Web 2.0, Web 3.0 ...?

Weekly summary – week 40

2008-10-09T12:56:00.002+02:00

29/09/2008 – Monday

Business Week: Best of the Web 2008

BBC: Children's web watchdog launched

The Next Web: Italy’s undeveloped web market has a wealth of opportunities

Ars Technica: UK spy agency looking for a few good Facebook users

PR 2.0: The State of Social Media 2008

30/09/2008 – Tuesday

ZDNet: Stallman brands cloud computing as 'stupidity'

01/10/2008 – Wednesday

BBC: Google 'Goliath' Microsoft says

About.com: StumbleUpon Presents New Way To Stumble

Google Blog: Browse what the world is saying on Blog Search

02/10/2008 – Thursday

Ars Technica: Skype security flub leads to discovery of Chinese monitoring

EU Commission: Network of child abuse websites closed down following public complaint to the Irish Hotline

Wired: McCain's Long, Brutal History of Opposing Sensible Broadband Rules

ZDNet: Microsoft to launch 'Windows Cloud' in a month

Business Week: Nokia Aims to Be No. 1 on the Mobile Web

03/10/2008 – Friday

Forbes: Web 3.0: Not Yet

Internet Evolution: The Advent of Enterprise Microblogging

ReadWriteWeb: Report: Semantic Web Companies Are, or Will Soon Begin, Making Money

Reuters: False web report plays havoc with Apple stock

Supercomputing Online: World's biggest computing grid launched

IntelliEnterprise, web 2.0 intranet suite from Boston

2008-10-06T20:43:00.005+02:00

What is common in the Bank of Montreal (Corporate Treasury), the South African Local Government Association and the Slovak National Museum? All three and many other business organizations and NGOs are customers of adenine TECHNOLOGIES, an intranet specialist from Boston.

adenin’s main product is IntelliEnterprise which addresses all the standard Intranet requirements – collaboration tools, document management, knowledge management, content management, workflow, business dashboards, faceted search – plus it adds Web 2.0 features that allow businesses to put more power in the hands of their employees:

Wikis, blogs, and tagging allow organizations to take advantage of the “wisdom of crowds,” leverage folksonomy, and provide better access to collective intelligence.

Users can share photos, documents, links, contacts or provide information about their skills, groups and area of interest to a corporate Facebook, providing a social dimension that encourages social networking and user involvement.

Shared workspaces make collaborating among distributed workgroups easier.

IntelliEnterprise also includes a variety of vertical and horizontal applications that are easily added to the Intranet. With more than 100 ready-to-run modules, applications and tools, IntelliEnterprise is an unbelievably complete Intranet 2.0 Portal Suite. Some of these applications:

Complete, customizable CRM solution including: marketing campaigns, leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, contracts, projects, tasks, help desk and management dashboards.

Interactive OrgChart: the best way to visualize and understand the workforce. The OrgChart Portlet uses the “Reports to” field of the adenin employee directory or the user information stored in ActiveDirectory to automatically create interactive OrgCharts.

The Supplier Management solution is based on the customizable templates for address/account management, contracts, projects, contacts and tasks. This solution allows to store and manage all information about the relationship with a supplier.

Recruiting Requisitions provides an easy way to prioritize and manage your hiring process. HR departments can easily run the hiring process with the Recruiting Requisitions Application: track open job requisitions by department, hiring manager and position; collect hiring requests from line-of-business managers to start the search process; prioritize hiring efforts according to business needs.

Workflow Integration: the integrated Workflow Engine allows using these applications to automate complete business processes.

IntelliEnterprise also includes an application builder. This is an engine that allows non-technical users – subject matter experts, unit managers and knowledge workers – to design their own application to automate their business processes. Everybody who knows his business process should be able to create fully interactive applications with features such as real-time data operation without any coding.

Create your own social network for free with SocialGO

2008-10-04T21:32:00.003+02:00

SocialGO® (from the UK) lets you easily create and run a feature-filled social networking website. You choose who can join, what they can do and how it looks and the best part is it's free to get going. Moreover the best beta social network on SocialGo® will win GBP 1000.

It is stand-alone or can simply be bolted onto an existing site if need be. Private or public, it’s your choice. Everyone in your group is included and can get involved in a website where you're in control. Your members run the site... They create the content, invite other friends, message each other and use all the other fantastic features of SocialGO®.

Main features

You can easily provide every member of your group with their own member profile within your SocialGO® site. In this space sits their friends, the content they’ve added to the network and piles of other nifty stuff. Of course, they can customize their profile and privacy settings any way they want. The Wall is another super useful tool much like a personal guestbook where members can leave messages on your profile.

Members of your network can send messages to each other through SocialGO® and keep track of their messages in a conversation view. Group and event owners can message all their members and attendees. You, as the network owner, can message everyone at one time if you choose to. Members receive an email to tell them when a new message is waiting for them.

Bulletins are short messages members can send to their friends, group members, and event attendees or across the whole network. They are a brilliant way of sending information to large groups of people quickly and easily.

If another member of the network is online, you can start a real-time instant messaging conversation with them. This can be a text chat only or in full video and audio. There’s no software to install, all you need is your browser.

Let the minions organize themselves! Members are able to create sub-groups within your network. (You do, of course, have the control to delete these groups if you want.) Within sub-groups, members can still do all the things they’ll come to love from SocialGO® - share photos, message each other, start forum discussions & blogs, and organize events.

All members can upload photos or videos to their profiles, groups or events. These are easily organized into albums and you can share them with other members who can then view and comment on them.

Every member has their own personal blog on their profile. They can drop in photos, videos and other rich content. If they’d like to get their blogs to a wider audience, they also have the option to submit any blog into a communal Magazine tab which you can divide into categories and setup approval rules.

SocialGO® allows members to easily set up forums initiating discussions. Others can then join in and post responses. They can even subscribe to forum updates, so they’ll know immediately the discussion hots up again. Forums can be private (for members or a particular sub-group) or public.

All relevant web content for your group (news, blogs, forums, links, videos, etc.) can be aggregated on your SocialGO® network for your members to read. Not familiar with RSS? No problem… you can use the Google News search engine to easily create custom news results for the things that matter most to your members.

Access control: you can choose exactly who you want to join your network by either password protecting the signup or, if you’d like to be in more control, approving every member personally.

Content moderation: You can delete any inappropriate content on your network and suspend any odious members. And if you need any help, you can elect other people to become your moderators too. As a network owner you can easily set SocialGO® to only activate groups, events and magazine content when YOU are happy with it.

Member importing: you can import all your contacts into your new SocialGO® network manually, from your existing webmail, Microsoft Outlook or any of your Windows address books.

You can customize your design: using the powerful customization tools, you can make your site look exactly how you want. You can add your own sponsors, images, text or anything you like throughout your network to make it truly personal. You can even customize the default help text. With SocialGO® you have the ability to actually change the structure of your entire network.

SWIRRL, "like a wiki, but better"

2008-10-02T22:15:00.006+02:00

Swirrl is a new online cloud computing service. It's main aim is to combine the power of a database and the flexibility of spreadsheets with the collaboration potential of a wiki. Swirrl helps your business organize all of its documents and data, so that your business runs more efficiently.

All of your data can be kept securely in one place, accessible from any computer on the internet. All information and data is searchable, and all revisions are kept so it doesn't matter if anyone makes a mistake, or you want to see how things looked in the past.

To use Swirrl, you don't need any involvement from an IT department or system administrator. Because Swirrl is a hosted web application, there is nothing to install and you can get started in a few minutes. You can use Swirrl from anywhere with an internet connection and it works on recent versions of major browsers (Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2+, Camino 1.5+, Safari 3).

They offer free accounts and you can cancel, upgrade or downgrade your account at any time. Only pay for what you need.

Your wiki's home page provides an overview of activities. You can easily access your favourite (bookmarked) items, and items that you or others have recently edited. The home page also provides a way to communicate with the rest of your team, and a way for us to communicate with you.

Text Pages are like normal wiki pages. With Swirrl's powerful WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) text editor, they're easy to edit to just how you want them. It's also easy to link to other pages both inside and outside Swirrl.

Structured data can be stored in Data Sets. A familiar spreadsheet-style editor allows you to quickly enter data, or you can import from a spreadsheet file on your computer. You can analyze your data using spreadsheet-style formulae. This is more than an online spreadsheet though: the clues you provide about your data, in the form of row and column headings, allows Swirrl to understand its structure, enabling some powerful searching and analysis.

Swirrl's search facilities make it easy to locate your information quickly. The search results are categorized into Text Pages and Data Sets, and you can organize and explore your data using tags.

Account administrators can add, edit and delete Users and Groups. Swirrl's permission system allows fine-grained access control for both viewing and editing: allow just individual users or groups, everyone in the wiki, or publish to the whole internet. You have full control, and it's easy to see what the current settings are.

Every time an item in Swirrl is saved, a new version is created. You can see who changed what when, and you can revert back to old versions if you change your mind about an edit (version tracking).

TubeMaster Plus, a freeware multimedia file downloader from France

2008-10-02T20:48:00.005+02:00

TubeMaster Plus is a freeware which can download multimedia files (such as FLV, MP3, MP4 ...) from *ALL* YouTube like websites and can save them on your computer. All multimedia files can be converted to other popular video or audio formats (AVI, MPEG, MP3, MP4, IPod, PSP ...).

Click on the tutorial pictures below:

You may download it if you wish.

Weekly summary – week 39, 2008

2008-09-30T19:12:00.002+02:00

22/09/2008 – Monday

Ars Technica: Palin hacker's IP address linked to Tennessee college dorm

Forbes: Why Google Isn't Enough

ReadWriteWeb: Top Digg User Zaibatsu Banned - Reactions from Both Zaibatsu and Digg Management

23/09/2008 – Tuesday

BBC: Mayor sees London as 'wi-fi city'

The Next Web: Russian oligarchs slowly taking over Russian tech industry?

Internet Evolution: Google v. Apple: Open Phone or Closed Phone?

24/09/2008 – Wednesday

Webmonkey: Google Announces Digg For Questions

ReadWriteWeb: MySpace Music Launches Tonight and It Looks Very Cool

O’Reilly Radar: Is Google Spreading Itself Too Thin?

25/09/2008 – Thursday

CMS Wired: Is the Blogosphere Shrinking?

Google Blog: The next Internet

ZDNet: Businesses urged to harness staff Web 2.0 skills

TechCrunch: Steve Ballmer Visits Silicon Valley, Talks About Microsoft’s Future In Software, Search And Mobile

CNET: Microsoft's Mundie outlines the future of computing

Reuters: Yahoo to transform Web ads with new system-Yang

26/09/2008 – Friday

Mashable: EU Makes it Official: You Can’t Randomly Ban People From the Internet

Wired: Moore's Slacker Uprising Makes a Splash Online

TechCrunch: Digg Valued At $175 Million In Latest Funding

ReadWriteWeb: Study: 93 Percent of Americans Want Companies to Have Presence on Social Media Sites

PEW report on how Americans use the Internet at their workplace

2008-09-30T17:37:00.002+02:00

An interesting report was issued by the PEW Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project titled “Networked Workers”. Here is a resume of the findings.

Most working Americans use the internet or email at work: among those who are employed, 62% could be considered “Networked Workers” who use the internet or email at their workplace.

Nearly half of all working Americans do at least some work from home: 45% of employed respondents in our sample reported at least some amount of at-home work.

With workplace internet use, Americans tend to be always on or always off: 60% are using the internet at work every day and 28% never.

Internet use at work varies by company type and profession: government workers – federal, state or local – are the most likely to use the internet at work; almost three-fourths (72%) of government workers use the internet at least several times a day at work. Those who work in schools and educational institutions are also frequent internet users at work, followed closely by those who work in non-profits. Nearly three out of four professionals and managers or executives use the internet at work, either constantly or several times a day. About half of clerical, office and sales workers also use the internet at work at least several times a day. Service workers and those in the skilled trades are far less likely to report internet use at work.

Information and communications technologies present trade-offs for today’s workers:

80% say these technologies have improved their ability to do their job.
73% say these technologies have improved their ability to share ideas with coworkers.
58% say these tools have allowed them more flexibility in the hours they work.

However…

46% say ICTs increase demands that they work more hours.
49% say ICTs increase the level of stress in their job.
49% say ICTs make it harder for them to disconnect from their work when they are at home and on the weekends.

Americans juggle work and email accounts, checking both throughout the day in many cases: more than half of working adults (53%) have both personal and work email accounts. And while 22% say they only maintain personal addresses, just 5% say that their email use is limited to a work account.

In recent years, workers have become more likely to check their email outside of normal working hours:

50% of employed email users say they check their work-related email on the weekends. Fully 22% say that they check their work email accounts “often” during weekend hours, compared with 16% who reported the same in 2002.
46% of employed email users say they check email when they have to take a sick day; 25% say they do so “often.”
34% of employed email users say they will at least occasionally check their email while on vacation; 11% say they do so “often.”

One in five employed email users and half of Blackberry and PDA owners say they are required to read and respond to work-related emails when they are not at work: some 22% of employed email users say they are expected to read and respond to work-related emails, even when they are not at work. Blackberry and PDA owners are more than twice as likely to report that their employer expects that they will stay tuned in to email outside of the office. Fully 48% say they are required to read and respond to email when they are away from work.

Only few workers feel that email has increased the total amount of time they spend working: some 22% of employed email users say they are expected to read and respond to work-related emails, even when they are not at work. Blackberry and PDA owners are more than twice as likely to report that their employer expects that they will stay tuned in to email outside of the office. Fully 48% say they are required to read and respond to email when they are away from work.

Other online activities capture workers’ attention at the office:

Shopping is among the most popular online leisure activities at work, with 22% of employed internet users reporting at least some at-work purchasing.

Blogging: 12% of employed Americans who use the internet and the same number of all online Americans have created or worked on a blog. Just 2% of employed internet users say they blog at work. One in three internet-using employees (33%) say they have read someone else’s blog or online journal, and 11% report at least some at-work reading. However, among young working adults, 46% are blog readers, compared with 33% of 30-49 year olds and 25% of employed internet users ages 50-64. At-work blog reading is equally prevalent among all of these groups.

About the survey methodology: all numerical data was gathered through telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates between March 27 and April 14, 2008, among a nationally representative sample of 2,134 adults living in continental United States telephone households, including 1,000 self-identified full-time and part-time adult workers. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is +/- 3%. For results based on workers (n=1,000), the margin of sampling error is +/- 4%.

You may read the entire report!

Social Networking Sites: economic and societal importance for Europe

2008-09-29T09:30:00.002+02:00

The importance of social networking sites in Europe is significantly increasing: in the past year, the use of social networks has grown 35% in Europe. 56% of the European online population visited social networking sites last year and the number of regular users is forecast to rise from today's 41.7 million to 107.4 million in the next four years. In 2007 9.6 million British belonged to the country's social networking community, with 8.9 million and France and 8.6 million in Germany. Commissioner for Information Society and Media of the European Union, Viviane Reding, gave a speech on Social Networking at the Safer Internet Forum in Luxembourg.

According to a press release, users in Europe spend 3 hours per month on average on social networking sites according to comscore.com. The UK registered the highest usage in 2007 with an average of 5.8 user hours spent on such sites. This was a significantly heavier usage level than in France, which averaged 2 hours per month, or Germany, with 3.1 hours and Spain and Italy with 1.8 hours.

In parallel with well known companies based in the US like Facebook, Youtube and Myspace, European companies are doing very well in this sector. Finland-based Habbo Hotel claims 80 million registrations. Badoo and Faceparty from the UK have a combined membership of about 15 million users; Belgian-based Netlog has 17 million while the French based Skyrock 18 million and Dailymotion 11 million.

Other European sites include Hyves in the Netherlands, StudiVZ and SchuelerVZ in Germany, Aha.bg in Bulgaria, Arto.dk in Denmark, E puls and Grono in Poland, Szene1.at in Austria, Studenti media group in Italy, and Tuenti in Spain.

Social networking sites can be beneficial to public and professional institutions and to society as a whole. Given the popularity of social networking services among professionals, the young and the retired for sharing holiday photos, stories and news, keeping in touch, and organising their social and working life, it is clear that social networking sites offer potential for European industry, by increasing productivity through better customer relations and internal communications or as a business in itself.

Technology firms are taking the lead by using social networking to improve customer services and client involvement in company's product innovation and development services. Other companies are opening specific networking sites for their own employees, giving them the possibility to operate as a community no matter where they are. This gives employees the chance to feel involved in company decisions which could help engage them and increase productivity.

Social networking websites are also a means for smaller companies to take advantage of the internet at lower cost. 40% of small and medium enterprises do not have websites because running a website can be costly. These are cheaper, less demanding but efficient way for them to attract customers and promote their business across borders.

Parallel to the positive effects of social networking sites, there are also some risks relating to these media. The risks young users face in passing an increasing proportion of social time online include grooming (where adults can pass for young people with the intent of abusing children), accidentally finding inappropriate content, abuse of personal or private information or cyber-bullying. According to a Danish study, 31.5% of the 12 to 18 year old users participating in the study said that they have had bad experiences on the Internet. 70.1% of these were caused by messages from strangers.

There are many existing measures to protect young internet surfers like screening and parental control. Some social networking sites also provide user safety tools and information. Many of them have in place systems for reporting unwanted content and inappropriate or illegal behaviour, like cyberbullying and grooming. A report is usually followed by written warnings to the offending users, suspension or cancellation of accounts. When lawfully required by the police, sites have a policy for the disclosure of communications data and content in line with the national law. In addition, most social networking sites use a combination of technical and human moderation with personnel who receive appropriate training to manage different types of situations.

However, it is also important to empower digital natives – who have grown up with and are more confident in using network technologies – though age verification systems and industry self-regulation.

uQudos, a new social gaming network

2008-09-28T22:52:00.003+02:00

I got a comment to one of my blog posts giving me a tip to check out uQudos.com, a new game website where you can upload, play and share all your favorite Flash games. uQudos brings game developers and players together on a new social gaming network. Their mission – as stated on their site – is to stimulate, supply a platform for and reward creativity.

Talented game creators, from amateur/home developers to (semi)professional game studios, can easily upload their own-created Flash games, in search of recognition and financial compensation. The more often developers’ games are played and appreciated, the more their popularity and their revenues increase. In additional to the fact that all developers receive a share of the advertising revenues, the most talented also earn extra money with the Monthly Upload Contests and Sponsored Game Development Contests.

Gamers can:

play the user-created games,
invite their friends,
create a profile,
store their favorite games,
become a fan of certain developers,
rate or comment on games and
communicate with friends and other gaming fans.

uQudos offers advertisers an interactive communication platform with possibilities for (video) advertising and game development contests which allow brands to be creatively connected to the gaming community and which gives consumers the opportunity to speak up and show their skills and creativity.

If you are a Flash game freak, visit uQudos!

EU objective to achieve broadband Internet access for all Europeans by 2010

2008-09-26T22:34:00.004+02:00

How can the EU achieve that all Europeans have access to broadband Internet? This is the main question raised in a new Commission report, titled: “COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS on the second periodic review of the scope of universal service in electronic communications networks and services in accordance with Article 15 of Directive 2002/22/EC”.

According to the press release regarding the report, from 2003-2007 broadband use in the EU tripled to 36% of households. However, 7% of the EU's population are still not connected (30% in rural areas). There are striking gaps in the EU: 100% of the population is covered in Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium, but more than 60% in Romania (75% in rural areas) do not have broadband access. Even in strong economies such as Italy and Germany, 18% and 12% respectively of the rural population are not covered. With broadband increasingly important in daily life, policy tools like radio spectrum management and mobile satellite services should accompany a broad debate about the universal service in telecoms – a safety net guaranteeing a minimum level of services, such as connection to a phone network and basic Internet access, filling basic needs that the market does not.

According to the report, average fixed broadband usage penetration per 100 inhabitants in the EU was 20% in January 2008, but the rate varies significantly across Member States, from 7.6% in Bulgaria to 35.6% in Denmark.

Mobile broadband may contribute positively to increasing broadband penetration figures, as it has developed significantly in a number of Member States and as wireless LAN technologies start to play a significant part in internet access. The significant decline in access prices as regards both mobile and nomadic wireless technologies and rising performance and transmission speeds indicate that broadband usage will be rising faster than the figures for fixed broadband access indicate.

Internet and broadband penetration at home, % of EU households

The report shows that competitive markets for broadband Internet are providing EU citizens widespread and affordable access. However, further efforts are needed to ensure Broadband for All. So far, the EU has stimulated broadband with the following 3 tools:

Telecoms rules for more competition and investment. Europe has almost 100 million broadband lines in January 2008 and a growth rate of 20%, with 52,000 new lines connected daily in 2007 (IP/08/460). Last week, the Commission published further regulatory guidance on ensuring competition and investment for optical fiber networks (IP/08/1370).
A new system to stimulate mobile satellite services, which can deliver broadband via satellite across the EU, was set up this summer. The European Parliament and the Council created a one-stop shop for authorizing such services: instead of 27 procedures, mobile satellite operators now apply to the Commission (IP/08/1250).
In November 2007, the Commission made proposals for reform of radio spectrum management to free resources for new wireless services (IP/07/1677), which were mostly endorsed by the European Parliament on 24 September (MEMO/08/581). If the Council also accept this new form of spectrum management, the Digital Dividend – extra radio spectrum available after the move from analogue to digital TV – can be used for new wireless broadband services, and not just new TV channels.

The Commission report asks if these measures are enough or should a new universal service obligation be considered.

Conclusion of the report summarizes the short term tasks to be tackled:
This Communication sets out some reflections for the future role of universal service in the provision of e-communications services. It raises the question whether the concept and scope of universal service at EU level should be changed and if so, whether universal service is an appropriate tool to advance broadband development, or whether this should be left to other EU policy instruments or to national measures. It provides the basis for a discussion on the range of relevant issues in order to open a substantial European debate that would allow all stakeholders to express their views and discuss alternative approaches, in the course of 2009. EN 12 EN

On the basis of this debate, the Commission will issue a Communication in the second half of 2009, summarising the debate. It could follow this up in 2010 with concrete proposals if they are needed to update the Universal Service Directive.

The Commission invites the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions to use this Communication as a basis for further discussion.

YouTube Vision, a mashup of latest geotagged videos of YouTube

2008-09-26T09:58:00.004+02:00

I found an interesting Google Maps-Youtube mashup* called YouTube Vision, which shows the most recent geotagged** videos being uploaded to YouTube on Mibazaar.com.

If you don’t want to watch the shown video, there is a forward and backward button located at the top right corner of the map. (The forward arrow will take you to the next video and the back arrow will take you to the previous video.) I found it as I was on a virtual cultural journey when I browsed through dozens of geotagged YouTube videos from around the world.

* In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.

** Geotagging is the process of adding geographical metadata to media such as photographs, videos, websites, or RSS feeds.

Come2Play, a social gaming network platform for web site owners

2008-09-25T16:00:00.003+02:00

Come2Play, a developer of a unique platform for multiplayer casual Flash games, launched its white-label social gaming network platform in July. The platform offers web site and blog owners the opportunity to create a social gaming network by means of embedding a multiplayer games channel. All games can be spread from this channel as an applications and widgets.

Come2Play allows Web site and blog owners to create a private labeled/skinned version of games galleries, channels, applications and widgets. By integrating fully featured multiplayer game channels with widgets, and applications into their web site, digital content providers can lay the basis for a social gaming community.

“Now, almost every web site owner can create his own social gaming network. By using our free platform, web site owners can create a social community that combines players from different social networks, personal pages, blogs and web sites based on live, real-time interaction,” said Alon Barzilay, co-founder and CEO of Come2Play.

Come2Play’s game channels include some of the world’s most popular games, such a Chess, Checkers, Go, Reversi, and Sudoku, and will soon offer original new games based on unique concepts.

The company’s platform runs on leading international venues including Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, meebo, Zapak India, MSN Israel, and superEva Italy.

By using Come2Play’s platform, anyone can create and embed his own social gaming network platform with channel, widgets and applications.

Weekly summary – week 38

2008-09-22T20:46:00.002+02:00

15/09/2008 – Monday

Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum: Social networks help people to get jobs: employer survey

NYT: New WSJ.com Builds on Its Community of Subscribers

BBC: EU launches new hi-tech institute

ZDNet: US money heads to European startup, Zemanta

comScore: Mobile Search Grew 68 Percent in the U.S. and 38 Percent in Western Europe During Past Year

Ars Technica: WWW creator Berners-Lee launches ambitious Web Foundation

Mark Evans Tech: Has Twitter Won the Microblogging War?

16/09/2008 – Tuesday

Business Week: Is the U.S. Losing Its Edge in Tech?

Internet Evolution: LiveWorld Turns Every Site Into a Social Network

The Next Web: TwitterKeys: Enhance your Twitter conversations

Marketing Profs: Top 10 Challenges Interactive Marketers Face

Google Blog: The future of online video

17/09/2008 – Wednesday

O’Reilly Radar: Facebook Growth By Age Group: Share of College-Age Users is Declining

Reuters: Mobile search about to become real business: MCN

Ars Technica: MySpace to get kids talking politics with MyDebates.org

18/09/2008 – Thursday

ZDNet: Microsoft gives Live Search a Powerset boost

TechCrunch: Yahoo And Rhapsody Team Up For Full Song Playback In Search Results

19/09/2008 – Friday

Google blog: The future of mobile

ZDNet: Amazon set to launch content-delivery service

BBC: Computer terror teenager jailed

ReadWriteWeb: Do Semantic Search Companies Need a Semantic Map? It's All Semantics...

New PEW report on e-gaming habits of teens in the US

2008-09-22T18:37:00.002+02:00

The survey and the report looks at which teens are playing games, the games and equipment they are using, the social context of their play, and the role of parents and parental monitoring. Though arguments have been made about the civic potential of video gaming, this is the first large-scale study to examine the relationship between specific gaming experiences and teens’ civic activities and commitments.

The survey and report were born from the collaboration of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the MacArthur Foundation, and some civic education scholars from Mills College. The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, an independent research company specializing in social and policy work, between November 1, 2007, and February 5, 2008, among a sample of 1102 teens ages 12-17 and a parent or guardian. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is +/- 3%. For results based teens who game (n=1064), the margin of sampling error is +/- 3%.

The main findings:

97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games:

50% of teens played games “yesterday.”
86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii.
73% play games on a desktop or a laptop computer.
60% use a portable gaming device like a Sony PlayStation Portable, a Nintendo DS, or a Game Boy.
48% use a cell phone or handheld organizer to play games.

99% of boys and 94% of girls play video games. Some 65% of daily gamers are male; 35% are female.

Most teens do not limit themselves to just a few game genres, instead choosing to play many different types of games. Daily gamers are more likely to play a wider range of game genres than non-daily gamers:

80% of teens play five or more different game genres, and 40% play eight or more types of games.
55% of daily gamers play eight or more types of games; just 33% of less frequent gamers do so.

Girls play an average of 6 different game genres; boys average 8 different types.

The five most popular games among American teens in the period of the survey (November 1, 2007, and February 5, 2008) were Guitar Hero, Halo 3, Madden NFL, Solitaire, and Dance Dance Revolution.

For most teens, gaming is a social activity and a major component of their overall social experience: although most teens play games by themselves at least occasionally, just 24% of teens only play games alone, and the remaining 76% of teens play games with others at least some of the time.

65% of game-playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them.
27% play games with people who they connect with through the internet.
82% play games alone, although 71% of this group also plays with others.

Online gamers are more likely to report playing games mostly with people they know in their offline lives than with teens they met online. Of teens who play games online with others:

47% of teens play online games with people they know in their offline lives.
27% of teens play online games with people they first met online.
23% of teens play with both friends and family known in the offline world and people they met online.

63% of teens who play games report seeing or hearing “people being mean and overly aggressive while playing,” and
49% report seeing or hearing “people being hateful, racist, or sexist” while playing. However, among these teens, nearly three-quarters report that another player responded by asking the aggressor to stop at least some of the time.
85% of teens who report seeing these behaviors also report seeing other players being generous or helpful while playing.

To find out more you can read and download the full (76 page) report in PDF format.

Glubble, a free parental control suite for families with young children

2008-09-22T10:12:00.002+02:00

Glubble is a free parental control suite developed by Glaxstar for the Firefox browser, designed for families with young children. Glubble permits each member of the family to have their own custom environment to make sure kids can’t see the whole World Wide Web.

Glubble turns the Internet into an activity for the entire family. Just like visiting the local recreation center, Glubble lets parents setup online "play spaces" full of fun, free and safe activities—like games, parent-approved Web sites, coloring pages and private family homepages - all from the convenience of the home computer.

Glubble is a 7.7 MB Firefox add-on. Its main features:

With one simple click on a button your child can open the Glubble library where all the Glubbles you have approved are collected. Each Glubble is uniquely identified with a picture which your child will find easy to remember. Selecting a Glubble will open the links to featured web sites that are all thumbnailed to help your child to choose the web site of their choice.

Coloring pages, games, dress-up dolls, cartoons, language exercises, audio books reference for school papers and tons of other cool and safe content has been carefully selected for your children to discover and play with by our in-house editorial team. This free content is archived in the Glubble library and is accessible for children easily by clicking any of the thumbnails.

The star button right next to the web address bar allows your child to easily bookmark a site as a favorite. All they have to do is press the star button and the page they are looking at gets added to their favorite thumbnail bar.

Whenever your child hits a link or submits an URL to a web site or page within a web site that you did not approve Glubble blocks the request and opens a message panel for your child to ask for approval or to return to their homepage. Your child can even add a message to you (or any other helper in their group) whenever they request the ability to see a new website. They can clearly select who they want to ask by clicking on a helper's name.

If your child asks you for permission to see a new web site (that is not already included in their Glubbles collection) then you'll see a new message appear in your Firefox browser while online - even when you're at the office or logged into another network - you can reply right away or decide to reply later. You will even see an event history of every request from your child on your homepage along with a history for each response made by each of your child's helpers.

Children can send private messages to all members of your Glubble family in complete safety with the Glubble Family messaging system on your child's homepage. The message will appear at your Family Homepage.

The search engine augmentation feature enables the children to use world famous search engines like Google on their own while you remain safe in the knowledge that they can only find things that they are allowed to see.

GAUDI, Google’ new audio indexing service

2008-09-20T20:24:00.002+02:00

Google Audio Indexing (in short: GAUDI) is a new technology from Google that allows users to better search and watch videos from various YouTube channels – as stated in the FAQ of GAUDI. It uses speech technology to find spoken words inside videos and lets the user jump to the right portion of the video where these words are spoken.

Google Audio Indexing uses speech technology to transform spoken words into text and leverages the Google indexing technology to return the best results to the user. The returned videos are ranked based on the spoken content, the metadata, the freshness. GAUDI periodically crawls the YouTube political channels for new content. As soon as a new video is uploaded to YouTube, it is processed by its system and made available in its index for people to search.

To find a set of videos, simply type a query in the search box and press the "Search videos" button. The results of your search will appear in the left column. You can refine your search using channel filters, the active filter showing in bold. For each result, they provide a thumbnail of the video, its title, the time since it was published, the duration and the number of times the query terms are mentioned (i.e. spoken) in the video. By clicking on a result, the video will be displayed in the right column. If you need to see more results, you can navigate between result pages using the links at the bottom of the left column (previous, next, etc.), just like on most Google Search products.

Unfortunately Google Audio Indexing today searches only those videos uploaded on the YouTube political channels. Hopefully they will broaden the scope of videos…

“Towards Future Media Internet” - conference in October 2008

2008-09-17T20:11:00.003+02:00

The Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) European Technology Platform will have its 2008 NEM Summit on October 13-15, 2008 in Saint-Malo (France). The 2008 NEM Summit "Towards Future Media Internet" aims to be a major conference and exhibition devoted to the field of networked and electronic media and information & communication technologies (ICT) at large. The conference will address topics related to:

Electronic Media Content

Distributed Media Applications

New Media Delivery Networks and Network Services

User Devices and Terminals

NEM Enabling Technologies

Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) is one of the European industrial initiatives, also known as Technology Platforms, established by major key European and global stakeholders. NEM addresses the convergence of media, communications, consumer electronics, and IT as a wide opportunity for future growth, by taking advantage of generalized broadband access, increased mobility, availability of richer media formats and contents, as well as new home networks and communications platforms.

Recent technological developments in media distribution are enabling an unprecedented number of innovative applications, empowering the role of the end-user and fostering the creation of new business initiatives.

Electronic media technologies are enabling new generations of media devices and services, seamlessly conveyed over ever-increasingly intelligent media transportation networks. Thanks to the emergence of flexible content representation and rendering technologies, eApplications at large, supported by secure and trustworthy authentication and payment services, will be available everywhere, any time and on every device.

The retrieval of "My Preferred Content" will be made easy by the rapid adoption of multimedia search utilities that will unleash the power of identifying objects by Audio/Video multimedia keys. The relevance of the results will be improved even more, thanks to the context-awareness capabilities of terminals. The same system will allow the user to easily share his experiences and creativity with a broad community.

The multi-modality of rich and interactive media content will greatly improve user experience, including people with disabilities, through immersive and more natural use of all human senses: the user becomes an integral part of the multi-media experience, while the terminal device itself vanishes.

The ambition of the NEM Summit is to foster the interaction between researchers and business decision makers active in this emerging market, hence annealing the outcome of R&D activities into the creation of new business opportunities. The Summit will also allow researchers to identify opportunities for international research collaboration under the ICT Theme of Framework Programme 7 (FP7).

It is expected that the event will gather 400 to 500 representatives from the industry and research ICT community worldwide to share experiences and research results, identify future trends, discuss and identify opportunities for research collaboration (including under the ICT Theme of the FP7)

Some interesting pieces of the planned agenda:

Media and the Internet at the Croassroads – Joao Da Silva, Director of Directorate D (Converged Networks & Services) of the EC's DG Information Society and Media

Multicast distribution of Digital Cinema – Giuseppe Baruffa, University of Perugia

HoloVizio True 3D Display System – Tibor Balogh, Peter Tamas Kovacs, Zoltan Megyesi, Attila Barsi, Holografika

Content Providers and the Networks – Matteo Maggiore, Controller, EU and International Policy at BBC

Multimedia transmission in a managed P2P network: making sense? – Letian Xu, Kamal Singh, Gilles Straub, INRIA Rennes, Adlen Ksentini, University of Rennes 1

Hybrid Fixed-Mobile P2P Super-distribution – Antoni Oller, Andre Rios, Jesus Alcober, Technical University of Catalonia

A Service Oriented Approach to Online Digital Audiovisual Archives – Matthew Addis, Richard Lowe, Charlotte Norlund, University of Southampton

FAMC: The emerging MPEG-4 Specification for Dynamic 3D Mesh Coding – Francoise Preteux, Titus Zaharia, Institut Telecom

To find out more, visit the conference site.

U.S. cybersecurity is weak, a GAO report states

2008-09-16T13:27:00.002+02:00

BusinessWeek.com revealed a report published by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) titled “CYBER ANALYSIS AND WARNING – DHS Faces Challenges in Establishing a Comprehensive National Capability”.

Cyber analysis and warning capabilities are critical to thwarting computer-based (cyber) threats and attacks. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to, among other things, coordinate the nation’s efforts to prepare for, prevent, and respond to cyber threats to systems and communications networks. GAO’s objectives were to (1) identify key attributes of cyber analysis and warning capabilities, (2) compare these attributes with US-CERT’s current capabilities to identify whether there are gaps, and (3) identify US-CERT’s challenges to developing and implementing key attributes and a successful national cyber analysis and warning capability.

According to the report, GAO identified the following challenges DHS faces in establishing a comprehensive national capability:

“US-CERT faces a number of newly identified and ongoing challenges that impede it from fully implementing the key attributes and in turn establishing cyber analysis and warning capabilities essential to coordinating the national effort to prepare for, prevent, and respond to cyber threats. The newly identified challenge is creating warnings that are actionable and timely—US-CERT does not consistently issue warning and other notifications that its customers find useful. Ongoing challenges that we previously identified and made recommendations to address are:

employing predictive cyber analysis—the organization has not established the ability to determine broader implications from ongoing network activity, predict or protect against future threats, or identify emerging attack methods;

developing more trusted relationships to encourage information sharing—federal and nonfederal entities are reluctant to share information because US-CERT and these parties have yet to develop close working and trusted relationships that would allow the free flow of information;

having sufficient analytical and technical capabilities—the organization has difficulty hiring and retaining adequately trained staff and acquiring supporting technology tools to handle a steadily increasing workload; and

operating without organizational stability and leadership within DHS—the department has not provided the sustained leadership to make cyber analysis and warning a priority. This is due in part to frequent turnover in key management positions that currently also remain vacant. In addition, US-CERT’s role as the central provider of cyber analysis and warning may be diminished by the creation of a new DHS center at a higher organizational level.

Until DHS addresses these challenges and fully incorporates all key attributes into its capabilities, it will not have the full complement of cyber analysis and warning capabilities essential to effectively performing its national mission.”

Read the entire report at BusinessWeek.com.

New European Institute of Innovation and Technology to foster excellence in European innovation

2008-09-16T09:52:00.002+02:00

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso officially opened the European Institute of Innovation and Technology in Budapest with Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology is a major EU initiative which aims to foster excellence in European innovation and to provide new solutions for major challenges, such as climate change, renewable energies or the next generation of information and communication technologies.

In order to achieve its ambitious objectives, the EIT has been equipped with a fully independent, high-level Governing Board. It is responsible for guiding the EIT's strategic orientation and for selecting, monitoring and evaluating the EIT's operational base, the so-called Knowledge and Innovation Communities. The Board's 18 Members come from the worlds of business, higher education and research, and have all a proven track record in top-level innovation.

"By attracting and retaining the best and most talented students, researchers and staff from across Europe, and worldwide, the EIT will bring significant value-added to the EU's research and innovation landscape. It will become a breeding ground for new ideas and help turning innovative ideas into reality. It is a milestone towards the fifth freedom – the free movement of knowledge. The involvement of business is crucial, because the lack of business-funded R&D explains almost 85% of the gap between the EU and the USA, for example. Over time the EIT will contribute to boost Research and Development in Europe, close the business-funding gap, and bring the proportion of GDP spent on R&D closer to the 3% target that the Member States have set themselves", said Barroso at the opening ceremony.

According to plans, by end 2009 a selection and launch of the first Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) will take place. The Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) are long-term, integrated partnerships comprising universities, research organisations and businesses. Their objectives will be laid down on a contractual basis with the EIT but they will have a high level of autonomy in terms of how they organise themselves, how they manage any Intellectual Property generated and how they meet the agreed objectives. They will fully integrate the innovation, research and education dimensions and each one will last for between 7-15 years.

Subject to the prior approval of the Governing Board, the KICs are open for participation of actors from non-Member States as long as the majority of partner organisations forming the KIC is established in EU Member States.

The KICs will undertake education and training activities at Masters and Doctoral levels relevant to the innovation process. The degrees and diplomas obtained through the KICs will be awarded by participating universities in accordance with national rules and accreditation procedures and may also be labelled as "EIT" degrees. The EIT shall encourage participating higher education institutions to award joint or multiple degrees and diplomas, reflecting the integrated nature of the KICs.

The Community contribution to the EIT will amount to EUR 308.7 million for the 2008-2013 period. It will be used to finance the costs arising from the establishment, administration, coordination and integration of the EIT and the KICs.

Dwigger = Twitter + Digg

2008-09-15T12:00:00.005+02:00

Dwigger is a voting and threaded conversation tool for Twitter. The main aim of the team behind Dwigger was to create a tool with which you can “digg” (vote) someone’s Twitter comment or get votes for your own comment. Dwigger supplements Twitter by putting „Tweets” (Twitter messages) into threaded conversations with vote buttons. “We love Twitter - but the social interactions sometimes don't work very well. We want to make Twitter more interesting for people to use,” – the team says.

Dwigger members vote on submitted Tweets. If a Tweet receives enough votes, it will receive extended attention from the world. The highest voted Tweets of the week are posted in the „Top this Week” sidebar.

If you are creating a new post directly on Dwigger, you have the option to post additional information that will extend your post (longer than the standard 140 characters of a Twitter post). This expanded post may contain more text, images, embedded videos or other content. Although the extra information isn't included in the Tweet at Twitter, it will be displayed as a link from your Twitter Tweet back to your original Dwigger post. If your thread has extra info you can modify it, but the main contents of your Tweet cannot be modified because Twitter does not allow it. Comment Tweets can not be modified for the same reason.

On Dwigger, the threaded comments are Tweets. On Twitter your Dwigger comment will be posted as a reply Tweet. If the comment you are posting is longer than the 140 character limit on Twitter, only the first part of your comment will be displayed on Twitter followed by a link back to your full comment at Dwigger.

There is a “Hit List” which is a real-time keyword search for what's being posted at Twitter „right now.” You can post Tweets to Dwigger that you find on the Hit List by clicking the „submit to Dwigger” link in the Hit List results.

When you first join Dwigger, all the users you follow at Twitter are added to your followers here (except for "protected" users). From that point on, any time you add or remove a follow on Dwigger, Twitter will be updated accordingly. If you add new follows at Twitter, you can click the "import" link on your Dwigger profile to import from Twitter any follows you haven't already added on Dwigger.

You can use Dwigger by logging in Dwigger using your Twitter credentials. Then use one of the two ways to put a Tweet on Dwigger: Either create a brand new Tweet right here on Dwigger, or you can paste the URL of any Tweet that is already posted at Twitter; it doesn't have to be your Tweet. If you find an interesting Tweet of any public Twitter user, you can post it to Dwigger. Every post you submit (with the exception of blog posts) also updates your status at Twitter. You can even start a Dwigger thread via SMS (text message).

Weekly summary – week 37

2008-09-15T11:01:00.001+02:00

08/09/2008 – Monday

The Next Web: Apple admits Brit invented the iPod 30 years ago (sorta)

The Next Web: Skype founders to establish free video calls on television

Google Blog: Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time

ReadWriteWeb: OpenOffice: An Early Look at OpenOffice 3 RC1

09/09/2008 – Tuesday

NYT: Google Tightens Data Retention Policy — Again

10/09/2008 – Wednesday

The Next Web: In our world, bloggers still get jailed for their writings, like Erraji

Ars Technica: Google puts wallet behind African wireless broadband effort

Mashable: MySpace Launches New Option to Record Videos via Webcam

ReadWriteWeb: To 2.0 or Not 2.0? That is The Government's Question

11/09/2008 – Thursday

Read Write Web: Five Ways to Use Social Media to Reach People Who Don't Use Social Media

12/09/2008 – Friday

Intranet Blog: The future of intranets

Ars Technica: Yahoo plans a more social, open homepage design

NYT: Yahoo to Open Music Site to Other Services

TechCrunch: Lieberman Saves YouTube From Terrorists

The Next Web: Google aqcuired Korean blogging platform TNC

13/09/2008 – Saturday

TechCrunch: Microsoft’s Real Problem: Facebook is the New Outlook, and Other ways that Redmond is not Listening to Generation Y

14/092008 – Sunday

Wired: Large Hadron Collider's Hacker Infiltration Highlights Vulnerabilities

Google Blog: The social web: All about the small stuff

Passionato to become the world's most comprehensive online classical resource

2008-09-11T15:36:00.004+02:00

Passionato is a new online service which is said to be the world’s largest collection of quality classical downloads with over 18,000 recordings in high-quality (320Kbps) DRM-FREE MP3 files, compatible with any digital audio player.

Passionato's aim is to become the world's most comprehensive online classical resource and offer classical music lovers the largest available collection of high-quality DRM-free classical music downloads. Passionato provides access to catalogues from the two largest major labels, Universal Music and EMI Classics, as well as the key independent classical labels including Naxos, Chandos, Avie and Arts.

Designed for classical music lovers, Passionato's main features are: DRM-free recordings, transferable to any portable device and burnable to CD; high audio quality downloads (320kbps DRM-free MP3 and lossless FLAC); access to free software the Passionato Player specifically developed to help organise users' existing Classical CDs alongside tracks purchased through the Passionato Store; an unprecedented level of recording information which users benefit from when they download a track, work or album, and when they import their own CD libraries to their computers; the ability to search Passionato's recordings using over 20 fields, including by work, composer, conductor, venue and recording engineer.

You can search their vast list of classical music CDs, but you can also look through their catalogue by composers, artists, genres/periods, and record labels. They have a blog and a forum where registered users can be part of the classical music lover community.

Q2 state of the Internet report by Akamai Technologies issued

2008-09-10T11:08:00.004+02:00

According to its press release, Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, announced the release of the second edition of its quarterly "State of the Internet" report. Akamai's quarterly report provides insight into key Internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic, network outages and broadband connectivity levels across the globe.

During the months of April, May, and June of 2008, over 346 million unique IP addresses connected to the Akamai global server network - five percent more than during the first three months of the year. Extrapolating data gathered across Akamai's network, the "State of the Internet" report analyzes the origins of attack traffic, network outages and de-peering events, as well as provides a look at broadband connectivity by geography.

Findings from the 25 page report include a closer look at the trend of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to continue to target exploits that were identified years ago, suggesting there is still a significant population of insufficiently patched systems connected to the Internet.

From a protocol perspective, the report highlights that the second quarter of 2008 saw increased DNS resolution capacity, steps towards additional generic top-level domains, and a key IPv6 deadline for the U.S. federal government.

In addition, Akamai's unique level of visibility into the connection speeds of systems issuing requests to the Akamai network has created a one-of-a-kind view into broadband adoption around the globe. Leveraging that data, Akamai's quarterly "State of the Internet" report identifies both the countries and U.S. states with the fastest and slowest average connection speeds exhibited by IP addresses originating from those respective geographies.
You can read or download the report, and can access the archive of last quarter's report.

European Commissioner about the need of a Single Market for (on-line) services

2008-09-09T10:32:00.006+02:00

“We need a Single Market for (on-line) services. We are on the threshold of a new era of electronic network and service business: the Internet of the future. The first phase of this will be an internet of services (in which software-based services will be offered on-line using the internet as a massive transactional infrastructure). SMEs will increasingly have the possibility to rent computer resources instead of committing to expensive purchases of hardware or software upfront. The shift to online software services will place the emphasis on open and interoperable systems that can be upgraded and joined together in networks with other systems. And, although proprietary systems will remain important, Europe should benefit from its SME-based leadership in open source software – 70 % of open source developers are European. Remember also that we are strong in the GRID technologies that provide the tools for managing open systems of computers. These factors give us a pole position to respond to the new era of Internet of Services. It's an opportunity which we must not waste.”

This was one of the core elements of Viviane Reding’s speech which she presented on September 8, 2008 at the 2008 Biennial Conferences of the European Economic and Social Committee in Athens. Viviane Reding is the Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media. The 2008 Biennial Conference’s main theme is “Entrepreneurship with a human face”.

She also talked about the needed policy actions to overcome Europe’s “structural deficits” in order to catch up with ICT sector leading American and Japanese companies (the top-50 global ICT companies are American or Japanese, and among the 12 most efficient companies, only 2 are from the EU).

“First, we need a more effective Single Market in high speed internet services. European telecoms services are still offered on a narrow national basis. This is true even for mobile services, which as you all know I have been trying to coax in the direction of a real Single Market: where customers are not punished when they cross a border.”

“… we also need to "up our game" as regards commercialising ICT research results.”

"I will present early next year steps towards a systemic revamp of the European ICT innovation system, which will implement concrete steps on:

reducing the fragmentation of research effort in Europe,

prioritising European research into key areas,

strengthening public sector demand for innovative solutions,

shifting towards the proactive use of standardisation and IPR policies, and

attracting European capital into early phase and higher risk projects to fund high-tech start-ups."

Viviane Reding closed hers speech with a very optimistic – kind of rallying – picture of her belief:
“I believe that Europe can lead the next phase of the ICT revolution and European SMEs can be the powerhouse of this change. We have the brains, we have the talent and we have the energy. In the Olympic Games this summer, taken together the EU won more Olympic medals than either China or the USA. If we clear away the barriers of doubt and inertia, we can also aspire to the Olympian ideal of becoming the world champions in innovation and entrepreneurship. The prize is there if we reach out and take it.”

Read the entire speech.

Weekly summary – week 36

2008-09-08T11:30:00.003+02:00

01/09/2008 – Monday

Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser

ReadWriteWeb: Google Video for Business Launches: YouTube for Enterprise

TechCrunch: Can Hulu Be A Bigger Business Than YouTube?

New Scientist: Cyberwar fears grow after Georgia websites attacked

02/09/2008 – Tuesday

Google Blog: Google Chrome now live

Google Blog: Introducing Picasa 3.0 (and big changes for Picasa Web Albums)

CMS Wire: Microblogging with Jaiku: Too Late to the Party?

Wired: Amazon Takes On Wikipedia With Editable Music Data

03/09/2008 – Wednesday

TechCrunch: Mozilla Fights Back With New Firefox Benchmarks

Mashable: Think Facebook Beta is Sexy? Lots Don’t. Yet.

04/09/2008 – Thursday

BBC: Google at 10

ReadWriteWeb: Chrome: 1% Market Share In Less Than a Day

Forbes: How To Erase Your Tracks Online

Internet Evolution: The Biggest Threat to Google

05/09/2008 – Friday

Ars Technica: First look: Firefox 3.1 alpha 2 officially released

ReadWriteWeb: African Social Media Tracker Afrigator Gets Acquired

06/09/2008 – Saturday

gHacks: Download 20 Metallica Live Albums For Free

ReadWriteWeb: Businesses Can't Hide From 2.0: A Look At 2.0's Impact Across Industries