nptech.info

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/nfc.png"While the Bank of America has partnered up with Visa to begin a href"http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pay_with_your_phone_bofa_visa_begin_testing_mobile.php "testing out mobile payments/a later this month, analyst firm Forrester says one big question remains - are consumers ready to ditch their plastic? /p pAccording to Forrester analyst Emmet Higdon, the test is less one of the technology involved, but the user interface and whether or not "consumers' current love affair with smartphones is enough to change card payment behaviors that date back more than 50 years."/p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21630amp;cb=21630' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21630amp;n=21630' border='0' alt='' //a/p pThe mobile-payments trial run involves equipping a group of users' phones with near field communications (NFC) technology, which currently does not come installed, but we expect to see as a pre-installed feature in the near future. /p pTo make any headway, writes Higdon, "banks need to convince customers that using a mobile wallet can be as simple and convenient as swiping a plastic card". Beyond that, companies would also need to ensure security and privacy, "as well as competitive issues regarding control of the mobile wallet application itself - before any broad consumer rollout could be contemplated."/p pPerhaps, though, mobile payments aren't entirely about the transaction itself, but the whole experience. Online payment systems could make it much simpler to transfer funds and to put limits on spending, features that might not be available for credit or debit cards. There's also the issue of security. A recent episode of NPR's a href="http://www.onthemedia.org"On The Media/a discussed mobile payment systems and related how they can actually be more, not less, secure than cash. For workers in South Africa, the story went, everyone would get paid on the same day and often, returning home from work could be a scary time, as the chances of getting mugged were higher. Therefore, getting paid virtually rather than physically, was actually safer. Another possibility is that NFC could replace plastic in locations where completing credit card transactions become difficult, though mobile credit card solutions are becoming increasingly common./p pAccording to Higdon, a href="http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/us_consumers_continue_to_show_limited_interest/q/id/57421/t/2"nearly 50% of iPhone users/a are interested in mobile payments. Are you one of them? And if so, why, because we can't imagine that the debit card in your pocket is taking up too much room. What is the value added by mobile payments? /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/can_smartphones_replace_credit_cards.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/MHcu0Bc1VKqJl-0u6CKTNfspWNQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/MHcu0Bc1VKqJl-0u6CKTNfspWNQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/MHcu0Bc1VKqJl-0u6CKTNfspWNQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/MHcu0Bc1VKqJl-0u6CKTNfspWNQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=cISxm6bCJas:eQsaiXVfeRw:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/cISxm6bCJas" height="1" width="1"/

centerimg src="http://readwriteweb.com/images/DCQR-20100903-095144.jpg" alt="DCQR"//center pGov 2.0 advocates have printed a run of QR (2D barcode) stickers they will stick at bus stops all over Washington DC today, allowing mobile phone users to quickly get up-to-the moment bus progress reports, post traffic status updates, and more. This augmentation of the physical world with real-time data from the ether strikes me as accessible and useful. The project was one of many ideas a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexander-howard/digital-capitol-week-show_b_615255.html"discussed at DCWeek this June/a and is being implemented by the Research and Development group in Office of the CTO, DC Government (on Twitter: a href="http://twitter.com/octolabs"OCTOLabs/a)./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21632amp;cb=21632' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21632amp;n=21632' border='0' alt='' //a/p pO'Reilly's Gov 2.0 correspondent a href="http://twitter.com/digiphile"Alex Howard/a shared a link to this photo on Twitter this morning. Smart phone users will use QR reading apps to snap a picture of the codes, then their phones will be shown relevant real-time information corresponding to the bus stop they are at. (That makes more sense to me than a href="http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=145221"NYC's new QR codes on the back of garbage trucks/a, but hey - they point is, these things are growing more mainstream in the US.)/p pemUpdate: The team behind these QR codes has updated us to let us know that the stickers are ready but won't actually be distributed for a few more days./em/p pHere in my home town of Portland, Oregon, the ability to check "time-to-arrival" for buses by phone is much appreciated. Augmenting that kind of data with a richer experience, launched by QR code, sounds great. Santiago, Chile a href="http://www.capterra.com/public-transportation-software/software_news/prweb4230034"added similar QR codes/a to 4,000 of its bus stops this Summer./p p"See" also a href="http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2010-08-31/better-government-through-technology"this audio interview/a earlier this week with Bryan Sivak,br / Chief Technology Officer at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) in the District of Columbia./p p!--start:nonyt--br / centeremstrongBelow: US interest in QR Codes, as expressed by Google search queries./strong/em/centerbr / img src="http://readwriteweb.com/images/QRGoogleTrends-20100903-102114.jpg" alt="QRGoogleTrends"/br / emGoogle Trends info via UK QR news blog a href="http://2d-code.co.uk/qr-code-search-term/"2d Code/a./em!--end:nonyt--/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/qr_codes_coming_to_bus_stops_in_dc_photo.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zYdF9_eAHrrh4CDtGE7cAuiVzuI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zYdF9_eAHrrh4CDtGE7cAuiVzuI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zYdF9_eAHrrh4CDtGE7cAuiVzuI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/zYdF9_eAHrrh4CDtGE7cAuiVzuI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=1o5mYMjTfX0:rfFEWJAjf-E:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/1o5mYMjTfX0" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="timecard_sep10.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/images/timecard_sep10.jpg" width="150" height="107" /Montreal-based entrepreneur and blogger a href="http://www.instigatorblog.com/about/"Ben Yoskovitz/a knows a thing or two about hiring employees at startups. Yoskovitz formerly founded his own company, a href="http://standoutjobs.com/"Standout Jobs/a - a tool designed to improve hiring and recruiting techniques for small businesses on the Web. Needless to say, the hiring and performance tracking of employees at the SMB level is a topic of interest for Yoskovitz. One of the items a href="http://www.instigatorblog.com/how-many-hours-should-a-startup-employee-work/2010/08/26/"he recently wrote about/a is whether startups should hire workaholics expected to work 80+ hours each week, and some interesting arguments emagainst/em this doctrine emerged./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21582amp;cb=21582' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21582amp;n=21582' border='0' alt='' //a/p div class="pullquote""You have to hire people who are passionate about the business. If they're not passionate, they'll fail you. If they are passionate but lazy they'll fail you."br/- Ben Yoskovitz/divThe startup ecosystem has long accepted the "all day, every day" methodology toward building a company, especially at the early stages. When you think you have a great idea you don't want to stop working on it, and young entrepreneurs will work during every spare moment to hasten the progress of their idea. That's great, and many successful entrepreneurs have done just that, but should that translate to your employees once you begin expanding? pYoskovitz argues that a startup shouldn't be hiring and measuring their employees based on the number of hours they work. The only thing "hours worked" is a good indicator of is just that - how much time they put into whatever it is they were doing, he says./p p"I'm not even sure it's a great measurement of passion (which is an essential quality you need to look for in startup employees.) It could just be that the guy is slow, so he works more hours," writes Yoskovitz. "We need to think about other measurable indicators of an employee's quality and value./p pimg alt="chaindesk_sep10.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/images/chaindesk_sep10.jpg" width="300" height="225" class="alignright" /In a post about a href="http://www.instigatorblog.com/should-you-hire-workaholics-for-your-startup/2008/03/11/"hiring workaholics at startups/a, Yoskovitz reiterates this point, stating that passion and work ethic are far more valuable than simply the number of hours the person is willing to commit./p p"You have to hire people who are passionate about the business. If they're not passionate, they'll fail you. If they are passionate but lazy they'll fail you," he says. "They need to have a strong work ethic, a sense of responsibility (to you, their peers the business) and they need to be passionate."/p pStartups are a unique beast. They are not normal jobs. Anyone applying to work at a startup knows that they will not clock-in and out at the same time each day. That said, it would also behoove startups to look beyond a person's time commitment when evaluating potential and current employees. Just remember that 5 hours of concentrated hard work always trumps 20 hours of lazy work devoid of passion./p pHow many hours a day do you think employees should be working at a startup? Or do you agree in Yoskovitz's "hours, schmours" argument? What are the best new ways to gauge your employees work performance? Let us know in the comments below!br / /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/09/startup-employee-metrics-looking-beyond-work-hours.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pKpnws1Zg70mL8OTsboD-lv_C8w/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pKpnws1Zg70mL8OTsboD-lv_C8w/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pKpnws1Zg70mL8OTsboD-lv_C8w/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pKpnws1Zg70mL8OTsboD-lv_C8w/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9KkEdqJxgic:9k1NK5aZD1A:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/9KkEdqJxgic" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/nike_case.jpg"Have you ever wanted to walk into a building and be automatically checked into a href="http://www.foursquare.com"Foursquare/a, without any action on your part? That's the promise of an intriguing DIY project from electronic engineering hobbyist, a href="http://seattlewireless.net/~casey/"Casey Halverson/a. He has a href="http://seattlewireless.net/~casey/?p=37"come up with/a a low-cost solution that involves a Nike+ sensor, a $25 breakout board and a Web service called a href="http://www.stumble.to"Stumble.to/a that watches for electronic devices, then automatically checks you into your favorite places via Foursquare and other location-based social networking services. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21629amp;cb=21629' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21629amp;n=21629' border='0' alt='' //a/p pemEvery so often, we like to feature a "weekend project" here on ReadWriteWeb. These generally consist of the kind of things you'll want to try out and play with when you have some free time, like over the weekend! None of our projects to date have been quite this involved, but it's a holiday weekend here in the U.S. - and doesn't building an automatic Foursquare check-in system beat eating hot dogs at a cookout? We think so. /em/p pIf you have a few hours this weekend, you can build this automatic Foursquare check-in system yourself, with very little upfront investment. If the idea sounds appealing, but you're not sure if you have the skills needed to make this happen, don't worry - the hardware may soon be available for purchase alongside re-modded sensors that dangle on your keychain. /p h2Materials/h2 pTo get started, you'll need the following materials: /p ul liA Nike+ sensor: If you don't already have a href="http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikeplus/en_US/"a Nike+ sensor/a, you can pick one up by locating the nearest store that sells Nike gear using a href="http://nikerunning.nike.com"the company website/a. Sensors are sold either with a pair of running shoes or along with the Nike+ sportsband. (If you don't have a sensor on hand, you can still do this. Stumble.to's service can register Wi-Fi clients via MAC addresses, too.) /li li A USB+iPod Serial Adapter: This $25 breakout board (a href="http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8245"available here from Sparkfun Electronics/a) sends and receives commands to the receiver and listens for individual foot pods. Your local electronics hobbyist shop may carry something similar. /li liA computer/li /ul h2Accounts/h2 ul liObviously, you'll need a a href="http://www.foursquare.com"Foursquare/a account. (Twitter check-ins and Fire Eagle are also supported.) /li liSecondly, you need to register an account with a href="http://stumble.to/"Stumble.to/a and obtain an API key. /li /ul h2Software/h2 ul lia href="http://www.python.org/"Python/a /li lia href="http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/"PySerial/a/li lia href="http://stumble.to/downloads/stumbleto-shoe-agent.py"The shoe-agent Python script/a (direct download): This is the script that connects the Nike+ sensor to the Stumble.to software. /li /ul h2Just Do It!/h2 p Once you have all the components in place, here's how to get started: /p ol liInstall Python and PySerial/li liPlug in the serial adapter./li liObtain your a href="http://www.stumble.to/about/api"API key from Stumble.to/a/li liEdit the shoe-agent script with your API key information and specify the serial port your USB adapter appears as. /li /ol pThat's it! Halverson is working on a more detailed how-to guide, so stay tuned to a href="http://seattlewireless.net/~casey"his blog/a for an update on that, if you need further details. (strongUpdate/strong: a href="http://seattlewireless.net/~casey/?p=66"Here it is/a!)/p h2Garage Project to Become Commercial Success?/h2 pAlthough the above guide is meant for electronic hobbyists who want to have a little fun with Foursquare and hardware sensors, this DIY "garage project" may end up leading to commercial success for those invovled. Halverson says he's thinking now about how he could build a different type of sensor, like one that hangs on your keychain, for example, instead one that sits in your shoe or pocket. The new sensor could be thinner and lighter or maybe have an on and off switch that would register your check-ins automatically when on while still allowing an easy way to go off the grid when needed. /p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/shoe_scanner.jpg" align="right"The Stumble.to Web service created by a href="http://codebutler.com/"Eric Butler/a and a href="http://cdine.org/"Ian Gallagher/a has incredible potential as well. Although it only works with Foursquare, Fire Eagle and Twitter for the moment, additional services like Facebook Places, Gowalla and other check in-based social networks can and will be added in the future. Stumble.to essentially works as a middleman between hardware devices and location-based networks. It works with sensors, but also with Wi-Fi clients like laptops and smartphones that register their MAC addresses with the service. /p h2Bringing Check-Ins to Non-Smartphone Users with Low-Cost Sensors/h2 pIn reality, this project isn't all that different from the system created by a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/shopkick_brings_real-world_incentives_to_the_check.php"mobile check-in service Shopkick/a, but with cross-platform appeal. a href="http://shopkick.com/"Shopkick/a, now available as a mobile application for smartphones, offers deals to users who check in at popular retail establishments like Best Buy and Macy's. However, it forces the venue to install the company's proprietary hardware to verify that the check-ins come from people who are actually in the store. It also requires a smartphone. /p pUsing low-cost components at the venue level and short-range sensors like the one from Nike+ offers the same benefits but without excluding users who prefer using other location-based services... or even those who don't own smartphones! A sensor combined with an online account at Facebook, Foursquare or another site could engage feature phone users who want to participate in this hot, new check-in game, but can't install mobile applications on their phone. /p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/stumbleto.png"/p pFor the end user, the experience could be simple: it would only be a matter of registering an account with Stumble.to and associating their preferred services with their keychain sensor. Afterwards, they could continue to enjoy the features of location-based apps, like the discounts, mobile coupons, tips, reviews and other rewards, without having to actually having to perform a manual check-in on their phone./p pAnother interesting side note: Stumble.to has a "check out" feature too, meaning it can calculate the time you spend at a venue. Although no location-based service tracks this metric today, it could be implemented in future iterations to discourage the so-called drive-by check-ins (those where the user checks in as they pass a venue, often while driving, in order to get the points or rewards in a given location-based game like Foursquare). A service could perhaps dole out emmore/em points or better rewards to those who actually stayed put for awhile instead of those who were just cruising by. /p h2What Do You Think?/h2 pWhether you geek out on the DIY project or want to wait for a commercially available system, you can see there are clear advantages to automated, hardware-based check-in services. Whether or not companies like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and others will actually want users to skip using their apps in favor of automation is another matter entirely, though. Some smaller services may be dependent on in-app ads for example, or links posted by their users that drive traffic to company homepages. Automation would have an effect on how the services could be effectively monetized, and that's something they will need to consider thoughtfully before embracing a system like this. /p pBut that's just them. We think it's awesome - what about you?/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_hack_nike_for_automatic_foursquare_check-ins.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/n0VmZqAReXt9x2FeoGPPHYQlpyo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/n0VmZqAReXt9x2FeoGPPHYQlpyo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/n0VmZqAReXt9x2FeoGPPHYQlpyo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/n0VmZqAReXt9x2FeoGPPHYQlpyo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=h16Im1Wdw2M:IPhYU71IhGQ:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/h16Im1Wdw2M" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="Future office, circa 1964" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/images/future_office_0810.jpg" width="150" height="155" / On Monday a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/08/workplace-of-the-future.php"we asked you about the workplace of the future/a - today, it's time to take a look at your comments. The biggest theme was remote work - several of you expect the workplace to be increasingly virtualized. Others suggested a few problems with this idea. "Swarming," as Gartner called it, was also seen as important - for better or worse. And could the workplace start to be more of a "FunPlace"?/p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21596amp;cb=21596' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21596amp;n=21596' border='0' alt='' //a/p pimg alt="CitizenSpace San Francisco" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/images/citizenspace_photo_0910.jpg" width="510" height="383" /br / ema href="http://citizenspace.us/"CitizenSpace in San Francisco. Is this what the future of the workplace looks like?/em/p h2Remote Control/h2 pThe first commenter, a href="http://favit.com/marfi"Martin/a, kicked it off by saying "People will just work from home. Homes will be built with cabinets, or people will buy wooden modeules and install them in their gardens. Commuting, and paying rents for office space just does not scale."/p pMany people echoed that sentiment. One reader suggested companies could give "work from home" bonuses to employees. And although there are many jobs that just can't done from home - like road construction, emergency room staff and delivery - there's obviously a huge interest in telecommuting. According to telework web site Undress for Success a href="http://undress4success.com/research/telecommuting-statistics/"40% of workers have jobs that can be done from home/a (it's not clear if that's just in the US or if it's both the US and Japan)./p pOf course, there are a few problems with this idea. a href="http://twitter.com/JackieTEwing"Jackie Thorpe Ewing/a commented:/p blockquoteI don't believe all workers will work from home. Some folks just cannot function that way. They need the routine of getting somewhere and doing something specific. Those folks are necessary to the future work place. If everyone works remotely, where is the synergy, where is the idea bouncing. Humans need the contact to liberate ideas. Video conference, Skype - they cannot replace human interaction. pWhile many of the tasks can certainly be done remotely, I believe there will always be a need for face-to-face communication on some level./blockquote/p pI think that's a pretty common sentiment - one that has enabled the rise of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking"co-working spaces/a such as a href="http://citizenspace.us/"Citizen Space/a in San Francisco and a href="http://www.nedspace.com/"NedSpace/a in Portland. These sorts of spaces are popular among freelancers and startups - are there many people working for large organizations utilizing these types of spaces?/p pAnother draw back pointed out by one commenter: /p blockquoteEveryone seems so convinced telecommuting will be the predominant mode of working. I can tell you as a manager, I just don't trust the productivity levels for when people work from home, and I know our CEO agrees with that. So, yes, cost-wise and time-wise, it is inefficient for society, productivity-wise, it's not. pSo I don't think the percentage of telecommuting increases from here. Has anyone seen stats on it over the past couple of decades? It would be interesting to see if it has plateaued./blockquote/p pLooking at the stats on Undress for Success, it appears that the rates of telecommuting have been going up, with growth having slowed down between 2006-2008 - but they don't have more recent data up./p pPersonally, I think results based compensation will also become more common as organizations try to squeeze as much ROI out of employees as possible and replace full time, salaried employees with contractors. On the other hand, I think people have been predicting this since at least 1984 when the first edition of em The Way of the Ronin /em was released (and I wouldn't be surprised is Alvin Toffler or Peter Drucker were talking it even earlier)./p h2Drone Swarms/h2 pa href="http://autom.x.iabc.com/"Autom Tagsa/a wrote us by e-mail to say:/p blockquoteAs the recession ensues, work force headcount becomes a critical factor in ensuring healthy bottom lines. What we may see evident in the immediate is a temporary deconstruction of traditional work roles and profiles, wherein the "leaner team" is composed of workers each wearing multiple hats and becoming quite adept at performing tasks outside of their core competencies partly as a result of 'swarmed' initiatives (per Gartner) and spontaneous, autonomous work habits. The long-term impact of this trend may yield a more knowledgeable workforce constantly aggregating and fine tuning skills as a function of the need to truly multitask efficiently./blockquote pInsects are specialists, so I'm not sure if the "swarm" metaphor applies well. On the one hand, more generalist work sounds appealing. On the other, it sounds like an extraordinary amount of additional pressure for each employee./p pSomeone at a href="http://barcampportland.com/"BarCamp Portland/a 2009 suggested that a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_outsourcing"business process outsourcing/a could be taken to its logical extreme: literally outsourcing entire companies. Teams of employees would work together juggling projects for multiple companies./p h2On Brighter Note/h2 pa href="http://twitter.com/SOinc"Jeff Walters/a shared a more optimistic view of swarming, suggesting that the practice will transform workplaces into FunPlaces as workers use social media to connect and engage in work that's more meaningful to them:/p blockquoteExample: A team working on how to improve the total experience for casino guests will come together in the casino to train, work, observe and then create a solution. They'll complete part of the solution elsewhere, of course, working from the team leader's shared "FunPlace" or home. pExample 2: A team working on a new distance learning app for university level studies will go to schools of students not yet in universities (high schools in the US), plus homes and communities where prospective students can be gathered to experience new forms of online education (a.k.a. = "games") that are engaging, effective and that simulate working in "FunPlaces."/p pExample 3: A team working on a new city development project will "camp" at the development site over the course of several days or weeks to live/design/architect the ideal 24x7 architecture and solution for a mixed use development (living, retail, "FunSpace," and entertainment)./p pComing together physically will be for "fun" and physical/social connections or "workers" will find new gigs only a click away./blockquote/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/09/readers-respond-the-workplace.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wvhjKqR-qS7mDTbYDJMoR30HlUA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wvhjKqR-qS7mDTbYDJMoR30HlUA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wvhjKqR-qS7mDTbYDJMoR30HlUA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wvhjKqR-qS7mDTbYDJMoR30HlUA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ZQmchGDIyrA:TJ8Zi0rPskU:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/ZQmchGDIyrA" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/itunes_ping_logo.jpg" /Only 24 hours after the launch of Apple's new social network, a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping/"Ping/a, the service has been overrun by spammers. The fraudsters have created iTunes profiles and are posting links to a number of online scams, including ones that promises "free iPhones" or "free iPads" in exchange for filling out online surveys. For the most part, these suspicious links are being posted in the comments sections of the most popular artists on Ping, like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, U2 and others, all of whom are among the recommended accounts linked to from the Ping homepage. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21628amp;cb=21628' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21628amp;n=21628' border='0' alt='' //a/p pAs security expert a href="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/chetw/g/2010/09/02/apple-pingd-comment-spam-coming/"Chester Wisniewski/a points out, Apple doesn't require a credit card or any other positive identification in order to establish an account on Ping, which itself is a part of newly launched a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/"iTunes 10/a. Doing so wouldn't be advisable, either, as it would lock out a lot of "credit card-less" kids, teens and young adults from using iTunes. There's actually quite a bit of free content available from the iTunes Store, from apps to music to video, allowing parents to feel comfortable in letting their children manage their own iTunes accounts without close supervision./p pGiven those lax sign-up requirements, however, it's somewhat surprising that Apple didn't build in a good spam filtration system into its social network, too. The types of links being posted now are what any halfway decent blog commenting system like a href="http://disqus.com/"Disqus/a or a href="http://aboutecho.com/products-overview.html"Echo/a would pick up automatically, or at least flag for review, especially since the posts contain links. /p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/ping_spam.png"/p pAlthough not mentioned by Wisniewski, we think the lack of attention to this security detail should have new Ping users concerned, or at least wary. If Ping's spam filter (assuming one even exits) doesn't block links to obvious online scams, how can we be sure it's blocking links of a more nefarious nature - like those to sites containing viruses, trojans or other phishing scams? /p h2Where's the Spam Filter?/h2 pWhat's odd is that Apple is managing other aspects of the Ping network's security. User profile pictures have to be approved before becoming visible; we've yet to see blatantly offensive comments or posts, which seems to indicative some sort of filter; and, as the Apple-watching blog a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2010/09/02/spammers-already-hitting-taking-aim-at-apples-ping/"MacRumors/a notes, there is a "report activity" mechanism in place. Clicking the "report" link on any spammer's comment brings up a dialog box of choices such as "offensive comments," "inappropriate photo or video" and "spam." /p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/ping_spam_report.png"/p pBut typically a report mechanism would be used to deal with the items the spam filter missed, not as the first line of attack. Due to the rampant nature of the spam - we've yet to see an artist profile not affected by this problem - that means that either Ping's spam filter needs emmajor /emimprovement or the report mechanism is the emonly /emspam filter Apple has. /p pWe would ask Apple for comment on this, but they never return our calls. (Working in Apple PR must be a great, right?) So we'll just leave you with this warning instead: You can't get a free iPhone from filling out an online survey, OK? Don't click those links. /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apples_ping_overrun_with_spam.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pe7cyn7VmUMMchuthGGKZhHFyG0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pe7cyn7VmUMMchuthGGKZhHFyG0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pe7cyn7VmUMMchuthGGKZhHFyG0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/pe7cyn7VmUMMchuthGGKZhHFyG0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ovJcfkUyyE8:qYdXAfCAdoY:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/ovJcfkUyyE8" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaboobie/280743143/" title="Halloween Parade - Calculator by cthoyes, on Flickr"img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/96/280743143_dae5b4e8a9.jpg" width="150" height="110" alt="Halloween Parade - Calculator" //aAs the cloud computing market gets more crowded, a number of Web-based calculators are popping up to lure customers./p pThese online calculators deserve their fair share of scrutiny. For the most part, they are there for the vendor to tell their own story in a way that shows the benefits of their service. Huge savings and incredible returns are pretty much what you are given when you pop in your numbers, requirements and company information. In the end, what you get is barely insightful. What the vendor gets is far more./p pAt their best, these cloud computing calculators provide a thumbnail view of the market. At their worst, they are slick tools for generating sales leads./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21627amp;cb=21627' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21627amp;n=21627' border='0' alt='' //a/p pHere are three that we looked at. None of these calculators should ever be used to decide how to use cloud computing services. There are just too many factors to consider when making such a decision. It's a complex undertaking for any established company. It's why cloud management companies do so well. They provide a full gamut of services to help companies decide what should be in the cloud and what should not./p h2Astadia/h2 pa href="http://www.astadia.com/itx_us/"Astadia/a developed a cloud calculator based on the data it collected from the integrations it did for its customers. Its main purpose is to show the return on the Google, Amazon Web Services and Force.com platforms./p pThe calculator is heavily biased. a href="http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid201_gci1518962,00.html"SearchCloudComputing.com/a observes that the actual calculator itself was built on the Force.com platform. Astadia develops marketing and sales apps. Much of the apps it develops are created on Force.com./p h2Google Calculator/h2 pobject width="640" height="385"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4fv1Wc7ipMY?fs=1amp;hl=en_US"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4fv1Wc7ipMY?fs=1amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"/embed/object/p pThis one stinks.a href="http://www.gonegoogle.com/#/company-name" The Google Cloud Calculator/a is hardly a calculator at all. It's an advertisement and a lead generator./p pThe calculator asks for your company name and then the number of employees. Input two employees and the calculator says you will save about $31,000. Put in 15 employees and you will also save about $31,000. So, either Google is inflating the numbers for a two employee company or is vastly underestimating the savings for a 15-person company. /p pGoogle does not have to promote itself in this manner. Google Apps is an excellent service, it can stand on its own. Cost comparisons are fine but to call it a calculator is a bit far fetched./p h2Windows Azure/h2 pThe Windows Azure cloud calculator is better than the Google calculator advertisement. It still requires a high dose of skepticism, especially considering that it was built by a marketing firm. /p pBefore you launch the calculator, they issue a disclaimer. That at least removes a bit of the marketing gleam. /p pThe calculator asks a series of questions. SearchCloudComputing.com makes the point that the calculator is no doubt collecting hordes of marketing information. Again, its more of a marketing ploy than anything else. Still, Micrsoft at least tries to show some integrity:/p blockquote"You should not view the results of this report as a substitute for engaging with a third party expert to independently evaluate you or your company's specific computing needs. The analysis report you will receive is for informational purposes only," it reads. It also assumes a rough estimate of $20,000 per year to manage a server on-premise, and about $4,000 for the Azure equivalent."/blockquote pThere are plenty of other cloud calculators. Rackspace has one as does Amazon Web Services. Our advice is to treat these calculators like you would any marketing information. They are simply tidbits of information that should provide nothing else but a snapshot of the market./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/09/cloud-calculators-a-sign-of-sl.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kI_MTQwmKJUQDMM2YbmQYE60FGA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=t4ufa7oynNI:StnwoSrJs1Y:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/t4ufa7oynNI" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="arcdetriomphe.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/arcdetriomphe.png" width="150" height="114" /If you're capable of seeing past the old stones of Paris and the picturesque rural villages, you'll realize that France is every bit as technologically advanced as any other Western country - more so in some areas. Not only does the country have a higher percentage a href="http://www.journaldunet.com/cc/02_equipement/equip_hautdebit_fr.shtml"of homes/a with high-speed Internet than the a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10454133-94.html"U.S./a (plus it's a href="http://gizmodo.com/5390014/internet-speeds-and-costs-around-the-world-shown-visually"faster and costs half as much/a), it ranks a href="http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/le-net/blogs-en-france/15-a-20-millions-de-blogs.shtml"first in the world/a for number of blogs per Internet user, and has a formidable market of Internet consumers who a href="http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/magazine/strategies-mots-cles-2009/e-commerce-france.shtml"spent euro;5.5 billion online/a in the first quarter of this year./p pWhen I came to Paris in 2006, I had a well-developed idea for a startup and nothing else. It's now been about three years since I joined the fray as an entrepreneur and tech blogger. In that time, I've discovered that the startup scene is infused with passion, energy and a strong spirit of collaboration./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21573amp;cb=21573' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21573amp;n=21573' border='0' alt='' //a/p empa href="http://www.lipstickgeek.com"Pamela Poole/a is a blogger, translator and tech writer, and founder of a href="http://francophilia.com"Francophilia.com/a, a social startup for Francophiles. Originally from California, she now lives in Paris, where her involvement in the vibrant startup scene keeps her from spending too much time in the bakeries./p/em pThere's a thriving geek culture in Paris, and no lack of software development expertise, thanks to superior universities that produce superior engineers. The startup scene is relatively young, however, which is partly due to some pretty fundamental cultural barriers. But these barriers are showing some wear and tear./p div class="super-pullquote"pbWant to start up in France?/b/p pWhile foreign entrepreneurs wait for the Startup Visa to become a reality so they can go launch their startups in the US, France has quietly had a similar program in place for some time. The French government has translated the JEI program into English as the a href="http://www.france-science.org/innovation/yei/home.html"Young Entrepreneurs Initiative/a, an annual competition run by the French Embassy to the US. The name is a bit misleading - you don't actually have to be young, but your project does. YEI is essentially the same as the JEI program, and winners of the competition can come to France and enjoy the same benefits as startups with JEI status. So what are you waiting for?/p/divpThere are numerous events and organizations in Paris that exist solely to foster entrepreneurship and tech innovation, many of which get partial financial support from local, regional and national government. France is not a socialist country, but it's a socialized country, and a href="http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=8406"the French get a lot in return/a for the taxes they pay./p h2The Big Players/h2 pa href="http://siliconsentier.org/"Silicon Sentier/a is perhaps the best-known player in the Paris startup scene. It's essentially an ecosystem whose mission is the care and feeding of innovation. Among other activities and programs, Silicon Sentier runs a href="http://lacantine.org/"La Cantine/a, a coworking center, hip geek hangout and bustling hub for Paris tech events and activities: barcamps, workshops, competitions, launch parties, press conferences - you name it./p pa href="http://www.capdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/cap_digital_plaquette.pdf"Cap Digital/a and a href="http://www.systematic-paris-region.org/fr/index.html"System@tic/a are among a href="http://www.competitivite.gouv.fr/spip.php?rubrique44amp;lang=en"a number/a of a href="http://www.ambafrance-UK.org/New-article,8617.html"tech clusters/a in Paris. The boards of these organizations include large companies, local and regional government representatives, universities/public research labs and SMEs. Through them, entrepreneurs can hook up with Ramp;D resources in universities and companies, and get access to a robust support network that provides opportunities for visibility, growth and financing./p pa href="http://doc.openfing.org/FING/LAFING/PUBLICATIONS/BOOK_FING_ENG.pdf"Fing/a, another major player, is "an idea accelerator, a think tank and a resource for innovators." Fing may be a think tank, but it fosters startup success in very concrete ways. Startups can submit their projects to Fing, which provides support to over 200 projects a year through events, programs, and access to a large network of resources./p pa href="http://www.leweb.net/"LeWeb/a, Europe's largest (and the world's second largest) Internet conference is held in Paris every December. It was created and is run by French entrepreneur Loiuml;c Lemeur (a href="http://seesmic.com/"Seesmic/a), and it includes a competition for European startups. Yes, it happens in Paris, but it's held in English because it's an international conference. LeWeb is a world-class tech conference, and the speakers on the program are always the icregrave;me de la cregrave;me/i of the startup world./p h2Incubators, Accelerators, Competitions/h2 pWe have those too. Some, like a href="http://blog.seedcamp.com/2010/03/seedcamp-loves-paris-in-springtime.html"Seedcamp/a, a href="http://startupweekend.org/"Startup Weekend/a, a href="http://barcamp.org/"barcamps/a and the a href="http://www.opencoffeeparis.fr/"OpenCoffee Club/a are imports from other countries. Others are homegrown, like a href="http://www.seednetworking.fr/"SeedNetworking/a, the brainchild of some alumni of HEC (one of France's best business schools) and Ecole des Mines (one of the excellent engineering schools), who tweaked the speed-networking concept to get entrepreneurs who need developers and developers who need projects in the same room for some fast and furious face time./p pThe major engineering and business universities have incubators for students and alumni, though some of them are less Internet oriented than others, and there are a few unaffiliated incubators as well, like a href="http://www.parispionnieres.org/"Paris Pionniegrave;res/a, which receives both public and private funding and supports women-owned startups, and the incubators of a href="http://www.incubateurparisdev.com/" Paris Deacute;veloppement/a, which is funded by the city of Paris and the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Big names like a href="http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/"Microsoft BizSpark/a and a href="http://www.sun.com/startupessentials/indexb.jsp"Sun Startup Essentials/a have a presence here, of course, and a href="http://www.thefunded.com/"The Funded/a recently launched their a href="http://www.founderinstitute.com"Founder Institute/a in Paris as well./p pOne thing we are missing here in Paris is longer-term intensive accelerators of the a href="http://ycombinator.com/"Y Combinator/a variety, but they exist in the U.K., so it shouldn't be long till they hop across the Channel./p h2The Funding/h2 pThe funding landscape is complex from a foreigner's point of view because the government is very often involved somehow. There are public entities that seem to be frequently renamed or merged, as well as semi-private and private organizations, and their activities are all very intertwined with each other. And it's acronym hell. But the bottom line is that there is money for startups, and a lot of it comes from those taxpayer Euros I mentioned earlier. In fact, about three fourths of startup money comes from public funds./p pOne obstacle startups have traditionally faced here is that public and private funding is largely skewed towards projects that involve an Ramp;D/new technology component. French investors are more risk averse than their American counterparts, and the possibility of a patent is reassuring to them./p pAnd, until recently, business angels have been relatively few and far between. This is in part because the government historically filled the seed-funding void, and that is where people tended to turn. But angels are getting more structured, more active, and there more of them. Plus there's been another important new development: Several highly successful French Internet entrepreneurs-turned-investors, who are considerably less skittish than your traditional French investor, are taking matters into their own hands (a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-frances-new-and-awesome-super-angels-2010-4"Meet France's New and Awesome Super Angels/a)./p pThe chart below shows the general funding options available to French startups./p img alt="FundingFrench.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/FundingFrench.jpg" width="600" height="430" / pStartups can access public funding in a number of ways. A rite of passage for many is to go through a href="http://www.oseo.fr/"OSEO/a, which will analyze and validate a project. OSEO validation in turn makes early-stage startups eligible for a variety of support services and funding options. OSEO can be involved during very early stage activities, such as business plan creation and feasibility studies. It also provides support and guidance well beyond that phase./p pA startup can be designated a a href="http://media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/2010/74/2/JEI-2010_135742.pdf"iJeune Entreprise Innovante/i/a (Innovative Young Enterprise). The JEI program was created in 2004 and is managed by the Ministry of Research. Having JEI status is pretty much a golden ticket to financing, and JEI startups also get tax breaks and other benefits. To qualify, your project has to have an Ramp;D element. There is also the iConcours national d'aide agrave; la creacute;ation d'entreprises de technologies innovantes/i (National competition to help create innovative technology companies). Winners of this contest can be awarded up to euro;450,000 for Ramp;D./p pPrivate individuals who want a tax break can put money into special investment funds (a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonds_commun_de_placement_dans_l'innovation"iFonds commun de placement dans l'innovation/i/a) that are meant to be invested in innovative companies. These are managed by various wealth management entities (iConseils en gestion de patrimoine indeacute;pendents/i, or CGPI). The condition for receiving the tax break on these investments is that 60% of the money must go to early-stage, innovative companies, and it must be invested within two years of receipt by the CGPI. OSEO can designate a startup as an iEntreprise innovante au titre des FCPI/i, which makes it eligible for this kind of investment. This designation is similar to JEI but has a broader view of "innovative" and is less strict about the Ramp;D element./p pPocirc;le emploi is the government agency that provides unemployment compensation, but it also helps those recipients who are creating a small business or startup by providing extended compensation and breaks on the social charges (retirement, medical, disability, etc.) that businesses normally pay to the government./p pa href="http://www.reseau-entreprendre-paris.fr/reseau-entreprendre-paris/fr/s01_home/s01p01_home.php"Reacute;seau Entreprendre Paris/a, a network of business owners, and a href="http://www.france-initiative.fr/"France Initiative/a, a network of local organizations, are examples of the many semi-private organizations that support startups. They themselves receive both public and private funding, which they use in turn to provide financial support to startups through incubators and other established channels./p pI've focused on some options for early-stage startups here, and haven't discussed VC funding or the many organizations here that help French startups expand internationally. For a comprehensive guide (in French) to starting up in France, I highly recommend a href="http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/wp-content/themes/Ezratty4/forcedownload.php?file=/Files/Publications/Accompagnement%20des%20Startups%20en%20France%20Feb2010.pdf"Accompagnement des startups high-tech en France [PDF]/a, and for an overview of the funding cycle, a href="http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/wp-content/themes/Ezratty2/forcedownload.php?file=/Files/Publications/Cycle%20de%20financement.pdf"Exemple de cycle de financement de startup en France [PDF]/a; both are by a href="http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/"Olivier Ezratty/a./p emstrongNext page: /strongThe Jeunes Pousses/em pemsmallPhoto by a href="http://www.sxc.hu/profile/dafalias"Konstantinos Dafalias/a/small/em/p !--nextpage-- h2The Startups/h2 div class="super-pullquote"RWW's Never Mind the Valley series: ?php include("../../never_mind_valley.php"); ? /divpYou may think you've never heard of any French startups, but it's possible that you're using apps you don't even realize are French. If they've picked a name English speakers can pronounce and translated their sites into English, they blend right in. Take a href="http://www.netvibes.com/en"Netvibes/a, the pioneer in the personalized dashboard space, which has been written about a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/fastsearch?search=netvibesamp;x=0amp;y=0"a number of times/a here on ReadWriteWeb. They're a href="http://www.faqs.org/websites/netvibes.com/"going strong/a, and constantly adapting their platform to users' changing needs for information and social media aggregation. And there's a href="http://www.dailymotion.com"DailyMotion/a, which is eating into YouTube's market share and had a a href="http://www.beet.tv/2010/02/frances-dailymotion-seeks-to-double-its-us-market-share-this-year.html"70% jump in US traffic in 2009/a./p pThere are plenty of successful startups in France that cleverly capitalized on the fact that startups in other countries didn't localize for the French market. The model of a href="http://www.sarenza.com/"Sarenza/a is similar to that of Zappos, and it dominates the European market for footwear online. There are also original models that are either being copied or stealthily moving into English-speaking markets, like a href="http://en.vente-privee.com/vp4/Login/Portal.ashx"Vente-Priveacute;e/a and a href="http://www.priceminister.com/"PriceMinister/a. PriceMinister, a site for C2C/B2C sales of new and used goods (at a fixed price) is the top e-commerce platform in France (recently surpassing eBay.fr and Amazon.fr). It has infiltrated the U.K., and I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. were on its radar, where it'll surely give eBay.com some healthy - and much needed - competition. Vente-Priveacute;e is a retail site selling designer products at invitation-only online sales. One of the top e-commerce sites in France, it has expanded into other European countries and its model has given rise to some me-toos in other countries./p pThe French have their share of exemplary startups in the enterprise space as well, including a href="http://www.bluekiwi-software.com/"BlueKiwi/a, an enterprise social platform, and a href="http://www.exalead.com/software/"Exalead/a, which offers powerful and easily integrated search tools to help businesses and institutions get the most out of their information assets. Exalead's true entrepreneurial colors still show, thanks to its internal project incubator, a href="http://labs.exalead.com/"Exalabs/a. (Exalead was a href="http://www.exalead.com/software/news/press-releases/2010/06-09.php"just acquired/a by the technology giant, Dassault Systems.)/p pThese are some French startups that have made it to the big time. But what about the little guys? All those struggling, bootstrapping, Ramen-eating founders? As a matter of fact, Paris is crawling with them. Some are clearly aiming no further than the French market, but a number of them are out of the gate in at least French and English with a view to conquering the Web. Just like anywhere else, French startups run the gamut from basic Web apps that focus on a specific niche need, to ambitious and powerful platforms that are likely to give the current leaders a run for their money. Here's a list of just a few of our ijeunes pousses/i (sprouts)./p pi(E= in English)/i/p pa href="http://www.english-attack.com/fr/beta-preview"English Attack/a: Edutainment site that teaches English using Internet content that real people actually use: music, video, gaming, and more. (E)/p pa href="http://www.gamecreds.com/"GameCreds/a: Impressive social universe for gamers. (E)/p pa href="http://kontestapp.com/"Kontest/a: Ready-made solution for creating and managing a variety of interactive contests to provide user communities memorable experiences on Facebook and the iPhone. (E soon!)/p pa href="http://www.mymeetingsondemand.com/decouvrez-meetings/"Meetings/a: Nice collaborative app that manages all activities related to meetings: communications, attachments, agendas, action items, scheduling, etc./p pa href="http://www.monarbre-matribu.com/"MonArbre-MaTribu/a: Crowd-sourced reforestation project, very nicely done. One Euro plants a tree. (France only, for now.)/p pa href="http://www.pearltrees.com/"Pearltrees/a: A bookmarking site with a new approach to organization of content that resembles mind mapping. (a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/fastsearch?search=pearltreesamp;x=0amp;y=0"Covered previously/a on RWW.) (E)/p pa href="http://www.plyce.com/index"Plyce/a: Feature-rich location-based social network. They appear to be of the opinion that badges and mayorships are so last week. (Gotta like that thinking.) (E)/p pa href="http://www.regioneo.com/"Regioneo/a: You know all those cute little French open-air markets where small producers sell their amazing artisanal food products? This site lets you order directly from the producers. (France only, unfortunately)./p pa href="http://www.synthesio.fr/corporate/fr_index.php"Synthesio/a: Web app that provides extensive data from multiple sources for companies that want to track buzz and reputation, and identify trends and influencers. (E and more)/p pa href="http://tellmewhere.com/"span style='color:#002CE2'TellMeWhere/a: A real-time urban guide powered by user recommendations on everything from bars to barbers across the globe. Web and mobile. (a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/fastsearch?search=tellmewhereamp;x=0amp;y="span style='color:#002CE2'Covered previously/a on RWW.) (E)/p pa href="http://www.yoocasa.com/"Yoocasa/a: A private online space, developed in collaboration with child psychologists, where families interact in real time through photo slideshows, video chats, interactive games, and more. (E)/p pa href="http://www.ulule.com/"Ulule/a: Beautifully designed crowdfunding platform for projects that are artsy or for the betterment of society. (E) /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/09/never-mind-the-valley-heres-paris.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7EE9Fl90VaTb3-BJMsh4DjT1hKo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=keCwWOEfx2M:IVbvsWaBMSA:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/keCwWOEfx2M" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/apple_tv_sep10.jpg" /One of a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/live_blog_apples_fall_event.php"Apple's announcements/a yesterday was a completely redesigned a href="http://www.apple.com/appletv/"Apple TV/a. It's competing in a crowded and still confusing a href="http://newteevee.com/2010/09/01/comparison-apple-tv-vs-roku-vs-boxee-box/"field of products/a that stream video from the Internet to your TV. a href="http://www.boxee.tv/"Boxee/a and a href="http://www.roku.com/"Roku/a are two smaller companies a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/boxee_box_comes_out_of_the_box.php"trying to crack it/a; and a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-tv-tv-meets-web-web.html"Google TV/a was a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_introduces_google_tv.php"unveiled in May/a. The ultimate goal of all of these products is to make Web-to-TV very easy for consumers, but the market is still searching for the right formula. /p pWe'd like to poll the ReadWriteWeb community on this topic. Let us knowstrong how you currently get online video (and other media content) onto your TV/strong. Also, which of the emerging products do you think has the best chance to be the consumer offering of choice?/p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21626amp;cb=21626' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21626amp;n=21626' border='0' alt='' //a/p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/appletv_remote.jpg" align="right" /The key points of the new Apple TV are: a much lower price (now $99, compared to $229 for the first generation product), streamlined form (80% smaller), streaming functionality, no more local storage, Netflix and YouTube access, and 99c TV show rentals./p pOther ways to access Web content on your TV include: modern Internet-connected TVs; online gaming devices like Sony PlayStation 3 and X-Box 360; P2P software; Set-top boxes like TiVo (specifically, its a href="http://www.tivo.com/what-is-tivo/tivo-is/index.html"Premiere/a offering released in March); streaming software for computers, such as a href="http://www.playon.tv/playon"playon/a; wireless USB display adapter sets; special cables to hook a computer up to a TV. /p pOf course, there's still the matter of accessing good content. All of the online TV players have been busy doing deals with TV and movie distributors, a process which is far from being worked through. Meanwhile, many consumers have used P2P services like a href="http://www.bittorrent.com/"BitTorrent/a to get such content for free./p pThe video below from the Google TV announcement shows the (potential) benefits of streaming Web content to your TV:/p p object width="610" height="367" param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/diTpeYoqAhccolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xd0d0d0hl=en_USfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" / param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" / embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/diTpeYoqAhccolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xd0d0d0hl=en_USfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="610" height="367"/embed /object /p p I myself use a combination of Sony Playstation 3 and the P2P client a href="http://www.vuze.com/"Vuze/a in order to stream the occasional TV show and movie to my TV. Although it converts online video to a PS3 compatible format, it's still not a completely satisfactory solution. Sometimes the sound doesn't work, or the video is choppy, and so on. So I'm looking forward to purchasing one of the upcoming devices from Apple, Boxee, Roku or Google. /p pstrongDo you stream content from the Internet into your TV?/strong If so, tell everyone how you do it in the comments below. /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_thread_internet_tv.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Htdge7GkPBfNKqIY7KDO729SMRI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=sBt1-DfMzW0:nkNkhCAe-4I:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/sBt1-DfMzW0" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="wave_logo_sep09.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/wave_logo_sep09.jpg" width="150" height="122" class="mt-image-none" style="" /Google Wave is far from dead, and developers, early adopters and enterprises will be glad to hear it. Today Google announced it will expand on the code it has already open sourced, building Wave into a functional application that will allow users to run wave servers, host their own waves and build bigger and better applications with the real-time collaboration technology./p p"Since the beginning, it has been our vision that the Google Wave protocols could support a new generation of communication and collaboration tools," engineer Alex North a href="http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2010/09/wave-open-source-next-steps-wave-in-box.html"wrote/a on the Google Wave developer blog. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21625amp;cb=21625' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21625amp;n=21625' border='0' alt='' //a/p pGoogle had a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_wave_google_tries_to_reinvent_email.php"big plans/a for Wave - it was supposed to replace email and the a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/05/google-wave-graduates-to-googl.php"killer app/a among Google Apps, but the company basically gave up on the project earlier this month (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_wave_is_dead.php"Google Wave Is Dead/a). It still seems possible for the technology to do big things. But it sounds like Google plans to move on after the application is released. The future of the open source project will be defined by developers' contributions, North wrote./p pWave In A Box will not have the "full functionality" of the Gmail-integrated Web app, but it will feature threaded conversations and support importing data from a href="http://wave.google.com"wave.google.com/a./p pThe release of Wave as an application could be a big deal for developers, especially at businesses that want to take advantage of Wave for real-time collaboration and discussion (see our post, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/05/five-services-that-leverage-go.php"5 Services That Leverage Google Wave/a)./p pWave was always intended for people to run on their own machines, but this release will make the process much easier. Developers and enterprise users that have been eyeing Wave will be more likely to take the technology into their own hands and build things like feature-rich Web forums, productivity tools and apps to facilitate collaborative projects./p pGoogle did not specify a timeline for the release of the new code, but it has a href="http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/08/quick-note-on-next-steps-for-google.html"said/a that a href="http://wave.google.com"wave.google.com/a will be available at least through the end of the year./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_announces_wave_in_a_box.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/sF8cYC47ZCfRmtk0u0Ui52rtLqA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gBU3WQG19b8:P6zp1C8JBbY:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/gBU3WQG19b8" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="twitter-for-iphone.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/twitter-for-iphone.jpg" width="150" height="150" class="mt-image-none" style="" /As far as Web services go, Twitter is pretty easy to use. Fill out a brief profile, follow some people and go, right? Well apparently not. Developers at the company have been fretting over the fact that some people still think Twitter is "too hard" to use./p pBut the solution has proved easy. By simply releasing mobile apps named "Twitter," the company has seen a boost in new users./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21624amp;cb=21624' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21624amp;n=21624' border='0' alt='' //a/p pTwitter announced today that the number of total mobile users has jumped 62% since mid-April, thanks to the release of Twitter for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. These apps existed before - Twitter for iPhone is just a a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_acquires_tweetie_offers_free_as_twitter_fo.php"rebranded version/a of the third-party client Tweetie - but they weren't recruiting new users./p p"We did iPhone user tests and confirmed that even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called 'Twitter.' This kept them from using Twitter at all," CEO a href="http://twitter.com/ev"Evan Williams/a wrote in a blog post titled "a href="http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html"The Evolving Ecosystem/a" today./p pNow 16% of new users sign up via mobile, versus 5% before the name changes. Almost half of all active users "make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience," according to Twitter./p pDespite the mobile push and recent speculation that Twitter's clients have a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/twitter-for-ipad"killed/a its Web site, 78% of users still access Twitter at least once a month via the Web./p pimg alt="twitter-clients.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/twitter-clients.jpg" width="400" height="282" class="mt-image-center" style="text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;" /br / a href="http://Twitter.com"Twitter.com/a and Twitter's a href="http://m.Twitter.com"mobile Web site/a are the top ways users access Twitter, followed by SMS and the official iPhone and BlackBerry clients. a href="http://twitpic.com/"TwitPic/a, the photo-uploading service, and a href="http://www.google.com/friendconnect/"Google Friend Connect/a, the widget that lets websites feature content from social networks, are also in the top ten ways users access Twitter. Surprisingly, Twitter for Android was not./p pThe rest of the 300,000 registered Twitter applications have much fewer users, Twitter said. But Williams is encouraged by the growth and variety of apps in Twitter's ecosystem. "These new services help people get the most out of Twitter, contributing to user growth and new business opportunities," he wrote./p pTwitter said it now has more than 145 million registered users, although the number of active users is lower. /p pHow do you access Twitter?/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_ten_twitter_apps_why.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iZCNB5u5RBRe4DxmEMpa1NMMW_w/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=DoJK3A5pjb4:4eQDefjVggY:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/DoJK3A5pjb4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/help_wanted_sept10.jpg"College hiring is projected to rebound in time for the Class of 2011 to feel its effects, according to a new survey conducted by the a href="http://www.naceweb.org/home.aspx"National Association of Colleges and Employers/a (NACE). Employers who took part in NACE's survey say they're anticipating hiring 13.5% more new college grades from the Class of 2011 than they did from the Class of 2010. And in general, just under 48% of those responding said they plan to increase their hiring, while 40% say they expect to maintain the hiring levels. Good news for those stepping into the job market after graduation this spring./p pWe've written before about the things to ask yourself as to whether or not a a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/07/is-a-job-at-a-startup-right-fo.php"job at a startup is right for you/a. But if you think your post-graduate plans involve life with a startup, then there are a number of things you can do, while still in school, to prep. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21623amp;cb=21623' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21623amp;n=21623' border='0' alt='' //a/p h2Preparing Now for the Post-Graduate Job Hunt/h2 pThe first, of course, may be to look for an internship. While the traditional notion of internship conjures images of corporate drudgery (in my head, at least), a href="http://www.youtern.com/"YouTern/a is one organization that works to place college students with entrepreneurial-driven companies. (See our ReadWriteWeb write-up a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/05/online-community-youtern-links-college-interns-and-startups.php"here/a.) Not only are internships important skill-, network-, and resume-building experiences, it's a great way to get a taste for the startup life - something quite different than other post-college jobs./p pIf you're sure the startup world is right for you, then a href="http://www.jasonshen.com"Jason Shen/a and a href="http://www.derekflanzraich.com"Derek Flanzraich/a, both recent college graduates working at startups (Shen works for a href="http://www.isocket.com/"isocket/a and Flanzraich for a href="http://www.clicker.com"Clicker/a) have written a great set of tips on a href="http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/get-a-startup-job-out-of-college/"how to land a startup job out of college/a./p pHere are a few of their tips:br / ullibKnow Your Industry Inside and Out/b: Do your research. a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/02/07/domain-experience-gives-entrepreneurs-an-unfair-advantage/"Domain experience matters/a./lilibFocus - Only Target a Few Startups/b: You want to find the startup that matches your skills, your knowledge (see above), but also your workstyle and your vision./lilibGet Good at Specific Stuff/b: As Shen and Flanzraich write, startups "need people who can make an immediate impact on their 'bottom line', whether that's users, revenue, traffic, or something else." You need to bring a strong skill-set, but also a diverse skill-set. /lili bProve Your Worth/b: As with any job hunt nowadays, you want to make sure your online presence demonstrates a portfolio of projects and blog posts./lilibGet a Referral - Or Become a Friendly Face/b: Startups rarely have "openings," and even when they do, a reference makes a big difference. Don't know anyone who can recommend you? Shen and Flanzraich suggest volunteering. "Startups love free labor."/lilibSend in a Killer, Personalized and Memorable App/b: "Do something something different," they suggest. "Do something memorable. Something that proves your enthusiasm and dedication to the company."/lilibBe Yourself/b/li/ul/p pSure, it's Fall and college students are just beginning to return to campus. But it's never too early to start preparing for graduation - and the job search - in the spring. /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/09/how-to-get-a-job-at-a-startup.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/dRchD4BwYBSPznB_EDQPWC1T0FQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=9pl3QIA8zJ4:SIftqlmcgpg:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/9pl3QIA8zJ4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="SEOMoz logo" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/seomoz-logo.png" width="150" /SEOMoz, a site we've a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2010/08/3-must-subscribe-sources-for-seo-tips.php" target="_blank"covered before/a as a top-notch resource for search engine optimization tips, recently relaunched their site and opened their campaign-based Web app as a public beta. /p pThe company is also hoping to drive new sign-ups for its a href="http://www.seomoz.org/pro" target="_blank"Pro account/a, which is being offered at a discounted rate of $79 per month (normally $99), at least until midnight Pacific Time on Friday, September 3, 2010. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21622amp;cb=21622' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21622amp;n=21622' border='0' alt='' //a/p pThe SEOMoz Web app, which manages crawl diagnostics, on-page optimization, and keyword tracking, is now available to all Pro users. Other features like XML sitemaps and integration with Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics are on the horizon, according to SEOMoz Community Manager Jen Sable Lopez. /p pAlthough the site's UI was already pretty snazzy, a href="http://seomoz.org" target="_blank"SEOMoz.org/a is also sporting an brand new design from head to footer. /p pSEOMoz is used by big names like Ebay, Best Buy, The New York Times, Facebook and Yahoo!, among others. In addition to their paid Pro account, they offer an extensive library of free SEO resources, including a href="http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo" target="_blank"The Beginner's Guide to SEO/a and one of the most highly-acclaimed a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog" target="_blank"SEO blogs/a on the planet. /p pInterested in taking SEOMoz Pro for a spin? You can still a href="" target="_blank"sign-up/a at the discounted rate until midnight Pacific Time on Friday September 3./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2010/09/get-pro-seo-insight-for-cheap-with-the-new-seomoz.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/bmh3wfkDcGBSisxdXO8BWGLEpfE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=UVEEs-FC7So:qBvl9Gec-r4:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/UVEEs-FC7So" height="1" width="1"/

pa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/150799954/" title="Boston University: Marsh Plaza and Chapel by wallyg, on Flickr"img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/46/150799954_d90666bbeb.jpg" width="150" height="100" alt="Boston University: Marsh Plaza and Chapel" //aThe Virginia Community College system had a problem. The IT department had run out of ways to cool its data center. /p pThey explored going through the expense of transforming the building where the servers were housed or moving to a new building all together./p pVirtualization helped sort things out. They discovered servers that were soaking up power but were doing next to nothing. The results came far faster than expected. The cost savings were almost immediate./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21620amp;cb=21620' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21620amp;n=21620' border='0' alt='' //a/p pbr / a title="Download the Case Study on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28781340/Download-the-Case-Study" onClick="javascript:secondTracker._trackPageview('/PDF/CaseStudies/VirginiaCC');" target="rwcloud_new"Download the Case Study/a object id="doc_696620699441917" name="doc_696620699441917" height="600" width="100%" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" style="outline:none;" param name="movie" value="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" param name="wmode" value="opaque" param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" param name="FlashVars" value="document_id=28781340access_key=key-slzu1llslj9ljxwouqnpage=1viewMode=list" embed id="doc_696620699441917" name="doc_696620699441917" src="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=28781340access_key=key-slzu1llslj9ljxwouqnpage=1viewMode=list" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="600" width="100%" wmode="opaque" bgcolor="#ffffff"/embed/object /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/09/weekly-case-study-virginia-com.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/taH31KHQJttfKw7LksBnaaOPilY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=WnmgkBnaGBI:7ZHwB5uaUC8:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/WnmgkBnaGBI" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="facebook-places-logo.JPG" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/facebook-places-logo.JPG" width="150" height="150" class="mt-image-none" style="" /Facebook's goal for its a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gently_now_facebook_introduces_the_masses_to_locat.php"new Places feature/a may be even more ambitious than we realized. Facebook wants to be the central platform for location data across all Web services, a company spokesman a href="http://twitter.com/danielbachhuber/status/22835647204"said/a today at a New York Times developer a href="http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/timesopen/"conference/a. /p pThe statement reinforces the image of a world where the majority of the population is catalogued in Facebook's growing database. The long-term vision for Facebook Places is starting to take shape: Facebook wants to dominate the location-based Web./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21621amp;cb=21621' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21621amp;n=21621' border='0' alt='' //a/p pFacebook demonstrated that it wants your profile to be your identity on the Internet with Facebook Connect (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php"Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login/a). Basically, it now wants you to a href="http://www.quora.com/Where-does-the-location-data-come-from-for-Facebook-Places"add location to that identity/a./p h2Covering the basics/h2 pPlaces is restricted to basic location-confirmed check-ins - who is where, when - shunning mayorships and badges and leaving any sort of advertising up to third-party developers. This minimalist functionality leaves out some of the fun out of checking in, but it makes sense if Facebook's plan is simply to place its 500 million users on a dynamic map./p pAnd Facebook hopes that soon, any app developer who comes up with a new location-based service will a href="http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/403"turn first/a to Facebook's massive trove of data./p h2Early projections/h2 pThe full manifestation of Facebook Places is still five to ten years out. The feature is available to all users in the U.S., but not everyone is using it. /p pFor one thing, Places requires users to check in from a GPS-enabled device, but a href="http://gigaom.com/2010/03/26/1-in-2-americans-will-have-a-smartphone-by-christmas-2011/"less than a third/a of Americans have smartphones, according to Nielson. That's changing rapidly - Nielson estimates that half of Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2011./p h2Trusting Facebook with location data/h2 pAnd all this is contingent on people sharing their location information with Facebook, of course. That's no guarantee given the company's history of privacy slip-ups (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_privacy_explanation_debate.php"The Facebook Privacy Debate: What You Need to Know/a). But whether people use the service will depend on how much utility they get from it, as it did when Facebook introduced the News Feed feature. Users initially rejected the change, it now drives much of the activity on the site because it's useful and fun./p pUsers, developers and advertisers should all be excited for the possibilites for location-based services, from social shopping and rewards programs to real-time travel guides. The question is whether Facebook can persuade its users to trust it with their location data. Users might prefer to give their location data directly to individual applications, or another company might rise up to collect this data./p pWhat do you think? Are you ready to trust Facebook to handle your real-time location for the apps of the future?/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Yxqm7SqBqyqH48Oq88fos3aDhks/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Yxqm7SqBqyqH48Oq88fos3aDhks/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Yxqm7SqBqyqH48Oq88fos3aDhks/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Yxqm7SqBqyqH48Oq88fos3aDhks/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=ATiASY67DZ8:mPadj_G_nlM:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/ATiASY67DZ8" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/images/appcelerator_aug10.jpg" width="150"/Back in August, after the a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5m_monthly_check-ins_later_getglue_comes_to_android.php"release of the company's Android app/a, I spoke with a href="http://getglue.com/"GetGlue/a CEO Alex Iskold about how his startup prepared itself for a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/08/how-to-prepare-your-startup-for-platform-expansion-rapid-growth.php"making the move to mobile/a. The app first launched on the Web, and thus the company's developers were most familiar with languages native to the Web. In order to transition to mobile, Iskold and GetGlue employed the services of a href="http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-cross-platform-application-development/"Appcelerator's Titanium/a - a tool that simplifies native mobile app development for developers. Today I had the chance to chat with a href="http://www.appcelerator.com/"Appcelerator's/a Scott Schwarzhoff about how young companies can plan ahead for their development strategy by anticipating the three phases of app maturity./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21619amp;cb=21619' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21619amp;n=21619' border='0' alt='' //a/p div class="pullquote""You can have a lot of things pop up in the form of new APIs, new capabilities and new platforms. You need to stay ahead of the curve."br/- Scott Schwarzhoff/divIn the last year, the venture-backed Mountain View-based company has quickly grown to support over 64,000 developers and thousands of mobile apps across several platforms. The company's flagship offering, Titanium, allows developers familiar with Web languages to quickly piece together mobile applications with native platform functionality. pCompanies of all sizes, from startups like GetGlue to large corporations like eBay and NBC, have built consumer and enterprise level applications using the service. As Schwarzhoff points out, every company needs to plan ahead for mobile development./p p"It's important to have a really well thought-out development plan across all platforms that can sustain in the long term," Schwarzhoff told ReadWriteWeb. "You can have a lot of things pop up in the form of new APIs, new capabilities and new platforms. You need to stay ahead of the curve."/p pimg alt="iphonehand_sep10.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/images/iphonehand_sep10.jpg" width="300" height="358" class="alignright" /One of the best ways company looking to expand into mobility can roadmap their products is to understand what Appcelerator calls the "application maturity model," which consists of three distinct phases./p ullistrongThe Information Phase/strong - The first step for many companies, says Schwarzhoff, is to dip their toes into the mobile sector with basic read-only apps that provide one-way information to the user. It's in this phase that many first timers build familiarity with the platform, its capabilities and possible business models./li listrongThe Participatory Phase/strong - In this second phase, apps begin to allow for two-way communication, pushing and pulling information between the device and the cloud. Companies begin to realize the potential of the platform and its native functions, like location, photos and social networking./li listrongThe Business Operations Phase/strong - In the third phase, a company finally begins to use their apps as a new way to drive revenue and loyalty from their customers. It's not just a side project, says Schwarzhoff, now it's a critical part of the the overall strategy./li/ul pSchwarzhoff adds that companies don't just pass through these phases with their apps, but with platforms as well. As companies enter the mobile scene on one device, like the iPad, they then get increasing curious about other form-factors. /p pWhatever your startup does, or intends to do, mobility should play an important role in the overall business strategy. Planning your mobile roadmap early and understanding the phases of app maturity will go a long way to help this facet of your business grow quickly and smoothly./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/09/phases-of-app-maturity-roadmapping-your-startups-mobile-strategy.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7umiW5Es27fVKT5IHvoPt6uzETs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7umiW5Es27fVKT5IHvoPt6uzETs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7umiW5Es27fVKT5IHvoPt6uzETs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/7umiW5Es27fVKT5IHvoPt6uzETs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=Z_nagqOXiJU:atfU-QWUq6k:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/Z_nagqOXiJU" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/thefacebook.jpg"a href="http://facebook.com"Facebook/a has confirmed that it is testing a new feature that will allow any user to subscribe to notifications of another user's activities through the same interface that new comments and accepted friend requests appear in now./p pThe feature was first reported on by the watch-dog blog a href="http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-subscribe-to-2010-09"AllFacebook/a. This feature is going to be a big deal. It will facilitate greater interaction between a user and people of interest by placing updates about those peoples' activities in the highest-priority place in the Facebook interface, the inbox with the strongest signal-to-noise ratio by far./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21618amp;cb=21618' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21618amp;n=21618' border='0' alt='' //a/p pimg src="http://readwriteweb.com/images/fbsubscribe-20100902-151659.jpg" alt="fbsubscribe" align="left"/AllFacebook correctly points out that there may be some amount of backlash among users who are not happy to have observation of their activities made all the faster and easier. That was peoples' objection to the creation of the original Newsfeed, though, and that is now the central part of the Facebook experience. It's fascinating that making already accessible information so much more easy to access can make such a big impact on the user experience, but anyone who has experienced the power of web page updates being centralized in an RSS reader knows that this type of technology really is powerful./p div class="pullquote"Subscription to notifications will help users track the activities of their closest friends and family, and possibly of people they have a work-related interest in, far more effectively than ever before. /divThis is the type of change that a better implementation of Facebook Groups could accomplish as well. Imagine if it was it easier to put friends in groups, to access updates from that group in isolation with fewer clicks and to publish certain updates in a way that was only visible to particular groups with less friction than there is today. Facebook has de-emphasized groups for a long time, though, and this experiment makes it clear that one single high-priority pipeline for selected updates is more important to the company than a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/a_closer_look_at_facebooks_new_privacy_options.php"the contextual integrity of communication within groups/a. pSubscription to notifications will help users track the activities of their closest friends and family, and possibly of people they have a work-related interest in, far more effectively than ever before. /p pThe feature may also make users feel more comfortable adding a greater number of friends than they would otherwise, because they know that they won't miss the activities of the most important people in their online lives. That will be good for both users and for Facebook./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_testing_subscriptions_to_other_people.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iDjXbXQDDhBd8U4vrcq26eoLpwk/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iDjXbXQDDhBd8U4vrcq26eoLpwk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iDjXbXQDDhBd8U4vrcq26eoLpwk/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/iDjXbXQDDhBd8U4vrcq26eoLpwk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=x7T43sdtXpk:p9wBeIzYQbU:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/x7T43sdtXpk" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="greenpeace_logo.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/greenpeace_logo.jpg" width="150" height="94" class="mt-image-none" style="" /While Facebook might have won a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/08/facebook-google-oregon.php"praise from locals/a with its construction of a data center in Prineville, Oregon, it has sparked the ire of the environmental activists at Greenpeace./p pYesterday, Greenpeace posted on its a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/Cool-IT/executive-director-of-greenpeace-to-ceo-of-fa/blog/26324"blog/a a letter from its director to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which the environmental organization took the social networking company to task for the energy consumption and the energy source for the new Prineville data center. The facility will be powered by "dirty coal-fired electricity from PacificCorp, which runs an electricity mix that is disproportionately powered by coal, the largest source of global warming pollution," and as Facebook has announced that the data center will be double the size initially planned, Greenpeace objects to this doubling of the demand for "dirty coal energy."/p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21616amp;cb=21616' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21616amp;n=21616' border='0' alt='' //a/p pAccording to Greenpeace, at current growth rates data centers and telecommunication networks will consume about a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/make-it-green-cloud-computing/"1,963 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020/a - more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined. Greenpeace says that over 500,000 people have joined the organization's initiative calling for Facebook to "a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/cool-it/ITs-carbon-footprint/Facebook/"unfriend coal/a."/p pResponding in the comments to the Greenpeace blog post, a Barry Schnitt, Director of Policy Communications for Facebook, touted the energy efficiency of the new data center, pointing out that while the industry average for Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ranges from 1.6 to 2 that the Prineville data center will have a PUE of 1.15. And Facebook. Schnitt suggested that there "just isn't a perfect solution yet" to the energy problems associated with data centers, noting the percentage of coal energy tapped by Greenpeace's own data center in Virginia./p pGreenpeace responded on its a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/Cool-IT/facebook-responds-to-greenpeace-demands/blog/26341"blog/a today, agreeing that arguing that companies like Facebook are far from powerless to make a difference in the way in which energy consumption and sources operate. WIth being such massive consumers of energy, Greenpeace contends, Facebook can demand cleaner energy from its supplier. And Greenpeace pointed to the efforts by other Internet companies, namely Google and Yahoo in developing more energy efficient data centers./p pWhile the tit-for-tat responses between Facebook and Greenpeace continue, it's perhaps no coincidence then that Google updated its research blog yesterday with a post about the work the company is doing to develop "a href="http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/09/towards-energy-proportional-datacenters.html"energy proportional data centers/a." /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/09/greenpeace-demands-facebook-un.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IaBA1N4Cyc5rK8pzVQ59Q0hQ0so/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IaBA1N4Cyc5rK8pzVQ59Q0hQ0so/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IaBA1N4Cyc5rK8pzVQ59Q0hQ0so/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IaBA1N4Cyc5rK8pzVQ59Q0hQ0so/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=eJERVuCwJwY:__dNMNiqPiQ:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/eJERVuCwJwY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/phone7.jpg"Windows Phone 7 will be available in time for the Holiday Season, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/windows_phone_7_ships_to.php"Microsoft says/a, and today the company unveiled a beautiful new RSS reading app built by an award winning team of Microsoft 2010 interns./p pCalled a href="http://jobsblog.com/blog/winphone-app-winners/"Headliner/a, the app adheres to the design standards of the rest of the OS (delightfully attractive, for Microsoft) and includes most of the features that mobile RSS users will want. See the demo video below and marvel at the slick UI, the clean display of feed items and the social media integration. Then tell us what emyou think/em it's still missing. I can only think of one or two things, really./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21617amp;cb=21617' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21617amp;n=21617' border='0' alt='' //a/p pobject width="610" height="355"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mOC8d7Ik-3Mcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xd0d0d0hl=en_USfeature=player_embeddedfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mOC8d7Ik-3Mcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xd0d0d0hl=en_USfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="610" height="355"/embed/object/p pIt's got a River of News view (most recent articles from all subscriptions), Google Reader sync, share via Twitter (some Facebook action would be nice), recommended feeds, a mysterious feature called "reset subscriptions." /p pWhat's missing? a href="http://Instapaper.com"Instapaper/a or a href="http://ReadItLater.com"ReadItLater/a integration would be nice. Personalized feed recommendations, too./p pMore than anything else, though? A mobile feed reader needs a quality sorting system. Google Reader has Sort By Magic, you can use the Postrank browser extension on the desktop and my new favorite mobile solution is a href="http://my6sense.com"My6Sense/a. When you're on the go, you want the option of seeing just the most high-quality stuff. Scanning and pecking works great when reading feeds on the desktop, you can process a full river of news no problem that way, but mobile needs to bring you the best content from your subscriptions on a platter./p pThat said, Headliner looks pretty nice to me. I hope Microsoft bundles it with the OS so that millions more people can be exposed to a quality feed reading experience./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/check_out_this_awesome_rss_reader_for_windows_phone_7.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kBjRJS8NUomorV2ScAgfVmQZM0A/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kBjRJS8NUomorV2ScAgfVmQZM0A/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kBjRJS8NUomorV2ScAgfVmQZM0A/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/kBjRJS8NUomorV2ScAgfVmQZM0A/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=gCdZozVSNc4:gGV9qvCraR8:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/gCdZozVSNc4" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="facebook_logo_mar09.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/facebook_logo_mar09.png" width="150" height="41" /a href="http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/08/29/egypt-security-department-to-monito-facebook-and-support-the-government/"strongEgypt has created a special security department to monitor Facebook/strong/a. Allegedly, the "main task of this group is to monitor Facebook content like groups, pages and chat and to publish reports countering online criticism of current Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak or his son Gamal." But it's extremely unlikely that the secret police powering it will not collect user information, as well as seek out and punish those who use the social network for free speech and political reasons. /p pEgypt's relationship to Facebook is extensive. Very popular for several years prior, on April 6, 2008, students and others used it to stage a protest against the Egyptian government's precipitous raising of bread prices. This protest gave birth to the the April 6 Movement. But the protest was brutally put down and the leadership of April 6, whose goal is an open discussion of issues of importance to their country, have been harassed ever since. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21614amp;cb=21614' target='_blank'img src='http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14amp;cb=21614amp;n=21614' border='0' alt='' //a/p pimg alt="blackberry.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/blackberry.jpg" width="200" height="150" class="alignright" /a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5it_73CxzMozqkSOODLh2r7aCIlLwD9HVRNTG0"strongIndia adds Google, others to censorship efforts/strong/a. Censorship efforts grow like mold. a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blackberries_banned_in_uae_ksa_this_week_in_online.php"Earlier efforts against Blackberry/a by Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates grew to infect India. India's efforts to force Blackberry to decrypt user information has now expanded to include, well, everyone. India is demanding that "all companies that provide encrypted communications...install servers in the country to make it easier for the government to obtain users' data." Web and social media companies have not been brave in general, and Blackberry has a href="http://techpp.com/2010/08/30/blackberry-averts-indian-ban-given-60-days-reprive/"already started to yield/a. /p pa href="http://mlrcblogsuits.blogspot.com/2010/08/davis-v-avvo-inc-fla-cir-ct-filed-aug.html?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+MlrcLegalActionsAgainstBloggers+%28MLRC%3A+Legal+Actions+Against+Bloggers%29utm_content=Netvibes"strongAttorney sues crowdsourced rating site/strong/a. A Florida attorney filed a complaint alleging that a rating site for lawyers "defamed him and other lawyers by misrepresenting public information and using 'punitive, coercive and manipulative practices' against attorneys who try to correct their listings." MLRC is a great blog to keep track of lawsuits filed against bloggers and the users of other social media in the U.S./p pimg alt="china_flag_button.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/china_flag_button.png" width="150" height="126" class="alignleft" /a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/01/attack_on_science_journalist_in_china"strongChinese scientist and blogger attacked/strong/a. Fang Zhouzi, scientist, blogger and anti-fraud campaigner was attacked by two men after a television interview in a tea house near his apartment. Politicians and bosses in China, like Egypt, often uses thugs to prosecute violence against opponents. /p pa href="http://en.rsf.org/jordan-government-yields-to-protests-and-01-09-2010,38254.html"strongJordan adjusts its Internet censorship law/strong/a. The anti-free speech law that Jordan a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/this_week_in_online_tyranny_12.php"implemented last month/a has been ameliorated somewhat. Prosecutor's offices do not have unlimited discretion on whom to prosecute and the defamation elements have been limited. But you can still be sent to forced labor for blogging. And "immoral" content is still illegal. (That means "any" content is illegal if the wrong person decides he doesn't like you.) /p pimg alt="wikipedia_logo_dec08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/wikipedia_logo_dec08.jpg" width="150" height="140" class="alignright" /a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/30/wikipedia-the-new-battleground-for-israel-and-palestine.html"strongIsraeli and Palestinian chauvinists duel on Wikipedia/strong/a. Right-wing Israeli groups are teaching courses on how to edit Wikipedia entries to give them a Zionist slant and now Palestinian journalists are doing the same in reverse. Nothing like a emtrue believer/em to put you off your lunch, is there? /p pa href="http://techpp.com/2010/08/30/blackberry-averts-indian-ban-given-60-days-reprive/"strongImprisoned Iranian blogger receives press award/strong/a. a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/net_neutrality_this_week_in_online_tyranny.php"Kouhyar Goudarzi/a, one of 17 prisoners on a hunger strike to protest horrifying conditions in Tehran's Evin prison, has been awarded this year's Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award by the National Press Club./p pimg alt="coronado.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/coronado.jpg" width="125" height="170" class="alignleft" /a href="http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/update-on-rod-coronado/"strongActivist gets parole revoked for Facebook/strong/a. Rod Coronado, who served time in prison for arson after burning down research facilities at the Michigan State University, and who has been arrested several times since, has had his parole revoked. One of the violations was "associating" with a proscribed type of person, an environmental activist who had expressed approval of illegal actions for protest. Coronado accepted a Facebook friend request from Greenpeace co-founder Mike Roselle. The other probation violation was accessing a computer outside his home. The conditions come from two different convictions. /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/egypt_establishes_facebook_cops_this_week_in_onlin.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cfJt_LcTAIWnLeCFEwJbhlWH7Hs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cfJt_LcTAIWnLeCFEwJbhlWH7Hs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cfJt_LcTAIWnLeCFEwJbhlWH7Hs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cfJt_LcTAIWnLeCFEwJbhlWH7Hs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:FFnlKYwJmN0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:Ij26kaj3iuU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:C2pbw5bZMiI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=kRiEznzHeRA:9OqIO3790Ls:OqabYuBsmOY"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/kRiEznzHeRA" height="1" width="1"/