Planet:Web20

I have to say that I expected something a little more exciting. Our previous Joost coverage is here, and we have a long post on them coming up. Thanks Orli. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

March 30, 2007 10:35 PM

If you’ve applied for a job before, you’ve probably fretted over how to answer questions like “are you inclined to rely more on improvisation than on careful planning?” or “do you like to create challenges for yourself when you take on a new project?”. Companies commonly use personality tests filled with questions like these to [...]

March 30, 2007 09:06 PM

A free cross-site chat for any website or blog.

March 30, 2007 03:12 PM

A new blog that covers information and resources about lifestreams.

March 30, 2007 03:11 PM

A property search engine that lists sale and rental properties across Europe. Using the Google Maps mashup, users can view listings in all European languages and currencies. With 1.8 million sale and rental properties in 45 countries, it's Europe's largest property portal.

March 30, 2007 03:06 PM

A reverse auction site where sellers compete for your business.

March 30, 2007 03:02 PM

Statsaholic (formerly Alexaholic) launched a year ago and provided much easier access to Alexa traffic data than the Alexa site itself. Statsaholic also had other features Alexa didn’t offer, like embeddable graphs and data smoothing. Others agreed, and soon started linking to Statsaholic instead of Alexa when doing traffic comparisons. At one point, [...]

March 30, 2007 10:20 AM

Yesterday I sat down with Sean Parker at his offices at the Founders Fund in San Francisco to see a demo of his new and yet-to-be-named startup (the working name for the project is Project Agape). Parker is a larger-than-life twenty seven year old who co-founded Napster and Plaxo and was the founding president of [...]

March 30, 2007 05:13 AM

The “enhancement” that Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson made to Presidential Candidate John McCain’s website was mentioned on the Daily Show Thursday evening. Lots of other mainstream press attention, too. Davidson’s shareholders should be happy - this was a major guerrilla marketing event for Newsvine. Screenshots and video are below. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest [...]

March 30, 2007 05:12 AM

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about German startup SellABand when it launched last August. Like Amie Street, SellABand has an innovative way for struggling new artists to get their music heard, and make some money as well. Artists sign up and upload some of their music. Users listen to it. If they like it, they pay $10. [...]

March 30, 2007 03:22 AM

Online Videos by Veoh.com Prom Queen is coming, and it will be distributed on MySpace. Is the future of new media going to be a world where stories are told over eighty episodes that are each ninety seconds long? And advertising galore - pre rolls, post rolls, and product placements. This may be the highest advertising [...]

March 29, 2007 10:11 PM

Scrapbook maker Scrapblog strutted its stuff at the We Media conference last month, went off the grid, and finally came back online today. Scrapblogs are Flash-based slide shows made up of pages of photo or video layouts you can jazz up with a myriad of designs and effects. Transitions can be added between each page and [...]

March 29, 2007 08:25 PM

A free online community for people interested in travel, music and art, writing and photography, sports, and positive global development.

March 29, 2007 06:47 PM

Mobile social platform to share locations automatically, find events and places, and connect to friends.

March 29, 2007 04:44 PM

A website monitoring service which lets you monitor the uptime and response time of your website or servers from several locations around the world. You can see your historical performance and make sure that you have a acceptable availability so you're not loosing customers and visitors. Receive SMS and email notifications.

March 29, 2007 03:05 PM

britepic_id = "297898" britepic_src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/144942552_81a96c87cb_o.jpg"; britepic_keywords="Laguna, dog, pets, cute, perfect"; britepic_show_ads="1"; britepic_caption="Laguna: Attack Dog"; britepic_width="560"; The basic format for embedding images into a web page using the <img> tag has been around almost as long at HTML itself, since the first graphical web browser. It works, and it is used constantly. But can it be [...]

March 29, 2007 02:50 PM

Silicon Valley/Colorado based photo and video sharing site Photobucket has 36 million registered users and adds another 85,000 per day. If the growth rate continues, they’ll have 60 million users by the end of the year. More users visit Photobucket each month - 17 million, than Facebook. 56% of those users are under 35, and [...]

March 29, 2007 09:57 AM

Music community site MOG launched a 2.0 version of their site today. We previously covered MOG in our roundup of social music services, and when they launched an embeddable music player. The core MOG service is a client application called Mog-o-matic that monitors what music you listen on a variety of media players. That’s paired [...]

March 29, 2007 07:48 AM

StreetAdvisor is a new entry in the plethora of rating services popping up all over the internet. Some ask us to rate what we buy, the places we go, and even each other. This Australian startup applies ratings to your neighborhood. StreetAdvisor is a search engine for neighborhood reviews. Reviews are broken down by street and [...]

March 29, 2007 07:07 AM

Openfloodgate, like Scribd, lets content creators publish their works to the web, but with decidedly more control. The site is the project of Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford Technology Venture Partners and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship. Recently released from beta about two weeks ago, OpenFloodgate currently features a variety of stories, poems, lyrics, photos, [...]

March 29, 2007 07:04 AM

JibJab, the creators of the famous 2004 U.S. presidential election parody cartoon “This Land” have a new original video out called “The News,” embedded above. The new video premiered tonight at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner. All of their original videos can be viewed here. JibJab is slowly expanding from pure content creation to becoming [...]

March 29, 2007 03:34 AM

TripSync, a distributed booking system aimed at trip planning for small to medium sized businesses, quietly launched last week. We recently reported on some other distributed booking systems as well. TripSync is a web based application that lets your business book and manage the three major details of any business trip: flight, rental car, and [...]

March 29, 2007 03:10 AM

Wired Magazine is hiring one or two bloggers for its Epicenter business blog. You must be “fast, accurate, curious, motivated and willing to trash Digg every once in a while to be considered (I added that last qualification myself ). To apply, email them a 200 word blog post on a recent Silicon Valley business [...]

March 28, 2007 10:56 PM

TailRank, a popular blog news organizer that competes with TechMeme and Megite, has opened up its back end and will provide the service as a platform to application developers who would like to add a blog index and ranking service. The new service is called Spinn3r and goes live at around noon today. Rumor is [...]

March 28, 2007 06:50 PM

"Brings your plans to life." Simple, collaborative business planning where you can set and monitor goals, budgets, competition, target markets, your team, and much more.

March 28, 2007 03:22 PM

A free fitness tracking tool and social fitness community where members discover workout routines, track their workouts, and share workout routines with others.

March 28, 2007 03:20 PM

A collaborative product information website with social features like "tapping" and collaborative reviews. All content is openly distributable under a GNU license.

March 27, 2007 03:49 PM

A social media search tool that provides an easy way for people to view the latest social media buzz on any desired topic.

March 26, 2007 03:05 PM

A free online library where anyone can upload documents. Use our embeddable PDF player to publish and view documents right in your web browser.

March 26, 2007 03:02 PM

"IMified is all about providing an easy and consistent interface to the tools and services you use everyday without launching a web browser. We feel that IM lends itself to more than just "chatting". IM is always on, offers presence, and and is really simple to use. We're extending its use to actually help you get things done."

March 23, 2007 06:11 PM

A list engine that offers the opportunity to submit, order, vote and share resources about every subject, using social networking elements as tagging, voting and commenting. Made in Italy.

March 23, 2007 05:14 PM

A mobile extension for KoffeeWare mobile photo sharing, a dedicated to peer-to-peer solution running on both desktop computers and handheld devices or mobile phones. The mobile extension lets users access and share photo albums on a mobile phone anytime with free unlimited storage.

March 23, 2007 05:01 PM

A site created to bring musicians/artists, venues and fans together in one community.

March 23, 2007 04:59 PM

A user driven, social content website for everything related to the stock market, finance, and the economy. Gives investors a voice by allowing them to submit, vote, and comment on articles that influence the stock market.

March 23, 2007 04:55 PM

A free site where wine lovers and enthusiasts can share their personal tasting notes and browse the archive of other members notes.

March 23, 2007 04:52 PM

March 23, 2007 03:01 PM

A Firefox add-on that allows you to turn any web page into a white board. Easily mark up any web page, image, or map for review purposes, or just for fun. If you create an account, you can even save your doodles for future reference.

March 22, 2007 03:08 PM

Web 2.0 directory that uses human editors but also encourages visitors to suggest and vote for sites. The community's opinion effects the site's placement.

March 22, 2007 03:01 PM

A vertical search engine matching students and parents with tutors.

March 21, 2007 03:04 PM

March 21, 2007 02:33 PM

Technology that transforms your iPod or USB Hard Drive or Flash drive into a portable and private PC. Install the software on a USB 2.0 complaint storage device, upload your applications and files, modify your user settings and environment preferences, and take it with you wherever you go.

March 20, 2007 03:27 PM

Online shared contact manager and task lists (from 37signals).

March 20, 2007 11:59 AM

Have just one phone number that reaches you everywhere. You decide where you want to pick up your calls (cell phone, work, or home). Record greetings, call screening, notifications, and more.

March 19, 2007 06:21 AM

I'm here in New York City this morning at the start of the AjaxWorld Conference and Expo which I'm the technical chair for this year.  We expect it will be a exciting event that will bring the very latest developments in Rich User Experiences. I'll be blogging as much as I can about what's happening here -- and indeed on what seems to be a nonstop series of conferences coming up -- on this blog, on the Web 2.0 Journal, as well as on ZDNet . In fact, AjaxWorld is just the first in a several month long series of events as one Web 2.0-related happening after the other takes place.  It looks like this will be capped off  (at least in the first half of the year) by the expected industry blockbuster this year, the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco right in the middle of April.

In fact, there are a great many aspects to the way that the Web is changing and evolving in early 2007 and Ajax is only one of the elements of Web 2.0, yet it gets so much attention because it's enabling the browser to close the gap between what a Web app can do vs. a native PC application.  It's also the most visually obvous (and entirely optional) aspect of a Web 2.0 application.  But one things this is clear this year: Web 2.0 software models are beginning to evolve across the board. 

On the Ajax side this includes everything from very exciting major changes to the Ajax Framework Dojo expected to deliver the 1.0 version this year that businesses can finally commit upon, to real offline Ajax coming of age with everybody from Brad Neuberg (details here ) to Quinebox working on making sure Web apps can literally work any time, anywhere, on or off the network, which is one of the most serious complaints about Web apps for serious work use.  As for rich media (which Ajax can't do), the Flash platform is really starting to rise as well and Adobe -- which owns outright one of the few remaining vendor controlled technologies that helps run the Web today -- has Flex 2 and Apollo which could really change the RIA landscape this year.  OpenLaszlo also tells a compelling story in this space as does Microsoft with WPF/E.  This year really will begin the RIA technology war it seems.

Even more intriguing, we are seeing the emergence of genuine open Web component models such as what NetVibes has come up with recently with their cross platform widget API, known as the Universal Widget API, encouraging open, cross site widget compatibility.  Netvibes has made our best Web 2.0 software list two years in a row and for good reason, they remain the best Ajax start page out there and they also get how to fully leverage the Web.  Finally, if you're not sure why widgets are a make or break aspect of a successful Web app today, check out my two part series (Part 1 , Part 2) on the fast rise of the DIY (aka Do it Yourself) era.

There's far, far more going on with Web 2.0 of course than the user interface story, and Architectures of Participation, social media, and the many other relentless changes taking place on the Web are often the core of the value.  But as I say often, rich user experiences are now a virtually essential checkliist item for high quality Web software.  When presented with a static Web page vs. a satisfying, immersive rich experience, user's will vote for the latter nearly every time.  And in the flat competitive environment of the Web, you can't afford having the product that's not providing it.

Lots more soon from New York City as AjaxWorld proper gets underway tomorrow morning (Ajax Bootcamp is today which I'm leading off), we expect many announcements and new development.  Stay tuned! 

March 19, 2007 04:44 AM

A reservation system designed for small businesses who sell tours, accommodations, or packages. The target customer is a tour operator who cannot distribute their product through a traditional GDS. The system puts control of product distribution in the hands of the tour operator.

March 16, 2007 05:01 PM

A family social network. Get latest updates from family & friends, build and linking family trees together, birthdays and anniversaries, share photo albums, blogs and other family treasures such as scrapbooks, interests and family news.

March 16, 2007 04:58 PM

Online graphing tool. Type your data in directly or use a live external data feed. The graphs will be Flash-based (very small files), customizable and animated, hosted and exportable, and can be put on mySpace, in blogs, documents, school reports, business slides, or anything else. Launching soon.

March 16, 2007 04:55 PM

A German site for students to sell their books locally at their university. Makes use of the Amazon API.

March 16, 2007 04:54 PM