Home / readwriteweb.com rss archive / September-19-2007


Soup: Tumble Blogging with Friends
Watch out Tumblr, here comes Soup. Soup is an easy to use tumble blogging application that includes two killer features: social networking (kinda) and outside activity streams. It's sort of a cross between Tumblr, Pownce, and a social activity aggregator. [Ed: I had to look up "tumble blogging". Wikipedia defines a "tumblelog" as "a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging." So now I know...]At its core, Soup is a microblogging app, and a pretty easy to use one. Their tumble blog set up supports text, link, quote, image, and video posts. Sign up is a snap (you can actually begin posting to your tumble blog before creating an account), and like Tumblr, Soup blogs can be mapped to an outside domain.Using Soup is easy: posting is all done directly on your Soup's page (i.e., your tumble blog page) while logged in. Posting forms and editing options are opened directly on the page you're...

Semantic Web: Difficulties with the Classic Approach
Summary: The original vision of the semantic web as a layer on top of the current web, annotated in a way that computers can "understand," is certainly grandiose and intriguing. Yet, for the past decade it has been a kind of academic exercise rather than a practical technology. This article explores why; and what we can do about it.The semantic web is a vision pioneered by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in which information is expressedin a language understood by computers. In essence, it is a layer on top of the current web that describes concepts and relationships, following strict rules of logic.The purposeof the semantic web is to enable computers to "understand" semantics the way humans do. Equippedwith this "understanding," computers will theoretically be able solve problems that are out of reach today.For example, in a New York Times article,written earlier this year, John Markoff discussed a scenario where you would be able to ask a computerto find you a low budget vacation, keeping...

Netscape's Propeller is Changing More Than You Might Think
AOL's social news site relaunched today under the new name Propeller. No longer "the new Netscape," Propeller seems on face like a clone of a clone. There may, though, be much more going on underneath the surface.The news of the move was received quietly, deemed proof by some critics that the project was just a failed Digg-clone; that its paid editors, friendly design and broad topic areas just didn't have the raw masculine spirit that Digg offers in its wild, untamed model of social news. That sounds ridiculous to me, but I don't spend any time on Netscape, either - I like Digg.The way the service works is interesting. For those unfamiliar, news on Netscape/Propeller is submitted by users but highlighted and shepherded by a team of paid power-users and editors. That paid team also does some original writing. The whole arrangement has been highly controversial since it launched in June of 2006. Paying power users was a move widely criticized, and not because they were...

Arrr! The Top 5 Online Resources for Real Live Pirates
You've probably noticed that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Others may joke about the matter, but Read/WriteWeb is a serious blog. Thus we present to you our Top 5 Online Resources for Real, Live Pirates.1. The Weekly Piracy ReportThe International Chamber of Commerce has for years published a fascinating Weekly Piracy Report on its website. These fairly detailed accounts of attacks on commercial vessels at sea must read like the sports page for real pirates. It's a fun, if twisted, site to read for anyone on any day of the year. For example, this week's report includes this account:13.09.2007: 0550 UTC: Posn: 18:33.9N - 072:23.0W: Port au Prince, Haiti.Robbers, armed with knives, boarded an anchored general cargo ship unnoticed. Ship's general alarm sounded and crew mustered. Robbers jumped overboard and escaped with ship's stores. Attempt to contact local authorities were futile. 2. Pirate Music from CDBabyOnline CD retailed CBBaby's got a page for kid-frien...

Digg Getting More Social
Sometime today, according to BusinessWeek, social news site Digg will launch a slew of new social networking features that will put the site in closer competition with services like Facebook and MySpace. The features will enable easier communication between diggers and allow them to form groups based around their interests. "This is really the first time that we have enabled communications between users," Digg founder Kevin Rose told BusinessWeek.The reason for the change, implies BusinessWeek's Catherine Holahan, is that as Digg has expanded its reach beyond technology focused stories, its early users have complained that the main page has become diluted with news in topics that don't matter to them. The new features will allow users to form connections and share stories with people that have common interests."Instead of submitting stories for review by the larger Digg community, users will be able to send -- 'shout' in Digg terms -- story links along with messages to particular...

More Google Ad News: Gadget Ads
Google announced the limited release of their new Gadget Ads program, which they tout as "mini versions of your website in any AdSense ad size." The rich media ads combine "data feeds, maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript in a single creative," according to Google, and are available to select high volume AdWords clients and distributable across the entire AdSense network.Gadget Ads are created on top of the Google gadget framework used to create widgets for their iGoogle start page property. The ads themselves are actually entered into the Google gadgets directory automatically.Google's new ads are sold via the familiar CPC or CPM model, however, because they are self contained, interactive marketing messages, I am not sure how measurement of CPC differs from regular ad creative (is this really per interaction?). Google offers free hosting for videos for the ads via YouTube (but allows advertisers to display videos with their own, branded player), and even...