We were very excited earlier this year when RWW made its way onto the latest edition of the Web Trend Map. For those of you unfamiliar with this map, it "plots the Internet's leading names and domains onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains and personalities are carefully selected through dialogue with map enthusiasts, and every domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, and character". Information architecture company iA built this awesome visualization and we have learned that it is about to roll out an interactive version of its map later this month.

Thanks to a tip from RWW reader @CleverClogs, we discovered that Tokyo based iA, who has been working on an interactive version of its Web Trend Map 4 since early June, will launch on July 14th. According to iA, "the idea is simple: Track the online tends in real time, deliver them in personalized and localized isometric maps. The technology is kind of a complicated story; but of course, we'll give our best to make the interface as simple as the idea".

No further details were given at press time, but we did find another clue on the company's Flickr photostream; "July 14th is the launch day of the interactive Webtrendmap. I hope we can launch the new iA site at the same time...our website might look somewhat like this (WTM spoiler alert)":

You can already go to openzoom.org to find a zoomable version or go here to order a full-size printed version. Be sure to follow @iA on Twitter and check out the notebook on its blog for any breaking news updates about its visualizations.

This news tip was submitted by a RWW reader. If you discover any Web apps, Web technology trends, social media or social networking tips you think might be interesting for us to write about, please send them to us at tips@readwriteweb.com.

This is a good day to stay home, watch a baseball game, throw some hotdogs on the grill, eat an apple pie and watch fireworks on your computer. earthTV, an international live TV channel, has cameras located in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York City, Niagara Falls and Honolulu and will be broadcasting live streams of fireworks displays beginning at dusk in those cities. If you just can't wait until then, go check out its timelapse showing Independence Day displays from years past.

The fun is not limited to fireworks. Today Jimmy Fallon will emcee a special concert featuring the Foo Fighters and Michelle Branch from the South Lawn of the White House. Look for exclusive live video at whitehouse.gov/live beginning with President Obama's opening remarks at 7pm EDT. According to the White House blog, "the concert, put on by the USO honoring the hundreds of service members and their families who will be in attendance, will begin at 8:10 pm ET, followed by fireworks over the National Mall at approximately 9:10pm".

For those of you that are really feeling the American spirit today, check out this silly video we found. After all, it's not really a party until someone shoots rockets out of their butt or blows a hand off, right? (WARNING: Do Not Try This at Home)

In September of 2008, Expono went live with its site and made the bold choice to go with 100% cloud computing. Other sites like SmugMug have done this with great success and it feels like a growing trend. The lower cost and ease of scaling made cloud computing a sensible choice for Expono and the company set about building its incredible array of features. Those features, combined with the company's talented and ambitious team based in Oslo, Norway, make Expono a potential contender in an increasingly crowded media sharing marketplace.

Expono is a "freemium" service that allows its non-paying users to transfer 10GB of data a month, use 1GB of storage space and have one custom group. The $45 Plus account allows for 100GB of monthly data transfers, 10GB or more of storage space and up to 10 custom groups. Plus users also have access to a lot more features.

You can go here to view a complete list of Expono's features. It's an impressive list, if not a little overwhelming, and you simply need to have a look for yourself. Here are a few of the main features we like:

Custom Location in Maps:

Geotagging has become a pretty popular thing to do with photographs. It's just interesting for us to see on a map where a photo was taken. It gives viewers added perspective, helps the photographer better organize their collections and could even help businesses attract customers. Expono has a feature that lets users drag a pin, place it on a map where the photo was taken and give that place a name for future reference. It's a simply but useful tool and a nice feature.

Language Translation:

Expono has not forgotten our Spanish-speaking friends and allows English-Spanish translations. The company is frantically working on translation to other languages like Danish, Russian, French and Hebrew and is actively searching for help translating other languages.

Full Quality Photo Sharing on Facebook:

Expono allows users to share full quality photos and activities and connect on Facebook. It looks pretty straightforward and easy to do:

"Simply go to Facebook Settings on Edit Services menu, press the "Connect with Facebook" button and follow the instructions. It takes 10-30 seconds!"

"After your accounts have been connected, you will be able to tag your Facebook friends on your photos like any other contacts you already have in your address book. With your Facebook friends now on Expono, you can add them to your contact groups, give them access to the photos you want them to see and tag them on your photos.

Face Tagging and Sharing to FriendFeed and Twitter:

Expono has extended its integration with Friendfeed and Twitter that allows interaction between users of those services:

"Earlier we had automatic photo uploads announcements to Friendfeed and Twitter every time you uploaded new photos to Expono. The functionality allowed our users to inform their followers and subscribers about newly uploaded photos in a innovative way. Now we have extended that to include direct sharing of public album and photos right from the Share menu, giving your subscribers and followers access to view your full quality photos with just 1 click."

Basically, you connect your Expono account with FriendFeed or Twitter, tag your friends' photos, add them to your contact groups and give them access to the photos you want them to see.

See what Expono's small but loyal group of followers are talking about on Twitter and also on FriendFeed.

Oh, did we mention Expono's context aware media RSS that allows users to enter a URL into your Wii Opera browser URL field, run it fullscreen and watch a slideshow on your TV? Don't forget authenticated RSS feeds, GPS support, photo editing, iPhoto photocasting, EXIF and IPTC support and much, much more. We also like that Expono takes your privacy very seriously.

This hungry startup (a core team of six, including Co-Founder and CEO Magnus Jonsson) means business when it says there are other exciting things in the works. Expono team member Daniel Bentes hinted at the company's interest in a developing a mobile site, similar to Flickr's new mobile site, that uses Apple's Core Location service right from Safari. Bentes says, "this kind of location awareness will be the future of not only search and discovery services, but even ad-based and paid content, giving even more value to viewers and readers alike. As of now, Apple's Core Location is the prime example of this ability". He adds that the company "...would like to implement the same kind of functionality on Expono.com for the coming iPhone version. But would REALLY love to implement it on the main web version as well, enabling this functionality to an even broader audience".

Like we said, there are other sites out there that do similar things. But when you combine all these things together and they are done well (in this case they did a great job), you get a very powerful and useful tool that just may be worth forking over your hard-earned money for. If you don't want to take our word for it, check out what our friend @CleverClogs had to say about Expono over on Friendfeed. She is quite knowledgeable and discriminating about such matters. You might want to also go to the Expono Customer Support Community on Get Satisfaction to see what others are saying and to throw in your own two cents.

Be sure to read the Expono blog for even more information and follow the company's Twitter updates @expono. The service is still in Beta, but you should have no problem getting an invite if you sign up at Expono.com.

BBN Technologies was recently awarded a $29.7 million contract to develop a universal text engine that will capture intelligence and render it usable to humans as well as artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Officially called the Machine Reading Program, this new system will "automatically monitor the technological and political activities of nation states and transnational organizations - which could mean everything from al-Qaeda to the U.N." for the US military. BBN expects there may also be many useful civilian applications for its new reader. The company has also developed a real-time audio stream called the the BBN Broadcast Monitoring System that automatically transcribes real-time audio streams and translates them into English.

With this new project, BBN hopes to "develop techniques that can generalize across the linguistic structure and content of diverse documents to extract relations and axioms directly from text rather than relying on a knowledge engineer to encode such information." Here's how it will work:

Although it is not immediately clear when (or if) this new machine reader will be available to civilians, we are certainly looking forward to trying something like this out. Some paranoid types will believe this is nothing more than "the man" trying to spy on us, but those people need to realize everything we do online is being watched by someone. If you are really concerned about your online privacy you should secure important data on your computer, call your government leaders and try to change privacy laws, or stay off the Web altogether.

Researchers, medical professionals, consumers, students and others are all likely to benefit from such an application. Not having to spend unnecessary time searching through mountains of information on the Web for something relevant makes life easier and allows us to be more productive.

Fans of NetNewsWire who have been patiently waiting for an updated version shouldn't have to wait too much longer. The next generation of the NetNewsWire iPhone app, which promises to have added functionality like the ability to mark news items as unread and send articles to Instapaper, is said to be based on TapLynx.

According to NewsGator's Brent Simmons:

"The idea behind TapLynx is that you can take a collection of feeds and some artwork, make choices about colors and gradients and behavior (all in a configuration file you edit), then create an iPhone app. Without doing any programming.

But you can do programming if you want to -- use TapLynx as the base and add more features. (In fact, that's what I'm doing with NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone -- it's a custom app built on TapLynx.)"

Being able to rapidly develop customizable and unique iPhone apps with no need to learn Cocoa is great news to those of us who are interested in building such apps, but know very little about developing them. We are anxiously awaiting for TapLynx to make its way out of beta, but meanwhile you can sign up for the SDK here and the company will let us know when it becomes available. Be sure to follow @taplynx on Twitter.

While most people visiting the site right now will be interested in the unfolding events in Iran following an alleged fraudulent presidential election there, you can search virtually any subject you choose. There is a dedicated "breaking news" search right below the search bar, as well as other more "nifty" searches for things like "WTF", "funny", "Vegas", "OMG", "love", "Obama", "beach", etc. But beware, if you are more of the adventurous sort then try to search for something like "boobs" but remember this; you can't unsee what might appear before you and that could be quite disturbing. Better just stick to current international events and tech stuff, people. Trust me.

Be sure to follow @picbrk updates on Twitter for more information.

According to Integrasco, the new iPhone 3GS has been the subject of over 8500 hits, in discussion forums alone, in the last couple of days. "The release of this handset as well as the iPhone 3.0 software have led to a significant increase in the overall iPhone and Apple buzz."

What Are People Talking About?

Generally people are happy with the overall use of the handset. The new oleophobic screen is brighter and displays warmer, richer colors than previous iPhones. Most people report that the shinier screen makes fingerprint marks more easily removable, while others are unimpressed.

Overwhelmingly, people are talking about the new iPhone's lightning fast speed, especially when opening and closing applications and browsing the net. Reportedly, "the overall system seems to be a lot faster and smoother than the iPhone 3G released a year ago."

One of the most anticipated new features is the iPhone's new video recording capability:

"Users of the new Apple phone are simply blown away by the excellent quality of the video recording; some people even go as far as to say it is the best they have seen in a mobile phone until now. Voice control works almost flawlessly as well, spot on most of the time. Google Maps and Digital Compass also work very well together."

The iPhone's 3mp camera with autofocus and macro features are also a big hit.

Drawbacks and Glitches

So far some consumers are disappointed that Apple didn't make the iPhone more affordable, especially in the UK. It was to be expected that a new iPhone model with more features would cost more, so this is no shock. Some consumers have found other issues that they are not happy about:

"The 3mp camera with no flash and no front camera for video recording are pretty disappointing. But my biggest beef is no memory card slot so apple can gouge you for the 32GB iphone and no mini-usb for charging etc. means my next phone will be an android. Sorry Apple, not good enough."

Others find that the digital compass does not work well when driving in a car and lots of people have complained about a weak Wi-Fi signal. One Mac Rumors commenter says:

"Really, really terrific speed... The ONLY issue I'm having is my Wifi signal seems to have weakened a lot. My wifi router is in the next room (literally 10 feet away, through one wall) and I have 1 bar on the 3G S and 5 full bars on the 3G."

another commenter adds:

"Beware! WiFi reception on this phone seems to be pretty bad compared to the 3G. I have read complaints earlier in this thread, and I can see it for myself as well."

One Twitter user even took his iPhone back to the store because he thought it was broken. @WheezingGeek says Apple gladly replaced it but the new one was not any better.

Some others have noticed a "high-pitched sound right after sending an SMS or during video recordings...however this high frequency noise is hardly noticeable for most people. In any case, if there is in fact a problem, it is expected to be fixed in a future software update".

There are some reported service issues in the US when customers try to activate their new iPhones and in Italy some people have remarked that the voice control feature does not work very well for them.

Conclusion

The increased speed, amazing video recording features and new 3.0 software might be enough for some people to finally pull the trigger on a new iPhone purchase. There are still detractors though, who think Apple is not really innovating, just trying to compete with other devices that already have these features. It's obvious that Apple will remain a solid contender in this market and releasing the new 3GS is a big step in the right direction. Let us know what you think.

This week, John Fontana of Network World reported that Google has reserved 1 million phone numbers with communications and information services company Level 3. The company has not announced anything yet, but on the GrandCentral website it says "if you are a GrandCentral user, over the next few days you will be prompted to upgrade to Google Voice". These look like clear signs that it is getting ready to go live any time now, so check those emails and get ready to claim your number, they could go fast.

Google has continued to keep the old GrandCentral service, but has not allowed new users to sign up. Currently only GrandCentral users have access to Google Voice and new numbers are only available for American area codes. The GrandCentral users we spoke with love the service and are thrilled to try Google Voice. Our own Frederic Lardinois says it looks like a winner; "it takes the best features of GrandCentral and adds a number of important and interesting new features...clearly this is one of the most important products that Google has released in the last couple of months".

Judge for yourself. Below are three videos that show how easy it is to place calls, set up a conference call and how the phone calls are routed. There is some speculation about future integration with Android and we are certainly looking forward to that as well.

Open Source Citizenship

When Open Source Bridge co-founder Audrey Eschright began to think about organizing this conference, she first took a look at open source citizenship:

"We're planning a conference that will connect developers across projects, across languages, across backgrounds to learn from each other. We want people to experience something beyond "how to use tool X" or "why databases keel over when you do Y" (even though those topics are important, making up our tools and trade, and will be a central part of the conference content). We'd like to share what open source means to us, what it offers, where we struggle, and why we do this day in and day out, even when we're not paid for it.

In order to do that, it seemed important to bridge the kinds of roles we have in open source, user/contributor/owner/institution, getting down to something more fundamental. What else are people who interact in this multi-directional way? Perhaps we're citizens. Not residents--we do more than live here. We are, like citizens of a country, engaged in the practice of an interlocking set of rights and responsibilities."

It seems that there are plenty of good open source citizens in Portland. Organizers formed a non-profit organization and the call went out to find volunteers. Citizens responded immediately and there was even support from the city government. Overall, "thousands of hours went into creating this event, all unpaid. Several people who contributed were new to open source development...and made a huge impact anyway".

The Conference

One of the biggest goals of Open Source Bridge was to bring some interactivity and collaboration to its sessions and allow attendees to engage closely with one another. One way it accomplished this was to set up an innovative "track structure" for its sessions. Sessions were "technology agnostic, based around shared community experiences and focus on the similarities between projects, not the differences" and featured tracks split into five areas: business, chemistry, cooking, culture and hacks. This is a great way to structure conference sessions and did indeed promote interactivity and collaboration.

A big surprise (and a welcome change) at this open source event was the fact that there were over 20 women who either led conference sessions, spoke or played other significant roles, including co-founders Audrey Eschright and Selena Deckelmann. Notable participants include Sarah Sharp of Intel, Maria Webster (a.k.a. Ubergeeke) and Rikki Kite, Associate Publisher of Linux Pro Magazine.

A highlight of the conference was when Portland Mayor Sam Adams opened the second day with a keynote address, vowing the city will one day be a "hub of open source". Adams says, "bottom line: the city government has unnecessarily been closed in proprietary software and has been a laggard in using open source software". Portland wants to join Vancouver, BC as a completely open city.

As the sessions at Open Source Bridge were winding down each day, the fun was just beginning. In a room high atop the Hilton Hotel in downtown Portland sat the 24-hour hacker lounge, a dedicated space for "code sprints, bug bashes, bouncing ideas, starting new projects or just mingling and taking in the vibe". On the last night of the conference there was a special Beer & Blog gathering for attendees and an open source themed taping of local tech podcast sensation Strange Love Live.

Although it might not replace OSCON for some people, it's clear that this conference was a huge success and will continue to grow and find its place among open source enthusiasts. It was exciting to see over 500 attendees from around the world, including a delegation from the Korean Software Industry Association, really connect with each other to advance the open source cause.

The only negative thing we could find was a lack of enough electrical outlets for people's laptops. We have been assured that organizers are working on the problem and that next year's attendees will have plenty of power available. Everyone we spoke with said this was a worthwhile event and will be looking forward to next year's conference. We applaud the efforts of all the organizers, volunteers and open source citizens that made Open Source Bridge possible. Be sure to check out the conference Attendee Wiki for more details and contributed session notes. You can also search the Twitter hashtags #osb09 and #osbridge for a blow-by-blow account of the week's events.

Of course, you can always search Google in real-time with our favorite Greasemonkey script called, "Realtime Twitter Search Results on Google"

While Google has not confirmed this new search engine just yet, the company's search products chief Marissa Mayer hints that there may have been something like this in the works at Google for some time now: "...we are interested in being able to offer, for example, micro-blogging and micro-messaging in our search. Particularly in Blog Search and possibly in Web Search, but we don't have any particular plans to announce". The Google Operating System blog points to this description used in Google's localization service as further evidence that there is something going on. It is allegedly a phrase that Google wants translated to be multilingual:

"Recent updates about QUERY. This is the MicroBlogsearch Universal result group header text. A Microblog is a blog with very short entries. Twitter is the popular service associated with this format."

This is not proof-positive that Google is developing a microblogging search engine, but it makes sense that they would. Twitter and other microblogging platforms are rich with information could be used to rank messages. Reportedly the search results will appear based on frequently used keywords or current events, but a whole bunch of other factors could play a role in providing relevant results. The number of followers a person has, the author's authority in Twitter's social graph, replies, re-tweets, posting frequency and other stats could be used. We hope Google is paying attention to current microblogging trends and will include those results in any microblogging search engine it may or may not be working on.

This is all fine and dandy, but when it was discovered that it worked for porn site previews also, and that it could be easily accessed by kids, it caused quite a bit of concern among parents. Bing had noted on its blog how to use Smart Motion Previews in combination with its SafeSearch feature, but apparently it was still very easy for kids to view explicit adult content on its site. Yesterday Microsoft announced that it has made changes that will make it easier for parents to block and monitor what their kids are watching when they visit Bing.

To be fair, kids can easily access explicit adult content by searching Google or other search engines without "strict filtering" enabled, or by simply knowing the URL of a porn site. When Bing discovered that it was making it even easier for kids (also schools and businesses) to view these materials, it acted fast to make two significant changes:

"First, potentially explicit images and video content will now be coming from a separate single domain, explicit.bing.net. This is invisible to the end customer, but allows for filtering of that content by domain which makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block this content regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be. This makes it much easier for filtering software to block unwanted content if SafeSearch has been turned off.

In addition, Bing will begin returning source url information in the query string for images and video content so that companies who already use this method of filtering will be able to catch explicit content on Bing along with everything else they are already blocking for their customers." An example of such a query string is:

http://ts2.explicit.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=974382499649&id=12ae77a7fed979b0502840bedacd2552&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.explicitsite.com%2fexplicit-picturegoeshere.jpg

CNET News reports "the company has reached out to more than 25 filtering and security vendors to work with them to provide a solution for filtering explicit content while using Bing".

While there are parental controls built into Vista and Mac OS X and software like Safe Eyes to keep kids from viewing porn online, ultimately it is the responsibility of the parents to impose rules and guidelines and to monitor their internet usage. It's also good to have discussions about what you consider is appropriate behavior online and to keep up with the latest trends and technology.

Sprint, the third-largest U.S. wireless operator, owns exclusive rights to the Pre through at least the end of the year, but Verizon and AT&T have also expressed interest in carrying the phone. I tried to purchase one of these contenders to the iPhone throne this weekend but I was unsuccessful and relegated to a waiting list. Local Sprint retail stores, even those with an allotment of 60 units, sold out in just an hour or two. The Best Buy stores in the city where I tried to buy one in (Portland, Or.) had only two each, and those were sold minutes after their doors opened.

Friday, before it was officially released, I did get a chance to play with the Pre a little bit and tested one again on Saturday at a local Sprint retail store. My initial impression is that it is pretty cool indeed. First of all, it looks sleek and feels really good in my hand. The touch screen display is large and the Qwerty keyboard is adequate, if not a little small. The user interface is instinctive and both the browser (full HTML browser based on the WebKit application framework) and the webOS are lightning fast. It comes with most everything you would expect from a $299 smartphone ($199 after rebate), including a camera with flash. And of course, it is perfectly capable as a telephone also. The only obvious reason the Palm Pre is not an iPhone killer just yet is its lack of available apps.

Fortunately, our own Sarah Perez has really done her homework on the new Palm Pre and its new webOS and you can find that post here. Be sure to also read posts from Bloomberg.com and Gizmodo and watch a video review on YouTube for even more information. We knew it wouldn't take long for someone to want to tear this thing apart to see what makes it tick (it's the nature of the geek, right?), so for all of you morbid tear-apart-the-toaster types, there's this.

Australia: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter

Canada: Facebook, MySpace, Flickr

India: Facebook, Orkut, Hi5 (Twitter is a close fourth)

France: Facebook, Skyrock, MySpace,

China: QQ, Xiaonei, 51

Germany: Facebook, StudiVZ, MySpace

Italy: Facebook, Netlog, Badoo

Russia: V Kontakte, Odnoklassniki, LiveJournal

Spain: Facebook, Tuenti, Fotolog

United Kingdom: Facebook, Bebo, MySpace

United States: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter

Cosenza also noticed some visible patterns that are worth sharing. I've added my own notes in parenthesis:

- Facebook has almost colonized Europe and it's extending its domination with more than 200 millions users
- QQ, leader in China, is the largest social network of the world (300 million active accounts)
- MySpace lost its leadership everywhere (except in Guam)
- V Kontakte is the most popular in Russian territories (looks a lot like Facebook)
- Orkut is strong in India and Brazil (this one was a little scary because it already knew my name)
- Hi5 is still leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania (Hi5 is a San Francisco based Company)
- Odnoklassniki is strong in some former territories of the Soviet Union
- Maktoob is the most important Arab community/portal

Finally, let's see what services our friends in these other countries are using to network with each other. Check out this list of social networking services that you may not be aware of:

- Iwiw in Hungary
- Nasza-klasa in Poland
- Cyworld in South Korea
- Friendster in Philippines
- Hives in Netherlands
- Lidé in Czech Republic
- Mixi in Japan
- One in Latvia and Lithuania
- Wretch in Taiwan
- Zing in Vietnam

Be sure to check out Vincos Blog and while you're at it, listen to his Last.fm playlist and read his thoughts about Facebook.

Terms of service policies dictate how companies doing business on the Internet interact with you and how they will use your personal information and intellectual properties. Earlier this year, Facebook caused quite a stir when it modified its TOS and ended up launching its Facebook Bill of Rights to ease the minds of its worried users. Many of us already track TOS changes for major companies by using modified RSS feeds, but this EFF solution seems like a more reasonable option.

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann says, ""Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad...but Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their 'friends lists' to their calendar -- and sometimes even their medical information. TOSBack will help consumers flag changes in the websites they use every day and trust with their personal information".

We applaud the Electronic Frontier Foundation for providing a tool to keep us aware of these changes. We will certainly give this new product a try and will report on any TOS policy changes that we think are important for you to know about.

According to Twitter, "impersonation violates Twitter's Terms of Service and we take the issue seriously. We suspend, delete, or transfer control of accounts known to be impersonation" and has done so in this case. The company has said it will "not play ball" with La Russa and does not intend to settle this suit or pay any damages.

Twitter's Solution:

According to the Twitter Blog, the company is experimenting with a solution to prevent impersonation from happening in the future. This is what it came up with:

"We do recognize an opportunity to improve Twitter user experience and clear up confusion beyond simply removing impersonation accounts once alerted. We'll be experimenting with a beta preview of what we're calling Verified Accounts this summer."

The verification process will first begin with "public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation". Twitter wants to point out that this does not mean that all accounts without the authentication seal are fake. One way to determine authenticity is to check the official web site of the person for a link back to their Twitter account. The company also wants you to know:

"When we do start testing Account Verification, we will be sure to provide ample methods for feedback. Initially, verification will not be tested with businesses. However, we do see an opportunity in that arena so we'll keep you posted when we have something to share."

Apparently the Twitter guys have been thinking about selling corporate clients a "verified account" for some time now. Check out this exchange from the transcripts of this year's D: All Things Digital:

Walt Mossberg: 24 percent say they'd pay for power accounts. Do you think that's a good idea?

Evan Williams: Yes, I think it's a good idea. We've talked about it for a long time. Here's how it might work: Lots of commercial users are on Twitter already. That's not odd, and it's happening successfully already. But we could give those users tools to make it better. For instance, here's how P&G (PG) might sell Tide....Wait that's a bad idea. How about The Wall Street Journal? No, they're a media company; that won't work either. How about Dunkin' Donuts? People like Dunkin' Donuts. They have an affinity for that, and they're already following Dunkin' Donuts. So one thing we can do is tell new users that the Dunkin' Donuts account on Twitter is actually Dunkin' Donuts. To verify that.

We think it's great that Twitter is finally going to do something about the growing problem of impersonations, but why now? Is it because of lawsuits from powerful celebrities (La Russa is also a lawyer), or is it simply trying to do the right thing for its users? It's a shame that ordinary users are not afforded the same verification measures as the "beautiful people", who tend to use the service far less to actually connect with others. We have heard stories of ordinary people and community blogs struggling with the company for many months to have control of their own names on Twitter and are a little skeptical about their motives. Tell us what you think.

Twitter won't give out its own numbers (and apparently won't follow or listen to you either), but Purewire was able to pull together profile data from 7 million user profiles and this is what it found:

First, many Twitter users "have abandoned their accounts shortly after creating them, and a significant percentage are not showing signs of account activity".

* 40 percent of Twitter users have not tweeted since their first day on Twitter (i.e., the account was most likely created and subsequently forgotten about).

* Approximately 25 percent of Twitter users are not following
anyone, while two-thirds are following less than 10 people (i.e., the
account was created but is not actually being used regularly).

Second, the data shows that "Twitter is used more as a mass medium for receiving information, rather than as a way to interact with others. Proof is shown by evaluating the followers and friends of Twitter users".

* More than 1/3 of Twitter users have not posted a single tweet, and almost 80 percent of the users have less than 10 tweets (i.e., while Twitter is billed as a great collaboration tool, a large number of users are there to consume content, not distribute it).

* Approximately 30 percent of Twitter users do not have any
followers, and 80 percent of Twitter users have less than 10 followers
(i.e., for many users, their posts are not being widely tracked or
read).

* 50 percent of Twitter users are following more people than they
have as followers, and another 30 percent of Twitter users are following
the same number of people that are following them (i.e. users are
aggressively trying to attract followers by hoping they will "follow
back" but have been unsuccessful).

It's clear that celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher have made Twitter the "flavor of the month", but there are many people out there who will never quite get it. That's alright with us. There are bound to be folks trying out different Web apps that won't end up using them, we do it all the time. We still think Twitter has become a valuable mainstream communication platform and its usage will continue to evolve and grow.

Be sure to check out Purewire's new Twitter grading tool Tweet Grade to see if you and your followers pass the test.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Sean Ammirati, Doug Coleman, Dana Oshiro, Steven Walling and Lidija Davis.

What makes PutACart especially interesting is that it "allows content on its customer's blogs and social sites to come first, and then adding in products to sell only as they fit the content". For example, say you have a post on your personal blog, Facebook page or other social networking site about fishing. If you have an old fishing pole you want to sell, you could easily add a cart to that post. You can post either a simple blurb with your store's title, description and logo which links to your storefront or you can show all of the products in your catalog.

How Does It Work?

Setting up and using PutACart could not be easier.

1. Setup an account (right now it's free) and add products of any kind to your catalog.

2. Add your products to any social network, blog, or web page. The PutACart system automatically creates the "code" you will need to publish your products to these internet locations and can be done with no programming knowledge.

3. Visitors buy your products -- you pay PutACart NOTHING for each sale.

That's really all there is to it. If you would like to find out more information, visit the Questions page on the PutACart Website and be sure to check out this screencast demonstration.

Alpharetta, Georgia based PutACart.com creator Raleigh Gresham says, "one of the achievements we are most proud of is the lineup of sites and places our users can sell their products. Because the system is so basic, products can be sold anywhere someone can paste basic HTML code."

In addition to finding reviews written on the company's Website and Android, you can also browse or search reviews from its partners and clients. That includes reviews of many of Roomex's 20,000 hotels, Puddleducks outdoor gear, Klipsch audio products and Bubble Brothers wines.

The application is also available in white-label OEM form and LouderVoice thinks it might be ideal pre-install for many networks. According to the company, "if you don't have an Android phone, trust us, you're going to want one, it's a fantastic system, particularly if you use GMail, GCal, GTalk etc. This will be the biggest mobile platform ever released".

If you want to see this new application "in the wild", check out this video review we've uncovered and keep an eye out for LouderVoice's own screencast coming soon on its blog.

Much has been written about Evernote's functionality. For those that are unfamiliar with Evernote, it is a web-based bookmarking and note taking service and also offers a desktop application. When the company rolled out its free iPhone app earlier this year, it received rave reviews.

Evernote becomes a single destination for every note you have, including video, pics, to-dos, audio message, web clips, and web bookmarks. All notes can be tagged and synchronized between your Mac or PC, the Evernote Web app, and your BlackBerry. You can access your existing notes by searching for keywords, filter by tags, or simply browse for them.

In The Field

Many of us have been looking for a mobile note taking application that would be useful "in the field", since that's where we take most of our notes. Often we can't type fast enough on our mobile devices to keep up, so we jot down notes on *gasp* paper. With Evernote for Blackberry you can simply take a snapshot with your device, add a subject, comments and some tags and save it for later. When you get home you can sync everything up and have it available on your desktop or on the Web.

Prior to using Evernote for Blackberry, some people used to snap pictures of people's name tags at various events for future reference. Now you can put those in a folder in Evernote and tag, comment and archive them.

But Does it Work?

Taking text notes in Evernote for BlackBerry is straightforward and easy as are snapshot and audio notes. Trying to recognize words in some written notes can be a little sketchy, but Evernote does a pretty decent job of finding key words through a simple search. Overall the interface is a little clunky, and there seems to be no (obvious) way to add content to existing notes using the BlackBerry. Those are the only major complaints we have with it, although not being able to add to existing notes on the fly is a real bummer.

What makes this app especially useful is the ability to sync everything at once. That alone makes it an app we will continue to use. When you add BlackBerry's tagging capabilities with GPS, it becomes very powerful note taking tool indeed. Imagine being able to geotag a note and how that could be useful later. Add some snapshots, maybe a short video or audio clip and you have the makings of a very serviceable blog post or report.

Evernote for BlackBerry is certainly worth a try, check it out for yourself. It is available on the Evernote site or from BlackBerry App World. Of course there are several note taking apps for the BlackBerry, but so far this is the best one we have found, especially among the other free apps.

Pollution is location dependent. Those living next to a busy freeway or industrial area or temporarily exposed to upwind or downwind conditions are often exposed to more air and noise pollution, but do not necessarily have monitors in place to record and report those conditions. This mobile way of monitoring and reporting conditions is likely to empower citizens of these neighborhoods and key decision makers to take action.

How Does it Work?

According to Sensaris,

"Whether used by pedestrians or cyclists, the sensors provide noise and ozone levels in real time over the Internet and web based visualization (mashups). Our Senspod technology forms the basis for innovative citizen centric services. We look forward to helping other cities use it for their own community action and urban life quality improvement plans."

We think this is potentially a wonderful tool that will empower citizens to become involved and take back some control over their quality of life. Hopefully it will force cities to pay more attention to air and noise pollution problems in less affluent neighborhoods and take steps to improve conditions.