So, yesterday was officially my last day at ReadWriteWeb. I know what you’re all thinking: “Uh, so why are you posting today? Just get outta here already!” Okay, okay, you got me. But this is my 747th post at ReadWriteWeb, and I just couldn’t bring myself to leave without saying goodbye (and apologize in advance for quoting “The Sound of Music…
Facebook Improves Messaging: Adds Search
Facebook announced last night that it was adding search to the Inbox feature of its site. According to Facebook engineer Prashant Malik, Inbox search was something the company knew they needed for a long time, and was heavily requested by users. Search is one of the fundamental features that any email-like messaging system needs, and adding it is…
Ameritocracy: Crowdsourced Campaign Clarity – 100 Invites
Ameritocracy, which just launched into invite-only public beta, is a new political site that helps people cut through the noise and rate and review political information for credibility and relevance. The site helps users to sort through the sea of information we’re pummeled with via the media each day and pull out the more credible and relevant…
Hakia Announces Semantic API
Semantic search engine Hakia today announced a set of APIs that opens up their natural language processing and search platform to developers. Hakia’s Syndication Web Services really comes in two parts: search queries, which allow developers to add web search functionality leveraging Hakia’s five billion page index, and XML feed calls, which give…
Vint Cerf: High Oil Prices Could Help the Web
While some of our European readers may snicker if I were to complain about having to pay $4.10/gallon to fill up my car’s gas tank, the fact is that across the world many people are feeling pressure at the pump. There are some who argue that the environmental benefits of high gas prices, which are changing our energy consumption habits for the…
Huffington Post To Take on Local Newspapers
Last night at Guardian News & Media’s internal Future of Journalism conference, Arianna Huffington revealed that her Huffington Post property is planning to expand into local news. Initially, the site will launch an edited news aggregation site (similar to the main Huffington Post web site) localized for the US metro area around Chicago, Illinois…
China Web Boom: .CN Now More Popular than .Net
China’s top-level domain has now surpassed .net as the web’s third most popular top-level and second most popular country-specific domain, according to a study by VeriSign says the Associated Press. VeriSign said that registrations of .cn domains had surged 23% in the first quarter of this year, and tripled year-over-year. China’s domain boom…
Firefox 3 Sets Download ‘Record’ – Are You Using It?
Firefox has already surpassed the 5 million download mark it set out to meet in its first 24 hours. As I write this, the browser just passed the 7 million download mark for its version 3.0 software, and with over 6800 downloads per minute (and rising) is on track to do 8 million or more by 1pm ET (24 hours since the download went live). Whether…
Build Your Own Reddit With Reddit
Social news site Reddit’s secret announcement — which people have been speculating about for the past 24 hours — is out of the bag: Reddit is open sourcing their code. “We’ve always strived to be as open and transparent with our users as possible, and [open sourcing our code] is the next logical step,” said Reddit in a blog post. Reddit, which…
Software Company Ditches AdWords for… Kiva?
Two months ago, Portland, Oregon-based Jama Software — the makers of a web-based project management app called Contour — began a program called “You try. We give.” The idea was simple, for everyone who signed up for a free trial of Contour, the company would set aside some money to invest in microloans at Kiva. In theory, word of their…
Long Tail Ad Network Makes Sense for Technorati
Last week, when we heard that Technorati had raised another $7.5 million, bringing their total raised to $30 million, we asked you what blog search engine you use. 41% of you answered Technorati, but it was clear that Google Blog Search has cut into Technorati’s marketshare, and some commenters said that they didn’t have a need for a dedicated…
Mobile Banking on the Rise
Earlier this month we reported on a survey that revealed that 48% of online banking customers between the ages of 18 and 34 would be interested in using “secure gadgets for personal banking” if their bank offered them. More than a quarter of bank customers would consider switching to another bank if it took better advantage of web 2.0…
Social Media Used to Keep Flood Victims Informed
Getting information out to victims and their families during a disaster is a major issue for any relief organization. So while the Central United States recovers from a spate of storms that has ravaged towns with tornadoes and flooding, the American Red Cross is relying on a number of web 2.0 technologies to spread information to the press and…
Quillpill: Cell Phone Novels Escape Japan
For better or for worse the concept of the cell phone novel is making a splash in Western countries via a Twitter-like app called Quillpill. Quillpill handles all the heavy lifting — i.e., aggregating each post and displaying them in the correct order. Essentially, Quillpill is a mobile writing application that imposes a Twitter-style 140…
Study: More People are Turning to the Web for Political Info
A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that 46% of Americans have used the Internet, email, or text messaging to get or share election information this year. 35% have watched online political videos — triple the number that watched video online in 2004, while 39%, according to the study, have turned to the web for…
eBay Launches Dev Platform – Too Little, Too Late?
Online ecommerce giant eBay today announced “Project Echo” at the eBay developers conference, which will allow developers to create applications for sellers that will run inside the eBay Selling Manager. Previously, third party applications built for eBay via the site’s API could only run off site. Project Echo, which will probably launch…
Poll: Which Blog Search Engine Do You Use?
paidContent is reporting that Technorati has raised $7.5 million of planned $10 million fourth round of funding. That would bring the total amount raised by the blog search engine to about $30 million. Google Blog Search has greatly eaten into Technorati’s share of the blog search market, and the company changed CEOs last August. We documented…
Is eBay Artificially Inflating Listing Numbers?
We’ve been taking a look recently into the troubles at online auction and ecommerce giant eBay. Ten days ago we took a look at reasons why many sellers are leaving eBay, and yesterday we covered an Australian ruling that barred the company from forcing sellers to use PayPal as their only online transaction method. Despite the problems the company…
Do Regular People Really Read Blogs?
Andrew Romano over at Newsweek wrote earlier this week that US presidential hopeful John McCain’s new blog, written by former Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb, is an entertaining read compared to Barack Obama’s corporate-like campaign blog. To Romano, this indicates that McCain is stuck in “insurgent mode.” “Team McCain has concluded…
What’s Next for Microsoft and Yahoo!
Update: Yahoo! and Google have indeed announced a partnership in the form of a non-exclusive deal allowing Yahoo! to run Google advertising alongside search results. The press release is here.
The clumsy $44 billion mating dance that began in February between Microsoft and Yahoo! officially came to an end today. Yahoo! and Microsoft each…