Brijitis an interesting new service that supplies magazine abstracts for those of us too busy to read through every print publication we're subscribed to. If you don't subscribe to print periodicals anymore, you might want to skip this review. I subscribe to quite a few and really like what Brijit aims to do. The service says it "aggregates the world's best long-form content and abstracts it in 100 words or less." The company got a nice long write-up in the Washington Posttoday, but I'm sure potential users would rather read my shorter take on it here.There are about 60 magazines that currently make up the core sources you'll find abstracts for on Brijit. They range from Foreign Policy to 60 Minutes (so beyond just print) to Playboy (insert "I read it for the articles" joke here, if you can figure out how that would work in this case).Abstracts are written by paid freelancers who get $5 per accepted abstract. In other words, prolific readers and writers will write up these review/abstracts for fun and Brijit will pick up the tab at a nice dinner every once in awhile. I think that's a pretty viable value proposition for many chronic magazine readers. Does it scale economically to be paying for the abstracts? This angel funded company is no doubt aiming at high-end advertisers targeting upscale magazine readers, so I think it might work out quite well.The abstracts come with a rating, from zero dots (reading this article is not a priority) to three dots (exceptional, a must-read, not to be missed.) The reviews/abstracts I've seen are helpful and interesting; I now know which articles I'm going to make sure to read in the newest Wired, for example.There's a comments field, ratings, affiliate links to subscribe to the publications and links to read articles online where possible. There are RSS feeds all over the site, which will make the difference between visiting Brijitonce and keeping an eye on the highlights over time. The site has an austere but usable design. I'm really impressed. I've probably said too much though, already, as this has been far more than 100 words. Check it out for yourself and subscribe to some feeds; you'll likely feel better informed after just a handful of months and you could feel more justified in still getting those wonderful, old fashioned print periodicals delivered to your house.

  YourStreetis relaunching this week as a local news aggregator and mapping service. It's simple but really well executed; getting to review nice, smart little apps like this one is a big part of what I like about my job here. The site originally launched this spring as a neighborhood-based social networking site but this news service probably has a lot more potential. The company was founded by an impressive group of executives with backgrounds at CNET, Sony Music Connect and elsewhere. That's going to go a long way in an otherwise crowded local news search market.There's no shortage of local news sites, but the big differentiators here are two: the discovery process and the quality of the site's execution.YourStreet uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the geographic location of news stories, down to the specific venue an event occurred. That's impressive and so far it looks pretty accurate. When I looked the site said it had added 5,683 stories in the last 24 hours and there's an RSS feed available for any location you select.There are a number of ways to interact with the site's search results; you can recommend a particular story, start a conversation about it or flag it as incorrectly located. You can add a story manually and place it on the map or request that your own local blog be added to the index. Account creation and login are as easy as they could be short of OpenID creation.The new YourStreet is a simple web application on its face but it's something I can imagine many people coming back to again and again.

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Vint_Cerf_to_Step_Down_from_ICANN';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Vint Cerf, who led a team in the 1970s that created the TCP/IP protocols and is commonly thought of as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, has been on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the past 7 years. Next month, when his term as chairman of ICANN is up, Cerf plans to leave the organization.Since it was founded in 1998 to oversee the distribution of domain names and IP addresses, ICANN has weathered a number of storms, including calls by some world leaders in 2003 to remove the organization's control over how domain names are assigned. In part due to Cerf's leadership, the group remained intact and has even managed to grow its budget. Approximately 100 people now work at ICANN.What does life after ICANN hold for the 64-year-old winner of both the National Medal of Technology and the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Cerf will maintain his role at Google as "chief Internet evangelist," which he has held since 2005. He also has "five books in various stages of completion," according to the AP, though perhaps somewhat surprisingly, only one of those books will be about the Internet. "I hesitate to say the definitive history, but I will try very hard to characterize the first 10 years of it," Cerf said about the subject of his book project.Cerf also plans books of poetry, on relationships, and a biography of his wife."I don't regret at all the time spent, (but) I'm looking forward to having the time back," Cerf told the AP of his days at ICANN, which he estimates took up 25-40% of his time. "If you multiply eight years by a quarter to 40 percent, that's a lot of years."Reuters reportsthat potential successors for Cerf at ICANN include telecommunications expert Roberto Gaetano and lawyer Peter Dengate Thrush -- neither of whom have the celebrity star-power of Cerf. "The bad news is we're not going to find another Vint," said Steve Crocker, a childhood friend of Cerf's and the inventor of the Request for Comments (RFC) series. "It's equally a form of good news. We're now going to go through a period where ordinary mortals are managing things."Even though Cerf will still have an integral role in shaping the future of the Internet via his positions at Google, the IPv6 Forum, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Labratory, he does not plan to stay involved in ICANN. "I absolutely need this time back, and I don't want to hover over the process," he said. "I want them to feel the pressure to organize themselves and not imagine they can turn back and look for guidance from me."Photo credit: jdlasica.

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Hulu_Peaks_at_the_Public_with_a_Whimper';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Hulu, the online video project from Newscorp and NBC/Universal, with participation by Sony, MGM and others, has begun its highly controlled opening to the public this week. The Hollywood-content-only, wildly over funded project is opening up a private beta to a few thousand users it told reporters before a midnight EST embargo this morning. Amazingly, none of those reporters appear to have been included among those few thousands with actual access to the site - all reporting I've seen has been based on a WebEx demo at most. It can be awfully messy to let industry experts actually touch your technology months before it's opened to the general public. When I say general public, I mean in the United States - it appears that people outside the US cannot view the videos. This is the future? If you live in the US you can watch old episodes of TV on the internet? You won't likely be able to interact with the Hulu site for months but much of the content is available on other sites, in their video players, now. An embedded example is available below the fold - US residents only please!This Launch is UnimpressiveLet's be honest: there's nothing courageous or innovative about Hulu - the whole project is quite the opposite in fact. Huge media is exposing its crown jewels to the web because it has to - much as they wish it wasn't, this internet thing is real. The initial offering that Hulu is bringing to market is shamefully uninspiring and woefully inadequate for a new world of media. If you haven't found any other online video that you enjoy and you've been eagerly awaiting the day that the gloss of old-Hollywood's push-media experience would come to the web, then your lucky day will be here in a couple of months.No user generated content (not even best-of), no desktop player or download of material (it's all in a Flash player) and very little viewer interaction is enabled. Viewers are allowed to select which section of the precious Hollywood content they are most in love with, that section or the whole video can then be shared with a friend or embedded on a website. This is just a multi-partner content deal with paltry technology behind it and a whole lot of money for marketing. Nothing innovative to get excited about.Dragging Their FeetContent will be available on Hulu at Hawaii time on the day after they air, at the earliest. As reported by Kara Swisher, who wrote an otherwise good, critical post on Huluwith an inexplicable conclusion that it will shake up the industry - only the 5 most recent episodes of current TV shows and less than a dozen movies will be available on the site.Liz Gannes, who provided the smartest coverageon the sneak-preview I've seen so far, says that the biggest nod to remix culture comes in this move: "Hulu has enlisted film school students to edit together mashups of its content; one featured clip combines various times Homer Simpson has said 'D’oh.'" Gannes also provided a list of programming content in PDF format, complete minus subsequent Sony and MGM content. That's one page in three columns of show names and two pages of participating media brand logos. Thankfully we'll be spared advertising at a frequency made standard on the box - Gannes says Hulu will run ads at about 25% the standard rate of TV. Is that TV with or without Tivo? What It Could Have BeenHere's just a quick sampling of things that Hulu could have done with their piles of money and professionally produced content.A really solid desktop player with DRM free, ad supported content downloads would have been great. These people's stranglehold on our attention is not nearly so safe that they can continue giving us the bare minimum of access.A recommendation engine would make sense if there was any serious catalog of content. Perhaps Hulu is of the belief that we should all adore their every drop of content, though, and thank our lucky stars to be able to embed any of it in full-episode format on our MySpace pages.Hulu could have been a great first opportunity to put Flash Light on the mobile to the serious test. How about some live video streaming? There are some hard technologies being brought to market - why not lead the way on them the way the networks lead the way in bringing TV into our lives so many years ago?There are doubtless hundreds of ways that a social layer could have been implemented, it could have been borrowed from countless models already explored by startups like StumbleUpon, Twitter or Last.fm.Hulu could have done something important. Maybe it still will in the months before it actually goes live to the public. I wouldn't bet on it though; all that money and potential will likely be squandered on brand fear, legal foot dragging and a dangerously inflated sense of self importance by the participating companies.

  Pet adoption matching web site Petfinderwill reportedly be making the move to the small screen. The Animal Planet TV network, which acquired the site last year, has begun work on a television series based around the web site. The site matches families with pets in need of homes from local animal shelters, and the show will presumably do the same.The television series is currently being filmed in the Los Angeles-area and will be hosted by zoologist and minor TV personality Jarod Miller, and by dog trainer to the stars Dina Zaphiris. It is set to debut in Q1 2008 and run for 13 episodes. According to Reuters, each hour-long episode will be centered around figuring out which type of pet works best for families by letting them try out "teacher pets" that have already been adopted in their homes.We've seen Hollywood put a lot of effort into making web movies, putting content online, and sourcing talent from web video, but to our knowledge this is the first example of a web site being made into a television show for offline consumption.

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/ActionThis_Launches_Online_Task_Management_Service_Free_Offer_for_R_WW_Re';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';ActionThis, a Wellington, New Zealand based startup, today launched a "Get Things Done" task management app. It enables people to create and track project management items and tasks, either using a browser interface (free) or within Microsoft Outlook (premium, subscription-based). Note that at the bottom of this post, there is a special offer for R/WW readers - 1,000 free Premium accounts. Seeing as we live in the same city, last week I caught up with ActionThis CEO Ed Robinson and Chief Marketing Officer Tim Howell, to get a demo of the product and see where it's headed. As a side note, it's worth noting that ActionThis isn't the only web-based task management app in town - PlanHQis another Wellington-based startup offering a similar product (I met both startups on the same day). However the two products tackle different niches - I'll explore PlanHQ in an upcoming post.Crowded Market - What's the Differentiator?ActionThis is going after a global market - and it's very crowded. 37Signals for example offers Basecamp, which tracks tasks online too. But everyone has their favorite. In August, Josh Catone wrotethat his favorite is The Online CEO. You can take your pick of online To Do list products - SolutionWatch listed 25 of themlast year. So what differentiates ActionThis? It actually has a very good one - it neatly integrates with Microsoft Outlook, which millions of people already use for task management. What's more, integration with Microsoft Project and Windows Mobile are coming soon. The target market for ActionThis is small and medium sized businesses, as well as departments and teams within enterprise. Ed told me that ActionThis will be especially useful for distributed teams.The Microsoft Office integration is key to ActionThis' potential success. ActionThis is backed by Intergen, a local web development firm that has a close relationship with Microsoft. CEO Ed Robinson comes from Intergen and also worked for 6 years at Microsoft in Redmond, as a program manager. So ActionThis is playing to its strengths and has created an online task management product that can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook, potentially tapping into a huge user base. In the demo I saw, creating a new task within Outlook was as easy as creating an email - and there are tracking features in ActionThis that are missing in Outlook's native task feature. See screenshots below.ActionThis task in OutlookAttaching ActionThis items to an email in OutlookSpecial Offer for R/WW ReadersActionThis is currently being offered as both a free and premium version. The free version is web-only for single users. The premium (subscription) versions of ActionThis start at US$10 per user per month - and basically for that you get the Microsoft integration. There is a 30 day free trial for the premium version. However ActionThis is offering 1,000 R/WW readers a free ActionThis license for 12 months. To take up this offer, click hereand enter the following code: RWW1007. This promotion is only available to first time subscribers to ActionThis and it will end when 1,000 people have signed up using the unique code published here.ConclusionActionThis is essentially two separate products: the web-based version and the one integrated into Outlook. In our meeting Ed Robinson described this as following the "good, better, best" concept, where the Web version is 'good' and the Outlook one 'better' (as it offers more functionality). The 'best' will come when ActionThis adds Microsoft Project integration in the near future (1-2 months time). I also asked how ActionThis in Outlook differed from Outlook's native task management feature. Ed replied that Outlook native tasks are limited to "peer to peer" interactions within groups, whereas ActionThis offers a central overview and additional features.ActionThis is marketing itself as a web-based product, but it's also tapping into Microsoft's marketing of the "software as a service" concept. Microsoft hasn't yet built web-based functionality into Outlook tasks, at least not as well as ActionThis, so this small Wellington startup is banking on Microsoft users all over the world signing up to its 'value add' service. Of course the risk is that Microsoft evetually releases similar functionality itself, but until then it's a potentially lucrative market for ActionThis - provided they can convince users that the added benefits are worth paying for.

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Why_Amazon_s_HaaS_Hardware_as_a_Service_Strategy_is_a_Winner';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';We all know the term 'Software as a Service (SaaS). The term SaaS was coinedin a conference in 2005 and then popularized by Salesforcewith its "No Software" motto. Today Googleis one of the strongest backers of this approach, with such products as Gmail, Google Readerand Google Docs. And ever since Bill Gates' famous Internet services memoin November 2005, Microsoft has been promoting the concept too.But today we can coin a new, similar term: HaaS, for 'Hardware as a Service'. Hardware has always been available as a service through dedicated hosting providers, but it was never so well abstracted until Amazonintroduced S3and EC2. With dedicated hosting, you still had to deal with dirty hardware issues like scalability; but Amazon makes it a totally painless experience. In other words, the relationship between EC2-S3 and dedicated/virtual hosting is similar to the one between SaaS and ASP(Application Service Providers) - EC2-S3 is an evolved version of dedicated or virtual hosting services.How big is HaaS?First of all, if you still don't know about S3 and EC2, I recommend you take a look at some past RWW articles on the topic; Alex Iskoldwrote a very good introductory articleabout it. See also Alex's ETech reportof Amazon CTO Werner Vogels' speech. Also, there are great articles on Amazon's official web site.So what is Haas? A good comparison can be made with Google Adsense. In early 2000, Google enabled web publishers to generate revenue from their content. Google introduced a fair pricing model that worked for everyone, from personal publishers to big media companies. As a consequence, some earned pennies with Google AdSense, while others earned millions of dollars per month.In other words, Google fragmentized the Revenue side of web business and made it available to everyone. But the Costs side of the web business remained the same for a very long time. There was an ongoing inefficiency and nobody did much about it. Virtualization, which was made commercially available first by VMware, changed things a little and lowered the prices of hardware. But things were still pretty much the same; publishers still had to pay for resources they didn'tuse and deal with the hassles of maintenance.Now what Amazon is doing with EC2 and S3 is to fragmentize the Costs part of Web business. Publishesr no longer need to deal with scalability - they pay exactly for what they use. In other words, resources are allocated more efficiently than ever - which was what happened with Google AdSense too, as the below diagram shows.Can Amazon Follow Google's Example, on the Hardware Side?Another way to ask how big is HaaS: "Will Publishers follow the same pattern as with Google Adsense and pick more fragmentized and efficient hardware options?" If the advantages are obvious, there is no reason for them not to embrace Amazon's offerings. However, there are a few differences that may slow down or even inhibit this process:Amazon S3 & EC2 is less viral than Google AdSense. Google Ads were spread all over the Internet - everywhere you go, you see Google Ads and you want to give it a try yourself. Amazon's offerings work in the background and they're not visible to users, hence they're not especially viral. However, Amazon could try things to make their product more viral - e.g. offer discount prices for web sites that promote that they're powered by Amazon EC2.It is tough to switch your existing infrastructure to Amazon S3 & EC2.  On the other hand, you can start using Google AdSense using a simple copy-paste.The fact that the EC2 pricing is linear may make it not so attractive for big publishers. Even so, Amazon should cut deals with the top web sites, to try and influence other sites.It's also worth pointing out that VMware, the first virtualization software company listed on NASDAQ, performs very well and shows the potential of HaaS. Amazon EC2 is not a direct substitute of virtualization, but it shows the potential of offering super-efficient hardware services over the Internet.ConclusionIt's intriguing to watch Amazon, the old favorite dot com era e-commerce site, transform itself into a technology company with their new and innovative HaaS unit. Amazon is leveraging its deep scalability know-how and expertise, and it's making web publishing even easier and cheaper. As a result, it should eventually bring great value to Amazon.Some may be wondering why Amazon is de-focusing and entering into something that is far from its DNA as an e-commerce service. To respond to that question, take a look at the table below, which compares some financial data of Internet bigcos:CompanyNet Profit Margin (%)2006 Annual Revenue ($M)Market Capitalization ($B)Google29.0210,604.92210eBay18.865,969.7450Yahoo9.966,425.6845Amazon1.7710,711.0037In terms of 2006 annual revenue, Amazon is even stronger than Google and well ahead of the others. However, in terms of market capitalization, it is ranked only 4th. That's because of Amazon's more traditional, less technology intensive business model - which pushes their net profit margin down with high inventory costs.That's why, in order to remain strong, Amazon is investing more and more in technology - which will increase its net profit margin.We will see how HaaS complements SaaS; and how many SaaS startups will shift their infrastructure to Amazon's server farms. And let's not forget that Google and Microsoft are both increasing their HaaS efforts - the Google Dalles server farms for example. Nonetheless, HaaS gives Amazon hope for increased profit margins and stock price in the long term.

  We are about to witness the loud noise and mess that happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. The irresistible force is personalization. This is the key to productivity. Personalization technology cuts through the clutter and saves time. The firm that delivers personalized content sits at the top of the attention economy food chain; all other content is “drive-by commodityâ€�. Personalization leads to relevancy in advertising; and loyal customers.The immovable force is privacy. You cannot do personalization effectively without knowing an awful lot of information about an enormous number of people. The privacy backlash is building. Today it is only techies who are aware of the issue and where it is headed, but when mainstream users get spooked by a few more high profile cases, we will see consumer backlash and then, with politicians on the bandwagon, more regulation.This will make a loud noise and will be messy; and in that mess will be big opportunities for entrepreneurs. VRM (Vendor relationship Management) may be a key part of this, which we'll explore in this post.Photo: Doc SearlsConsumer backlash and regulation will take time to play out, but when it happens it'll change the rules totally. Look what happened to the Direct Marketing industry. The ease with which technology enabled us to build large contact databases and put them into the hands of traditional direct mail marketers led us to Can Spam and Do Not Call regulation. More importantly it encouraged all of us to find many different ways to block out the intrusive marketers. People just got fed up with intrusive marketing. However, traditional direct mail will seem merely annoying compared to the intrusiveness of pitches that will seem to know precisely who I am, what I did yesterday and so on. If there is any justification for that $15bn Facebook valuation (I don’t think there is, but that’s another story) it has to be based on the fact that the advertiser can know so much about you and all your friends, so that they can target incredibly precisely. In the glorious world being presented by technologists, personalization will be so precise and so useful that nobody will question the privacy invasion. Yeah right -- that may be true by the time we get to Version 3.1. But well before then, we will get enough examples that are almost exactly right but wrong in some crazy, chaotic way, that it spooks and offends enough people to set the Blogosphere on fire. Then MSM will pick up on the story and then politicians and regulators will jump on board. VRM: The Next Big Opportunity?Yes, I know, the Attention Economy guys have been banging on about this for a long time and it all seems somewhat theoretical. The basic idea - that data about me is my data and I should be able to control it and benefit from who has access to it - is sound and resonates with people at a gut level. The problem is that the proponents have not yet come up with an alternative model that works in practice. Beyond a few people who live online, seeing the stream of stuff we look at online is about as interesting as watching paint dry. I once looked at my Google search history and it was “ok, now what?”. There has to be a “show me the money” angle; either in cash, or more likely in productivity and cost savings. The model of paying people specifically to look at advertising is likely to catch lower income people with time on their hands - not the ideal target for advertisers. It has been interesting to watch the thinking evolve:1. CRM. That’s good, we can keep track of our interactions with customers.2. One to One Marketing. Turned out to be a mirage. Mass marketers do segmentation. Genuine mass customization is years away. The front end for that is not hard, the back end is really, really tough and involves massive enterprise change.3. Attention Economy. The basic issue around supply and demand (supply of content is exploding, demand is relatively static) is sound. Try explaining to somebody quite how this is different from “eyeballs” and what it means to them. Eyes tend to glaze over.4. Intention Economy. Inferring Intention is why Google is valued at $200 billion. The trouble for the rest of us is: if Google has search all wrapped up, what is left as an opportunity?Photo: christophercarfi5. Vendor Relationship Management. Doc Searls, who’s thinking evolved through Attention and Intention, is leading the charge on this. To quote their front page:“VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties.CRM systems until now have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for both vendors and customers — in ways that don’t require the former to “lock in” the latter.The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.For VRM to work, vendors must have reason to value it, and customers must have reasons to invest the necessary time, effort and attention to making it work. Providing those reasons to both sides is the primary challenge for VRM.”VRM is still at the conceptual, evangelizing phase. It has yet to be built into a real service that offers real value to both buyers and sellers. There is a real entrepreneurial opportunity here.Get Ready for the Privacy BacklashIn some respects, this looks like the old idea of “Infomediaries” being recycled. That concept was first raised by John Hagel in 1997 in the Harvard Business Review. Recycling is a good thing. Sometimes the timing simply has to be right.The timing will be perfect when the privacy backlash really hits. A smart entrepreneur can get ready in anticipation of that. Of course it may never happen, but betting against buyer power in the Internet age is seldom smart.One key to VRM is ID authentication and that is a tricky subject. It is technically fairly simple. All you need is something like the numbered bank account system which records that ID #1234567 is actually Joe Q Public, male, date of birth, zip code and other details that Joe Q Public controls. The linkage between the two has to be totally secure. The bigger issue is who can be trusted as that Infomediary?For people to feel genuinely comfortable with privacy, personal data must be a) decentralized (a P2P model or federated servers) b) as secure as possible from hackers. With the number of high profile cases already public, people won’t trust a central database even if the provider has all the best intentions regarding privacy; they can change their mind or their data can be stolen.The other key is order aggregation. Much as we like to see ourselves as the center of the universe, sellers need volume and are not set up to manage a stream of customized orders. It's a lovely idea but it won’t happen, because the seller’s systems are not ready.Order aggregation is also not new as an idea. Again the timing might be right as companies tear down their command and control systems and everything moves to a retail model. What is the Purchasing Department (who loves ya Baby?) other than an order aggregator?ConclusionThis may play out first in B2B and professional markets before it happens in the broad consumer market, for the simple reason that transaction value per individual is higher. I like VRM as a catchphrase. It is dead simple to understand. It is intuitively appealing to people. Can we say Vroom?What do you think? Is VRM a viable model? Where could it play out first? What are the alternative models that can combine the benefits of both personalization and privacy?

  It's conference season for the Web and below are some upcoming events that may interest you:Defrag- 1 free ticket available to R/WW reader; discounts tooDefraghas been sponsoring our Weekly Wrapups for the last few weeks; and we are a Media Sponsor for the event. The focus of Defrag is 'The Implicit Web', a topic we've explored a lot on R/WW - see for example The Attention Economy: An Overview.Defrag is a two-day event being held in Denver, Colorado, from November 5 - 6, 2007. To register with a $100 discount, click here.Also Read/WriteWeb has one free ticketto give away. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post giving us a 1-sentence definition of The Implicit Web. The best definition, as chosen by myself, will receive a free ticket to the event - valued at $1,495. (Note: if you purchase a ticket using the discount link above, that will be refunded if you win the free ticket)New New InternetOn Thursday, November 1, 2007, ExecutiveBiz will be presenting the The New New Internet: Web 2.0 for Businessconference in Reston, Virginia.NewTeeVee LiveOur friends from the GigaOm Network are presenting a one day event called NewTeeVee Live, to be held in San Francisco on 14th of November. The event will showcase the online video industry. NewTeeVeeis a similar blog to last100(a Read/WriteWeb Network blog), so we will be closely following the action. Note: if anyone would like to provide some live coverage of NewTeeVee Live for last100, please contact us. We may be able to get you a free press pass to the event.TechCrunch Boston MeetupOur friends at TechCrunch have another meetup happening, this time in Boston on November 16, 2007. Our own Josh Catone will be there, schmoozing on Read/WriteWeb's behalf. Look for a tall skinny guy with a beard!Widgety GoodnessBritish startup Snipperoo is holding a conference about widgetson December 6, 2007, at Brighton.R/WW Events BoardLast but not least, don't forget R/WW has an Events Board, hosted by EventBee. You can list your event there for as little as $75.

  Sponsor:Here is a summary of the week's Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups - either via the special RSS feedor by email.Web NewsMicrosoft Invests in FacebookThe week was dominated by the news that Microsoft beat Google to an investment in Facebook. There was initially a rumorthat Google had won the much hyped deal. But then the news hit that Microsoft had invested $240 million for a minority stake in Facebook, at a valuation of $15 billion. As part of the deal, and probably driving it, Microsoft expanded their advertising agreement with Facebook to international markets (they already had responsibility for US banner ads). Note however that this deal leaves room for Facebook to run its own advertising network, which we have been discussingon Read/WriteWeb. Facebook's ad system will likely use social profiling to target ads, given the wealth of such data that Facebook has.There was a lot of follow-up discussion on the deal, including from our Read/WriteWeb writers. Alex Iskold wrote an intriguing article entitled Should Google Be Afraid Of Facebook?. He concluded however that Facebook isn't in the same league as Google, so the Mountain View company doesn't have a lot to fear. Josh Catone offered a contrarian view, in light of the massive influx of cash that Facebook received earlier in the week - and more importantly, whoit came from.Let us know, in the comments to the Wrapup, whose view you agreed with more - Alex's or Josh's?Copyright ArrestsThis week saw two high profile arrests in Britain, in relation to online media copyright. The founder and some staff of a directory site called TV Links was arrestedlast weekend and the site was shut down by British police. Tv-links.co.uk listed links to other sites where visitors could find television content, often posted without permission of copyright holders. On the heels of that followed another copyright arrest - British and Dutch police raided the serversof invite-only public torrent tracker OiNK.cd (formerly OiNK.me.uk) and arrested the site's 24-year-old server admin. According to the IFPI, it was one of the main sources for leaked, pre-release music on the Internet, responsible for leaking 60 major albums this year. Judging by the comments on both posts, Read/WriteWeb readers were unimpressed (to put it mildly) by the arrests and raids.Web ProductsAl Gore's Current: Re-defining TV, Using the WebLast week while in San Francisco R/WW Editor Richard MacManus visited Current's offices, to check out the launch of their new Current.comwebsite. He spoke to Robin Sloan (Online Product Strategist) and Joshua Katz (President of Marketing), who gave him a demo and overview of their strategy. Richard came away impressed by Current.com's stunning design - but more importantly the new Web Nativefunctionality that Current has built into (and around) Television watching. This post explores that innovation, which may well change our television viewing habits over time.Jango's Social Music Service Shines In a Crowded MarketJangois a social music site that's launching formally in the middle of next month, but has decided to reach out to blogs for coverage now. Apparently a company with an enlarged sense of proportion all along, Jango says its private beta has 300,000 users. Yet it's stayed off the radar of all the leading web 2.0 review blogs to date. Read/WriteWeb readers who click through this linkcan access the closed beta.You'll be prompted to create an account after you enter your first artist search.According to Marshall Kirkpatrick, it's a good looking service - think Last.fmwith more social features and more AJAX. Think Pandorawith profiles brought to the front and more control over the playlist.ChoiceA Takes on the Realtors of the World, 2.0 StyleChoiceAis a new site for do it yourself, or For Sale By Owner, real estate listings. It's got a nice, simple interface that makes good use of new web technologies and it's quite pleasing to peruse the limited listings collected prelaunch. Those listings are free to post and so far are primarily based around the Pacific Northwest of the US. Reators though, wrote Marshall Kirkpatrick, may prove to be a case study of one of those industry roles that just can't be replaced by the internet.Instant Messaging Round-UpThere are more and more ways to get your instant messaging done, with a large number of new online and offline clients from third parties. With so many instant messaging options, it's hard to figure out which one to use. So Josh Catone created a list of online and offline instant messengers, as well the various protocols supported by each, so that you can more easily find the one that's right for you. There's really not all that much difference between each except in interface and supported protocols. The best option for you will likely be the one that supports the networks your friends connect to and has an interface that you feel comfortable using.You can find many other product reviews and startup profiles in our Startups category.Analysis2007 Web 2.0 Summit Review: How the Web 2.0 Conference Has Evolved Over 2 YearsLast week Richard MacManus attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. For some reason, wrote Richard, the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit was harder to analyze than the previous 3 events. It was difficult to identify an over-riding theme to this conference. For a start, the cutting edge was even further away from the Summit than it was in 2006. The main themes that Richard picked up during this conference were:* Social networking (especially Facebook); and* The iPhone - which was seemingly carried by at least 1 out of every 2 conference participants.Two interesting trends to be sure, but not the cutting edge of web technology. Was this year's Web 2.0 Summit a case of 'Steady As She Goes'? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.Google vs. Systran: Mountain View Does Their Own TranslationGoogle has switched to its own in house translation system for all 25 available language pairs. Previously, the site used Systran for almost all of its translation processing, turning to its in house software only for Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. AltaVista's Babelfish, one of the first and most well-known online translation services, still uses Systran for language processing.Josh Catone put the two head-to-head to see which produced better results - also check out the comments to see what our readers thought.TwitterWhere Tracks Tweets from Any Location, Like San DiegoThere was lots of coverage around the web this week of the role that social media played in reporting about the wildfires in Southern California. Twitter and Google Maps received the most coverage but there are probably infinite permutations of those two tools and others, as well. One tool that just happened to launch this week was TwitterWhere, a service that makes tracking Tweets from any location easy to do. Marshall Kirkpatrick couldn't help but think of San Diego when he saw it.You can find more R/WW analysis posts here.R/WW Network Blogslast100This week our Digital Lifestyle news blog last100covered some new features from TiVo- including multi-room viewing and the ability to transfer content to a PC for DVD burning. In online music news, last100 reported that Amazon MP3 may bethe No. 3 online music store in just 30 days.For an interesting counterpoint view to the iPhone craze, check out last100 Editor Steve O'Hear's analysis of why he bought an iPod Touchand not an iPhone.Alt Search EnginesAltSearchEnginesthis week took a look at the Top 3 Alternative TV Search Engines. ASE Editor Charles Knight also analyzed the future of search. As we approach 2008, wrote Charles, the “Future of Search” seems to be less and less a guessing game every day. Check out his findings here.Also, did you know that Alternative Search Engines collectively have a 1.7% Market Share in search? Now you do. Check out this image, courtesy of Internet World Stats:That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

  This week Read/WriteWeb upgraded its server and also moved to Movable Type 4. The upgrade process resulted in issues with commenting yesterday and the first half of today. So my apologies to anyone who left a comment over the past couple of days for the bad user experience. Commenting is now back working - and what's more it is much faster than previously on this site.The server upgrade (on Media Temple) and move to Movable Type 4(Six Apart) are part of a major overhaul to Read/WriteWeb. We also have a re-design in the works.

  It's interesting to see how the techniques and technologies of amateur, citizen journalists are adopted, co-opted, and integrated by the mainstream media. Take blogs, for example, which earlier in this decade seemed likejust an outlet for amateur web publishers. Fast forward a few years and you'll be hard pressed to find any mainstream news source that doesn't embrace blogging in some way -- CyberJournalist.net lists 245 blogs run by mainstream news sites.Earlier this week Nokia and Reteurs announced that they had partneredto create the 'Mobile Journalism Toolkit,' which teams a Nokia N95 cell phone with a keyboard, small tripod, and solar charger -- technologies often used by amateurs to capture local news. The toolkit has been deployed to select Reuters journalists to help them file stories from the field and use the cell phone's camera to take photos and videos of news events. "By running on handheld devices, rather than on bulkier laptop computers, the mobile journalism application enables us to create complete stories and file them for distribution, without leaving the scene," said Nic Fulton, Chief Scientist at Reuters.For now, the toolkit is aimed at professional journalists, however Nokia acknowledged that citizen journalists themselves, not just their techniques, are being more often relied upon by mainstream news outlets. "'Citizen journalism' is beginning to embrace a wide range of public engagement with the media," said Timo Koskinen, project manager with Nokia Research Center, "from groups of contributors organized around subject or geographic areas to the casual participation of observers who are lucky - or unlucky - enough to be at the scene of a newsworthy event."Current events in California have made the emerging symbiotic relationship between citizen journalists and the mainstream news media quite apparent. In order to report on the fires ravaging that part of the United States, many news outlets have solicited, and subsequently used, submissions from people capturing news with cell phone cameras and on blogs (and Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.). Multimedia platform Veeker, which last week signed a deal with NBC to handle viewer uploads in 10 major cities, said that NBC San Diego recieved over 2000submissions of pictures and video related to the wildfires. CNN's I-Reportssection reportedly received about the same number of fire-related submissions (up dramatically from the number of submissions it received about the Virginia Tech shootings or the Missouri bridge collapse earlier this year). Note: Veeker has an interesting analysisabout what they think made the citizen journalism efforts of NBC San Diego so successful on their blog."The real contribution of citizen journalists in a story like this, where whole areas of land are closed off and the fields of greatest danger keep shifting, is in having more eyes on the ground," Thomas Hollihan, a professor of media at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, told the Baltimore Sun. "Citizen journalists are swapping information back and forth - reporting where the flames are now headed or showing images on their cell phones of the fire. And with so much happening so quickly, that kind of information can be really powerful - if it is accurate."Perhaps the biggest development in the citizen journalism space this year was the acquisition of Newsvineby MSNBC earlier this month. The news network framed the deal in terms of adding social features to MSNBC properties ("Coming together allows us to take advantage of the tremendous market opportunity to expand social media and community features across all of our brands," said MSNBC Interactive News President Charlie Tillinghast in a press release), but what it really gives the company is access to citizen journalists. The mainstream media clearly sees the value in tapping into the general populace to access a more extensive coverage network. When your viewers are your reporters, you can have the news covered wherever it breaks.

  The US Senate last night passed a bill that would extend the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibits local governments from taxing Internet connections, for seven years. About two weeks ago the House of Representatives passed a similar measure that would extend the act for four years. Barring an unlikely presidential veto, this will be the third time the bill has been extended since it was passed into law.The extension of the tax moratorium has broad support, reports Ars Technica. Most ISPs and the National Governors Association would like to see the tax ban extended at least 4 years. It is commonly thought that the law will eventually be made permanent (perhaps the next time it comes up for extension?). According to Reuters, ISPs claim service costs might jump by as much as 17% if the tax ban were to expire.Alaskan Senator Ted Stevenswas especially happy about the extension of the Internet tube tax moratorium. "By keeping Internet access tax-free and affordable, Congress can encourage Internet use for distance learning, telemedicine, commerce and other important services," he said in a statement.The bill will now go to a joint committee where the Senate and House will hash out the differences between the two versions of the legislation that were passed. A revised bill is expected to be signed into law by President Bush once it has passed both houses of congress.

  A Mozilla Labs blog postyesterday announced Prism, an application that takes web apps to the desktop. Prism isn't a proprietary platform, but rather gives any web application that runs in a standards-compliant browser its own window and icons on the desktop. Right now, that's all Prism does. It doesn't add any offline functionality or give apps things like file system access, but Mozilla seems to hint about developments in that direction in the Labs announcement.Earlier this year, when we wrote about plans for offline apps in Firefox 3, Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla told us that applications would need to be reengineered to be taken offline with Firefox 3. That's not the case with Prism, which can take apps to the desktop as long as they run in the browser (though, as we mentioned, Prism doesn't actually take web apps offline, just puts them in their own desktop window).The Mozilla Labs crew said that they're working on an extension for Firefox that will add Prism to the browser and make taking web apps to the desktop a one-click affair.Except for the minor convenience of running oft-used web apps in their own dedicated window and making them accessible via a desktop icon, Prism isn't really all that exciting in its current form. It doesn't offer much of a benefit over bookmarks and your current browser window. However, the implications for the future are big. "This is a pretty huge deal," writes Ryan Stewart, "and it shows a trend that I’ve been preaching/tracking all along; that the desktop isn’t dead at all and that a hybrid approach is a successful way to go."There is prototype of Prism for available on the Mozilla labs blog post, as well as links to the source code.