Sharepoint is the big giant in the enterprise collaboration space. Salesforce.com is now in the market with Salesforce Chatter, a service that embraces Facebook, Twitter and the applications within Force.com.MindTouchhas the potential to compete with the large market players. Today they are announcing MindTouch Cloud, an open-source, SaaS service that integrates business data from any number of sources, including Oracle, Sugar CRM and Salesforce.com. SponsorMindTouch Cloud is meant for a business community to create their own dashboards. It allows users to collaborate with a familiar wiki environment with the capabilities of an enterprise platform. It's also another example of how enterprise technologies are increasingly designed so the average business user may perform tasks that have traditionally been the domain of the IT department.What differentiates MindTouch from Sharepoint and other services is its emphasis on the data. Users may collaborate across multiple enterprise systems and web applications.MindTouch Cloud is an enterprise mashup service. Business critical information can be exported from enterprise systems and mashed up to create reports and build applications. It has the requirements for the enterprise, including authentication using LDAP, single-sign on security. Role management is built into the service with the capability to create new users, roles and groups.Compare that to Salesforce Chatter and you see some similarities in how applications can be integrated to create an intelligent dashboard environment that fits into an enterprise environment.MindTouch does need some work on its user interface. But it has all the features that can make it a valuable service for a business looking to build dashboards that can mashup enterprise data and external applications.This is MindTouch's first cloud computing effort. Pricing starts at $7 per user per month.Discuss

  It always gives us joy to tell our readers that Microsoft is actually doing cool things. The company's Live Labs has been the source of a few interesting projects: a 3D photo-stitcher called PhotoSynth, a bookmarking service called Thumbtack(which was shuttered just this month). Typically, the UIs have been slick, but user adoption has lagged.Today, the Live Labs' latest creation has launched. Pivotis a fun, powerful discovery tool, built on Seadragon and powered by Silverlight, that runs in Vista or Windows 7 with IE8. It looks great and allows for truly intuitive exploration of information.SponsorThe official demo video iswas pretty cool, but is proving unembeddable. Instead, take a look at this onstage demo from Neowin:In short, datasets are organized as collections. Results can be as granular or as big-picture as the user desires, and correlations and patterns are easy to see and examine through powerful but simple visualizations. Imagine browsing through thumbnails representing Kiva loans, then sorting the loans by the different types of businesses they helped established. Or, on a nerdier note, think about riffling through decks of Magic: The Gathering cards, zooming in for larger-than-life detail of the card's artwork and then zooming out to see how each was related or linked to others in the set.This probably reminds you - as it did us - a lot of Wikipedia. But imagine Wikipedia as an infinitely scannable, shuffleable, expandable, retractable, linked, and yet still detachable deck of digital cards; and then you have an inkling of how Pivot looks and feels.Collections can be created by anyone, including third-party developers. Types of collections include simple, linked, and dynamic, which are each progressively more difficult to create. Developers are also encouraged to create collections from existing online datasets, such as the Internet Archive or data.gov.It's very exciting, indeed; and it's available for Windows users only at the moment. Mac users, we're sorry. Why don't you go write some complaint letters on your beautifully designed, virus-immune machines? We'd love to rub it in some more by posting a few screenshots with gloating captions, but we're too busy trying to get this machine to stop being so Windows-y and just run the softwareRight now, the service is invitation-only. We encourage you to Google around for your invite codes or check in here later to see if the kind folks at Live Labs have passed along any to us.Discuss

  At first glance, the phrase "dream achievement service" conjures images of people in head scarves listening to self-help tapes. Nevertheless, in the case of semantic search service Dorthy, "dream achievement" is about getting good results free from the irrelevant fodder of the regular search experience. In August 2009, Dorthy celebrated its Alpha releaseand as of this evening it's opening access to its data. SponsorDorthy claims to be a mixture of "AI, machine learning, natural language processing and common sense reasoning." Rather than focussing on individual keyword search, the site looks at the combined history of a users searches and adapts to omit and serve specific results. Users are asked to enter their dream or passion and the site offers related Tweets, videos, articles, blog posts and photos. As of today, in addition to the above results, the site also allows users to view each other's dream pages and subscribe. Once you subscribe to a dream page you can message like-minded users and delve deeper into their content. While sites like Hunch.commatch like-minded users via a survey process, Dorthy matches them on their actionable interests. To test this unique approach to search visit dorthy.com. Discuss

  HP Labs has joined the race to build an infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things. The giant computing and IT services company has announceda project that aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth" (CeNSE). It's a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors." The technology behind this is based on nano-sensing research done by HP Labs. The sensors are similar to RFID chips, but in this case they are tiny accelerometers which detect motion and vibrations.SponsorThe first CeNSE sensor to be put into the field by HP Labs is, according to the company, "about 1,000 times more sensitive than accelerometers used in a Wii, an iPhone or an automobile's airbag system." Other sensors planned in future include ones for light, temperature, barometric pressure, airflow and humidity.Use CasesPeter Hartwell, senior researcher and project team lead, listed some example use cases for these sensing nodes. The nodes could be "stuck to bridges and buildings to warn of structural strains or weather conditions [and] they might be scattered along roadsides to monitor traffic, weather and road conditions." A bridge like the San Francisco Golden Gate might take 10,000 nodes, said Hartwell.Other uses include embedding the CeNSE nodes in everyday electronics, tracking hospital equipment, sniffing out pesticides and pathogens in food. Ultimately they may even "recognize" the person using them and adapt. According to HP Labs, CeNSE sensors will enable real-time data collection, analysis and better decision making.Potential IssuesThis is an ambitious project by HP Labs and there are other large IT companies, such as IBM, building out similar platforms for sensor data and services. HP senior fellow Stan Williams noted that for CeNSE to work, "we have to make sensors that are vastly more sensitive than anything else that have ever existed before, while being absolutely dirt cheap so that we can deploy them in very large numbers." RFID technology has had numerous cost and technology issuesover the past decade, so HP Labs will surely run into similar real-world obstacles in this project. HP Labs admits that existing sensitive detectors are expensive; but it hopes to make them much cheaper.The Race to Build a Worldwide Sensor NetworkHP Labs' ultimate aim is to have a worldwide network of these CeNSE sensors. A trillion of them "should do the trick," says HP. The company is hoping that at that scale, sensor nodes will cost "next to nothing, yet measure everything." HP is also positioning this, boldly, as a technology that could "save the planet" by enabling it to be monitored.These are big claims and the proof will be in the pudding. One thing is for certain: sensor technology will become as pervasive as HP Labs says it will, in due course. The questions that remain unanswered though are: how long will it take, and which company (or companies) will gain the biggest footholds in this network?Discuss

  Employers all around the world are wrestling with whether employees should be able to access Facebook and Twitter at work- but some businesses are explicitly requiring that job applicants feel comfortable using Twitter.Just for fun we did a search across Craigslistjob postings in some cities around the US to see how many listings mentioned Twitter in each location. The top city this month? New York City, with 196 jobs welcoming Twitter use. If you live in Bismarck, North Dakota though - no one on Craigslist is looking for Twitter users on the clock.SponsorMentions of Twitterin Craigslist Job PostingsNovember 1st-18th, 2009New York City, NY: 196 San Francisco, CA: 159Boston, MA: 115Seattle, WA: 50Chicago, IL: 50Portland, OR: 41LA, CA: 40Austin, TX: 26Dallas, TX: 17Phoenix, AZ: 11A few others...Houston, TX: 11Denver, CO: 6Philadelphia, PA: 4Boulder, CO: 2Zero in Bismarck, NDAdmittedly these are still very small numbers. In my home town of Portland, Oregon for example there are 41 listings that mention Twitter so far this month - out of 3,400 listings total. That's just over 1%. Note also that some number of these listings in some cities are posted by recruiters with their Twitter profiles listed (that probably says something still) and real-estate startup Redfin is looking for two agents in most of the cities we searched.None the less, it's a fun list and may say a rough something about social media adoption by businesses in different places. Businesses that are down with the internet are generally down with the Twitter, it's emblematic of adult social media use these days. Most of the jobs listed were for marketers who would broadcast over Twitter, but customer service jobs were well represented too. There's a whole world of business opportunity on Twitter that's based on listening, but that will take a while to catch on.Of course not all of these are good jobs- would you want to be "a full-time, experienced social media expert" working for $10 an hour? How would you like to be a community manager for a company that's raised $6 million in high-profile venture capital? "This is a part time unpaid job for 3-4 months that could lead to a full time position. Around 20hrs per week, but must come every day to the office." Times are tough, but those positions are a far cry from what some top bloggers and social media consultants are making. There could be some real gems hidden in these listings, though, and it would be interesting to study rates of pay in social media by location.Are there any secret enclaves we didn't think to look in? Let us know if your town is unlisted but has a substantial number of search results in the jobs section for Twitter this month.In the mean-time, see you in Boston!See Also: Reading Blogs at Work: Why You Should Do It &How You Can Make it WorthwhileWorking bird illustration by Pasquale D'Silva.Discuss

  A subject of interest to us ReadWriteWeb folks this year has been smart grids - a method of delivering electricity to users' homes in a way that has been the cause of many green technologists for some time.Smart grid tech uses digital means to control appliances at users' homes to save energy, cut costs, and increase reliability. However, some experts are beginning to wonder how safe and anonymous this data is and how much end-user privacy could be compromised.SponsorAnd as the concept of "anonymized" user data is continuously being poked full of holes by everyone from hackers to academics, we must wonder just how much smart grids "know" about individuals. For example, the energy fluctuations of home appliances are so unique that a smart grid can tell the make and model of a user's refrigerator.A recently released reportfrom the Future of Privacy Foundation states that although more modernized approaches to energy consumption are absolutely necessary, uninformed enthusiasm about smart grid technology might lead to privacy breaches for end users."The infrastructure that will support the future Smart Grid," the report reads, "will be capable of informing consumers of their day-to-day energy use, even at the appliance level. While this is beneficial and supports valuable efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and reduce consumers' energy bills, it introduces the possibility of collecting detailed information on individual energy consumption use and patterns within the most private of places - our homes."We must take great care not to sacrifice consumer privacy amidst an atmosphere of unbridled enthusiasm for electricity reform. Information proliferation, lax controls and insufficient oversight of this information could lead to unprecedented invasions of consumerprivacy."Another reportfrom the National Institute of Standards and Technology states that, because of the lack of standards and procedures on data collection and storage, "Distributed energy resources and smart meters will reveal information about residential consumers and activities within the house."The Foundation's co-chair, Jules Polonetsky, stated in a Washington Post interviewtoday, "We're a little worried that without some serious planning now, there's going to be quite a challenge in a couple of years when people start realizing that maybe should think about developing some solid data retention policies that address what's going to be done with all of this data."Valid concerns, all, especially for users who would rather keep themselves, their families, and their homes "off the grid," under the radar, and largely unmonitored by corporate and governmental entities.Will user privacy be the factor that undermines cleaner, smarter energy for all? Or will smart grid companies find better ways to protect user data, just as social networks and marketing firms have had to struggle to do? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.Discuss

  Ten days after Google's Sidewiki was accused of lifting featuresfrom annotation startup Reframe It, the little company is striking back. In a video interview with Reframe It CEO Bobby Fishkin, ReadWriteWeb learned why this 15-person team thinks they've got a fighting shot at besting the search Goliath. SponsorThe idea for Reframe It comes from Fishkin's days at Yale spent pouring over scholarly annotations of Shakespeare. The CEO launched the company to capture this spirit of intelligent discourse and expose it to the wider web community. Today, in addition to sharing Sidewiki's features of basic web annotations and notes, Reframe It also offers enhanced social features such as comment sharing via email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Other interesting features include enhanced privacy settings, comment feeds, embedable widgets, search term tracking and perhaps the most groundbreaking feature - what Fishkin calls "branded community comments". Communities and publishers will soon invite users to contribute to relevant Reframe It conversations in roving groups across the web. One of Fishkin's earliest partners is UK-based financial community

  American Express just announcedthat it plans to acquire Revolution Moneyfor $300 million. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval. Revolution Money, which was founded by AOL's co-founder Steve Case, launched in 2007. The company offers a number of services, including a payment and ATM card that offers discountsat participating retailers and the Revolution Money Exchange, which enables online person-to-person money transactions. It seems reasonable to assume that American Express made this acquisition to get a foothold in the online e-payment market and to challenge eBay's PayPal.SponsorAccording to today's press release, Amex hopes that this acquisition will give Revolution Money - and Amex - room to grow as it goes "head-to-head with other online and person-to-person payment providers." Amex will put its own brand and marketing reach behind Revolution Money's services. Chances are that Amex is mostly interested in the P2P payment system that Revolution Money has developed. It will be interesting to see what the company will do with the Revolution Money card, which, even though widely accepted, hasn't exactly become a household name yet. Amex also plans to expand Revolution Money's reach beyond the US.Lots of Participating Merchants - But How Many Customers?The Revolution Money card is currently accepted at about 650,000 stores in the US, including Barnes & Noble and Whole Foods. Merchants have been drawn to Revolution Money because the company charges lower fees than credit card companies. The company didn't announce how many actual users it currently has, though just like GigaOm's Om Malik, we still haven't met anybody who owns a Revolution Money card.Discuss

  Long-time blogger and tech executive Anil Dashannounced today at the Web 2.0 Expo New Yorkthat he's leaving publishing software company SixApart and will head a new technology incubator called Expert Labs. Expert Labs will be dedicated to connecting technology innovators ready to build tools with government officials who can put those tools to use in the public interest. It's a vision that differs from what some other technologists are focused on with regards to the government.Dash is best known as a blogger for his articles like this 2007 explanation of LOLCat grammatical structureand this 2009 explanation of the real-time web. Can the man who's explained so much to the rest of us help the US government adopt new online technology? That's quite a task. SponsorThe organization's website reads in part as follows:Expert Labs is non-profit and non-partisan but we're moving with the speed and passion of true believers. We're providing funding and resources to help create some of the coolest new technology on the web, and as part of the largest general scientific society in the world, we have access to the smartest minds around. Put those together with your help, and we'll be making our country better in no time.Expert Labs will be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and funded by the MacArthur Foundation, Caroline McCarthy reports at Cnet.Dash wrote this Summerthat "I think the most promising new startup of 2009 is one of the least likely: The executive branch of the federal government of the United States." We've been far more critical here at ReadWriteWeb of the Obama Administration's efforts. The much anticipated Data.gov, for example, was so unexciting in its implementationthat watchdog group the Sunlight Foundation launched a competitor to it.The web changes very fast and government tends to change very, very slowly.Dash's Vision Appears Different From Tim O'Reilly'sThe organization will aim to facilitate production of applications to serve government. Those apps will be cloud-based. This is a different kind of approach, I'd say, than the one that Web 2.0 Expo founder Tim O'Reilly is taking in trying to build a "government as a platform." Expert Labs says it has "a mandate to help policy makers in the U.S. Federal Government tap into the expertise of their fellow citizens."O'Reilly, on the other hand, advocates a "government as platform" that would supply raw digital data and other forms of support for private sector innovators to build on top of. "How do you think like a platform provider?" O'Reilly asked in an interview with us this Summer."We've moved our government from a lean vehicle for collective action, and over the last 200 years it has become so strong that it's now 40% of GDP. I want to go back to the original vision of the role of government: a convener of things that we as individuals and companies can't do alone. Standard setting, pilot programs; government providing enabling technologies for citizens to serve themselves."Dash's incubator will help technologists help the government; O'Reilly's vision is to help the government help technologists. These two visions may be complimentary, but they certainly seem different. Which will be more effective at changing the world? Government can be a slow enough mover that it's hard to say. Both are thought provoking, but neither vision will be easy to make real.Photograciously licensed as Creative Commonsby Joi Ito.Discuss

  Salesforce.comis offering the capability to integrate Facebook and Twitter into its sales and customer support offerings, another sign the company is making a full-shift to the social web.How deep is this move? On stage this morning at Dreamforce, Mark Benioff called Facebook and Twitter a "phenomena," going on to say that the integration of the social web is the biggest development for the company in the past ten years.SponsorYou see this in Sales Cloud 2and Service Cloud 2,two new offerings which are both built on Salesforce Chatter. The Salesforce Chatterapplication is an enterprise collaboration envrionment, which the company launched this morning.Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2 are essentially extensions of its sales and customer support services but with social features fully built in all aspects of the products.Some of the features to be found in Service Cloud 2 Sales Cloud 2:Twitter integration: In Sales Cloud 2, users may Twitter stream into Salesforce so sales people can engage in conversations with people and add that information into the sales funnel. In Service Cloud 2, customer support may follow Twitter and respond to people with real-time customer support.Answers: This is a pretty cool feature. A Dell executive showed how an "Answer," tab can be added into Facebook where customers may pose their questions.Mobile: A sign that moble apps are here to stay. Sales people may use the platform to send documents through the Salesforce platform. These are a few of the features available with Service Cloud 2 and Sales Cloud 2. The majority of these features will be available in 2010.Discuss

  A few months ago ReadWriteWeb asked the question, "What are Hulu's Mysterious Plans?"Our own Sarah Perez covered the rumors surrounding a subscription model, premium services and of course, the much anticipated iPhone application. While Hulu continues to keep mum on its new monetization plans, today's reports reveal that the company is focusing on its music-related content. SponsorIn a company blog postHulu announced signing a partnership with EMI for Norah Jones content. While Hulu is best known for its HD television and movie programing, the site's latest deal may be a sign of things to come. In the past Hulu has featured music content like its Live from the Artists Denand Live From Abbey Roadseries', but this latest EMI deal may mean further plans to branch into the music business. Although EMI is Hulu's first external music partnership, the fact that the company began as a collaboration between NBC Universal, Fox Entertainment Group and ABC / Disney means that its music-related reach is likely further than we realize. What's more, the company already has the technology to stream music from their service as the same means can be used for delivering video and music. While it's too early to say how this will play out, if Hulu's decides to bundle on-demand streaming video and music, this iPhone owner would happily subscribe. Discuss

  Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, announced this morningthat he's closing down his Twitter client Ginxearly next year and instead focusing on an online local news project. We reviewed a "private pre-alpha" version of Ginx in February and called it a dud. Ginx had some nice ideas but wasn't terribly innovative and it's finest points have now been reproduced in Twitter's own Lists.Little is known yet about Peer News, Omidyar's next project, but an editor is being sought for hire. The project will begin in Hawaii, where Omidyar lives, but is intended to rock the journalist world.SponsorThe company's About page currently reads:We're a small, fast-moving entrepreneurial team dedicated to bringing civic affairs journalism and analysis to our community in a commercially sustainable way. We combine our social media and online community experience with a passion for journalism in the public interest.It's sad to see a project be closed, but there's a lot to be said for failing fast and moving on to other ideas. We look forward to seeing what form this next idea takes.Media innovator Dan Gillmor sayshe doesn't know any of the details about the new project but thinks this is a particularly important project to follow because of its emphasis on making local news commercially sustainable instead of operating as a non-profit. Omidyar has already invested in a variety of news-related companies, including Digg, FM Publishing, Seesmic and Wikia.Discuss

  Microsoft just announcedthat it started work on Internet Explorer 9 three weeks ago. Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, showed an early build of IE9 during his PDC keynote today. In this presentation, Sinofsky announced that Microsoft will focus on support for new standards like HTML5 and CSS3, as well as developing a faster JavaScript rendering engine. Sinofsky candidly acknowledged that IE8 did not do well on the Acid3 test, though this early build of IE9 only scored a few points higher than IE8 (24 vs. 32).SponsorAccording to Sinofsky, there is still a lot of internal discussion about how much of HTML5 to support in IE9. HTML5 is still in its draft stage. Sinofsky did not say when the company plans to release IE9.JavaScript PerformanceToday's presentation of IE9 was refreshing, as Sinofsky noted that IE8's JavaScript performance was clearly slower than that of its competitors. The current build of IE9, however, has already closed this gap significantly and the difference in performance compared to the latest builds of Chrome and Firefox were only minor. As Microsoft notes, given how fast modern JavaScript engines have become over the last year, improvements in the JavaScript engine don't influence real-world performance at this point and other browser sub-systems become the bottlenecks that impede improvements.Hardware Acceleration and Font SmoothingMicrosoft also plans to make use of DirectX-based hardware accelerated graphics and text in IE9. In his demo, Sinofsky showed that Bing maps can render about 14 frames per second in IE8. With hardware acceleration in IE9 turned on, he got 60 frames per second. In addition, this technology will also increase font quality and readability in IE9.VideosMicrosoft already published a number of videos with the engineers working on IE9 on Channel 9 (sorry, these are Silverlight only).Discuss

  Salesforce.comlaunched a social enterprise application here at Dreamforce today that will allow companies to create their own private, social networks and integrate with Twitter, Facebook and other social applications.Dubbed Salesforce Chatter, the application serves as a secure enterprise collaboration application and social development platform.SponsorThe application models social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Salesforce.com Chatter provides the capability for customers to have profiles, feeds and groups. It will also integrate Twitter and Facebook so people may get these respective feeds into their social network environment. In addition, developers will have access to the 135,000 applications on the Force.com platform.Some of the features with Salesforce Chatter:Profiles: Includes contact information, area of expertise, work history and a photo. We are seeing more profile features in Enterprise 2.0 applications. Starups like CubeTreeare using profiles as an anchor for customers to connect.Status Updates: A real-time activity stream - another sign that the real-time web is becoming a standard technology in the enterprise.Feeds: Content and applications will be part of the activity stream. For example, when an update is made to the Salesforce CRM environment, it will ping the feed to notify subscribers.Groups: Users may create their own groups to share content and updates.Social Content: Documents such as spreadsheets can be integrated into a user's feed, similar to how a photo is shared on a social network like Facebook.This has to be one of the more significant developments in how the enterprise is adopting the consumer web. It's another sign of the pervasiveness of social networks in people's lives. On a broader front, this can only help the cause of Enterprise 2.0 style companies. Users benefit in terms of having another option for how they use the social web in their daily work.Discuss