This article is part of the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest for the best websites and services. We know that Clearspring is the biggest widget network in the world, but they are also dominating early voting in the Embeddable Widgets category of the Open Web Awards. Top competitors so far include Sprout and RadicalBuy, while last year’s winners – Flockr and Widgetbucks – did not make it to the voting round. Here’s a look at all of the companies in the running: ConveyThis – Translates a website or blog post into any of 29 different languages. Clearspring –...
I went over to visit Peter Went this week, his company WCC Group produces a Fuzzy Logic Database which amongst other things used for matching Biometric Data. He said he was going to be in Milan today giving a talk to start discussion on the following point. Governments only really know about 5-10% of their population, a few because they have had a security clearance check performed and the rest because they have a criminal record. The remaining 90-95% of their population they have no clue about, they only know whether they paid there taxes. (Percentages may vary slightly.) A...
Social networking for women got a boost yesterday as media conglomerate Meredith Corp. acquired an undisclosed minority stake in Real Girls Media Network. The San Francisco-based network encompasses about 30 sites and portals for women — notably, DivineCaroline, a largely user-generated advice page. In addition to bringing Real Girls’ 3 million unique viewers to Meredith’s properties each month (upping its total to 15 million), the deal will combine the two companies’ advertising inventories and sales forces. This should jumpstart revenue on both sides. Also, Meredith will now have access to Real Girls technology that could update the look and feel...
The ways young people use the internet everyday are transforming learning in ways that adults often fail to understand but represent major new opportunities that need to be taken advantage of by supportive educators. That's the conclusion of a major new study by 28 researchers over three years released today by the University of California at Berkley and the MacArthur Foundation. Titled "Living and Learning With New Media," the study articulates the value of social networking, text messaging and other forms of new media use better than anything we've seen yet. It's a major contribution to our understanding of the...
The current economic climate is having a devastating effect on almost every business around. In order to adapt to changing conditions and opportunities, businesses will need to use flexible, adaptable systems to survive. The days of expensive year-long implementations of behind-the-firewall software look to be behind us. Sponsor I recently attended a Forrester Briefing and listened to comments by analyst Peter Burris, a very smart guy. The company has done a host of studies showing that technology will be a growing part of how businesses compete and differentiate themselves in the future. While systems and software used to be very...
Back in May, Yahoo launched a new variant of search entitled “Glue,” something which combines news, images, videos, and other content from around the Web (and other Yahoo properties) along with traditional search results that link to web pages. We just received word here at Mashable that Yahoo found the service so successful in their India test launch that they’re extending the product for inclusion in US search results off main Yahoo.com search queries. They’re starting out with a limited set of search terms, pulling content from Wikipedia entries, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and news. It’s an interesting way to...
NY-based KickApps has announced a new partnership with the New Orleans Hornets NBA team today. The partnership brings a new "Hornets Fanzone" social network which includes fan videos, photos, blogs, chat, a message board and groups. What I've found with the social networks that KickApps powers for most of the sports teams they are working with is that it's nearly impossible to find the actual social network on the main sports team's website. On the new Hornets deal today, it's listed in their rotating news area but I can't find it elsewhere. The Seattle Seahaws installation is also missing...
Forrester Research has published a new report on the state of wikis, blogs, social networking, and other new tools in the enterprise: Forrester TechRadar™ For Information & Knowledge Management Pros: Enterprise Web 2.0. Here’s what they said about wikis: One of the more promising of the Web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise, wikis show good evidence of helping transform collaboration in the enterprise. Users report success with many wiki endeavors when they’re sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes. Here’s Forrester’s full summary of the report, which I think captures the state of wikis, blogs, forums, and social...
Today we are releasing our next major report, which distils - through unattributed verbatim quotes - what senior executives REALLY think about social networks inside organizations. Future Exploration Network created the report for IBM, hosting a select group of top executives at a Roundtable discussion, and capturing the key talking points from the conversations. Download the Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Networking Strategy report. I usually don’t put press releases on my blog, but the one we released this morning gives a good summary of the report: For immediate release: 20 November 2008 Australian senior executives say social networking has...
1Cast, a new media sharing service aimed at bloggers launched into private beta yesterday and is promising to be the new RedLasso. The service, like RedLasso before it, offers clips from major news outlets that can be embedded on blogs or general news sites. Unlike RedLasso however the clips are provided by legal agreements with content providers. It’s early days for 1Cast, and backing from Craig McCaw of Eagle River Ventures should help them grow, however it’s not RedLasso, at least not yet. The biggest issue with 1Cast is a lack of content bloggers would want to use. Content on...
