It’s time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. On the product side, we continued our Best Products 2008 series 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’s a 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
After only 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, MySpace began 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
Greasemonkey is 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?
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Web Trends
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 post in 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?
Can you 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.
