Marvel Entertainment – home to characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, and the Hulk – has announced plans to release a series of “motion comics” via iTunes. Introduced at New York Comic Con, the new format would have the iPod- and iPhone-bound digital books taking on characteristics of both print and animation with audio and motion…
Embedr: Embed Videos from Multiple Services in a Single Player
With online videos, you can never watch – or share – just one. But creating a playlist that allows you to share those videos – especially if they live on a number of different services – can be more difficult than it should be. Usually, you’re stuck with a series of links or a page full of embedded videos. Next time you have multiple videos to…
ReadWriteWeb Guide to Following The Grammys
The music industry and the Web industry have always had a contentious relationship. But it’s hard to resist the drama of awards. This Sunday, the music world will be focused on the 51st annual Grammy Awards, the annual recognition of artistic achievement in music. And the Web is sure to be chock full of opinions and criticism about the final…
Domain Pigeon: Your Unintelligible Five Letter Domain Name Awaits
You’ve done the market research. You’ve built the killer app. Now, all you need is a decent domain name. Preferably a .com. Why? Because the iPhone doesn’t have a .net button, for one thing. But finding something short and memorable can be difficult at best. Enter Domain Pigeon, a domain search service that eschews one-at-a-time searches by…
30 Google Doodles We Love: Could Your Kid’s Be Next?
Google has made a tradition of tweaking its logotype in honor of holidays, special events, and celebrations. And that tweaking has resulted in a library of interesting interpretations of “Google.” Now, they’re giving school age children the chance to participate in the fun and win some cash with the “Doodle 4 Google” contest. What are they up…
SocialWhois: Whois Lookups for the Social Web
When you want to know about a domain name, you jump to whois to get all of the information on the person who registered it. But when you want to know more about the person who just started following you on Twitter or FriendFeed, it hasn’t been that easy – even though we’ve tried to provide you with tools to do it. Now, a new service promises to…
Google Latitude: Ready to Tell Your Friends (and Google) Where You Are?
Where you are is as important as what you’re looking for. That’s why more and more services are looking to location as a filter for providing relevant information when and where we need it. So it only makes sense that Google – a company known for its ability to deliver relevant information – get into the location-aware app game. Today, they…
GOP, RSS, and API! Oh My! US Congress Republicans’ New Site
We have spent a great deal of time covering US President Barack Obama’s Web presence, from the Democrat’s social media strategies to whitehouse.gov. So when the Republicans in the US Congress released a new version of their site – complete with RSS feeds and an API – we felt it only appropriate to give the site a bi-partisan once over. And while…
Beaming Like It’s 1999: Easycontact Simplifies iPhone Contact Sharing
As much as we love to laud the features of the iPhone, we’re also the first to admit that it’s missing some basic functions – functions so seemingly obvious that it’s boggling that more app developers aren’t rushing to solve them. And while our favorite gripe is the lack of copy and paste functionality, there are still a number of other…
If Woot Went Green: EcoSteal
Chasing a good deal is always a popular pursuit. And with the current economic conditions, saving money has never been more important. Many look to shopping site Woot as a way to garner steep discounts on random products. It’s a site that has grown in popularity thanks to one simple catch: supplies are limited and there’s only 24 hours to make…
Image Spark Moodboards Share Inspiring Collections of Images
You encounter images everyday. Some of them inspire you to be more creative. Some evoke feelings of happiness or disgust. Some simply capture a moment. But all of them serve as a reference point. Image Spark hopes to make these fleeting moments of inspiration more accessible by providing a place for everyone to create, share, and be inspired by the…
ReadWriteWeb Guide to Super Bowl XLIII: Geeking Out on the Big Game
This Sunday, millions of people will tune into watch Super Bowl XLIII, where the Pittsburgh Steelers will meet the Arizona Cardinals in Tampa Bay, Florida (home of ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez) to decide who is the best team in professional football – or more correctly, given our international audience, American Football. Whether it’s the game, the…
Google and Plaxo Combine OpenID and OAuth for Improved Usability
As a concept, OpenID has shown a great deal of potential. But that potential has often been hamstrung by the series of hurdles through which OpenID users have been required to jump in order to use their credentials. When Facebook Connect entered the distributed digital identity fray, those OpenID usability problems came into stark relief. Now…
Collaborative Whiteboard Turns iPhones into Linked Sketchpads
If two minds are better than one, then two minds with two iPhones must be even better. But how can you get those two great minds working together and thinking alike? Try Whiteboard, a new app that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a collaborative workspace for sketching and sharing ideas in real-time.
Do We Need Another Web Survey Tool? Survs May Have You Checking “Yes” (Invites)
Here’s a survey question for you: Do we really need another Web-based survey tool? There are any number of respectable and useful survey products out there today, all of which do a fine job of soliciting responses from a constituency. So when we started to review Survs, the latest entrant to dip a toe into the online survey pool, we were cynical…
Synop.it: A Different Take on Cataloguing the Web
Tagging. It has fundamentally changed the way we find and manage content on the Web. Take a page, an image, or a chunk of media, surround it with keywords, and allow others to do the same. Then mix that tagged content with more tagged content and suddenly context starts to form. But tagging, for all its benefits, will only get you so far. Between…
PayPal Joins OpenID Foundation Board as Sustaining Member
This morning, the OpenID Foundation announced that PayPal has joined the OpenID Foundation Board, becoming the first financial institution to join the Foundation as a sustaining member. Andrew Nash, Sr. Director of Information Risk Management, has been named as the PayPal representative on the Board. PayPal’s commitment to the cause is another vote…
iClipper: iPhone Copy and Paste without Jailbreaking
The iPhone. Almost perfect but not quite. Great interface, interesting apps, and that certain Apple je ne sais quoi. Yet a basic feature like copy and paste remains one of the single most requested features. Not that there haven’t been attempts. But we just tested a very promising bookmarklet that allows iPhone users to copy and paste Web…
iPlotz: Goofy Name Belies Powerful Wireframe Tool
Anyone who has ever built a Web site for a client knows the painful process of gathering feedback on page layout and navigation. That’s what makes sketching wireframes such a valuable technique for eliciting those responses – before spending time and energy on design and coding. But trying to capture critical feedback on Photoshop wireframes can be…
Sqworl: A Lightbox for Shared Links
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we’re big fans of URL shorteners (although not all URL shorteners mind you). We use them for microblogging sites where we have to conserve characters, tracking how many people are clicking through links we share, and keeping groups of links organized. That’s why we like Sqworl, a URL shortener that acts like a lightbox for…