiteScape)
• Loic Le Meur (Seesmic)
• Alain Mowad (Polycom)

The panelists introduced themselves and their businesses/offerings. The panel ranges across the spectrum from super hi quality Cisco Telepresence systems down to Seesmic for low quality ad hoc solutions like Seesmic.

Loic Lemeur announced that Twhirl will include video within the next two weeks. He discussed the fact that video allows relationships to be formed around the world without actual presence - it brings people closer together.

Robert told of WalMart's ability to buy fabric internationally over video conferencing the quality is so high.

Cohen told of the savings that video conferencing brings - gas, time, environmental etc. People can work remotely easily - so long as the video integrates tightly with their existing workflow processes - people feel more comfortable giving feedback over video than "in the flesh". Veodia does all the hard work in the background and serves up one button for users to push - delivering up the best quality that the connection available can give.

Mowad says that Polycom is much more focused on real time video sharing - gives examples of tele-medicine and tele-education.

Questions from the floor.....

What are the coolest things the tools could have?

• Someone who has video on 24hrs a day when she works remotely - a sense of intimacy when they're not there
• How do you create a technology that becomes so immersive that one feels that they're "really there"
• Video brings an experience as close as possible to real life
• Video enables Seesmic to run an international development team with real time collaboration

How can video-conferencing work when their are larger teams?

• Remote controlled monitors that move depending on who is talking!
• There's a threshold beyond which video conferencing just doesn't work - 9 or 10 people perhaps?
• There is a perception of presence - the host of offerings - audio, video, IM etc build up a feeling of intimacy that means that the group feel together - even if the camera is focusing on someone else at the time

Discussion ensued about the fact that going forward the ability to catalogue the audio from a video stream - allowing for searching and text string recognition.

Joblogs launches!

I took the opportunity to meet this morning with Steve Ireland from Joblogs - a startup out of Canada which launched their offering today.

Joblogs is most readily described as CRM, relationship and management lite. It serves up a nice, intuitive and quick workspace which allows for the aggregation of contact information, email and documents and links and stakeholder comments all in one location. Their name is a mashup of Job and Blogs - not blogs in the traditional sense but in the sense of being enablers of two way communication and idea collaboration.

It's a good solution for anyone handling large number of customer interactions - service based industries being the most obvious - anyone that requires daily coordination of a dynamic set of different data streams.

It goes out to general release on Monday 9 September and has been bootstrapped via subscription from a previous offering. Joblogs puts their specific points of difference as;

• Non-obstructive user interface (e.g. no save or cancel buttons, and of course no page refreshes)
• Customizable databases with drag and drop
• Private blogs with that serve as a point of collaboration for business projects
• Arbitrarily relate different records together
• Email dropbox that automatically links messages to associated contacts, companies and projects

Here's a screencast of the product:

And it's over!

Sitting in the last session of the conference with organiser Ismael Ghalimi going over the tools used to run the entire operation - 500 physical attendees and a couple of thousand virtual ones. All planned and arranged in a couple of months - it's been a whirlwind.

Overall it's been great to be around a bunch of people who "get it" - understand the cloud and what it can bring to business going forwards.

If I had any criticism it would be that a lot of time was spent talking about where we are at - not so much time spent envisioning the future. Obviously with a number of vendors present this isn't a surprising fact - but nonetheless it would have been great to have some vision sessions that were vendor agnostic.

Anyway... thanks to all the attendees, thanks a bunch to Ismael and his team and I look forward to seeing you all again next year.

What we thought might have been an AIR app in the making, may be something entirely different. With social video sharing sites such as Youtube and Vimeo it can be hard to keep the recommendations flowing. Hundreds of videos are added to these sites daily, but only a select few are really worth our time. With no easy way to sort through these uploads, Vimeo is asking the community for help in finding a solution. Today the site has announced the launch of Vimeo Toys. These toys aims to give users an interactive and visually appealing way to find more video content. Here's a look at what's available.

VimeoLand & Pulse

The VimeoLand toy gives a look at recent happenings on Vimeo. VimeoLand displays an interactive landscape of characters that represent the latest actions from Vimeo users. Hovering your mouse over a character will display a pop-up containing one of the following recent actions:

• A comment
• A like
• Recent signup
• Recent upload

Each action includes a link to the profile of the user who completed the action and a link to the video that the action took place on. What's a little random and unique about VimeoLand is an airplane that flies back and forth above the landscape. Clicking the plane will cause a random video to be dropped from the plane's cargo. It's pretty nifty. Vimeo fans will find this particular toy to be very useful and entertaining.

Currently there's only one other toy available. If you're looking for something less flashy than VimeoLand, we recommend Pulse.

Making Your Own Vimeo Toy

We're interested in seeing what other unique visuals developers will create with Vimeo Toys. To help developers get started, Vimeo has listed a sample XML file with over 50 activity items to choose from. Vimeo's team of workers will decide whether or not your toy is worth being featured on Vimeo. While this isn't a problem for us, we'd rather see the community take a vote on what stays and what goes.

What we think would be really interesting to see is for Vimeo and developers to take things to the next level. By this we mean seeing a visual graph of what our friends, or a select group of users, are up as a Vimeo Toy. The current offerings are still a little too random for our tastes. Nevertheless, we're happy with what we see so far and look forward to see what else is next.

Vimeo company profile provided by TradeVibes

If a post on Facebook’s developer blog is accurate, you have less than a week to make your call for no change. That’s right, no change. a group of members have coalesced behind a petition, massing together “Against the ‘New Facebook’” to send Zuckerberg and the rest of them out in Palo Alto a message: “We’re not saying get rid of the new layout, just that they should keep the old one and let us choose which layout we want like skins. Color options would be good too.”

As Compete’s trendspotters made known this past week, many Facebook users have switched over to the “new” Facebook, also called “beta,” only to revert back to the old way. Yet, the company is choosing to switch the network over by default in a matter of days, not months, as I myself envisioned it would. If you’re not fond of the idea of a site-wide shift, join the gentle opposition. Their goal at present is to reach 1 million registrants. As of 7:50 PM ET Saturday, they collectively number 424k-strong. The count has been 11 42 days in the making. Thousands enter the fold by the hour. All to invoke no change, but rather, a choice. Where do you fall? (Note: We made mention of a parallel movement yesterday, less than half the size, with nearly the same title. It happens.)

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As we noted late last month, Google affixed its name to the GeoEye Inc’s GeoEye-1 satellite, in order that the Web giant get dibs on some high-resolution imagery produced of our little planet in orbit. Well, today marked the blastoff sequence, followed by a successful launch.

According to the AP, it started fighting gravity at 11:50 AM today from vertical stasis at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Video posted to the GeoEye website marks the occasion.

GeoEye isn’t just a rudimentary upgrade to satellite photography of typical Google Maps-like order. It’s designers regard it as having “the highest resolution of any commercial imaging system,” with the capability to show detail within one square foot or so. And of course, Google isn’t the exclusive name to share space on the cylinder of GeoEye-1. Boeing Launch Services provided the rocket, and its purpose will be “environmental matting to agriculture and defense.” Nonetheless, Google will reap fruits of the digicam’s labor. The data begins to flow in 45-60 days’ time, said Google’s Kate Hurowitz in late August.

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So a whole lot of people thought Microsoft’s Silverlight technology warranted an install to watch the summer games in Beijing at NBCOlympics.com. And another big crowd felt different, thinking, among other things, that the use of Adobe Flash would naturally suit them just as well.

Following the main events in China (the Paralympics opened today), the limit of Microsoft’s exclusivity deal with NBC was made clear this past week when NBC broadcast live coverage of the NFL’s opening game between the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins in celebratory preparation to do the very same for games occurring every Sunday night for duration of the next 17 weeks - and all in Flash. NFL.com, too, displayed Thursday’s game and will routinely cover Sunday matches here on in.

The no-show-Silverlight talk doesn’t end there. Suzanne Tindal of CNET’s Webware quoted Microsoft senior program manager by the name of Scott Hanselman as having said at the company’s own Tech.Ed conference that “we’re going to see a 100- to 1,000-fold speed increase in JavaScript as Google and the guys at Mozilla…kick us in the arse.” Furthermore, Jonas Follesø of Cap Gemini, an IT and business consultancy, commented that JavaScript will pose a serious challenge to Silverlight - more so than Flash has thus far.

An interesting position for Silverlight to find itself in, for sure. As it is basically known, Silverlight is a platform for developing rich Internet applications. More so with the 2.0 beta than with versions to come before, given its support for .NET and so forth. Therefore, juxtapositions with both Flash and JavaScript are rightfully made. Which means that if Silverlight is to have any chance at the kind of ubiquity shown by its more common competitors, it needs to do far more than solidify video delivery partnerships with the likes of NBC. It must inhabit a vast supply of Web applications of all types. Which, to speak reasonably here, isn’t so inevitable. Years of assimilation among Web users needs to happen to achieve an all-around permanence. Flash and JavaScript developers know this. Unfortunately for Microsoft, those forces didn’t have monsters of such dimensions to spar with.

It’s not an impossibility for Silverlight to grow, mind you. Given the right level of attention to the platform, Microsoft could mark its Olympic foray as only the first big starter in the long slog toward mass adoption. But “could” is the key word. The hill climbs (yes, climbs plural) will be trying. One, as I noted above, is to convince the public of its validity and utility in the presence of two semi-household names. There’s a toughie.

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Rhonda from MySpace says the network has had a spam infestation in its application profiles. So much so that it shut down the forum display. Complaints were coming in like crazy. Now users interested in “more exciting forums” are advised to carry on their conversations elsewhere for the time being. Free bulletins are suggested. How’s that suit you?

At the risk of making an irate user base even more angry and loud, perhaps this is the only way to really put the spoilers in a chokehold. Though as Nick O’Neill of Social Times writes, “it shows that MySpace doesn’t have…control over (its) spam situation,” which only puts the site in negative light it’s spent quite some time working to emerge from. Facebook, meanwhile, has instituted a spam reporting system that’s considered to be at least partially effective, if not fully.

So, how should should one look at this outcome? Glass half-full, or half-empty? The first category is where I fall. Better to have nothing than lots of nothing, I think. How about you?

Update: Rhonda from MySpace offers a clarification of her original post in the comments. Useful to read.

How does the closure of MySpace App forums sit with you?
( polls)

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NBC seems to be having a change of heart this week. The network recently wrapped up their streaming of the Olympics using Microsoft's Silverlight technology. However if you tuned in for this week's NFL season opener, NBC was using Adobe's Flash technology instead of Silverlight. Making some do a double take, here's a look at why NBC left Silverlight in a flash (pun intended).

As we stated, NBC took a chance on Silverlight to stream the Olympic ceremonies for online and mobile viewers. While this was a great opportunity for Microsoft to promote its Silverlight platform, it wasn't enough for NBC. According to SAI,
"Microsoft, meanwhile, said that during the Olympics, 40 million US to visitors NBCOlympics.com didn't yet have Silverlight installed."

NBC has already begun switching back to Adobe Flash for the start of the NFL season. Yet their efforts don't seem to be paying off at the moment with reports of video playback for the NFL season starter game being too horrible to watch.

Not a Good Look

We all know that at least 90% of computer users have Adobe Flash installed. It's easy to see why NBC would want to switch back. The partnership between Microsoft and NBC was likely more beneficial to Microsoft in the end. One of the downsides for NBC was that users tend to become either wary or lazy about downloading new extensions for a website. This is especially true if the website was working just fine with previous extensions only days before. However, with a rocky start to switching back, NBC online sports fans are probably wondering if it's even worth the effort anymore.

Adobe company profile provided by TradeVibes Microsoft company profile provided by TradeVibes

Next week, DEMOfall 08 hits San Diego, California for 3 days, and a total of 72 companies will, according to Chris Shipley, Mary A. C. Fallon, and the rest at DEMO setting the stage, “launch disruptive innovations.” The span of companies is as wide-reaching in design as they are in global placement. Shipley & Co are promising to showcase everything from battling spam (effectively); a game development utility for the masses, sharing and selling photographs, and lots else. And they’ve gone ahead and offered up an early look at the names slated to pitch their product or service to the crowd. And a big tease this list is. Here are some Web-centric highlights that we’ll be keeping an eye on.

Alerts, Bellevue WA - Information, delivered. News, weather, notes, etc.
Telnic, London, England - Store, update, publish contact information.
Awind, Junghe, Taiwan - Your digital home, plus WiMax.
beeTV, Milano, Italy - Personalized video.
ffwd.com, San Francisco, CA - “Your personal remote control for video on the Web.”
Invision TV, Bethesda, MD - An “Internet video guide.”
RemoTV, New Haven, CT - Stream media to any Internet-connected device.
Blue Lava, Honolulu, HI - Immerse yourself in your photography.
Kadoo, Washington, DC - Share files, etc. with specific people.
MeDeploy, Hamden, CT - Distribute media in lots of places. Quickly. Easily.
MixMatchMusic, Burlingame, CA - Connect with musicians.
Photrade, Cincinnati, OH - Sort of iStockPhoto-like. Name has received mention on Mashable.
Echonest, Somerville, MA - Music recommendation through APIs.
Paragent, Muncie, IN - Remote desktop management.
Accordia Group, New Rochelle, NY - Business relationship management.
Arsenal Interactive/HeyCosmo, Mountain View, CA - Social “unification.”
Familybuilder, New York, NY - Build a family tree within a social network. (I.e., Facebook, Bebo.)
TravelMuse, Los Altos, CA - We’ve covered this startup before. We loved.
Zazengo, Santa Cruz, CA - Social activism networking. We previously highlighted one network build on Zazengo, called MalariaEngage.
GreenSherpa, Santa Barbara, CA - Personal cash flow management.
Rudder, Inc, Houston, TX - Financial analysis in your inbox.
Momindum, Paris, France - mash documents with video presentations.
Qtask, Burbank, CA - All manner of project collaboration.
iWidgets, San Francisco, CA - Social marketing.
Semanti Corp, Alberta, Canada - Semantic Web cataloguing.
SkyData, San Mateo, CA - LinkedIn, Facebook, Outook, Google, Salesforce, SugarCRM, NetSuite in one.
WebDiet, Henderson, NV - Eat healthy, be healthy, wherever you are.
CrowdSpring, Chicago, IL - Crowdsource ideas. We covered these guys back in March.
Sim Ops, San Francisco, CA - easily build your own games.

Disclosure: Mashable is a sponsor of DEMOfall 08

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With all the news about Chrome, it's been pretty easy to forget about one of Firefox's recent releases: Ubiquity. We gave Ubiquity a rave review for giving Firefox a whole new UI. The standard commands, or "verbs", that come with Ubiquity are great. Yet we couldn't help but want more. Developers have been working around the clock to produce some fantastic custom verbs for Ubiquity. Here is ReadWriteWeb's list of the top picks of custom Ubiquity verbs!

Media

Ubiquity already comes with built in search commands for Youtube, Amazon, and Flickr. Here are our top picks for searching media sites using custom Ubiquity verbs:

• Last.FM - Allows users to search the Last.FM music network for artists pages.
• Seeq - Search Seeqpod for music.
• Vimeo - Allows users to search Vimeo for matching video results.
• Stickam - Watch the livestream of your Stickam friends no matter what page you're on.
• Netflix Search - Search Netflix for movies.

Social Networks

So far Ubiquity only allows you to interact with one social network: Twitter. With these custom verbs you'll be able interact with more popular social networks.

• Ping. FM - Update your default Ping.FM status.
• Jaiku - Update your Jaiku status.
• Identica - Update your identi.ca status
• Facebook - Update your Facebook status or locate a friend.
• FriendFeed - Post a link or comment to your FriendFeed stream.
• Twitter and Link Shortner - Extends Ubiquity's default Twitter functionality to include a link shortening command.
• Myspace Person Search - Search for someone on Myspace.

Social Sharing and Bookmarking Sites

Outside of Digg, there are no other ways to share news and links with friends. So for those of you on Reddit, Delicious, and other related sites, we have just the verbs for you!

• StumbleUpon - Stumble the current page you're viewing. Requires StumbleUpon extension.
• Sphinn - Submit an article to Sphinn.
• Reddit - Submit a link to Reddit
• Twine - Post an article to Twine.
• Delicious - Bookmark an article with tags to your delicious account.
• Share On - Share a link on any of the following sites: Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, or Fark.
• Most Popular on Delicious - Get a quick overview of the current 10 most popular delicious bookmarks.
• Google Bookmark - Add the current page you're viewing to your Google Bookmarks.
• Instapaper - Save a page for later to your Instapaper account.
• Soup.io - Bookmark a page to your Soup.io account.
• Tumblr - Share a ton of link love to your Tumblelog.
• Check Slashdot - Get a quick overview of either three of the latest articles on Slashdot or any number of articles that you specify.

Notable Verbs

While searching for the best Ubiquity verbs we came across a ton that were great, but couldn't be categorized. Without further ado here are other notable verbs:

• Subscribe via Google Reader
• Multiple URL Shortners (TinyURL, isgd, Bitly, Hurl)
• EveryStock Photo Search
• Find Movie Times Near You
• W3C Validator
• Torrent Search
• 30 Boxes
• Remember The Milk

And The Verbs Keep Coming

We're sure you'll be able to find a ton of new Ubiquity verbs to subscribe to. What we'd like to know is what verbs you're already using and what verbs you hope to see in the near future. To start the list, we're already using quite a few of the built in verbs and most of the social media custom verbs listed here. In the future we'd like to see verbs for Diigo, sharing items via Google Reader, and more video related verbs. Let's hear what's on your list.

This is a fairly important question to consider, I think. The gaming industry clocks in billions of dollars in revenue each year, a good portion of which is devoted to mobile sales. Yet if mobile Web use is going to continue climb at the solid clip, and mobile phones are to be smart and powerful enough to conquer interactive entertainment, is there room for platforms devoted primarily to gaming?

While Sony’s PSP hasn’t seen itself become a phenom of the mobile gaming space, the Nintendo DS is an item which has often been touted as something of a marvel; nearly as cool as the Wii when it first arrived. Nintendo has consistently sold millions for several quarters. And the company will undoubtedly sell more. But just how much more? And if/when momentum slows to a trickle, then a crawl, and then stops, what comes after? Does Nintendo move into software exclusively, bringing Mario, et al. to the iPhone, Android devices, Nokia handhelds, and other systems?

What triggered my interest in this subject isn’t gaming itself. The most I would consider myself is a very occasional gamer. Once in a while a little Sudoku, some Tetris, some chess. Also, I’ve recently been draw to the “Cannon Challenge” [iTunes URL] game freely issued by Discovery for iPhone/iPod touch users. Otherwise my free moments are devoted to other pursuits. No, gaming isn’t really the focus here. Rather, it is the way in which mobile platforms themselves are evolving that is the basis for this comment. They are evolving to the point that Nintendo’s handhelds, and those of its competitor(s), will be no more. Why? Internet connectivity. More precisely, always-on Internet connectivity.

It’s been said constantly for over a year now by various persons well-known and not so well-known: the iPhone is a great gaming platform. Leo Laporte of TWiT, The Tech Guy, and The Lab fame, says so. Regularly. The co-hosts of “Diggnation” offer similar praise for the thing. I’ll say so, too. And by categorial association, I would say a number of other smartphones are similarly equipped to provide gameplay that’s visually impressive and entertaining as well. Indeed, because of computing power alone, it might be argued that the likes of Nintendo won’t be able to extend its legacy in a tangible sense for many more years.

Yes, it’s important to emphasize this new and very big nail in the coffin of convention. It’s a point that has been echoed with increased volume in recent months. The ever-present mobile Web. If game developers take up the task of engineering titles to connect players with one another without limit to place or time - or, reversely, dependent on place and time - the sort of gaming that comes with the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP in their current Wi-Fi-enabled form, is going to quickly become outdated.

Of course, Sony has a convenient bridge to the next era of mobile gaming in its partnership with Ericsson in the mobile phone world. That is something Sony should address, and sooner rather than later. But Nintendo, interestingly enough, doesn’t have that option. Not yet, at least. And rather than establish exclusives with one handset maker or another, it may well be better off investing little to naught in hardware and focus instead on publishing titles compatible with the modern smartphone platforms of today.

Not too long ago a report released by comScore noted that US mobile subscribers’ had essentially balanced pan-Atlantic rate of 3G adoption with residents of Europe, after years of lagging behind. If comScore’s numbers are anything accurate, they only add weight to the line that mobile phone gaming is the logical extension to come from the market. The next cash cow. Naturally, this requires that consumers take to the all-in-one approach to mobile communications, which they’ve been slow to do. But the advent of Nokia’s newest N-Series devices as well as those from Apple and Samsung, etc., have done much to whet the consumer palate. So much so that a migration is simply inevitable.

To be sure, this is a good thing. Change rarely does good things for nostalgia, but it enables progress to continue on. The sheer volume of possible applications of GPS- and 3G- and 4G-infused networking, let alone gameplay, piques the interest of millions of people. Privacy is of course an ever-present concern. But gamers have made plain their desire to take the multiplayer experience as far as it can allow. That has been the case with Xbox Live fans, PC-based MMORPG devotees, and it will also be true for mobile gamers, too. Heck, the possibilities given via the Nintendo DS specifically have intrigued a global supply of users. So gaming over wireless cellular telephony spectrum is really just upping the ante. It is very much within reach.

Now, there is a limit to what you can do given that sort of infrastructure and personal componentry. A small screen can only provide so much opportunity to developers. But the social aspect is where things go big. It’s more a matter of developers’ thinking anew about the handheld world, and seeing what they’ve already constructed in the realm of iPhone and Android, they presumably won’t be short for ingenuity for many years to come.

Which brings us back to the future that Nintendo - and to lesser extent, Sony - will encounter and be forced to navigate. Mobile gaming is critical to its business, regardless of its clear success with the Wii. Will we see Mario soon emerge on the N96, a BlackBerry’s touchscreen, the iPhone, and a Sony Ericsson Walkman of some sort? I’ll venture to say yes. Somewhat soon, anyway. It’s only sensible that they make it happen. If only because it has become increasingly evident that smartphones themselves are now being designed to be the next generation of all-purpose playgrounds, and Nintendo could well make a fortune introducing itself and its trademark craftwork to the wider world of pocket computers and the cloud they inhabit.

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If you were interviewing someone for a position with your company and they admitted that they didn't know anything about the new trends and innovations taking place in their field, what would you think? Likely, what you would think is "next candidate, please." In today's business world, job-seekers are expected to stay current with the happenings taking place in their area of interest. There was a time when those happenings were very much job-specific and anything having to do with technology fell squarely on the shoulders of I.T. That time has passed. Web 2.0 technologies lifted the veil of mystery surrounding computing technology and made it accessible to everyone. Today, if you're not staying current with Web 2.0 technologies' impact on business, then you're just not staying current. Period.

Web 2.0 Is Everywhere

No matter which department you're in, Web 2.0 technologies have had an impact. If you've been ignoring their prevalence and adoption, you're at risk of falling behind in your career and your business is at risk of losing ground to its competitors who are tuned into this trend.

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we deliver news about Web 2.0's impact on business in addition to news about web technologies in general. Depending on your area of interest, you can find a lot of great information on this subject in our archives. Or simply bookmark this post for easy reference.

Document Collaboration Suites

GroupSwim is an innovative company which has created an intelligent community building and collaboration SaaS solution. They aim to connect individuals and build knowledge utilizing social based methodologies. Read more.

DreamFactory's suite of Enterprise 2.0 applications consists of a Project Management module, a Time and Expense Module, a Document Manager, and a Team Calendar. Originally, the company was available on Amazon Web Services, but now DreamFactory's software will be available on Intuit's QuickBase platform, too. Read more.

Box.net offers collaboration functionality which allows any Box.net user can invite collaborators to any folder in their account. The collaboration feature is also fully compatible with all the OpenBox services, which extends online collaboration beyond just word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, similar to what Google Docs currently offers. Read more.

The term groupware refers to applications that facilitate real-time communication, coordination and collaboration amongst groups of people. A number of startups are working hard to develop the nascent groupware market, so in this post we identify some of those startups and provide an overview of where the market is heading...read more.

What's the Deal With Wikis?

Only a handful of years ago, it was common to hear people laugh at Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it! How could you take it seriously? These days, just as blogs are, wikis are on their way to winning a reputation as serious publishing platforms. Wikis are now serious business. Read more.

Atlassian Confluence, makers of one of the most popular enterprise wiki solutions, offers Microsoft Office and SharePoint integration in their release of the Confluence 2.9 software. With these new tools, users no longer have to know the technicalities of wiki markup or even how to use the included rich-text WYSIWYG editor in order to make changes to the wiki - they can simply open up a Microsoft Office document instead. Read more.

WetPaint, a popular hosted Wiki solution, provides person-to-person and private messaging between users of their Wiki network. This means that Wetpaint Wiki users can now send single or multi-person private messages, to connect and collaborate with others about their interests. This post introduces wikis and discusees who is using them and for what purpose.First, wikis are described and then the range of wiki products in the market right now is explored. Read more.

Leave it to people in the wiki market to know how to collaborate. Nearly 20 different wiki providers have teamed up to offer a new Firefox extension that will notify users whenever they are on a page that is publicly editable, using a standard icon that sits in the same place the RSS autodiscovery icon appears. Clicking on the icon (img. on the left) will take you to that page's editing interface. Read more.

What's Office 2.0?

Web Office Defined: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. Read more.

The State of Office 2.0: Over the past 10 years, Corel, Sun, IBM and others have tried to compete with Microsoft in the office software business, but thus far none of them have been able to take a significant chunk of Microsoft's large market share, which generates revenues exceeding $15 billion each year. These companies have tried everything; including Sun open sourcing their StarOffice suite and releasing it as the free OpenOffice. Yet, even this very compelling move has not been able to make a serious dent in the market. Read more.

Microsoft announced their Office Live Workspace is publicly available for everyone to access. The site, a free web-based extension of Microsoft Office, lets you access your documents online and share your work with others. Some say that the service's launch is a direct response to Google's entry into the web office space with their Google Docs online service. If that's so, then the question now is: did Microsoft just trump Google Docs? Or does Google Docs still rule online office suites? Read more.

The Web Office was a market that underwent a lot of changes in 2007. Our definition of Web Office is: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. The 2007 year in review: Read more.

This is the perspective of a "skeptical, later early adopter"; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don't spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze. Read more.

EditGrid, the main product of HongKong-based company Team and Concepts (TnC) Ltd., is a leading Web 2.0 online spreadsheet service that focuses on online collaboration and interoperability. Read more.

eXpresso was named as one of PC World's 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year for 2007. PC World succinctly summed the product up: "[it] allows Excel users to share their spreadsheets, online or off." eXpresso is different from the web office contenders that you normally hear about on ReadWriteWeb for three reasons...Read more.

Zimbra is looking to expand its platform to the iPhone. Recently they announced Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0. Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 will allow iPhone users over-the-air two-way synchronization of e-mails, calendar, contacts, and photos between user mailboxes and mobile devices, and seamless "push" e-mail service for all Zimbra Collaboration Suite users. Read more.

News from the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco, 2008. Read more.

What's Happening in the Enterprise 2.0 Space?

A report released by Forrester Research is predicting that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013. Read more.

Enterprise 2.0 is Happening: If you're a business who has been ignoring the Web 2.0 trend and the spread of social media: look out, the tide is shifting and you're about to be left behind. The rise of social media didn't happen overnight, the power of the internet to unite people, the ubiquity of broadband, the rise of Gen Y, the development of new technologies for socializing on the web - all of these things and more have led to the rise of social media. And this new force is affecting change in the way that companies do business - now and for many years to come.

The break-up of behemoth, vertically integrated enterprises commenced in the 1970's, got a boost from junk bond financing in the 1980's, and accelerated in the 1990's with globalization. Now, late in the 2000's, Social Media (aka Web 2.0) is adding another gear that will accelerate the fundamental restructuring of the enterprise. Read more.

Most enterprise software sucks. That is my considered opinion from 30 years in the software biz. Words that come to mind are: bloated, inflexible and user hostile. The good news is that it is getting better, a lot better. The driver for change is what I call the consumerization of enterprise software. These new software champions typically have some if not all of these 8 main attributes...Read more.

The Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad program is a program that allows companies to showcase their products and compete for the opportunity to present their ideas to the community at this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference. This competition, organized by Stowe Boyd, began in April when companies were invited to post their video pitches to the E2 web site. After the community voted, the list of contenders was narrowed down to five finalists who will now compete for the final spot. For that grand prize winner, the prize is free exhibit space at the upcoming conference. Read more.

SharePoint to run Enterprise 2.0? 9 companies are saying "yes," having recently launched Enterprise 2.0 offerings that integrate with SharePoint technology. If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception. Read more.

Is 2.0 Affecting My Industry?

Yes! Check out the examples below of Web 2.0's impact on various industries and fields.

Finance/Banking

Google is announced that after more than a year of work on the problem, Google Finance is now offering real-time price quotes for any stock traded on NASDAQ. Read more.

Strands, the recommendation and lifestreaming service we've written about here before, announced a much anticipated deal that will put it in the driver's seat for financial recommendations served up to millions of online banking customers around the world. The company's recommendation test-case in music is no longer all they will be known for around the world. Read more.

We reported on a survey that revealed that 48% of online banking customers between the ages of 18 and 34 would be interested in using "secure gadgets for personal banking" if their bank offered them. More than a quarter of bank customers would consider switching to another bank if it took better advantage of web 2.0 technologies. While that survey was flawed in some ways, there is another access point to banking information that customer may want more than secure widgets: mobile. Read more.

48% of Bank Customers Want Web 2.0 Gadgets. WorkLight, a startup that offers enterprise 2.0 products, recently did a survey among Facebook users to find out their willingness to use Web 2.0 tools for secure banking. The survey was conducted among 1000 Facebook users between the ages of 18-34. The fact that the survey was conducted among Facebook users gives it a bias towards tech-savvy people. However there are some surprising findings. Read more.

Accounting

Online Accounting: State of the Market: Accounting software for small business and personal use is increasingly moving from the desktop to online. However, compared to other office software, this transition to online has been relatively slow. Partly that's due to user reticence: writing a document online and sharing it with others (via Google Docs, Office Live, Zoho, or whatever you use) is one thing. Entering sensitive financial information into your browser is harder to adjust to. Read more.

Project Management

Add this one to your web office toolkit - LiquidPlanner is an online, hosted project management tool that lets you access and update projects anywhere you have an internet connection. The service offers you and your team a complete project environment, social networking and collaboration features, and a probabilistic scheduling engine which tells you the probability of completing each task - and ultimately the entire project - by a certain date. With everything organized into a centralized dashboard that can be customized for each team member, everyone on your team can stay focused on their tasks and how they relate to the project as a whole. Read more.

The Clarizen project management software came out of stealth mode last year and has now just launched a new version with additional features. The latest version, Clarizen v 2.0, will be demoed at the "Under the Radar Conference," an event held on Microsoft's campus whose current theme is "The Business of Web Apps: Where the Web Goes to Work." Read more.

Enterprise 2.0 is a rapidly growing trend that takes the concepts and tools of social media (social networking, RSS, wikis, blogs, etc.) and re-purposes them for business use, wrapping them up into applications that make the tools at work seem more like the tools we use in our day-to-day lives. While these enterprise 2.0 apps give us that web 2.0 feel, it's rarer to see actual Web 2.0 services like Facebook or Twitter used by businesses. And although we've seen many people promoting the business use of Twitter, we had not yet heard about anyone actually going so far as to integrate Twitter into a non-consumer focused application. However, that's just what Joint Contact has done. Their PM tool now shows how tweeting can actually be a productive activity. Read more.

37Signals offers a range of applications, from simple, single-function apps like Ta-Da Lists (to-do lists), Writeboard (collaborative word processor), and Campfire (group chat) to more complicated apps like Basecamp (project management) and Highrise (group contact manager). Read more.

eProject is an on-demand Project Management company. More than 100,000 users at 650 companies currently use eProject's solutions. They run the gamut from Fortune 500 companies to medium-sized fast growing organizations. Read more.

Health

Health 2.0, web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we're starting to see health 2.0 apps try to tackle the enormous inefficiencies in the healthcare system - check out our description of Carol.com below. Also, in the longer term, we will see the Web being used in medical diagnosis and practice. Read more.

The Health 2.0 Conference is reviewed here and some of the health web apps that caught our eye as well as trends that are discussed. Read more.

Google announced the public availability of Google Health, after initially launching as a closed beta back in February. It is described as "a safe and secure way to collect, store, and manage [your] medical records and health information online" and is being positioned as a way for users to control their own medical records. Read more.

HR

Traditional resumes are boring. They become stale and out-of-date, they can't really showcase your work or achievements, and they end up just sitting in the bottom of someone's inbox. A paper resume, while professional, doesn't really let an employer get to know you. Many sites are trying to solve the problems of traditional resumes by providing job seekers a new way to stand out in the crowd. Read more.

The iPhone has been making headway in its battle to become a business-ready tool. Obviously, the addition of Microsoft Exchange support was a big step towards being considered a viable alternative to the traditional smartphones used at work, like Blackberry and Windows Mobile. However, beyond simply supporting enterprise email, the iPhone platform has a lot of potential to cater to the needs of its business users, too. Read more.

LinkedIn has an audience that is both younger (41 vs 48) and richer ($106k vs $98K). LinkedIn was also naturally crowing about their growth (189% for year ending Oct. '07) and the chart from Nielsen which shows comparative Facebook growth at 125%. Note that Facebook growth is from a higher base and the law of large numbers applies, but Facebook has always crowed about their growth rates vs the larger MySpace, so they have to live with growth rate comparisons to LinkedIn now. Read more.

Marketing

Viral marketing, user-generated content, online buzz: over the past few years, these terms have been representative of a new way of marketing to consumers that takes advantage of the current popularity of the social web. This new technique involves companies encouraging its customers to create content of their own in order to generate interest in the company's brand. Unfortunately, one of the potential side effects of this strategy is the potential for negative buzz. Despite this fact, a surprisingly low percentage of marketers are monitoring for negative responses. Read more.

Using the new pilot program from a company called Involver, Kiva launched a video campaign on Facebook to draw users to their site to lend directly to these developing nations. The video even features a button that appears at the end of the video encouraging you to "lend" money. Read more.

Mobile marketing startup, TextBound, has big plans to make text messages the new mass media for advertisers. Like we mentioned earlier, more and more companies are going to be betting on location based mobile ads this year, and TextBound hopes to capitalize on this trend. But unlike mobile social network/marketing vehicle, Fluc, TextBound isn't about connecting with your friends, it's about delivering ads to your cell phone via text message, then taking you to the mobile web for more details. Read more.

Recently, HiveLive announced a new partnership with Responsys, a marketing firm whose client list includes some big-name brands like Apple and Salesforce.com. Enterprise 2.0 is sure to follow. What Responsys offers their customers are on-demand email and marketing solutions that can be anything from web sites to email to mobile. With the new partnership with HiveLive, they can expand that offering to include enterprise social networks. Read more.

Widget platform Clearspring has an ad network that will allow widget publishers to monetize their widgets with advertising. The ads run inside widgets and come in a variety of formats. Clearspring has already inked deals with some of their largest widget publishers to run ads, including the NHL, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate Films, Blockbuster, and Virgin Mobile. Read more.

Mefeedia, a Web video search startup with a claimed source list 15,000 strong, announced the addition of six more this week. They’re some pretty high profile ones, too. Revision3, Next New Networks, 60 Frames, On Networks, and Hulu and ABC.

Granted, the viewing experience delivered by each publisher individually is generally a more pleasant one. And ABC-based video, as you might expect, cannot be viewed through Mefeedia directly. The network has had an near-exclusive hold on its Web-based content for a number of years, so far only allowing syndication with the likes of Veoh, an official partner since late June. However, on the whole, the convenience of Mefeedia, more palpable than ever, is really something to note.

Naturally a search base of 15,000 sites and sources is absolutely immense, and gives Mefeedia something to trumpet in its sector of the market. But what sort of experience such depth provides is what in the end gives Mefeedia some real-world purpose. It’s not only how much a user’s search delivers, but what is presented on request. And that is what makes the service’s latest enhancements important. They help to further the relevance of Mefeedia. The breadth of premium content in the space is growing in great strides, and Mefeedia must at once make sense of user-generated material as items from professional producers large and small.

Of course it’s far from complete in its effort to grasp the field, though if it plays its role correctly, it’ll always have room to expand. What’s more, another slight negative is that its presentation of content is not so current all the time. For instance, you couldn’t catch the latest episode of a Web-only show like Revision3’s “Diggnation” at this very moment. But this challenge is something that has afflicted a number of Web video sites before. And seeing as how Mefeedia plays the part of a search utility, it’s further removed than places closer to the market’s “ground level,” which poses one more collective hurdle to continuously leap past. Still, it presses on.

And on the technical end, it seems to be doing quite well. Video quality can be quite high, if sourced appropriately. That’s why, as was the case in spring, I think Mefeedia is a name to keep an eye on. Rich with RSS and richer yet with things to see, its value is evident. And it is likely only going to increase as it gives viewers more reasons to stay longer with these new names added to the roll.

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

MeFeedia Raises $250k for Video Aggregation
Mefeedia Adds News Video Search
A Quick Conversation with Mefeedia’s Frank Sinton
FireAnt - Best Vlog Directory Yet
Genius.com Funded, Blogster Sale, NYTimes Widgets, Tag Maps, Yahoo Answers, Social.com, MeFeedia, AOL QVC, TutorLinker, Film.com, Skype Pro
Video Search Summit 2008: Register Now and Save $200
Hollywood Needs Trusted Opinion to Promote Perpetual Reruns

Join us now for our weekly review of Web Technology news. This week was dominated by the launch of Google's new open source browser Chrome. As the Ed tweeted during the week: how often does a major Internet company launch a brand new browser? Check out our extensive coverage and analysis below.

This week we also reported on another major announcement from Google: a YouTube-like app for Google Apps. Finally, check out our poll - it asked our readers what word processing tool they mostly use. The results may surprise you...

Google Launches Open Source Web Browser, Chrome

In what may be the story of the year in Web tech, this week Google launched Chrome, its open source app browser. Can Chrome kill IE? Will it kill Firefox? Or will it go the way of Google Base, Google Sites and other Google Flops? The browser became available for Windows users in 100 countries and 43 languages this week. It's Live now at google.com/chrome.

As mentioned, we at ReadWriteWeb extensively analyzed this big news. Here is our coverage...

Chrome News Leaked in Comic Book Form

The news first leaked on Monday morning via Google watchdog Phillipp Lessen, who scanned and posted a printed comic he received in the mail from Google. You can view it here. In the comic, Chrome was framed as a browser for applications instead of just web pages.

Test Drive Google Chrome With RWW

As soon as Chrome was made available as a download, the ReadWriteWeb team took the new browser for a spin. We walked through it live and shared our screen as soon as the browser became available. The video of our session is posted below. Thanks to DimDim for help with this.

You can also see the slideshow from the press conference here:

Does Google Have Rights to Everything You Send Through Chrome?

Our coverage of Chrome initially touched on issues like browser performance and business implications for Firefox - but one thing we picked up on shortly after was a curious section of the Chrome Terms of Service.

The terms include a section giving Google "a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services." That seems pretty extreme for a browser, doesn't it?

Later in the week Google removed the offending section of the Terms of Service. It seems that the default Google service TOS includes these kinds of claims, even though they may not be as appropriate in some circumstances as in others. We're not sure when such claims would be justified but we're glad they've been removed from Chrome. Here's the original version of the End User Licensing Agreement.

Note: be sure to check the comments of this post for a rigorous debate!

See also: Google and Privacy: A History and It's Time for a New Terms of Service Regime

Serious Security Flaw in Google Chrome

It wasn't all good news for Google. Ryan Narraine, a security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab, reported that Chrome also inherited a potentially serious security flaw from the old version of WebKit it is based on. An attacker could easily trick users into launching an executable Java file by combining a flaw in WebKit with a known Java bug and some smart social engineering. Security expert Aviv Raff, who first discovered this flaw, set up a demo of the exploit here. (Note: This page will automatically download a Java file onto your desktop). You can safely click on the download, as it only opens up a notepad application written in Java.

But Wait, There's More...

• Video of Google Chrome Announcement
• Chrome Is Coming To Android
• Chrome To Get Extensions - Just Not Yet
• Chrome: 1% Market Share In Less Than a Day
• Chrome Not Ready For Enterprise

Did Anything Else Happen This Week?

Google Video for Business Launches: YouTube for Enterprise

This week Google launched a new product for the enterprise market, Google Video for business. It's a new application in the Google Apps office suite, enabling workers to upload and share videos inside their organizations. Videos can be shared on an individual, group or company-wide basis. Google sees it being used for such things as executive communications, product training, trip reports, "social videos" for the company intranet.

We think this has the potential to break open the Web Office market, because up till now nobody has done rich media for the enterprise as an easy to use browser-based package. Google Video for Business manages to do this, mostly because of YouTube's influence.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Web Trends

Poll: Which Word Processing Tool Do You Mostly Use?

We ran a poll a year ago asking which word processing tool you used the most. What we were really driving at was: how many of you are using an online word processing service (Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree, etc) as your main tool, instead of a traditional desktop one (MS Word, OpenOffice, etc). We ran the same poll this year:

Which tool do you mostly use for word processing?
( polls)

The best of the online word processers was still, you guessed it, Google with their Docs program at 17% at time of writing. But Microsoft still dominates this market, polling at 48% of our readers using it as their main tool.

For further analysis of the poll results, see: Word Processing: Most of You Still Use Desktop Software

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

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

Thank you to our sponsors, for supporting ReadWriteWeb's mission to provide in-depth coverage of Web apps and trends. To enquire about sponsor slots on ReadWriteWeb, email us for a Media Kit.

Why sponsor ReadWriteWeb? It is one of the most popular blogs in the world, number 8 currently according to Technorati, and reaches an influential audience. Our site is read by tech and media professionals, early adopters, developers, designers, analysts, CIO's, VC's, media execs, leading thinkers. Email us now for more details.

Here are our current sponsors:

Strands has created a social recommender engine that is able to provide real-time recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices.

Calais, powered by Thomson Reuters, brings state-of-the-art semantic functionality into your blog, content management system, site or application.

The Web 3.0 Conference is for the builders of the next generation Web: designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and venture capitalists. It's on October 16 - 17, 2008 in Santa Clara, CA.

Talklets, from TEXTIC, is a Text to Speech system for your web pages or applications. Its API gives you the ability to convert text to speech, dynamically, on your website.

Compete Search Analytics is a way to build and optimize search marketing campaigns.

Direct Media Exchange is a simple solution for managing ad networks that allows publishers to make more money from their websites.

Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.

The Defrag conference is focused on the tools and technologies that accelerate the "aha" moment. It is being held November 3-4 in Denver, Colorado.

DEMOfall 08 is the launchpad for emerging technology. Over the course of two days, 70 emerging technologies each have six minutes to deploy technology's next big thing. It is on September 7-9, 2008 in San Diego.

EditMe lets you make a web site in minutes and edit the content with a single click.

Quintura is a visual-based search engine, which we are now using to power ReadWriteWeb's main search. Check it out here.

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).

MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW and SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

ReadWriteWeb is one of the media partners for DEMOfall 08, which starts this weekend September 7-9 in San Diego. Sarah Perez will be there to cover the event for RWW.

ReadWriteWeb readers can receive a discount rate of $2,395 ($600 off the standard rate of $2,995 and $400 lower than the July early bird rate of $2795) by clicking here for registration.

There are 70 companies presenting and they fall into the following broad categories: Moving the Chains ("smart incrementation" of innovation); Television Meets the Web; Web Meets the Television; Words, Pictures and Music; Your Mobile, Your Life; Open Studios ("seamless cooperation"); Protecting What's Yours (security); Getting Embedded with Social Networks; It's Easy Being Green; Managing Green; Activism; Web 2.0 Gets to Work; Defining the Next Web.

Here is the entire agenda.

Chances are if you’re reading this, it’s probably a little late to watch the action unfold live, but if you are in fact up at the wee hours of the morning this Saturday, you could be in for a treat. By treat, I mean finding embarrassing and possibly titilating videos favorited by your contacts on FriendFeed.

Paul Bucheit, one of the founders of FriendFeed, logged on at about 1 AM to fire off the following missive:

Vimeo changed the ids and urls used in their feeds, so all vimeo content is now showing up a second time. For unrelated reasons, some old YouTube videos are now being picked up as well (but these are not dups). The good news is that they are all very entertaining

It seemed innocuous at first, but then a few folks who had apparently over a year ago favorited some fairly pornographic videos had their predilictions in pr0n exposed to everyone on their list.

I’m intentionally not linking to these threads on FriendFeed because as it turns out at least one of these folks hold fairly high profile positions, and had already gone to sleep once these videos started showing up on FriendFeed. Because of the way FriendFeed works, people began commenting and “liking” the pornographic items, and then the potentially damaging favorites spread much further beyond those in their immediate list.

It uncovers a brand new type of public relations danger for those that lifestream - everything that is old can be new again, thanks to the glitchy wonders of automation. More importantly, a failure to scrub every possible damaging favorite, like, comment or post from a publicly available feed has the potential to end your career.

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Flick Banned in China?
Soft Porn Makes Flickr UK’s Number 1
MySpace China Next Week - How Much Censorship?
Flickr China Coming
YouTube Porn?
Mashable Rocks: Connect with us on FriendFeed
Porn Stripped Out by Flickr Filtrs

Social media tools are some of the latest crazes these days. We happen to be huge fans of a ton of them here on ReadWriteWeb. Yet the biggest problem with most social media tools is that they aren't for everyone. There's a constant debate on how early adopters can persuade more mainstream users to try these tools out. We might have the most flexible social media tool available for any user: Yoono!

Widgets Galore

Yoono is a Firefox extension that sits in your browser's sidebar and provides access to a ton of widgets that help keep you connected to your friends. The available widgets range from your favorite social networks such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and Flickr, to providing related web page recommendations.However the things that Yoono is able to do are endless. Essentially Yoono is a tool that can do a lot more than it seems at first glance.

How Mainstream and Early Adopters Can Use Yoono

For mainstream users, Yoono is the perfect tool for casual surfing habits. With Yoono in your sidebar you can easily access all of your contacts from popular social networks, instant messaging platforms and receive instant update notifications of what's going on. You can keep up with your Facebook friend's updates (sorry Myspace users). If you're on Flickr, you can view the latest pics from the photostreams of your friends. For those that don't wish to leave their current page just to see one of your friend's latest pics, Yoono provides a fast loading overlay of any picture you hover your mouse over. You can also add comments to Flickr photos and upload your own images right from Yoono. For Twitter users, Yoono pushes the latest replies, direct messages, and updates from your twitter friends with the ability to reply and send updates right back. There are also widgets for Google Reader, Digg, and Youtube