It’s the weekend, so time for our review the past week’s web tech news, reviews and analysis on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we showed you how to create a custom search engine using social bookmarks, found out why online video is set for a boost at the Olympics, analyzed a new mainstream RSS Reader, and checked in with Windows Live. On the trends side we answered Mozilla’s call for visions of the future of the Web, also looked into the future of blogging, checked out what big brands are doing with social media for the Olympics, and analyzed the gender of the Semantic Web (yes you read that correctly).
Web Products
Build A Custom Search Engine Using Your Social Bookmarks
Last week, Yahoo finally unveiled the long-awaited new version of the social bookmarking site Delicious. Along with the new URL, simply delicious.com, the site got a revamped UI and added new features like selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks. However, amid the delighted oohs and ahhs from the tech community over the new-and-improved site, some people were raising the valid question: “Who bookmarks anymore?” Besides bookmarking for the sake of making sure a site gets seen in your FriendFeed stream, the truth is that many people bookmark, but then turn to Google search when they actually want to find something.
Mainstream Web Watch: The Olympics & Online Video
The Beijing Olympics started this week and what better test of the mainstream web is there than the world’s biggest sports event. One of the most obvious ways the Web will be utilized with the Beijing Olympics is with online video coverage. In the US, NBC has teamed up with Microsoft Silverlight for 2,200 hours of live coverage. Meanwhile in China, Adobe has teamed up with a Chinese network.
Mainstreaming RSS: Regator is Now in Public Beta
We first wrote about the mainstream RSS reader and blog directory Regator in early July. At that time, Regator was still in private testing, but this week, it has opened up its doors for a public beta release. Since we first covered Regator, the developers have made some important changes to their service, including the ability to upload OPML files. Even with this feature, though, Regator still remains a highly curated service, where every new entry in its blog directory has to be approved by the editors.
Microsoft Relaunches Windowslive.com as a Community Site
Until now, Microsoft had used WindowsLive.com as the main hub for getting information about its Live branded services like Messenger, Hotmail, Spaces, SkyDrive, and Photo Gallery. This week, Microsoft re-launched the site as a community site, where users can exchange information and ideas about how to best use these tools. As Marty Collins, the Windows Live senior marketing manager explained to us in an interview last week, the idea behind this redesign is to better explain to users how they can use these services together, as well as fostering an active user community.
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY
Web Trends
What’s Your Vision of the Future of the Web? Mozilla Wants to Know
Everything’s changing on the internet these days, so it’s as good a time as any to make some drastic changes to the way we interact with it too. Mozilla Labs has put out a call for anyone in the world to share their vision of how they would like to see the browser, or the web in general, look and act in the future. Called The Concept Series, the project will track down and share future web concepts submitted through a very simple process. What would you like the web to look like in the future? We offer one of our favorite visions below.
The Future of Blogging Revealed
There has been a lot of talk lately about the changing face of the blogging landscape. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger asked if blogging has lost its relational focus; Scoble explained why tech blogging has failed you; and even though not everyone agreed with his every statement, there was a renewed commitment in the blogosphere to return to blogging about what excites instead of just writing about “Apple’s newest gizmo or the peccadillos of tech personalities.” However, we’re wondering if people even need to blog anymore…at least in the traditional sense.
The Olympics & Social Media Marketing
This week we looked at how Web technology is being used in the Beijing Olympics. In this post we check out how some of the world’s leading brands are using social media tools in their Olympics campaigns. Our first post discussed how online video will be a big part of this Olympics, which is great for consumers. The Web can also be a boon for brands too, when it comes to major sporting events.
Will The Semantic Web Have a Gender?
One academic warns that it might and says we need to pay attention to it.
As machines learn to understand what the web means, what perspective will they understand it from? Who is teaching them? “Objective” descriptions of the world and the relationships in it can cause real problems, particularly for people with little power in those relationships. How will the emerging Semantic Web understand relationships and what will that mean for us as human users?
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
