IMIA Web 2.0 Taskforce Portal

Today, Six Apart is launching three new features for TypePad: enhanced TypePad profiles, a new commenting system, and TypePad Connect, a no-cost combination of services that promises to make participating in and managing communities easier for bloggers on a variety of platforms - not just those offered by Six Apart.

For users familiar with the Six Apart family of products, the profiles will be a welcome step forward from the original TypeKey implementation and the new commenting features offer functionality users have come to expect from commenting systems. But it's TypePad Connect - or more appropriately the vision for what TypePad Connect could be - that makes this announcement interesting.

Sponsor

According to Six Apart, TypePad Connect "makes community management easier for bloggers with the ability to track, moderate and respond to comments across multiple sites and blogs from one dashboard or via email." In other words, it's your lifestream and your blog conversations - be they on your blog or someone else's - all in one spot.

At first blush, TypePad Connect may appear to be a reactionary response to services like IntenseDebate, Disqus, and Backtype - possibly even FriendFeed. Services that have all but usurped the conversations that once were the domain of individual blogs.

And maybe in some ways, it is. But there's clearly something else happening here.

If it lives up to its promise, TypePad Connect has the potential to combine both popular lifestreaming features and comment-aggregation features under one user profile. And with an open approach, they could do it in a way that allows users to begin to experience the promise of the distributed social Web.

When it comes to understanding the social Web, SixApart definitely has vision. The company sprung from the early days of blogging, launching one of the first major blogging platforms. They were the birthplace of OpenID, a single digital identity that has continued to gain support throughout the online community. Members of the company remain deeply involved in a number of efforts driving the social Web today.

This move toward a distributed social presence falls right in line with their previous efforts. Like other services with "Connect" in their names - Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect - TypePad Connect has a grand vision of moving personally relevant content outside the proprietary constructs of specific blogs - or even of Six Apart, itself - and making it useful and accessible to other services.

In other words, the same way that Facebook Connect, for example, offers other sites access to your Facebook profile information - saving you the time of establishing yet another profile on yet another service that replicates the information you already have stored elsewhere - TypePad Connect offers other blogs easy access to your profile. And in return, you get the ability to manage all of the comments you make from one spot. Your profile is no longer beholden to a blog or service, it's available to be distributed.

Embracing the concept of community that has the ability to exist and live outside the walls of a given blog or proprietary product is definitely a step in the right direction. (For that matter, it doesn't take a huge intuitive leap to see the value of having a TypePad Connect profile as the endpoint for an OpenID URL.) TypePad Connect could be another step toward the realization of a truly distributed social Web.

Even in its current beta iteration, the offering has some definite benefits. Things like simplified avatar management, lifestreaming of multiple services under one profile, and comment management features from a central dashboard will be appealing to many existing Six Apart customers and will likely attract new users, as well.

But as with any beta offering, there are some downsides and issues.

Ironically, one of the current issues with TypePad Connect is comment management. Even though comments are not stuck on a specific blog, comments are still stuck within TypePad Connect. Allowing users to export comments is on the roadmap, but in the beta version, all comments are currently being held on the TypePad Connect servers. That's a concern.

There's also the opposite problem: there's currently no way to import comments into TypePad Connect. That means if you're starting a blog from scratch, you'll be fine, but if you're adding TypePad Connect to an existing blog, you're going to have an old comment database and a new one. So you'll be managing two sets of comments.

That said, it's a beta. It's expected to have flaws.

TypePad Connect definitely has a vision for a far more grand offering than the current beta. No doubt, pressure - be that pressure from users asking for the functionality or pressure from competitors like Automattic (which has begun to amalgamate the ingredients for a similar offering with Gravatar and IntenseDebate) - necessitated Six Apart moving sooner rather than later.

But when it comes right down to it, it's the vision in which I believe. I think Six Apart has a chance to provide a compelling solution for a common problem, even if they're not quite there yet. And once they begin to get closer to that vision, it could change the way we think about managing our conversations online.

Vision aside, would I implement this solution today? To be honest, I'd be hesitant to adopt TypePad Connect on an existing blog until some of the beta kinks are worked out. But if I were starting a new blog today? TypePad Connect would definitely be in the running for my centralized commenting system - even though I wouldn't be starting that blog on one of Six Apart's platforms.

If you're interested in trying it, TypePad Connect offers native support for Blogger, Movable Type 3.x and 4.x, Tumblr, TypePad, WordPress.org 2.0 and higher. It can also support any other installation with a chunk of javascript. Support for additional platforms are planned once the offering comes out of beta.

When I think of Blackberry users, I think of accountants, lawyers and anyone else who wears a tie and carries a briefcase. You know, really boring people. MySpace users, sorta the opposite.

But there must be some significant overlap, because 400,000 people downloaded the MySpace Blackberry application in the last week, says MySpace - it was launched on November 12.

Both RIM and MySpace say this is a record - no other application has been downloaded so quickly onto Blackberry devices, and MySpace has never had an application on any platform be downloaded as often.

MySpace also says that 15 million messages have been sent and received via the mobile app, and users have updated their mood and status more than 2 million times.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

With the recession in full swing, industries across the charts have been laying off hundreds of employees — making the job market increasingly competitive. So what’s a freshly unemployed tech professional to do? Hit the streets and start networking. As the hordes of job-seekers descend upon trade shows, conferences and meetups around the country, a few mobile startups could be poised to profit from their misery: digital business card services.

The last few months have seen the launch of a number of services, delivered via mobile technologies from iPhone apps to text messages, that aim to do away with the business card. Previously, companies may have pitched their product as a “green” alternative to dead-tree info swapping, but in today’s market, the dynamic nature of the digital business card could prove to be a more powerful selling point — at least for a startup that can dispatch updated, social media-connected personal data securely across the range of mobile devices.

The iPhone has been a key driver of the market for digital business cards, at least in terms of visibility. Gabe Zichermann, CEO of rmbrME, says his company, which had previously offered an SMS solution with about 1,000 users, had 10,000 users (and even more downloads) of its beamME application in the first 10 days it was available on the App Store. Other apps include Nameo, Handshake, FriendBook and iCard. Most of the services work roughly the same way: Bring two iPhone users together, pull up the app, and a simple touch command sends information between their devices.

However, Nameo, Handshake and iCard are limited to contacts with an iPhone. But what about those of us without iPhones? Dub, which was launched in beta in June of this year, is another option for the BlackBerry set, and as of this week, its service is also available for Android phones (currently that’s just the T-Mobile G1). (The company says service for the iPhone and Windows Mobile are due out in December.) Perhaps Dub’s biggest claim to fame is that it offers integration with common business services. Data can be beamed to a Salesforce.com contact management system, as well as to mobile devices, and Dub users will soon be able to sign into the service using their LinkedIn login and password.

But even Dub, which allows for limited cross-platform sharing, requires that both users have a smartphone and install the app. For on-the-go information sharing, the “Do you use this app?” conversation can add an extra layer of awkwardness and time. For universal sharing, users might be better off with an SMS service from players such as Dropcard, TextID and rmbrME. Even iPhone app-addicts have an option: While most iPhone apps rely on Wi-Fi networks and geolocation, rmbrME’s iPhone app, beamME, allows users to send personal data from their iPhone to any phone, whether it has a data connection or just a simple voice connection.

I’m still slogging along with a Nokia 2610, so I’m partial to technology that doesn’t leave me (with my pesky  insistence on multiday battery life) out in the cold. I’ve found services like rmbrME and Dropcard to be simple to use, and I could easily send my data to smartphone-carrying folks via shortcode. Better yet, people could send info to me, without even knowing that I still carry a Stone Age-era device.

While there hasn’t been much venture investment in the space just yet, Zichermann says rmbrME has raised just shy of $1 million in angel investment, and DubMeNow has reportedly raised $1.1 million in angel funding. DreamIt Ventures provided seed funding for Dropcard. But the startup founders are optimistic: Zichermann says VCs are exactly the kind of social, tech-savvy users that “get” services like rmbrME, which should make it easier to raise funding when the time is right.

Also promising in this market: None of the services is dependent on advertising revenue. Most of the services use a “freemium” model, and several are working to add enterprise-level functionality. DubMeNow’s BlackBerry-focused, Salesforce.com-integrating app seems aimed squarely at the business-to-business marketplace. Zichermann says rmbrME also has its eye on premium services aimed at the enterprise market, such as offering a branded, customized look and feel for user cards.

You probably can’t throw away your business cards just yet. But if you’re in the market for a new job, sign up for an SMS service and head out to the trade shows.

Image courtesy of rmbrME

YieldBuild, an ad optimization platform that helps users manage multiple ad networks and position advertisements on their webpages, has launched its self-service program to the public. When we last covered the company, YieldBuild was still in private beta and only sites with more than 500,000 monthly visitors were eligible to participate. Now, web publishers of any size are welcome to join, and the installation process has been streamlined to require only a few snippets of JavaScript.

YieldBuild helps publishers maximize their ad revenues in a number of ways. To begin, the publisher ties their accounts from Google AdSense and similar services to their YieldBuild account. Next, they designate a number of hotspots on their page where ads can appear, but don’t necessarily have to (for example, I could tag five possible ad spots on a page and let YieldBuild figure out the ideal configuration). YieldBuild will automatically display different configurations to different visitors until it figures out where each ad should be placed for optimal results. The service also takes into account ad appearance, adjusting font size and color as needed. In the past the system would take around 100,000 visitors until it had ‘learned’ the ideal settings, but the new algorithm needs only a fraction of that traffic.

YieldBuild has also recently introduced support for CPM ad networks, and allows users to not only perfect the placement of their ads, but also which ad networks should be used at a given time to maximize revenues. Other players in this space include Pubmatic and Rubicon Project which also offer management for multiple ad networks, but focus less on the actual placement and formatting of the ads.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

We’d noticed an increasing number of people emailing on a large-scale bucket test (a product change tested on just a percentage of total users) that Google has been conducting for months - adding a Digg-like voting feature to search results (which also changes the ranking) as well as user comments.

Tonight, Google apparently said “what the hell” and turned it on for everyone.

The changes are called SearchWiki, and are a dramatic departure from Google’s streamlined, algorithm-rules approach to search. It takes features from Digg to allow users to vote site results up or down, as well as features from Wikia Search to allow users to add comments, move search results, etc. The result are customized results that appear every time you do that search in the future (assuming you are logged in).

Here’s a demo video:

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Content Delivery Network BitGravity is testing a new product they’re calling Multiview (at least internally) that delivers up to six different synchronized high definition video streams at once. The viewer sees the normal view but can click on any of the other views at any time, and audio is obviously synchronized. The result is this: the viewer is put in the producer’s chair, and can switch camera angles at any time.

Why would you want this? I’m speculating, but an obvious use is sporting events. Instead of watching whatever is on screen, viewers could watch particular players instead. And if a particularly interesting play happens, users can switch cameras to see it from different angles.

There are other obvious uses for this too. As usual, the pornography industry may be the first to try it out.

This is also a view into the future, where video breaks away from the bonds of broadcast television. The Internet is interactive - so let viewers interact.

To see a Multiview test, go here, which shows a driving trip from six different camera angles (it’s Google street view on steroids). Not sure if they’ll keep this live now that we’re pointing to it.

Note that the BitGravity guys are known for doing random stuff to show off their network. But from what we hear, Multiview is being productized.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Verizon Wireless today admitted that some of its employees had been looking into President-elect Barack Obama’s cell phone billing records. In a release, the company said:

“This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed President-Elect Barack Obama’s personal cell phone account. The account has been inactive for several months. The device on the account was a simple voice flip-phone, not a BlackBerry or other smartphone designed for e-mail or other data services.

“All employees who have accessed the account — whether authorized or not — have been put on immediate leave, with pay. As the circumstances of each individual employee’s access to the account are determined, the company will take appropriate actions. Employees with legitimate business needs for access will be returned to their positions, while employees who have accessed the account improperly and without legitimate business justification will face appropriate disciplinary action.

“We apologize to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day.”

This is a good enough reason for all of us to question the privacy policies of our phone companies, which have time and again shown that they are ready to play lose-and-easy with their customer’s privacy. Of course, they are known to use underhanded tactics to position themselves as the good guys, though they are anything but. [Digg]

In my opinion, this breach — regardless of what your political leanings — is not a good thing. If President-elect Obama’s records are not safe, who is to say a disgruntled employee won’t mess with those of private citizens with whom they have an axe to grind.

What do you think Verizon’s punishment should be?

Google put on a full court media push tonight for a major change the company is making to its search experience. According to the Official Google Blog and a very unusual email the company sent out to press, a new feature called Google Search Wiki will launch soon. We're not seeing it yet, but this is what it will do.

The feature will allow logged-in users to change the order of search results and mark up search results pages with notes. Only their own results will be changed - unless they click a link to view all Search Wiki notes on a search's page. Very few details are out yet, nothing regarding vandalism, libel, history or other wiki matters. Those are pretty important concerns given that this could become the biggest and most important wiki in the world.

Sponsor

This isn't Google Labs, this isn't a little project off to the side, apparently there's a Google Search Wiki team and they have access to the primary search results page. We expect this to be a very big deal.

When we first wrote about Genwi a year ago, it was a social feed reader with content feeds that could be organized by different categories (blogs, news, videos, music, podcasts) and shared with your friends. Today, it is relaunching with a completely new design that takes into account what your friends are doing across the Web as well.

You can think of Genwi as a combination of Google Reader and FriendFeed with sophisticated search, auto-categorization, and filtering features. As before, Genwi is a super RSS feed reader. It suggests feeds by category, or you can add your own (via search or by importing an OPML file from another reader). You can also invite your friends by giving Genwi permission to match its members to your contacts in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, LinkedIn, AOL, Outlook and elsewhere (although it does not have Facebook integration yet).

Once you do that, you can track your the social activity of your friends across the Web, just like on FriendFeed. Anytime a contact does something on Twitter, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, or other social media sites, it appears on Genwi. (The other supported services are Vimeo, Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, Pownce, Yelp, Upcoming, Last.fm, iLike, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, Jaiku,Webshots, Picasa, Smugmug, Zoomr, Furl, Reddit, Mixx, and Diigo).

So far, so what. But Genwi has some interesting features that could push the ball forward in the Web filtering/lifestreaming game. Genwi treats the Web as a collection of information objects. An object can be a blog post, a video, a streaming song, a photo, a Tweet, a Digg. Genwi lets you grab the objects you care about either directly through RSS feeds or indirectly by paying attention to what your friends do and presents them all in a manageable, personalized, searchable feed. Explains Genwi co-founder Killian P. McKiernan:

At first a web page was a published document. It has evolved to a collection of objects—wading through all of these objects by searching and loading pages may not be the most efficient way to consume them. It might be better to bring in all the objects that matter to you and create a context enabling you to filter and directly consume what is most interesting.

Once all the objects are ingested into Genwi, it starts to do some interesting things with them. Each post/video/song/object can be filtered by type and category, as well as by most popular, highest rated, and most recent. They can be rated, shared, or added as a favorite. All of your friends favorites show up in your wire (which is what Genwi calls your personal super feed). The most popular items are available in a public wire, which can also be sorted in various ways. When you search for things, favorite items across the network come up top, adding an element of social rank to the searches.

There are other features that noteworthy as well. You can follow other people’s wires without having to “friend” them. If you wan to send a “quick post” to all your friends, it will appear Twitter-like in all of their feeds (FriendFeed has something similar called “messages”). It handles all sorts of media quite adeptly. And it does a better job of showing what’s popular on the service in a very granular fashion.

On the downside, the site takes longer to load than FriendFeed and is not quite as responsive. But it has a few tricks worth checking out.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Facebook, which is quite a hit on smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone, is making a debut on Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 phone as a panel. Panels are special interface mechanisms unique to Xperia; they allow phone users to interact with a specific web service or an application.

With this release, Facebook is now available on the iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile (almost) platforms. No Facebook on Nokia’s Symbian or Google’s Android — not yet, anyway. 

I wonder how many people will actually end up buying the X1 device, which is about to go on sale. I returned the review phone earlier today so I don’t know how this app, which you can download for free, actually works. But I do know you can use it to check status updates, friends’ profiles, pics and notifications. Facebook on the iPhone remains one of the best mobile web apps — and even other versions of Facebook pale in front of its capabilities. (Read: my X-1 Review.)

It's clear now that the Web has once and for all replaced TV's role in the music business. Yesterday Guns n' Roses released their very long awaited album Chinese Democracy via a colorful MySpace page. Then today NPR announced that they will offer an "Exclusive First Listen" to the new albums of two music legends - Neil Young and Paul McCartney. In late September NPR had a similar arrangement for Bob Dylan's latest album. Younger musicians are flocking to Web platforms such as Imeem and last.fm to promote their music. For bands still under the radar, all the afore-mentioned sites cater to them - but also small sites like Muxtape (a notice on its homepage currently reads: "relaunching soon, in the service of bands").

All of this is further proof that Web technology has gone mainstream in the music business.

Sponsor

In an age when MTV seemingly doesn't play any music anymore - instead preferring to bore anyone over 15 years old with insipid 'reality tv' shows - it represents a big shift away from TV to the Web, when promoting new music.

The Guns n Roses MySpace page is impressive. It offers the full album online, a couple of days before the official release in stores. True GNR fans, including this author, will still buy the album when it is released. But by promoting the album online a couple of days before release, it encourages new fans and gives Guns n Roses a lot of free publicity and viral uptake on the Internet. This will almost certainly increase overall sales.

While Guns n Roses hasn't gone as far as Radiohead did with their latest album In Rainbows - which was released as a 'pay what you want' download before it was even an actual CD product - Guns n Roses and MySpace is an appropriate partnership for both parties. For Guns n Roses, it allows them to reach a young, hip, massive audience. And for MySpace, it gives them a lot of page views and we presume a very healthy profit from the record label and retailers such as Best Buy (which has a banner ad right at the top of the page). We should also point out that Guns n Roses has employed some heavy handed tactics to stop illegal file-sharing of the album, so they haven't been entirely savvy about the Web. Still, the MySpace promotion is inspired.

We've been impressed by many of the online music services this year - last.fm has continued to evolve its web services, Imeem has been a revelation for many music fans, Pandora's traffic continues to grow despite ongoing legal issues, sites like The Hype Machine (our coverage) and Muxtape (when it was available) offer something new and different, and so on.

But we're also noticing some of the more traditional radio stations vastly improving their Web sites - and NPR is a great example of that. NPR Music is currently marking its one year anniversary. It features content from NPR and 12 of its public radio stations, but what's impressed us has been the "original-to-NPR Music features" such as live performances, studio sessions, first listens to forthcoming albums, and interviews. This author is a subscriber to NPR's All Songs Considered podcast, which has recently featured a full Radiohead concert and a Guest DJ appearance by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

I want my MTV? Not anymore. I can get everything I want in my Web browser! Although to be fair, even MTV has moved its music to the Web.

Economic downturns are hard for everyone, at both work and at home. Week after week there are requests for managers to further reduce budgets, lay off more people and cut projects that were previously classified as “necessary to sustain normal business operations.” These pressures forge managers made of diamond, and those who perform well in both boom and bust are destined for greatness. The very best managers get out ahead of downturns and take action early to minimize shareholder losses and, ideally, create shareholder value.

Here are six simple questions to determine if you are one of these managers.

1. Do you treat economic hardships in your business as a time to relax, or do you look to improve your skills?
2. Do you constantly push back when new budget cuts come along, or are you offering up cost savings ahead of requests from higher level executives?
3. Do you complain that you are too short handed to accomplish your mission, or do you spend time developing tools, systems and metrics that help you determine how to get more done with less people?
4. Are your top performers worried about losing their jobs, or do you spend time nurturing them and growing them to be even more successful in their positions?
5. Do you complain that you need all of your folks, or are you constantly weeding your team of underperformers without replacing them when times are rough?
6. Do you treat hiring freezes as interview freezes, or are you constantly looking to find bigger and better talent so that you can move quickly when it’s time to hire again?

These questions help illustrate some of the steps we believe define exemplary leaders and managers in tough economic times. Put more directly, we think that the following are some of the five things that great managers and leaders do during economic downturns that help prove they are “the best of the best”:

1. Upgrading skills. This can be anything from getting an additional degree in your area of expertise, to getting a degree in a field adjacent to yours (technologists getting an MBA or marketing folks deepening their technology), to taking continuing education courses or just taking some time to become current with your job through professional reading. The best leaders and managers see being “the best” as a journey rather than a destination. We cover this in more detail in “To Get Better You Must Practice.”

2. Make More with Less. Stop talking about being the best and prove it. Put the systems in place that allow you to measure how much shareholder value you create with every dollar you spend on headcount or systems. Show how you can do more next year with the same budget or — better yet — more with less money. If you aren’t doing this as a standard operating procedure, start doing it while the economy is struggling, and you will absolutely be seen as being one of the best.

3. Mind Your Flowers. Whether you are making difficult headcount cuts or not — but especially if you are — you need to take care of the folks who are creating the most shareholder value within your organization. Exit the economic downturn with your best people on your side — not the folks with the longest tenure but the folks who create the most value.

4. Weed Your Garden. The best managers during great times are always looking to remove underperformers from their teams and upgrade them with superior performers. The best managers during economic hard times are ahead of the headcount cuts with a list of the folks who should be removed from their team for poor performance. Don’t ask if other organizations are getting their fair share of cuts; focus on what’s right for the shareholder and get it done ahead of the request!

5. Get Ready for Spring Planting. It may not seem like it today, but things will turn around; if not for your current employer then for your next employer. You need to have that list of great talent with whom you’ve been interviewing ready so that you can quickly augment your existing team as the need arises, or build your next team if your current employer doesn’t survive the downturn. Leadership is as much about people as anything else, and great leaders focus on building great teams.

Marty Abbott and Michael Fisher are partners with AKF Partners.

Yahoo appears to be quite serious about openness and promoting third party content and applications on their massively visited home page. Today they’re announcing the addition of an eBay widget to the new Yahoo home page, which is still being tested with just a subset of Yahoo users. The widget will be added to the My Applications dashboard area on the left.

eBay users can use the widget to monitor buys and sells, check recent bids and get reminders about auctions that are about to close. They can also search listings without leaving Yahoo.

Yahoo, like AOL, has made a subtle but important shift in their home page strategy. In the old days the home page linked out to other Yahoo pages, or advertisers. Now they’re willing to provide content that users want on the home page, no matter the source. The fact that users can access this eBay widget, presumably without eBay paying a sponsorship fee of any kind, shows Yahoo is willing to put users above revenue (in the hope that happy users will mean more revenue down the road).

By the way, Yahoo sure does love Southwest Airlines. Every screen grab they supply the press with has a big fat Southwest ad in it.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Every once in a while we show some of the stats about the feed readers people are using to access TechCrunch content. Since we recently passed a million daily RSS readers, now is a good time for a new update.

In June 2006 Firefox, Bloglines and Newsgator were the three largest readers, in that order. Feedburner did an analysis later in 2006 with similar results. Long ago Google reader eclipsed all of those readers. And recently, Outlook has surged as the feed reader of choice.

Of our roughly 1.4 million RSS readers, 520,000, or about 38%, come from Outlook. 390,000, or about 28%, come from Google Reader. Newsgator and BlogRovR are next with about 10% each, followed by Netvibes, Bloglines, AOL, Flock, Yahoo and the Windows Media Center.

The complete breakdown is below.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Every once in a while we come across a company that seems to have a giant bullseye on it for acquisition, with a great product, viable business model, and a talented team. Twilio, a company that has created an intuitive API for a variety of telephony services, is that kind of company (it also managed to Rick Roll my boss). The startup has developed a simple API with pay-as-you-go pricing that allows developers to quickly implement phone services into their applications, opening the door to a number of services that were previously only accessible to the small sliver of engineers trained in the dark magic of phone calls. Twilio is launching today in private beta, and TechCrunch readers can grab an invite here.

CEO Jeff Lawson says that while other web telephony services exist (like Asterisk, an open source project), these technologies tend to be very complex and difficult to use, even for experienced developers. Lawson says that Twilio is looking to commoditize these phone services by making them much more accessible to developers, by introducing a set of very intuitive commands. The API primarily consists of 5 commonly used phone actions (Say, Play, Record, Dial, and Gather a phone number), each of which behaves exactly as you’d expect it to. That Rick Roll app we heard a few days ago? Here’s the code (for you non-programmers, this is pretty basic stuff):

Lawson showed me a number of other impressive examples, including a project that he said managed to replicate GrandCentral’s core functionality in only around 15 lines of code. A number of organizations have already started using the API to build their own applications, including a non-profit that has now automated hundreds of calls that used to take staff hours to make.

Twilio is adopting the cloud-service model, with no contract required and flat fees for calls depending on the number of minutes used and the number of phone numbers needed (developers can also scale their needs based on demand, so they don’t have to worry about their servers crashing). And while the Rick Roll app was created with the service, Lawson says it was just a pre-launch joke, and that safeguards are in place to prevent any future applications from making annoying phone calls.

Twilio isn’t perfect - it doesn’t yet support voice recognition, which is a key component in many telephony services (though this feature will be released in a future version). But it is very cool, and will probably be very popular among developers. Don’t be surprised if this one gets snatched up soon by a cloud service provider like Rackspace or Amazon (my money’s on Amazon - CEO Jeff Lawson was a Product Manager for AWS).

There are a few of other startups trying to make phone services more accessible to developers, including Skydeck, which we covered here.

Twilio Web Service API for building Voice Applications

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Walter Mossberg, who has been reviewing technology since 1991 for the Wall Street Journal in his weekly "Personal Technology" column, is convinced the companies that succeed in this type of econaclypse, as AllThingsD has dubbed the economy, will be those that focus on innovation. "It has been my observation that while things do slow down in bad times, they don't stop," Mossberg said.

Speaking to a packed room this week at the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase in Redwood City CA, Mossberg, the "Most Influential Computer Journalist" according to Time Magazine, described the trends that excite him right now as happening both in computer hardware and computer software: outside the browser Web applications, service in the cloud, and hand held computers.

Sponsor

Much like during the mid to late eighties, when we saw advances in the personal computer, Mossberg explained we are once again witnessing advances in hardware innovation. This time however, we are not getting excited about the Commodore, Radio Shack and Apple II devices; instead, a new model of computer is energizing the world of consumer technology. The super smart phones or hand held computers as Mossberg prefers to call them: the iPhone, the G1, and the soon to be released BlackBerry Storm.

In much the same way, this time also reminds Mossberg of the mid to late nineties as we are once again observing a swell of Internet innovation; this one happening on the software front with widgets/Web apps and service in the cloud.

With so much information available on the Internet, and the instant gratification demanded by consumers today, the melding of these products is inevitable. Mossberg, who believes widgets will flourish on hand held computers, suggested that while the new class of mobile devices offer better browsing than their predecessors, it is in the apps that he sees competition, innovation and ideas fermenting. "We don't necessarily need to go through a browser," he said.

The problem of course is replicating data across devices in a smooth, cohesive manner to ensure that data available on the Internet is available on the handheld. And that's where service in the cloud comes in. While corporate America has enjoyed technologies such as BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Microsoft Exchange, and Lotus Notes that have enabled data to be replicated between devices [servers, desktops, laptops and handhelds], according to Mossberg, nobody has yet been "wildly successful" in bringing this technology to the wider consumer world via the cloud.

And so the race begins. While Mossberg has always claimed he is not responsible for business coverage of tech companies, the fact remains that for the past 17 years, the star of the Wall Street Journal has accurately assessed innovation within the consumer tech market. Given his insights this week, the only questions that remain are: who will bring cloud services to the masses, and will it happen during the econaclypse?

Read the transcript of Mossberg's keynote below.

Thank you.

For all their mesmerizing graphics and adrenaline fueled gameplay, it might come as a surprise to non-gamers that many of today’s most popular computer games are bogged down by downtime (I should know - I spent the better part of 1999 mining virtual ore in Ultima Online to become a master blacksmith, and enjoyed about 10 minutes of it). MMOs like World of Warcraft see epic battles punctuated by hours of wandering mostly empty wilderness, while FPS games often punish gamers for dying by making them sit out and watch their comrades go at it until the beginning of the next round.

Today GotGame is giving these gamers something to do during these bouts of boredom. The company has released Rogue, a web browser based on WebKit and Adobe’s AIR platform that integrates directly into most of today’s popular gamers, allowing users to swap between their game and the web with a single hotkey. Gamers will be able to check their Email, listen to Pandora, watch Hulu videos, or casually browse the web at their leisure, jumping back into the game within seconds whenever they need to (the browser supports opacity, so it’s easy to tell when you need to swap your attention).

It’s possible to accomplish similar multitasking by placing games in ‘Windowed’ mode (which doesn’t make them take up the full screen), but this makes games prone to crashing and poor performance. Conversely GotGame says that Rogue should run perfectly fine with most games, and should only slightly affect performance (though the effect will increase significantly if you watch Flash-based movies like Hulu).

While it may seem counterintuitive to non-gamers, GotGame Rogue is a great idea - I would have loved to have had it during my gaming years (instead I was forced to sit a TV next to my computer monitor). Provided the app is as stable as GotGame claims, it will probably do very well. Other players in this space include Xfire, which offers an in-game application for socializing with other gamers.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Crowd Science is a new tool that allows web publishers to gather demographic data. We're using Crowd Science currently on ReadWriteWeb - you may have already come across a pop-up invite and filled out the survey. If you haven't, that's because it's done randomly. So if you do get the Crowd Science pop-up, we'd love it if you filled in the demographic survey. The data from this survey lets us know more about our readers, which helps guide us in our topic selection and so on. Plus of course it enables us to get sponsors and ads that are highly relevant.

Sponsor

Crowd Science has given us 50 free Personal accounts to give away to our readers. To get a free account click here and enter the promo code "RWW". Crowd Science will choose 50 people, randomly, to get an upgrade to a Personal account - which you will get free for a period of 1 year.

Last I heard about Leapfish (this was a couple of years ago), they ran a useless but fun tool that provided you with a free appraisal for your domain name based on a variety of ratings and criteria. Now they’re back with an equally useless tool, this time without the fun part.

The company just revamped itself under the ownership of California-based DotNext, morphing into what they refer to as a “multi-dimensional information aggregator,” which is actually nothing more than yet another meta search engine. You know the kind: sites that pull together search results from real engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo and attempt to differentiate themselves by adding tabs for meta-searching images, videos, Q&A, blogs, and so on. Leapfish also displays a number of static, non-customizable widgets on their homepage for the latest news, weather reports, and a stock market summary, which is a kind of step backwards from all the start page personalization efforts we’ve seen over the years.

The company is actively contacting potential advertisers to buy keywords for top positions in their search result listings for a flat fee—typical registration fees are reportedly around $1000 and there’s a yearly renewal fee of 5% of the amount spent —which would give them a “lifetime” guarantee for a top slot for that keyword, but they also get the opportunity to resell it later to another advertiser. Of course, this is only beneficial if Leapfish becomes big, and the chances for that are slim.

The premise of meta search engines is that the aggregation process digs up the most relevant results across different sites and technology platforms, all on a single page. What I want to know: if these meta search engines (and boy, are there many) deliver significantly better results or a greater experience than a Google’s or Yahoo’s core search technology can on its own, then why doesn’t everyone flock to them instead?

The answer: people don’t want to get as many search results as possible and they don’t care about how large the unindexed part of the internet is, let alone what they might find on this so-called “invisible deep web.” All they want is a quick, convenient way of obtaining decent information from a source they know and trust. Or do you honestly visit Search.com, Dogpile, Zuula, Fazzle, Clusty or Mamma.com to get what you need? (I can go on with this list forever, but ask Mark Cuban about how much that last one is worth).

Don’t get me wrong: I see the value of startups trying to improve search and driving innovation both on a technology and a business level, and I’m sure some will be able to compete and carve out their piece of the market. In fact, I hope some of them will. Because no matter what your opinion is on human-powered search, semantic search, vertical search, or social search engines, you have to admit several companies in that space are trying to push the envelope, often drawing attention from the big guys or keeping them honest at least (see yesterday’s announcement about Yahoo Glue, for example).

For me, though, wanna-be search engines like Leapfish don’t clear that hurdle.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Today Qualcomm scored a huge coup for its MediaFLO mobile television service by winning the right to broadcast the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and to create a 27/7 channel devoted to the event. All MediaFLO subscribers will be able to watch the broadcast when it airs on Dec. 3. The fashion show pulled in a television audience last year of 6.5 million, exactly mirroring the number of people who are watching any form of mobile TV, which includes options other than MediaFLO.

But as the February transition to digital television looms, groups such as the National Association of Broadcasters and the Open Mobile Video Coalition (pushing a jointly developed LG and Samsung standard)  are seeking to develop alternate methods to watch TV on the go to avoid being beholden to wireless providers. The OMVC and it’s backers are branching out beyond cellular networks, hoping to install their technology in cars and laptops. Should those efforts succeed, Qualcomm’s investments in MediaFLO won’t pan out.

With its Ultra Mobile Broadband 4G wireless effort officially shuttered last week, Qualcomm needs to find another way to mint money. It still has a platform effort in Gobi, MediaFLO is still around, and 3G networks aren’t going anywhere for a while, but Qualcomm built its success on controlling the IP for the widely adopted mobile standard CDMA. It can certainly play in other fields, but without a choke hold on some widely needed intellectual property, its negotiating power and royalty rates will be lessened.

Image from CBS