It’s time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. This week we had two big product launches: the Google Phone and MySpace Music. We also looked at Favtape, a new startup aiming to shake up the online music market. On the trends side, we had another great podcast this week – on Data Portability. We also analyzed Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, checked out the world of barcode scanners, and investigated how some religious organizations are using the Web. Last but not least, we bring you the latest from our new Enterprise Channel.
Web Products
Google Phone Unveiled, Can it Beat the iPhone?
This week, Google, T-Mobile, and HTC came together to introduce the first phone running the Google mobile OS, Android. The overall message at launch was focused on openness. But will the future of the mobile internet be driven by open platforms? That’s what Google is betting on with Android, but more importantly, it’s what T-Mobile is hoping will stop the flood of customers leaving their service for AT&T’s iPhone.
To entice customers away from the iPhone, we now have the G1, a slick alternative with a touchscreen and an app store of its own. The companies want you to believe the G1 is just as good, if not better, thanks to the real QWERTY keyboard and the open nature of the Google OS. Now that we have all the facts, are you convinced?
RWW Predictions: Google’s Android vs. Apple’s iPhone
This week we asked at RWW Predictions: will T-mobile or AT&T adjust their entry price point (either up or down) for the HTC Dream and the iPhone respectively in 2008? Nearly half of respondants said no, there won’t be a price adjustment in 2008.
The long awaited MySpace Music service launched this week. We like what we see. It’s going to be a very big deal.
Users will be able to assemble playlists from a huge catalog of songs from all four major labels and from independent distributor The Orchard, full length songs are all streamable for free, users will be able to purchase DRM-free MP3s through a close integration with the AmazonMP3 service and developers will have a gradually increasing amount of access to user activity data from the Music section. Screen shots in the post.
Muxtape Is Dead – Favtape Emerges as a Great Alternative
While Muxtape’s Justin Ouellette posted a dire story about the shutdown of the popular mixtape service and his dealings with the music industry, Favtape has updated its service dramatically. Muxtape will effectively remain closed for the general public and will only return as a music hosting service for bands. Favtape, on the other hand, now looks like Muxtape on steroids, with embeddable playlists, album art, integrated YouTube search, a shuffle mode, and the ability to create tapes based on your last.fm and Pandora bookmarks.
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!
- E.Factor is an online community for entrepreneurs.
- Strands provides real-time recommendations of products.
- Calais brings semantic functionality into your site.
- The Web 3.0 Conference is on October 16 – 17 in Santa Clara.
- Talklets is a Text to Speech system for your site.
- Compete Search Analytics is for search marketing campaigns.
- Direct Media Exchange is a solution for managing ad networks.
- Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
- The Defrag conference is on November 3-4 in Denver.
- EditMe lets you make a web site in minutes.
- Quintura is a visual-based search engine.
- Eurekster is a custom social search portal.
- MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
- SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.
Web Trends
In this week’s episode of RWW Live, our podcast show, we discussed Data Portability – the ongoing campaign for open data across the Web. We had an amazing group of Data Portability leaders on the call: Chris Saad (Co-founder, DataPortability.org), Daniela Barbosa (Chair, DataPortability.org), Eran Hammer-Lahav (Open Standards Evangelist, Yahoo), and Angus Logan (Technical Product Manager for Windows Live Platform, Microsoft). Friend of RWW Chris Messina also popped into the call midway through. The discussion was very interesting, check out the recording here:
Download MP3
Blog search engine and ad network Technorati released its 5th annual State of the Blogosphere report this week. Technorati says its findings indicate that blogging is now mainstream. We’re not so sure. Although reading blogs is becoming increasingly mainstream, is writing them?
The Scannable World: Mobile Phones As Barcode Scanners
One of the promises of the mobile web was the possibility of being able to integrate the internet with the real world. One of the ways to accomplish this task is through the use of barcodes. The idea is that you take a picture of the barcode with your camera phone and you’re then delivered to a mobile web site. This could effectively make anything – whether a poster, an ad, or an object – a virtual part of the world wide web. Although this technology has been available for years, it’s only now with the birth of the smartphone, or more precisely, the next-gen smartphone, that the potential for this type of integration may finally be realized.
See also:
The Scannable World, Part 2: Scanning Your Web Printouts
The Scannable World, Part 3: Barcode Scanning In The Real World
This week, as part of our ongoing Mainstream Web Watch series, we looked into how religious groups are using Web technologies. In the first post we looked at LifeChurch.tv, a sophisticated rich media site that aims to preach Christianity over the Internet. What was really great to see is how LifeChurch is using best-in-class web apps to create each different aspect of their online presence – Twitter for real-time communication, Wufoo to create their online forms, Blip.tv for video teaching, Mogulus for live broadcasting, and so on. It has also developed its own web apps.
See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute
Religion and Web Technology, Part 3: Inside Islam
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY
RWW Enterprise Channel
Last week, we covered how Zoho is defying conventional wisdom in the Web Office market. But is being unconventional all it takes for a bootstrapped start-up to take on both Microsoft and Google, in head to head evaluations by giant enterprises such as GE? Far from it. Whenever you see a surprising ‘overnight sensation’, you will usually find years of hard work and careful execution.
In Part 2 of this story, we revealed some of Zoho’s cookbook.
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.
