It's time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. On the product side, we continued our Best Products 2008series with two more lists: Best Consumer Web Apps and Best
RSS/Syndication Products. We also reported on Google's Chrome browser
coming out of beta and MySpace's answer to Facebook Connect, MySpaceID.
On the trends side, we delved into the world of online shopping - with
a RWW Live podcast and follow-up analysis. We published our latest
'A-Team' report on freshly funded startups. And we check the latest
from our Enterprise Channel
and Jobwire
- our new product which tracks hires in tech and new media.
The Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by EasyDate Affiliate Network
:
Web Products
Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008
It'sa well-known fact that our readers are on the cutting - if not bleeding
- edge of technology. But sometimes, it's important to take a step back
and realize that the apps to which we've grown so incredibly accustomed
are just barely beginning to register with the general public.
With the Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008, we've tried to select the
apps that have burst onto the radar of the everyday user this year - or
if not quite, then perhaps they will next year. Click here
to find out what our top 10 picks were.
Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008
RSS and syndication are the veins that the new social web flows
through. Countless products and services have been built on top of RSS
in the past few years but there are always a few that stand above the
rest.
As part of this year's Top 10 Products series
,
we offer below the Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008. These
are the feed tools we and the people we know use day in and day out -
we love them, we hate them, we wouldn't want to work without them. Click here to see our picks
.
Yahoo Pipes, one of our top 10 RSS/syndication products of 2008
See also our other 2 top 10 lists published so far in December:
Google Takes Chrome Out of Beta
Afteronly 100 days and fifteen updates, Google has taken the "beta" label
off Chrome, its WebKit based browser. Given that the company has a
penchant for keeping products like Gmail or Google Docs in perpetual
beta, it comes as a bit of a surprise that Google already considers
Chrome to be a 1.0 product.
Since the first beta release
,
Google has focused on fixing stability issues (especially with regards
to playing Flash video), sped up the already fast V8 JavaScript engine,
and added a better bookmark manager and privacy controls.
MySpaceID: MySpace Sides with the Open Stack
A few months ago, MySpacebegan to reveal details about its answer to Facebook Connect - MySpace Data Availability. At the time, we were left to guess what the offering would contain
.
What we did know was that - in stark contrast to the proprietary nature
of Facebook Connect - MySpace had chosen to rely on the Open Stack,
using OpenSocial, OAuth, and OpenID to build its service. Now, MySpace
has released that functionality - renamed MySpaceID - and, in so doing,
it has helped Open Standards take another step forward, as well.
Greasemonkey: The 7 Best New Browser Tweaks and How to Use Them
Greasemonkeyis a powerful Firefox extension that allows users to change the layout
and functionality of web pages. Every month hundreds of people write
and release Greasemonkey "scripts" that anyone can add to their browser
with a single click.
A good Greasemonkey script will change your daily use of the web in
ways you can't imagine being without. In this post we highlight our
seven favorite scripts published in the last month and offer a quick
screencast that will show you how to use Greasemonkey in less than 5
minutes.
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY
A Word from Our Sponsors
We'd like to thank ReadWriteWeb's sponsors, without whom we couldn't bring you all these stories every week!
- Mashery
is the leading provider of API management services. - Pro Opinion
allows you to get paid to take surveys. - WildApricot
is Membership Management Software. - Crowd Science
gives you detailed visitor demographics. - Strands
provides real-time recommendations of products. - Rackspace
provides dedicated server hosting. - VisualCV
lets you stand out from the crowd when job-hunting. - Quintura
is a visual-based search engine. - Eurekster
is a custom social search portal. - DEMO09
is the launchpad for emerging technology. - MediaTemple
provides hosting for RWW. - SixApart
provides our publishing software MT4.
RWW Jobwire
Microsoft Hiring From the Open Web: Assimilation or a Changing Redmond?
As we reported earlier on Jobwire
, OpenID thought leader Dick Hardt announced recently that he has joined Microsoft
.
Hardt's hire will be added to a recent history of the software giant
making controversial hires from among its presumed opponents, advocates
of open source and open culture. On Jobwire we asked: is this
assimilation or are we seeing a company change, with the infusion of
new and different DNA?
SUBSCRIBE TO READWRITEWEB'S JOBWIRE
FOR THE LATEST NEWS ON JOB HIRES IN TECH
Web Trends
RWW Live: Shopping 2.0
In this week's episode of RWW Live,
ReadWriteWeb talked to a group of leaders in the online shopping
market. We had executives from Retrevo, ModCloth, Baynote and Cartfly
on the call, and we discussed what's next in online shopping in this timely holiday podcast.
We wrote a two-part post summarizing the highlights from the show. In Part 1
we discussed why and how shopping 2.0 sites are targeting very niche
customers and how that's helped them increase revenues; and in part 2
we explained how e-commerce has evolved and what web technologies are being deployed nowadays.
Download MP3
See also: 10 Wish List Websites For The Holiday Shopping Season
Good News: A-Team Score for November Better than October
We published the first A-Team postin October, when only three web tech ventures got through our
qualifying criteria: a minimum of $1 million in Series A funding from
an institutional VC. Well you may not have noticed, but on one count
the economy got better in November. In November, eight deals got
through our filter.
However, we've also lowered our cut-off to $0.5 million. Tougher
times lead to smaller rounds, which is not necessarily a bad thing
because tough times force you to do more with less money. This got our
list up to nine deals in total for November.
Would You Pay for a Web App That Delivers the News?
Canyou imagine a news-delivering web application so compelling that you
would pay a couple of dollars per month for it? What would it look
like?
That's the challenge facing The Reynolds Journalism Institute
at the University of Missouri. They're working on a project called
"Information Valet," which hopes to save the failing newspaper industry
by finding a way to move news journalism online while making it
profitable and sustainable.
The Facebook Virus Spreads: No Social Network is Safe
"Koobface" is the name of the Trojan worm that's been making its way through the social networking site Facebook lately,
but to the site's users, it's been simply known as "the Facebook
virus." That name will soon become a misnomer, though, because the worm
is now spreading outside of Facebook's walls to attack other social
networks like Bebo
, MySpace
, Friendster
, MyYearbook
, and Blackplanet
.
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
RWW Enterprise Channel
Report: Corporate Blogs Not Trusted
According to a new report by Forrester Research
,
corporate blogs are the least trusted information source of all. Only
16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say that they trust
them. The report stated that regular blog readers and bloggers trust
company blogs a little more, and those that trust corporate blogs are
more likely to trust other media. We had some reservations about the
findings of the report though - in this post we check out a good and
bad example of corporate blogging, from Dell and the Walmart blog
respectively.
Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.
SEE MORE ENTERPRISE COVERAGE IN OUR ENTERPRISE CHANNEL
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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