pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/semantic_apps_nov08b.jpg" /In November 2007, we listed and reviewed a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_semantic_apps_to_watch.php"10 promising Semantic Web apps/a. A lot can happen in one year on the Internet, so we thought we'd check back in with each of the 10 products and see how they're progressing. What's changed over the past year and what are these companies working on now? The products are, in no particular order: Freebase, Powerset, Twine, AdaptiveBlue, Hakia, Talis, TrueKnowledge, TripIt, Calais (was ClearForest), Spock. /p pIn our next post in this series, we're going to publish a strongcompletely new list of Semantic apps to watch/strong! That's right, 10 emmore/em Semantic apps. Let us know your suggestions in the comments./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12600amp;cb=12600' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12600amp;n=12600' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p h2Freebase/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/freebase_logo_nov07.png" align="left" /a href="http://www.freebase.com/"Freebase/a is an open, semantically marked up database of information. It looks similar to Wikipedia, but Freebase is all about structured data and what you can do with it./p pFreebase has been one of the more hyped companies in Semantic Web, leading to some skepticism that the product is too much like Wikipedia and offers nothing much new. In May '08, we a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/freebase_overview.php"attempted to dispel the Freebase skepticism/a. Our conclusion was that the structured database, API, creative commons licensing - among other things - all added up to a richer product than Wikipedia. Then in July, we reported that a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/metawebs_freebase_now_60_large.php"Freebase was about to hit 4 million topics/a in its collection - which at the time was 60% more than the English Wikipedia. /p pHowever, we noted some concerns with Freebase - quot;big gaps in the dataquot; along with usability issues. In a follow-up article in August, we covered an interesting tool for browsing Freebase, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/freebase_parallax_taunts_us_wi.php"called Freebase Parallax/a. Unfortunately, when we tried out a number of searches in Parallax, very few subjects were well populated./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong still lots of work to do for Freebase, in terms of usability and useful data./p h2Calais (was ClearForest)/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/calais_logo_mar08.gif" align="right" /When we did our round-up one year ago, ClearForest had been recently a href="http://www.clearforest.com/whatsnew/PRs.asp?year=2007amp;id=109"acquired by Reuters/a and at that point it had a Web Service and a Firefox extension. What a change a year brings! ClearForest went on to release a href="http://www.opencalais.com/"Calais/a, a toolkit of products that enable users to incorporate semantic functionality within their blog, content management system, website or application./p pSince a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reuters_calais.php"launching the Open Calais API/a early this year, over 6,000 developers have registered with it and the service is doing more than 1 million transactions a day. We wrote about the launch of a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reuters_semanticproxy_jump-start.php"Calais' easiest-to-use service yet/a, called a href="http://semanticproxy.com/"SemanticProxy/a, at the end of September. a href="http://www.opencalais.com/node/8823"Version 3.0 was released/a earlier this month and version 4 is expected by January 09./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong Calais has really blossomed over the past year and it is one of the most promising Semantic services around today. We can't wait to see what's next!/p h2Powerset/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/pset-livesearch.png" align="left" /a href="http://www.powerset.com/"Powerset/a (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/exclusive_launch_of_powerlabs.php"our initial coverage here/a and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/powerset_and_hakia_quest_for_semantic_web.php"here/a) is a natural language search engine. It's fair to say that Powerset has had a great 2008, having been a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_acquires_powerset.php"acquired by Microsoft in July this year/a./p pAt the time of the acquisition, Powerset said that it needed a bigger partner to expand its product beyond its current state of only searching Wikipedia - something we had speculated about when the a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rumor_microsoft_powerset.php"rumors of the acquisition first appeared/a. In its own statement, Microsoft stressed how useful Powerset's technology will be for improving Microsoft's own search products and to quot;take Search to the next level.quot; In a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_microsoft_powerset_beat_google.php"our analysis of the deal/a, we noted that it was a quot;bold play requiring exact executionquot; by Microsoft. We thought it was doubtful that Microsoft bought the company just to enhance Live Search - although a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/live_search_powerset_integrati.php"in September Microsoft did just that/a. Possibly the plan is to replicate the Wikipedia solution, then incorporate Powerset into Internet Explorer./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong successful acquisition for Powerset, bold one for the acquirer Microsoft. Can't wait to see what Microsoft does with it!/p h2Twine/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/twine/twine_logo.jpg" align="right" /Definitely one of the more controversial of the Semantic apps we've covered on ReadWriteWeb. At launch last year, a href="http://www.twine.com"Twine/a claimed to be the first mainstream Semantic Web app. The company's founder Nova Spivack hasn't been shy to talk the product up even more over the past year. a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twine_public_launch.php"Version 1.0 of Twine was launched late October/a. At that time Spivack told us that Twine had 500,000 unique visitors in its closed beta, of which 50,000 are currently quot;activequot; (a user who visits the Twine site at least once per month). There were 20,000 'twines' at that point, with 1 million pieces of content having been added to the system./p pThose statistics are OK for a relatively young beta, however Twine has also been beset by usability and performance issues in its beta period. In March we summed it up with a post entitled: a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twine_disappoints.php"Twine Disappoints After Semantic Web Hype/a./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong still far from mainstream and reviews have been disappointing over the past year. Struggling to find its niche./p h2Hakia/h2 pimg border="0" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/hakia_logo_mar07.jpg" align="left" width="150" height="73"a href="http://www.hakia.com/"Hakia/a is a search engine focusing on natural language processing methods to try and deliver 'meaningful' search results. Hakia attempts to analyze the concept of a search query, in particular by doing sentence analysis. Over the past year Hakia has been busy extending its reach - a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hakia_licenses_semantic_search.php"licensing its proprietary OntoSem technology/a to other companies in March and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hakia_announces_semantic_api.php"announcing a Semantic API/a in June. It also released a social network of sorts, called a href="http://club.hakia.com"h-Club/a./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong Hakia has made good progress getting its technology into the hands of third parties. It's a steep challenge taking on Google though./p !--nextpage-- h2TripIt/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/tripit_logo_nov07.jpg" align="right" /a href="http://www.tripit.com/"Tripit/a is an app that manages your travel planning. With TripIt, you forward incoming bookings to plans@tripit.com and the system manages the rest./p pOver the past year TripIt has continued to iterate on its feature set - introducing LinkedIn integration, better mobile functionality, more social networking features, and other goodies./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong TripIt is one of those apps that amazes people when they first use it. Its challenge now is to grab a foothold among mainstream users./p h2AdaptiveBlue/h2 pemstrongDisclosure:/strong AdaptiveBlue is a current RWW sponsor and its founder Alex Iskold is a feature writer at RWW./em/p pimg border="0" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/adaptiveblue_may07.png" align="left" width="238" height="56" /a href="http://www.adaptiveblue.com/"AdaptiveBlue/a are makers of the Firefox plugin, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blueorganizer_semantic_web.php"BlueOrganizer/a. As we wrote in January this year, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adaptive_blue_indigo.php"the basic idea behind BlueOrganizer/a is that it gives you added information about webpages you visit and offers useful links based on the subject matter./p pOver the past year the company has been working on a new product, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/put_the_social_web_in_context_with_glue.php"called Glue/a. Launched last month, Glue is a more social networking oriented version of BlueOrganizer - it connects you to your friends based around things like books, music, movies, stars, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants, and more. /p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong the company has diversified smartly, but its challenge is to go beyond the 'cool factor' and get people using the products repeatedly./p h2TrueKnowledge/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/true_knowledge_logo_nov07.png" align="right" hspace="5px" vspace="5px" /When we covered UK semantic search engine a href="http://trueknowledge.com"TrueKnowledge/a last year, it was just after it had unveiled a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/trueknowledge_demo.php"a demo of its private beta/a. Back then it reminded us of the also unlaunched (at that time) a href="http://powerset.com"Powerset/a, but it was also reminiscent of a href="http://ask.com"Ask.com/a quot;smart answersquot;. TrueKnowledge combines natural language analysis, an internal knowledge base and external databases to offer immediate answers to various questions. /p pOne year later, TrueKnowledge is emstrongstill/strong/em in private beta - and this author got an error message when I submitted my email to apply to get into the beta. However there are signs of public life in a href="http://blog.trueknowledge.com/"the company blog/a, which is fairly active. Also the company launched a beta app this month, called a href="http://quizbot.trueknowledge.com/"Quiz Bot/a - a natural language search service that likely quot;won't be able to answer your question, but by asking us you are helping improve the service.quot;/p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong The jury is still out. It looks like a public beta is still some way off, which puts pressure on it to be extremely good when it eventually does launch./p h2Talis/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/talis_logo.gif" align="left" /a href="http://www.talis.com/"Talis/a is a 40-year old UK software company which has created a href="http://www.talis.com/platform/"a semantic web application platform/a. Over the past year, Talis has continued to make a name for itself as an evangelist for the Semantic Web, most notably through the a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/"blogging/a and a href="http://semanticgang.talis.com/"podcasting/a activities of Paul Miller. Talis also produces a great magazine for Semantic Web, called a href="http://www.talis.com/nodalities/"Nodalities/a, and has a href="http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities"an active company blog/a under the same name. As for the company's products, the platform seems to be iterating nicely and is being used in niche library and government applications./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong Talis has successfully positioned itself as an authority on Semantic Web in the blogosphere, which we love because it's a great way to keep track of Semantic Web trends!/p h2Spock/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/spock_logo.png" align="right" vspace="5" hspace="5" /a href="http://www.spock.com/"Spock/a is a people search engine that got a lot of buzz when it launched. Alex Iskold went so far as a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/spock_vertical_search_done_right.php"to call it/a quot;one of the best vertical semantic search engines built so far.quot;/p pSo how has it fared over the past year? Apparently a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/spock_traffic_surges.php"its traffic has been very good/a. However, as Sarah Perez recently wrote on this blog, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/people_search_engine_spock_to_offer_public_record_subscription_service.php"the "excitement has worn off."/a Instead of searching for people on Spock or other similar people search engines, wrote Sarah, most users simply turn to old standbys like Facebook or LinkedIn. To get their mojo back again (and no doubt some money in the bank), Spock has plans to launch a new subscriber-only service in January. It will be full-on public record search tool, which people can subscribe to for $1.99 per month./p pstrongRWW's verdict one year later:/strong despite claims of great traffic growth, it's clear that Spock as a consumer search engine hasn't quite panned out. Can it re-invent itself as a subscription-based specialist service? Check back in another year./p h2Conclusion/h2 pWe're pleased to see that all 10 of the products we profiled one year ago are still very much alive and kicking. One had a great acquisition result (Powerset), at least one has grown into a thriving developer ecosystem (Calais), some are experimenting with new services (AdaptiveBlue, Spock, Hakia), some are continuing to pump out new features and/or apps (TripIt, Talis). However, it's also clear that some are still trying to find their feet (Freebase, Twine, TrueKnowledge)./p pIn our next post in this series, we'll profile 10 more Semantic Apps to watch! Please tell us in the comments which ones have caught your eye recently./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_semantic_apps_to_watch_one_year_later.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ZNEz2oQ3kZnZN9nBx2DYeoafOxI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ZNEz2oQ3kZnZN9nBx2DYeoafOxI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=GCukISYa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=GCukISYa" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ArFnuHpX"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=s61gba8w"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=s61gba8w" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=8IhwGj3t"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=8IhwGj3t" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=uyQLw55h"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=uyQLw55h" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/WSYEmvBAeos" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/facebook-logo.jpg"Facebook a href="http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1story=167"announced this afternoon/a that the company will now offer more high-profile placement for applications that are verified as trustworthy and pay an application fee for the honor. /p pThe biggest problem with Facebook apps is probably not that they are security-violating and spam-happy. The biggest problem is that this incredible medium for global communication is being polluted by applications that are mind-numbing, insipid and pander to the lowest common denominator of humanity - even if they are otherwise well behaved./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12595amp;cb=12595' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12595amp;n=12595' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pimg alt="fbapps.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/fbapps.jpg" width="92" height="322" align="right"Vetting apps for "trustworthiness" is a good idea, but trustworthiness is just one of the criteria listed a href="http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php?tab=principles#trustworthy"on the Facebook platform's guidelines page/a. The first guideline is that the apps should be meaningful and useful! Any time spent in the app directory will show just how meaningless that guideline is./p pThe new Verified Apps program will be based on three criteria: /p ulliSecure: Protects user data and honors privacy choices for everyone across the social graph/li liRespectful: Values user attention and honors their intentions in communications and actions/li liTransparent: Explains how features will work and how they won't work, especially in triggering user-to-user communications/li/ul pThose all sound like good ideas that any decent app should follow, presumably all but a few apps written by students and international developers unable to pay $375 will be accepted as trustworthy. Meanwhile, apps are still treated like second class citizens in the newly redesigned Facebook (they are hidden in the background) and very few truly useful ones have access to enough oxygen to grow./p pThis verification process should have been in place when the platform launched, though there were so many apps coming through the pipe at the time that such a program might not have been tenable. Now enthusiasm has declined greatly so a vetting program may be less of a challenge./p pHonestly, though, Facebook has far more potential than the app platform at least is realizing and its problems run deeper than a verification program is going to solve.br / /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_to_verify_trustworthy.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/9jzLy5w2XviGWg2EWpsb5wgYKB8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/9jzLy5w2XviGWg2EWpsb5wgYKB8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=fQs7JoEE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=fQs7JoEE" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=onhfaLqQ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=78ZivYUh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=78ZivYUh" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=KdA81Xqm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=KdA81Xqm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=FJXGOCUy"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=FJXGOCUy" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/fcGaAew9AR8" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="motrin_logo.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/motrin_logo.png" /One would think that few ads could be less controversial than ads for painkillers, but over the weekend, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the maker of a href="https://www.motrin.com/index.jhtml"Motrin/a, found itself in the middle of a major controversy a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=motrinmoms"on Twitter/a, a href="http://friendfeed.com/e/84db4228-ed0b-44d7-b930-6309dbcfb937/Slings-and-Carriers-are-not-a-Fashion-Statement/"FriendFeed/a, and other social networks. Motrin's latest ad discusses the advantages of using the painkiller for mothers who 'wear' their babies close to their body with a sling or other a href="http://www.thebabywearer.com/index.php?page=glossary"baby carriers/a and who might suffer from back pain because of it. A lot of mothers (and fathers) were clearly a href="http://www.skimbacolifestyle.com/2008/11/motrin-giving-moms-headache.html"not amused/a by these ads and Motrin has now decided to remove them and has issued an apology./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12587amp;cb=12587' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12587amp;n=12587' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pThe ad, like a lot of ads, is offensive because it is boring and talks down to its target audience (and also because it stole its use of typography from a popular a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqc4FqvXlKs"YouTube video/a (emnote/em: language in the video might be offensive to some)). Motrin clearly didn't understand its market, but it is hard not to consider the 'outrage' over this video to be a bit of an overreaction as well./p pThis affair is also a good example of how much power a vocal minority can have thanks to social media. The controversy has already gone beyond Twitter, and mainstream news outlets will surely pick this story up within the next day or two./p p#160;object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BmykFKjNpdYcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BmykFKjNpdYcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/p h2We Feel Your Pain/h2 pMotrin, as a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/we-feel-your-pa.html"Seth Godin points out/a, had a chance here to reconnect with its customers by using social media to reach out to them with its apology, but the company issued a standard press release-style apology on its site instead. That might seem old-fashioned, but for most companies, that's the only way they know how to operate./p h2Learning from Comcast/h2 pMore and more users expect companies to a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study_social_media_presence.php"reach out to them/a directly through social media, so just having a social media presence is not enough anymore. When controversies like this one happen (whether deserved or not), smart companies will reach out to consumers directly to stop these fires right where they started. A pioneer of this is obviously Comcast, whose 'Director of Digital Care' a href="http://twitter.com/comcastcares"Frank Eliason/a reaches out to any and all Twitter users who tweet about issues with the company's service./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/motrin_bows_to_social_media_pr.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6VcENfZOGPNOdAKrBMqMOM8HhRM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6VcENfZOGPNOdAKrBMqMOM8HhRM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=FykyBvFR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=FykyBvFR" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=XiQp3Jv4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=9TNxIsSb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=9TNxIsSb" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=XgD7F3oi"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=XgD7F3oi" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=IxJri1Vp"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=IxJri1Vp" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/LtyvQCDRIlI" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="dechologo.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/dechologo.jpg" width="150" height="86"When it comes to storing personal digital data in the cloud and serving it up in interesting ways - we're in the very early days of a brand new paradigm. /p pToday popular online storage company a href="http://mozy.com/"Mozy/a announced that it has been merged by the company that acquired it with another acquisition called a href="http://www.picorp.com/"Pi/a (Personal Information) - into a new forthcoming service called a href="http://www.decho.com/"Decho/a (your digital echo). Pi was founded by Paul Maritz, who is now the CEO of virtualization powerhouse VMWare. What do you get when you bring these kinds of stars together into one service? Only a few clues are available so far, but we're excited to see what Decho becomes./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12585amp;cb=12585' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12585amp;n=12585' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pMuch as we love it, watching feeds of data stream past our eyeballs as we and our friends take different actions online (ala a href="http://friendfeed.com/marshallk"FriendFeed/a) is likely not the emultimate/em web application for personal aggregate data. There's a whole lot more to come and Decho looks like it's aiming to be a foundational part of that future./p h2Pi Looks Cool/h2 pThe storage side of this arrangement, Mozy, is interesting because the company has almost one million customers and has been innovating in its marketing and services for some time. Much more interesting, though, is Maritz's stealthy former company Pi. Now a part of the new company Decho, a href="http://www.picorp.com/"Pi's web site/a contains little more than a tasty description of an unlaunched data-centered personal information service. The site says Pi intends to build on the metaphors of search, subscription, aggregation and publishing for both manual and automatic consumption. /p pSee this paragraph, for example:br / blockquote"One of the failings of today's tools is that it is hard to get back the complete context of a task. Think of being in a meeting and all the items of information that are relevant: presentations, a list of attendees, private notes by you, notes you wish to share, notes by others, action items. Today it is surprisingly cumbersome to capture all this information in a way that is easy to get back to, and if needs be share with others./p pAt Pi we intend to solve this problem."/blockquote/p h2API Level Innovation/h2 pNot much is known about what services Decho will create when Mozy and Pi are brought together, but the following slide from the PR deck sure looks interesting./p centerimg alt="dechoslide.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/dechoslide.jpg" width="610" height="472" /center pThough vague, that looks pretty hot to us. It looks like a turnkey point of entry for a whole world of innovation built on top of our aggregated personal data. Presumably the security emphasis found on the Pi site and in online storage service Mozy will carry though here, so Decho will allow for data owners to have complete control over access./p pWe don't know for sure what to expect, but we'll be watching a href="http://www.decho.com/"Decho/a and the surrounding ecosystem of services closely in coming months./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/decho_to_offer_api_access_to_a.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/oWg55MSOkLQTmqWw8VJoKyyO8pA/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/oWg55MSOkLQTmqWw8VJoKyyO8pA/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=BVSxfN7e"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=BVSxfN7e" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=iJChZEO1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=z9pnjrOl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=z9pnjrOl" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=SOGpgSYH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=SOGpgSYH" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=l0P3s12n"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=l0P3s12n" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/ETv3JUQhN6E" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="wikipedia_german.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/wikipedia_german.jpg" /After it had been unavailable in Germany for more than two days, the a href="http://wikipedia.de"Wikipedia's German portal/a is finally back online. The local German version of the Wikipedia had become unavailable after a member of the German parliament, a href="http://www.lutz-heilmann.info/"Lutz Heilmann/a, pressed charges against the German Wikipedia because of defamatory statements in his a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLutz_Heilmann%23Einzelnachweiseamp;hl=enamp;ie=UTF-8amp;sl=deamp;tl=en"biography/a on the site. Heilmann argued that the article was "false and slanderous." A German judge then ordered the closure of the German portal for the Wikipedia, wikipedia.de./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12584amp;cb=12584' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12584amp;n=12584' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pThe Wikipedia entry about Heilmann, who is no stranger to controversy, accused the politician of sending threatening text messages to his ex-partner and stated that Heilmann was about to lose his diplomatic immunity. There have indeed been rumors that Heilmann is under investigation by the German parliament because of these reports, though other statements in the article about the questionable status of his college degree and his involvement in an online pornography venture are rather questionable./p h2'Unintentional' /h2 pimg alt="heilmann_mugshot.jpg" align="right" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/heilmann_mugshot.jpg" /After assessing the damage he had done, Heilmann, according to a a href="http://www.lutz-heilmann.info/"post/a on his own site, has now decided not to press any further charges against the non-profit organization behind the German Wikipedia project, though he might still press charges against the authors of the controversial statements in his Wikipedia entry. In this statement, Heilmann argues that he never intended for the whole site to be shut down because of this, but that he wasn't able to stop the German bureaucracy from taking its course during the weekend because of a legal error in his request to have the ban overturned./p h2Streisand Effect/h2 pOf course, the whole affair spectacularly a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect"backfired/a on Heilmann and turned out to be a boon for the German Wikipedia, which collected donations worth over 32,000 Euros during the weekend. The controversial article about Heilman was a href="http://stats.grok.se/de/200811/Lutz_Heilmann"read over half a million times/a since last Friday./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/german_wikipedia_back_online_heilmann.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/31zywWBIO2O9j6f9VVl_7GcwcjE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/31zywWBIO2O9j6f9VVl_7GcwcjE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=i7YUismG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=i7YUismG" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=U9ufXbbK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=fRe4L9lx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=fRe4L9lx" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Orzh1Up5"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Orzh1Up5" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=rwb3cNGt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=rwb3cNGt" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/UJ40MVr2BdI" height="1" width="1"/

emstrongpApparently, growing up digital doesn't just mean being used to technology - it means not being scared of it when things go wrong, either. /p/strong/em pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/email_burden.jpg"Do crashing computers and busted Blackberries completely freak you out? Does a cryptic error message on your screen leave you feeling defeated or discouraged? According to a new study from the a href="http://www.pewinternet.org"Pew Research Center's Internet amp; American Life Project/a, your age might have something to do with your attitudes and emotions surrounding technology. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12577amp;cb=12577' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12577amp;n=12577' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pThe study, based on a survey of over 2000 U.S. adults, took an in-depth look at how people felt and reacted to problems with technology whether that meant a down internet connection or a broken gadget. /p pResearcher John B. Horrigan points out: electricity was once new too. But now we flip on light switches without a second thought. And when the telephone was taking off in the early 1900's, people were given specific instructions on how to make a phone call - something we now do every day. Over the passage of time, each new generation of users becomes more savvy and more adept at using the new technology until it no longer exists as some odd new-fangled invention, but simply part of the world as we know it./p pThe same holds true for our computers, our internet connections, our gadgets and our cell phones. When these things fail, it's the younger users that are generally much more optimistic about the situation. Although young adults age 18-29 years old are no more likely to be able fix devices on their own, they were significantly more likely to be confident that they were on the right path to fixing it, and they were significantly less likely than older adults to feel discouraged or confused about fixing devices, says the study. /p pIn fact, 85% of 18-29 year olds reported being confident about solving their device problem, while only about a third of them said they were discouraged or confused. Meanwhile, over half (52%) of adults age 30 and older reported being discouraged, 44% said they were confused, and about two out of three (67%) said they were confident. Adults age 30-49 were somewhat less likely than older adults to be confused, as just 39% said they were./p pThere was some variation among gender lines, too, with men being more likely than women to be confident about problem solving (76% vs. 68%), but they were just as confused, discouraged or impatient during the course of trying to solve the problem./p pWhat this means is that, given time, our idea of a "mainstream user" will have to change. No longer will they be the slightly fearful, easily frustrated, computer novices. Instead, they will be much more at ease with technology. They may never be as tech-obsessed as we are, but they will have no problem adopting a new technology if it delivers value. /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/scared_of_technology_youre_old.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/d3wtkxnQc-7g-BFMjK7TKALgkUU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/d3wtkxnQc-7g-BFMjK7TKALgkUU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=vjdUOQiL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=vjdUOQiL" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=iybgBmCk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=KfXs9vQA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=KfXs9vQA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=pPq2nBp7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=pPq2nBp7" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=8Teao7hV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=8Teao7hV" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/TrhWMTbGkvU" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/glue_buttons.png"Recently, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/put_the_social_web_in_context_with_glue.php"we told you about Glue/a, a href="http://getglue.com/install.html"a new browser plugin/a from AdaptiveBlue that put the social web in context by letting friends share music, movies, books, and other sorts of things. Unlike social networks dedicated to these items, like a href="http://www.goodreads.com/"Goodreads/a, a href="http://www.flixster.com/"Flixster/a, or a href="http://last.fm"Last.fm/a, which keeps the information isolated from the rest of your web activity, a href="http://getglue.com/install.html"Glue/a pops up in your browser when you're emactively/em viewing a book, movie, album, etc. Today, you can extend the functionality of a href="http://getglue.com/install.html"Glue/a by also installing the new iPhone application. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12583amp;cb=12583' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12583amp;n=12583' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pa href="http://bit.ly/GlueIPhone"Glue for iPhone/a is the companion application that brings the Glue network to everyone's favorite new smartphone. Using the iPhone app, you can access the information stored in the Glue network on the go. The application surfaces your likes, those of your friends, as well as what's hot across the entire Glue network. This info is accessed via three buttons at the bottom of the app: /p pstrong1. Me/strong. Access books, music, movies, restaurants, wine etc. that you liked and commented on via the browser. All your favorites are always synched up and right there when you need them./p pstrong2. Friends/strong. When you're looking for social recommendations on the go, you can tap into an intelligent, aggregate list of things your friends liked around the web./p pstrong3. Popular/strong. This screen lets you expand your circle and stay connected to what is happening on Glue around the web. You'll find 100s of books, music, movies, restaurants, wines and more that are popular among the Glue users./p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/glue_for_iphone.png"/p pAs you browse through the items, you can either display them in the standard view as shown above, or you can switch over to a more fun "cover flow" view that allows you to quickly flip through the different films, books, restaurants, etc. similar to the way you browse through your albums on your iPhone/iPod. /p pThe iPhone app is definitely a must-have for Glue users as they will enjoy having access to their friends' recommendations even when they're away from their computers. /p object width="400" height="600"param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2235153amp;server=vimeo.comamp;show_title=1amp;show_byline=1amp;show_portrait=0amp;color=amp;fullscreen=1" /embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2235153amp;server=vimeo.comamp;show_title=1amp;show_byline=1amp;show_portrait=0amp;color=amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="600"/embed/object br /a href="http://vimeo.com/2235153"Glue for iPhone/a from a href="http://vimeo.com/user814588"AdaptiveBlue/a on a href="http://vimeo.com"Vimeo/a. emDisclosure: Adaptive Blue, makers of Glue, is a RWW sponsor./em stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/get_glue_on_your_iphone.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ljcyUOl1GYoReeBVwbmofoOrHp0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ljcyUOl1GYoReeBVwbmofoOrHp0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=d38F9ACf"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=d38F9ACf" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=dqDjNWUr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ILOlHMzE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ILOlHMzE" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=WLcuwh5L"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=WLcuwh5L" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=OZxqxUoH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=OZxqxUoH" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/ONst-fk3dTU" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="markcubanpic.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/markcubanpic.jpg" width="116" height="142" Four years ago, an eternity in internet time, Dallas Mavericks owner and controversial web thought leader Mark Cuban allegedly used inside information to dump all his stock in meta search engine a href="http://mamma.com"Mamma.com/a hours before the company announced a round of fund raising that caused the value of stock in the company to drop dramatically. That's what the Securities and Exchange Commission says, at least, according to a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122693827604333637.html"a short but high profile report/a this morning by the Wall St. Journal. Cuban owned a 6.3% stake in br / the company./p pThe full text of the SEC complaint is a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ-20081117-seccubancomplaint.pdf"here/a and key points are summarized below. strongUpdate:/strong For a really strange twist to this story, see a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/a-purported-war-of-words-between-cuban-and-the-sec/"this email exchange reported on by the NYT/a./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12581amp;cb=12581' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12581amp;n=12581' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pCuban is a frequent commenter on all things internet, from the technology to the business side of the web, on his site a href="http://blogmaverick.com/"Blog Maverick/a. Many people consider Cuban a braggart and an annoyance, others (including, to be honest, this author) find him a thought provoking, interesting and somewhat likable public character. It appears that the SEC will fine Cuban for his alleged crime./p h2Key Sections of the SEC Complaint/h2 pAccording to the SEC report:br / "Despite agreeing in June 2004 to keep material, non-public information about an impending stock offering by Mamma.com Inc. confidential, Cuban sold his entire stake in the company - 600,000 shares - prior to the public announcement of the offering. By selling when he did, Cuban avoided losses in excess of $750,000...strongUnless enjoined, Cuban is likely to commit such violations again in the future./strong" (emph. added) /p pMamma.com was considering raising capital through a private placement known as a PIPE ("private investment in public equity") offering. In doing so they reached out to Marck, their largest shareholder./p p"On June 28, 2004, the CEO sent an email message to Cuban titled 'Call me pls,'br / in which he asked Cuban to call him 'ASAP' and provided both his cellular and office telephone numbers. Cuban called four minutes later from the American Airlines Center in Dallas, home of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, and spoke to the CEO for eight minutes and thirty-five seconds.br / br / "The CEO prefaced the call by informing Cuban that he had confidential information to convey to him, and Cuban agreed that he would keep whatever information the CEO intended to share with him confidential./p p"Cuban became very upset and angry during the conversation, and said, among other things, that he did not like PIPEs [the particular method of fund raising Mamma was planning on] because they dilute the existing shareholders. At the end of the call, Cuban told the CEO 'Well, now I'm screwed. I can't sell.'"/p pIt all seems pretty straightforward, if a matter of he said she said, but we do wonder - why now? emstrongWho did Cuban anger recently to be charged with this 4 years after it allegedly happened?/strong/em/p pemPhoto: Mark Cuban at Blog World Expo, Creative Commons by a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/61237118@N00/"Marc Levin/abr / /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mark_cuban_charged_with_inside.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/L4kU2AHqVcjNCYUPUtiYlXfbkFM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/L4kU2AHqVcjNCYUPUtiYlXfbkFM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=vb9yjFvd"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=vb9yjFvd" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=UvUsuvtl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=aBJtOY5U"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=aBJtOY5U" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=1ZY0Gqfk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=1ZY0Gqfk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=GmuhrZ4r"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=GmuhrZ4r" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/t5_kOTzNxzM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="youtube_hulu_logo.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/youtube_hulu_logo.png" /According to the a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74ab11da-b415-11dd-8e35-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1"Financial Times/a, a href="http://hulu.com"Hulu/a, the online video service backed by NBC Universal and News Corp. is slowly catching up to a href="http://youtube.com"YouTube/a in terms of advertising revenue. a href="http://www.screendigest.com/"Screen Digest/a's Arash Amel forcasts that in 2008, YouTube will generate about $100 million in the U.S., while Hulu will make about $70 million. By next year, however, Amel forecasts that both sites will make about $180 million, even though Hulu only has a fraction of YouTube's traffic./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12580amp;cb=12580' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12580amp;n=12580' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pClearly, Hulu's content of professionally produced TV shows and movies generates more revenue per viewer and video than YouTube's user-generated content, which still scares advertisers (and especially brand advertisers) because of the unpredictability of the content. /p h2Advertising on YouTube/h2 pGoogle has been trying to create a viable advertising solution for YouTube ever since it a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_buys_youtube.php"bought/a the service in 2006, but so far, none of these initiatives have really worked. Just last week, Google introduced two more monetization schemes for YouTube: a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_monetizes_embeds.php"monetizing embeds/a and allowing video publishers to a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_puts_placement_of_user.php"bid for sponsored placement/a of their videos on the site. Whether these initiatives will have any major impact on YouTube's bottom line remains to be seen./p pimg alt="hulu_revenue.jpg" align="right" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/hulu_revenue.jpg" /We should also add some caveats to these predictions: The current economic trends make short-term forecasts for online advertising a bit tricky. Also, as a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/hulu-to-be-bigger-than-youtube-next-year-"Henry Blodget/a points out, it is worth noting that Hulu shares a larger percentage of its revenue with its content providers than YouTube does, so YouTube will still be making more than Hulu in terms of net revenue./p h2Don't Count YouTube Out/h2 pHowever, YouTube will surely not capitulate and leave the market for TV shows and movies to Hulu without a fight. Google has already made a deal with MGM to bring full-length movies to YouTube and other content providers will surely follow. /p pHowever, while the user experience on YouTube for watching short clips is quite good, it can't match Hulu's player or video quality. If YouTube wants to get users to watch full-length TV shows on its service, it will first have to create a better user experience./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/online_advertising_hulu_youtube.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/mIL67R1EWtI4JBNxwJw2V1hSbOw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/mIL67R1EWtI4JBNxwJw2V1hSbOw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=udrfMpHn"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=udrfMpHn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=EFHXJbH6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ROsGblhe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ROsGblhe" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=rWL1IQbu"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=rWL1IQbu" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=TKTrVBJa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=TKTrVBJa" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/oiZyJeWCfmA" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/google_logo.gif"Do you remember when you were first introduced to a href="http://google.com"Google.com/a? It's almost hard to imagine a life before them, isn't it? em(B.G. - Before Google?) /emTheir impact on the internet cannot be understated. As Google has come to dominate what it means to search the net, they've integrated themselves into our lives, our browsers, and our cell phones. But this wasn't always the case. Ten years ago, Google was just some new search engine trying to make a name for itself amid competitors like Excite and Yahoo. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12578amp;cb=12578' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12578amp;n=12578' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pLast night, we received a link to a little bit of Google nostalgia and we thought we would share it with you, too. Doug Sherrets, Business Development Manager at Slide, Inc. and occasional contributor over at a href="http://venturebeat.com"Venture Beat/a, sent us over to a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=45289773581"this Facebook page/a where he had reposted a blog entry that he had written on November 16th, 1998 at age 14 about a tiny startup called Google. We thought you would enjoy it too:/p blockquote pquot;A new search engine is Google.com, founded by some kids out of Stanford, the same university where Excite and Yahoo spawned. You might think the search engine market has already developed and today's leaders -- like Yahoo, Lycos, and Excite -- are going to be the search engine leaders for years to come. Guess what? You're wrong. Start-ups like Google will offer better services, and unless the established players react, they'll lose market share. Whether you like the name or not, Google is going to be a search engine to be reckoned with." /p p"While Google won't be #1 overnight, they'll get up there because people will like their search over Yahoo, Lycos, or Excite. Google produces accurate results, and that is what search is all about, right?quot; /p pquot;Can just a search engine company support a $1+ billion market value? Those billion dollar companies have more services like personalization, chat, and message boards other than search. You're right, but if you take search away, you take away the basis of the whole site. Users don't go to a portal to get stock news, they go to a portal to get to where they want to go. They might stop for a couple minutes on the portal using the extra services, but internet investors have to remember the epicenter of the whole business is the search engine. Instead of portals putting search on the backburner and letting their indexes get outdated, they should be buying out companies like AskJeeves and Google. They are the future.quot;/p /blockquote pa href="http://www.mrmarkets.com/1998/11/the_new_search_.html"emOriginal article/em/a/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_10_years_ago.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/A7BMyTGSr_j_mDQFqYMKTDTbdzg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/A7BMyTGSr_j_mDQFqYMKTDTbdzg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=g0ArsgZG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=g0ArsgZG" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=lZtgwWA6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=G7CrCRrS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=G7CrCRrS" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=W6fzXzrl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=W6fzXzrl" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=JbWkGsJG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=JbWkGsJG" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/buxXyQtEM08" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="adobe_logo_nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/adobe_logo_nov_08.jpg" width="99" height="93" /a href="http://www.adobe.com/"Adobe/a and a href="http://www.arm.com"ARM/a today announced that they are joining forces to bring a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/flash_10_released_finally_flash_works_in_firefox_again.php"Adobe Flash Player 10/a and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_best_things_about_adobe_air.php"Adobe AIR/a to ARM powered devices in a move that Adobe hopes will lower power consumption for mobile devices running Flash and AIR content, and make it easier for users to play video on a variety of devices./p pAccording to the statement, the partnership stems from the a href="http://www.openscreenproject.org/"Open Screen Project/a, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_to_publish_flash_file_fo.php"Adobe's industry-wide initiative/a set to address challenges of Web browsing on a broad range of screens.br / /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12576amp;cb=12576' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12576amp;n=12576' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pThe joint technology will target the ARMv6 and ARMv7 architectures used in ARM11 processors as well as the upcoming a href="http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-A8.html"Cortex-A/a series processors./p pARM believes that the resulting technology will run on "billions of devices from our partners, such as pocket-sized mobile devices, mobile computing platforms, set-top boxes, digital TVs and automotive infotainment," said vice president of marketing, Ian Drew in the statement. "The combination of Adobe Flash and ARM's low-power processor IP and Mali GPU will ensure a fantastic Internet experience for consumers on the world's leading 32-bit architecture."/p pGetting Flash on mobiles in an efficient manner has been a goal of Adobe for some time. The majority of mobile phones that can use Flash at the moment use Flash Lite, the cut down version of the technology, and one that is limited in what it can play. /p pAlthough the technology is not expected to be available until the second half of 2009, Adobe will demonstrate Flash Player 10 during the a href="http://max.adobe.com/na/experience/#?s=0p=0"Adobe MAX/a developer conference this week in San Francisco./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/flash_10_for_mobile_devices.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Pmuk-9vK39D5A0yJWp6JYR3vEMo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Pmuk-9vK39D5A0yJWp6JYR3vEMo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=WI7m403c"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=WI7m403c" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=pT6BBNGg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=gKauKGqI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=gKauKGqI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=izfu5Wl9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=izfu5Wl9" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=x9puI5cJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=x9puI5cJ" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/ThHcapYgnA8" height="1" width="1"/

pThe news that Barack Obama will probably have to a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/politics/16blackberry.html"surrender his Blackberry/a during his time in office seems incongruous. With a href="http://www.socialsignal.com/blog/alexandra-samuel/roundup-50-suggestions-on-how-president-obama-can-use-the-internet"a torrent of suggestions flying/a for how the new U.S. president can use the Internet to govern, and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obamas_social_media_advantage.php"given the role the Internet played in Obama's election/a, it's ironic that he may be spending much of his time disconnected from the hive mind./p pToo bad. I'd dreamed he'd be using a href="http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry/"Twitterberry/a to share tidbits from NSA briefings ("OMFG @Biden - can you believe Libya is at it AGAIN?!"). At the very least, I was hoping he could liveblog his own inauguration: "12:03 pm - Putting my left hand on the Bible, raising my right. Then bringing both hands over to the keyboard to type this. Roberts is starting to look impatient."/p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12575amp;cb=12575' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12575amp;n=12575' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pI mean, geez... this could have been downright emhistoric/em./p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/2008-11-16-Blackberry.gif" //p pema href="http://www.socialsignal.com/n2s"More Noise to Signal/a/em/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cartoon_the_presidents_blackberry.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/W4N-h5mL_RIxZIh2letGn7HidsY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/W4N-h5mL_RIxZIh2letGn7HidsY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=juKp7Fkp"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=juKp7Fkp" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=REhfTAsK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=QTisVLOe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=QTisVLOe" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=PKdO2tIt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=PKdO2tIt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ShI1SW1u"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ShI1SW1u" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/hqLSBTFrzHI" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="hard_drive_platters_nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/hard_drive_platters_nov_08.jpg" width="173" height="64" /According to the a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/technology/circuits/03basics.html?pagewanted=1ei=5090en=52520fd64c31403fex=1288674000"New York Times/a, a basic privacy measure that is often overlooked is the proper destruction of data on hard drives. a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081105083549.htm"An ongoing study/a by British Telecom says that most people don't realize that deleting a file doesn't actually remove the data from a computer. /p pIn fact, the BT research found that only 33 percent of second hand hard drives had been completely wiped clean. To ensure your drive doesn't contain any personal data before you give it away or sell it, you need to reformat the hard drive or use digital shredding software if you want to completely eliminate all traces of data. In this post, we'll show you how.br / /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12574amp;cb=12574' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12574amp;n=12574' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pWhen it comes to data stored on your computer, deleting files doesn't actually remove the data. File information is kept in a directory so that the operating system can find it. When you delete a file, all you are doing is removing it from the directory and flagging that part of the drive as being available for new data. Until that region is overwritten, the old data can be retrieved, in fact that's a href="http://lifehacker.com/393084/how-to-recover-deleted-files-with-free-software"how you can recover lost data/a. It's also the way most file recovery programs work - they look for data on your hard drive that shouldn't be there according to the directory and restore it./p pThe only way to completely remove the data is to overwrite the contents of the hard drive. You can do this by formatting the drive, or using data wiping software that fills your hard drive with random data./p h2Two Main Methods of Overwriting Data/h2 pstrongThe Gutmann Method/strong/p pBased on Peter Gutmann's paper "a href="http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sec96/full_papers/gutmann/"Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory/a", this method provides the best security. Data is overwritten 35 times with carefully selected patterns, which makes it unrecoverable. Unfortunately, it also makes it time consuming./p pstrongUS DoD 5220-22.M/strong/p pBased on the a href="http://www.zdelete.com/dod.htm"United States Department of Defense recommendation 5220-22.M/a, this method overwrites the data seven times. While less secure than the Gutmann method, it is faster./p h2Mac Users: Data Wiping Built In/h2 pMacs come with data wiping tools built into their systems. To securely delete a folder or file, all you need to do is move it to the trash can and from the Finder menu select 'Secure Empty Trash'. /p pimg alt="secure_empty_trash_nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/secure_empty_trash_nov_08.jpg" width="245" height="253" //p pAlternatively, the Disk Utility program 'Erase Free Space' scans your hard drive for unused space and securely deletes it to military (7 passses) or Guttman (35 passes) standards. You can find it in the Utilities folder./p h2Windows: Data Wiping by Selected File/Folder/h2 pa href="http://www.heidi.ie/node/6"Eraser/a is a free, open source program that works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 2003 Server and even DOS. It uses carefully selected patterns to overwrite your hard drive several times and lets you select single files, entire folders or the entire drive to be wiped clean. /p pstrongHow to Use Eraser/strong/p pa href="http://www.heidi.ie/node/14"Download /aand install the application. Once running, you'll be presented with a simple box that allows you to either schedule an erase, or do it there and then (on demand). /p pimg alt="eraser_Nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/eraser_Nov_08.jpg" width="459" height="335" //p pThere are three ways to enter data into the list if you are doing it on demand:/p p1. Select files and folders in Explorer and drag and drop them to the listbr / 2. Copy them to the clipboard and then paste them to the listbr / 3. Use the New Task command in the File menu. /p pNote: If you use the New Task command, a window will appear allowing you to select unused space on a drive, a folder or a file to be erased. /p pAfter you have added the data you wish to erase to the list, you need to select the method of removal. br / br / olliThe Gutmann Method (Default)/liliThe US DoD 5220-22.M Method/liliThe Pseudorandom Data Method/li/ol/p pUsing the pseudorandom data method, all passes will be random data, which is highly incompressible. This is the only method that should be used when erasing unused space or data on a compressed drive. The number of passes is user selectable from one to 65535. /p pOnce you've selected the files/folders/drives that you want deleted, and the method of deletion, you can run Eraser. It will ask you for confirmation before it starts erasing so make sure you are certain you want to continue as this is your last chance to prevent data from being accidentally erased. /p h2Data Wiping of Complete Drive/h2 pAnother free open source program that runs on strikeWindows/strike virtually any machine, a href="http://www.dban.org/"Darik's Boot and Nuke/a (DBAN) strongwipes the entire contents of every hard drive it finds on your computer/strong when you run it, so be very careful. /p pstronga href="http://www.dban.org/about"From the DBAN about page/a:/strong/p blockquoteDarik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction./blockquote pDBAN is simple enough to use. Once you've downloaded the program, write it to a CD, DVD, or thumb drive, boot from that and enter 'autonuke' at the prompt./p pimg alt="dban_nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/dban_nov_08.jpg" width="638" height="398" //p pa href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/technology/circuits/03basics.html?pagewanted=1ei=5090en=52520fd64c31403fex=1288674000"The New York Times/a has an in depth article about DBAN that includes an interview with the author, Darik Horn if you are interested in further reading./p h2The Ultimate Permanent Erase/h2 pWhile these methods of data wiping can be useful for most of us; if you're uncertain about using them, there is one other option. /p olliRemove the hard disk from the computer/liliUnscrew the casing, exposing the disks/liliSmash them to smithereens/li/ol pYour data now remains private. :)/p pemUpdate:/em As pointed out by Stu in the comments, simply formatting the contents of the hard drive is insufficient if you want to delete the data; the drive will also need to be overwritten to ensure data deletion. Additionally, a 'quick-format' will not suffice, it must be a full format./p pbr / /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_permanently_delete_data.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/yWYgpLt2yiqv1vnST6BfmjQRU7Q/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/yWYgpLt2yiqv1vnST6BfmjQRU7Q/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=1VBkT0QY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=1VBkT0QY" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=S5AHUieN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Aw2pivUj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Aw2pivUj" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=jSHUpLoA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=jSHUpLoA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ZtGeAgfH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ZtGeAgfH" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/r1XeMdGiWx4" height="1" width="1"/