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  Entertainment

  Top 10 Last.fm Mashups

  Last.fm is generally acknowledged to be one of the best web apps of this era - its music recommendation system literally creates a personalized radio station for you. But the now CBS-owned service doesn't get nearly enough credit for its API. We've heard stories about how 90% of Twitter's use...

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  Web

  Weekly Wrapup, 11-15 Feb 2008

  Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email. Easily the biggest tech story of the past two weeks has...

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  Web

  Comment of the Day: Semantic Web “Great For Diddling”

  Our 6th daily Comments Competition winner comes from a comment on our post 11 Things To Know About Semantic Web. It came from Alan Wilensky, who wrote that "all of the [Semantic Web] tech that has been so promised is great for diddling, but we haven'st seen productivity delivered." Congratulations...

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  Web

  11 Things To Know About Semantic Web

  1. You don’t need to apologize for calling it Web 3.0. Of course the Web does not upgrade in one go like a company switching to Vista. But there is a definite phase transition from current technologies. My personal Web 3.0 definition is “the combination of Web 2.0 mass collaboration...

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  Web

  HD DVD Could Be Dead Sooner Than You Think

  The high definition DVD format war has been raging for quite some time now, but it looks as though there may finally be a victor. The HD DVD camp, started by Toshiba and including heavyweight backing from Microsoft, has been gradually losing ground over the last year. Recent events, which...

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  Web

  Comment of the Day: R.E.M. Video = Open Source As In Linux

  Our 5th daily Comments Competition winner comes via a trackback. It's from Risa Dickens of the blog Indyish, in response to our post R.E.M. Releases New Videos Under Open Source License. Congratulations Risa, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher, courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget.Risa...

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  Web

  Open Thread: How Would You Fix Yahoo!?

  Easily the biggest tech story of the past two weeks has been Microsoft's unsolicited $44 billion takeover bid for Yahoo! It's not just the enormous amount of money that has brought it so much attention (though it would rank among the biggest tech mergers of all time), but also because...

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  Social

  Is Microsoft Better Off With Facebook?

  In October, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the company planned to acquire 20 companies per year for 5 years, with acquisition prices ranging in size from $50 million to $1 billion. Ballmer's statement came at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and presumably the acquisition strategy he was talking...

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  Web

  The New Identity Thieves

  The Wall Street Journal put up an interesting article today about profile thieves. These guys don't want your Social Security number or your bank account information, they just want to be cool. Like you. And they do it by ripping off your social networking profile, word-by-word.A Common Occurrence?If you think...

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  Web

  TradeVibes Company Information Wiki – 250 Alpha Invites

  TradeVibes, which has up until now been operating in stealth mode, is soon-to-be-public wiki focused around company information. TradeVibes combines an informational wiki with a number of community features aimed at using the wisdom of the crowds to create a company database similar to Hoovers. Though the company is still...

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  Web

  Visualizing Last.fm’s Friends Network

  Last.fm, one of the web's most popular recommendation and web radio services, provides their recommendations based on what "people like you" enjoy. This brings a social aspect to their system where friendships have an impact what people listen to. But what do these friendships look like? Are they localized groups...

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  Web

  Comment of the Day: Sync Kindle With iPhone

  Our fourth daily Comments Competition winner is Chuck Lawson, for his comment on our post Is the iPhone the Ultimate eBook Reader?. Congratulations Chuck, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher, courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget. Chuck noted that the Kindle is better for eBooks,...

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  Web

  Consumating Closing Quietly, Demonstrates Another Side of a Startup’s Life

  We like startups and innovation here at RWW so we try to pay attention to the news good and bad about what tech entrepreneurs are up to. It certainly seemed strange then that almost no one but its users and the intrepid Andy Baio seemed to notice that the CNet-acquired...

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  Web

  Why You Should Let Users Define Your App

  There's an old well-worn addage that says, "The customer is always right." On the surface, it means that you should always strive to provide good customer service. But on a deeper level, it means that if your customers do things with your service that you never intended, perhaps you should...

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  Web

  Tom Coates: Web of Data

  Tom Coates of Yahoo Brickhouse (ex-BBC) is over in Wellington for Webstock, giving a talk on the Web of Data. I've been a fan of Tom's Web theories for a long time, so it was great to see him speak live. He starts by saying that the companies that have...

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  Web

  PR Wire Service to Journalists & Bloggers: We Don’t Need You

  We received an interesting email today from Business Wire, a press release wire service that Warren Buffett bought in March 2006. Currently Business Wire is ranked about #32 on the Techmeme Leaderboard, which puts it above some top tech blogs (but not ReadWriteWeb, which is ranked #6 currently). The email...

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  Web

  Is the iPhone the Ultimate eBook Reader?

  "People don’t read anymore," said Steve Jobs last month. Try telling that to users of his company's iPhone and iPod Touch devices, many of whom seem to be using the device as an eBook reader. Our network blog last100 theorized that what Jobs' really meant was, who needs the Amazon...

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  Web

  How Will Publishers Fare Under Microhoo?

  By Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder of PubMatic There has been a lot of coverage about the potential Yahoo! acquisition by Microsoft over the last week. This coverage has looked at issues such as deal mechanics, antitrust implications, and the impact on advertisers. One aspect of the possible blockbuster deal that has...

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  Web

  Spidering the “Dark Web”

  For some, the term "dark web" simply means all the online data that search engine spiders can't reach, crawl, or index, but for the University of Arizona's AI Lab, the "Dark Web" refers to a research project where the social phenomena of terrorism is studied via various techniques including social...

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  Web

  GumGum Intends to be the “iTunes of Content”

  GumGum is a new license management solution for content owners that its founders say solves a serious problem with online content distribution. "Offline, content is licensed for a finite period of time to a predictable audience. These parameters enable content-owners and publishers to come up with reasonably good pricing arrangements,"...