Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email.
Product Reviews
This week’s Web Product of the Week is Iceberg, which Phil Butler profiled for Read/WriteWeb. Iceberg is a private beta startup that provides a Web based platform for building, sharing and selling powerful business applications, without the need to do coding. Phil called it “potentially a powerful service for business and personal applications”.
This week Alex Iskold wrote about Wine.com’s new RSS-based API. Until recently, Alex wrote, Wine.com was just a basic wine catalog. It was well designed and easy to navigate, but it was definitely a web 1.0 kind of site. Not only did Wine.com open up its catalog, the company did it with elegance worthy of modern APIs like del.icio.us and Flickr. The API is implemented via RSS, where each query returns a feed.
Josh Catone checked out Operator11, a new entry into the growing field of live online video companies. It touts itself as an online television network that offers anyone the chance to host their own live television show. Where Operator11 differs from its competitors is that its software allows viewers to actually become guests on the show and participate in more than just text or voice chat.
Other startups we profiled this week
- Postful: Email Meets Snail Mail
- Tangler Launches Embedded Forums and Chat
- JayCut: Online Video Editing with Export
- Create Photo Books with Panraven
- Facebook App, Lending Club, Passes Half a Million Dollars in Loans
- Adjustables Debuts Video Ad Service at ad:tech Chicago
- rollSense: Your Blogroll on Steroids
- Newser: Human Edited News Aggregation
Read/WriteWeb Files
This week we introduced a new feature, the Read/WriteWeb Files. Every week we’ll investigate a current issue or topic in Web technology. On Monday we opened a file on Yahoo entitled 100 Days For Yahoo. The title referred to a statement made by new Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang during an earnings conference call on Tuesday 17 July, in which he said that “the next 100 days or so” will be spent mapping out Yahoo’s strategic plan.
Josh Catone wrote a couple of excellent analysis posts about yahoo’s future: How to Fix Yahoo!: Building a Yahoo! Platform and A Yahoo!-eBay Merger Makes Sense. The first article suggests that My Yahoo becomes an open platform. The second article makes the case for a combined Yahoo-eBay, which Josh thinks will be a viable threat to Google.
As for what assets Yahoo has now that it can build on, I wrote a post detailing the top 10 Yahoo! Properties. I also looked at how Yahoo’s new advertising system is performing: Panama, 6 Months On.
Also check out Andy Pipe’s comparison between Yahoo! Buzzlist and Google Trends.
Finally, this week we covered two new developments at Yahoo: Yahoo! Plans a Run at YouTube and New Yahoo! Search Features: Search Assist, Shortcuts.
Analysis
Here are the analysis posts we published this week:
- Towards the Attention Economy: Will Attention Silos Ever Open Up?
- Microsoft Works to be Offered as Free, Ad-Supported Desktop Suite – No Browser Version?
- Google Mashup Editor
- VCs: Startups Are Too Reliant on the M&A Market
- The Emerging Global Innovation Graph
- Social Networking Goes Global – Especially in North American Region
- IM Most Valuable Web 2.0 Tool for Enterprise
R/WW Network Blogs
Our Digital Lifestyle blog last100 looked at Amazon’s invasion into the living room. And in a post titled ‘Old technology creates meaningful connections‘, Josh Catone argued that some older technology — particularly physical media – has a more tangible connection with the user.
Over on AltSearchEngines, our network blog devoted to new search engines, the August Top 100 Alt Search Engine list was released. This week AltSearchEngines also published a 3 part series defining a) What is a Search Engine? (an article by Nitin Karandikar), b) What is Not a Search Engine? (by Kaila Colbin) and finally c) What is an Alternative Search Engine? (by ASE editor Charles Knight). The third article by Charles explains his motives behind the Top 100 List.
Poll
Our poll this week asked: Will Jerry Yang turn around Yahoo’s fortunes in 100 days? Here are the results:
—
Yes, Yang will sort Yahoo out and have them challenging Google and MS again 46% (111 votes)
It will stay much the same; Yang won’t make that much difference 33% (81 votes)
No, Yahoo has failed to adapt – Yang can’t stop the rot and Yahoo’s decline will continue 21% (51 votes)
—
Nearly half of respondants think that Jerry Yang will turn around the fortunes of the company he co-founded.
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
