The Read/WriteWeb Job Boardprovides job opportunities for Web Technology and New Media professionals, at startups and tech firms all over the world. If you're looking for the smartest and most innovative staff, people who are one step ahead of the rest - then you'll find those people in the Read/WriteWeb community! Here are the latest jobs:Web Designer for Social Change Projects: The Open Planning Project is a non-profit connecting technology with social change. They are seeking a talented web designer to join their design team.ASP.NET Web Developer Team Leader: MyTickets, a fast-growing start-up based in the Sydney CBD, is looking for an experienced lead asp.net developer.Client Solutions Engineer, come to matchmine to DoCoolStuffMedia Developer Programmer FlashDirector, Online MarketingFor more great Web jobs, visit Read/WriteWeb Jobs.

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Ticketmaster_Unleashes_the_Widget_for_Its_Nefarious_Agenda';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Ticketmaster, the formerly IAC-owned events behemoth, went from large to small today, launching an affiliate widget program.Blogger Rex Dixoncaught the release. The company says it's the first primary ticket seller to offer an affiliate program, though there's a thriving economy of secondary affiliate ticket sales online. How many of those affiliate programs have their own snazzy widgets, though? Affiliate links can be served up in text or through any of seven Flash widgets. The sample widgets appear in a standard size but with awfully small text. I suppose people whose eyes aren't sharp enough to read it are too old for rock and roll anyway.Affiliates will receive fifty cents for each ticket they sell priced between $20 and $60, $1.50 for tickets priced between $150 and $199, and up to $5.00 for tickets priced above $500. That's a 1% commission on $500 tickets, hardly a generous sum. Where the Evil IsPrograms like this seem to illustrate the way that a long-tail economy can take the form of countless points of distribution feeding into the same major players that already dominated the old economy. Monopoly is a net-negative in terms of social impact, something that any of countless Ticketmaster-haters can tell you. Now the company will deploy an army of widgets to do its bidding. Can you think of a scarier widget play?

  SavvySource, an online parenting site that reviews toys, preschools, camps, and books, and lets parents share activity ideas, will on Wednesday launch a creative way to capitalize on the holiday shopping season. In partnership with a non-profit organization that deals with early childhood education, the web site has put together a quiz that helps parents assess and track the development of their child (aged 2 to 6), and receive a personalized list of recommendations for age appropriate educational toys, books, and activities -- all cleverly linked to Amazon via an affiliate code.The quiz, though simple to complete, is long. Very long (it takes about a half hour). Not having any kids of my own, I know nothing of early childhood development, so to test out the site I enlisted the help of my mom -- who, as it happens, is an expert in just that. We created a fictional child (based loosely on a real one she works with at her job) and took the quiz.For the most part, though slightly put off by the length, we were impressed by the depth and breadth of the questions it asked. It seemed to ask a lot of the types of things parent should be paying attention to, though it was not without some oddities. There were some duplicate questions (however, the version of the quiz I took was a beta copy, and SavvySource says they are still doing some "minor bug-fixing") and some strange ones. One of the weirdest asked if my child could "identify and describe the ways that the sun, wind, and rain work." I'm a college educated 24-year-old, and I have no problem admitting that I have no idea how the sun works (some sort of nuclear reaction, perhaps? That's as sophisticated as I can get) -- or how wind works for that matter (rain I think I could explain to some degree of accuracy). It's very doubtful that any 2 to 6 year old child could describe how those things operate.When the quiz is completed, SavvySource compiles a "Progress Portrait" and a "Learning Guide" personalized for your child. The former charts your child's progress in the areas covered by the quiz, and can be updated as your child is able to do new things, while the latter gives personalized toy, book, and activity recommendations.The recommendations seemed pretty well constructed, and we were impressed by the fact that they included free activity suggestions along with the Amazon-linked toys and books. The downside is that the recommendations are a bit overwhelming -- rather than constructing an overall portrait of your child based on the quiz as a whole and giving a handful of recommendations based on your kid's strongest areas (or those most in need of stimulation), the site gives separate recommendations for each, segmented area of the quiz. The result is an exceptionally long list of product suggestions that feels less personalized than it should be after 30 minutes put into answering quiz questions.One nice touch about the Learning Guide, though, that ties in your quiz answers, is that each recommendation comes with a description of which skills that product helps develop and shows you how your child ranked in those skill areas based on your answers. The site also provides a utility for culling the list into a single "Learning Registry," which can then be shared with others (friends, relatives, etc. -- anyone who may want to buy your child a gift).ConclusionIn the end, SavvySource has come up with a unique and potentially helpful way to make money this holiday season. I give them a lot of credit, as well, for actively promoting educational toys and books for children, which are certainly better than DVDs and video games for developing young minds (and motor skills, social skills, etc.). Including free activity ideas among the product recommendations is a nice touch that makes their service seem less commercially driven and will probably be a hit among parents.At the very least, if the site doesn't help you find a good holiday gift for your child, the quiz might at least help parents to start thinking about the types of things they should be paying attention to in terms of guaging their child's development and may give them ideas for things to try working on with their kids (for example, sorting shapes by color).

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/GDrive_Three_Ways_it_Could_be_a_Game_Changer';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';The Wall St. Journalran a B1 story this morning about the forthcoming online storage service from Google. Call it GDrive, call it Platypus, call it My Stuff - the vast majority of tech bloggers have called it old news. I disagree. I think there's a lot of potential for Google's online storage to be a game changing product.It appears that the GDrive will sit on your desktop and sync automatically selected files automatically with online storage. Those files will be accessible from the desktop and browser at least as easily as they would be were they on your own hard drive.Here's three ways I think this could be big.1. Your files will become computable on a massive scaleThe difference between local and online storage in this case will not just be the absence of space limitations, the data will also be accessible to the nearly infinite computing power of Google. Though it's a nontraditional use of the world, I think Henry Blodgetis on to something important when he writes this morning about GDrive that "'cloud computing' represents a paradigm shift similar in magnitude to the one that ushered in the PC age." Both for individual users and in anonymous aggregate, there's magic that's possible when our data is so accessible to unlimited processing power. To say that all our docs will be open to cross-application search, as the WSJ reported, is just the beginning. You want to talk about top-down semantic analysis, for example? There may be no better way to do it with our files, or to use our files in the service of ontology creation, than by putting them in the hands of Google. There are countless other online storage options, but who among them are actively chewing on the data they are storing? I'm willing to bet that Google will and will do a better job of it than anyone else. It's frightening and exciting at the same time.2. Mobile accessThe story today includes some of the first discussion of mobile access to GDrive files. Seamless syncing of our data assets between desktop access and mobile access could change the mobile landscape in a big way. Combine this with what could be a flourishing ecosystem of mobile applications ala Android, and perhaps (to allow myself some optimism) the promise of OpenSocial, and we've got some powerful new mobile social networking possibilities. Add some old documents from a previous job to my LinkedIn profile, from my phone on the run? No problem. 3. Gears + GDriveDo all of the above, ona plane. Someday Google will notice that I've got a trip out of town scheduled on GCal and offer to sync up my recent GDrive files marked "work" to Gears for the plane trip. Especially if I've been searching a lot on locations far away on Google Maps lately.The Gears functionality of quickly making files local and then syncing them back up when you return online is going to be a big deal. Zoho Writer's Gears offline version released yesterday is just one example. Combine Gears with effectively infinite storage and computing power and you've got a lot of possibilities.ConclusionIt's easy to be cynical about the details coming from the Wall St. Journal this morning. It's easy wonder whether Google will ever bring its storage product to market, whether it can be trusted given the number of times its own company blogs have been hacked and whether it's even a good idea given the near omniscience the company will soon possess. I believe, though, that important new information is coming out about the GDrive and the product will play a fundamentally different roll in our lives than existing online storage products purport to.

  Brightcovehas never really been more than a half-hearted consumer video play, opting instead to function as a content distribution network for a large number of high profile media partners. Today Brightcove informed members of its Brightcove.TVsite that it will no longer be accepting direct consumer uploads on December 17, 2007. That signals that the company is apparently giving up completely on any dreams of competing with YouTube (or smaller sites, such as Vimeo) as a direct personal video hub.Instead, Brightcove.TV will become a hub for the distribution and promotion of its professional and network publishing partners. A quick search through the site suggests that perhaps Brightcove's direct consumer offerings never really gained much traction anyway. I was hard pressed to find any videos not from professional content producers or amateur video bloggers -- both of whom would likely be using either paid publisher accounts or the free, ad-supported network accounts (which will still be available).Though Brightcove has received a lot of press, especially in the wake of its $59.5 million series C funding roundclosed last January, it has generally been as a CDN-type service for major content publishers, and not as a consumer facing service. While most Internet surfers have likely run into a Brightcove player or two on the web, it seems unlikely that many users interested in sharing video without embedding it on a blog or web site would choose Brightcove.TV over YouTube or other consumer oriented video sites with far larger audiences.Today's announcements appears to indicate that Brightcove is finally giving up on the idea that it can compete with YouTube as a consumer video destination and is instead focusing completely on its content delivery and monetization offerings.

  Verizon Wireless, America's #2 wireless carrier, announced todaythat it would open its network to non-Verizon phones and applications. That means any CDMA phone (i.e., even those purchased through rival carrier Sprint) will be eligible to work on the Verizon network provided that it passes muster at the new $20 million Verizon testing lab. Verizon said on a call this morning that any devices built to run on its cellular network will be eligible. As Kevin Tofel pointed out, "If you have the smarts to build a cellular-based device in your basement, VZW will test it and, if it meets the minimal network standards, it will get approved.""This is a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices -- one whichwe believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth," said Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless President and CEO in a press release. Hyperbole aside, this actually is a fairly significant development in the mobile market. Large carriers have long resisted opening their networks and as a result, customers are locked into limited choices from provider to provider (i.e., you can only get Phone X on Network Y and your choice of phone OS is limited to what that network sanctions).Google's recent announcement of their open source mobile operating system, Android, and the development of their Open Handset Alliance -- which counts both the third and fourth largest mobile carriers in the US, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA, as members -- may have put pressure on Verizon to open up.This is nothing new to customers of GSM-based networks (like AT&T and T-Mobile), who have been able to use virtually any SIM-unlocked device on the network of their choice for years. They're just not generally officially supported by the carrier, but Verizon will not be offering tech support for third party devices brought to its network anyway. What this does, though, is level the playing field for CDMA customers, so to speak.But the important question is: does this mean a Verizon iPhone is coming? Well, no. Apple's iPhone is a GSM based device and won't run on Verizon's network, open or not. But some punditsstill surmise that a CMDA, Verizon-friendly iPhone is on its way, perhaps within a year. Either way, the customers win when they get more choice, so this is good news for mobile users.Verizon will release developer specs in early 2008 and plans to have the open network option available for consumers by the end of next year.

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/health/A_Health_2_0_Overview_Through_the_Eyes_of_a_New_Diabetic';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Last Monday I found out from my doctor that I have Diabetes (probably Type 1), which basically means high blood sugar. It was quite a surprise, as I have no family history of diabetes and it is relatively uncommon to get Type 1 diabetes in your 30's. However, I soon discovered that diabetes affects more than 240 million peopleworldwide. So it is something a lot of people have. Indeed, chances are you know of someone with it or you may even have it yourself. Because it is so widespread, there is a lot of web data, social networking options and even web apps that cater to people with diabetes. In this post, I'm somewhat selfishly going to review the diabetes sites and apps I found across the Web. But this post also serves, I hope, as an introduction to the more general topic of 'Health 2.0' - a.k.a. healthcare that uses the Internet. Over the weekend, Frank Gruber posted an excellent round-up of health 2.0 resourceson the Web. Frank pointed out that the big sites, like Web MDand HealthLine, are the resources most used. But there are a lot of newer sites and apps that offer a more modern, Web 2.0 approach. He also noted that both Microsoft and Google are making moves in health 2.0. For example see our story earlier this year on Microsoft acquiring MedStory.Defining Health 2.0As with Web 2.0, there is a lot of debate about the meaning of the term 'health 2.0'. According to the Health 2.0 conference blog, their definition "is currently focusing on user-generated aspects of Web2.0 within health care but not directly interacting with the mainstream health care system." This means things like search, communities, and tools. As yet Health 2.0 user-generated content has not been connnected to the wider health care system - which, according to the Health 2.0 conference organizers, hasn't even adopted Web 1.0 yet!SearchThe first thing you might do if you discover you have diabetes, is do some Web searches on it. In my case my doctor and specialist had already explained the basics of the condition to me: it is fairly easily managed, via testing your blood a few times a day and injecting insulin maybe a couple of times a day (it varies by person). Also you must drastically cut your sugar intake in food and drink, and exercise moderately. There is no cure at this point for diabetes, so this routine must be followed indefinitely. So I was told all that, but still I was curious to find out everything I could... so, to the Web search engines I went!A Google search is where I started; and at the top of the first page of results is the Wikipedia definition. This is a very thorough and long page, explaining what diabetes is and pointing to over 50 external references. A lot of people still complain about the Wikipedia as a source of reliable information, but as a starting point on diabetes it is exemplary.My next port of call was a specialist health search engine. Frank mentioned Healiain his post, a health search engine that gives you filtering options. In my tests, it didn't really throw up much new info that I needed. WebMDhad better info, but it wasn't presented very attractively.HealiaAnother 'vertical search' option for health is Kosmix, which has a kind of search-portal for many different verticals - one of which is diabetes. Now this is more like it! There are guides, images, Q&A, videos, "trusted sources", news, a forum, and more - all very nicely presented and easy to access. Even the ads were relevant to diabetes. There are a lot of areas to explore in this portal from Kosmix, making it the best search resource I found on the subject. But it will depend on what you're looking for - in my case, variety and good presentation are key factors to help me explore this new condition I have.Kosmix HealthFor more info on health search engines, see of course our network blog AltSearchEngines. Editor Charles Knight wrote a post in June reviewing health search engines(including a list of them) - his conclusion was that WebMD was best, but he also recommended revolutionhealth , CognitionSearch , Healthline , among others. TauMedis another one I've come across that I like. Finally, check out the Great Debate on health search engineson ASE.Health 2.0 BlogsSearch is all very well for finding information, but what if you're after a more personal connection - or social groups.The Health 2.0 Blogis a great starting point for healthcare on the Internet. It's a community blog that started in November. There's also an accompanying wikiand Facebook group. The Diabetes Mine blogis a more personal day-to-day reflections blog about diabetes, by Amy Tenderich. The most recent post is very relevant to me - it's about being diagnosed with Type 1 in your mid-30's!Another great site for diabetics is dLife, an attractive portal of info and forum options. It recently launched an aggregator for diabetes blogs, Blogabetes[via ScienceRoll].dLifeThere are many more blogs related to health and technology - check out the blogrolls of the above sites, or a list such as this one.Social NetworksSo what can social networks provide for diabetics? As to be expected, there are a number of Facebook groups about Diabetes- over 500 of them in fact! The biggest is 'Find a Cure for Juvenile Diabetes', which has 5,470 members. I joined up to a few of these groups, but I wanted something more. I eventually found Tu Diabetes, an online community for people with diabetes that was created in March 2007 by Manny Hernandezusing Ning. Manny describes it as a place "where the members help each other out, educate ourselves and share the steps we take every day to stay healthy while living with this very serious condition." One person described Tu Diabetes as "like 'MySpace' on insulin"! The site recently reached 1,400 membersand it is a great example of a niche social network, as the below introductory video from Manny explains:Diabetes Web AppsSugarStatsis an app that allows you to track, monitor and share your blood sugar levels "and other key statistics" online. It is based out of Hawaii and was founded by Marston Alfred, who was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes over 15 years ago. Normally diabetics have a paper journal in which they log the blood tests we are required to carry out 3-4 times a day. SugarStats has potentially very useful aggregation, graphing and trending tools, plus you can share your stats with relatives or other diabetics. SugarStats also has a mobile version - even Twitter integration!! For more reasons why online diabetes tracking is better than the paper-based version, see this poston the SugarStats blog.SugarStatsThere is a free and premium version from $8.29 per month (with extra features such as Food/Carb Tracking & Graphs, and SSL security). I've signed up to the free version to try it out, but I can see myself upgrading if it works well for me. Overall, SugarStats is an excellent use of web 2.0 to enhance healthcare treatment.Health 2.0 EventsGetting back to health 2.0 in general, in recent years health 2.0 conferences and events have sprung up. There was a BarCamp-like event called HealthCampat the end of last year (no sign of a follow-up event though). The Health 2.0 Conferencewas held on September 20th, 2007 in San Francisco. There's some good coverage of this event on the Diabetes Mine blog.The next Health 2.0 conference is 3-4 March, 2008 inSan Diego, and the topic is "Connecting Consumers & Providers". For more information see www.health2con.com. ConclusionThis is a pretty indulgent post really - basically I needed to do research into diabetes management for my own purposes, and I have blogged what I discovered. But beyond that, I hope this post gives you a good idea of what is available on the Web when it comes to healthcare. There are a lot of people much worse off than me, both in terms of diabetes (it's much tougher for children to cope with) and other health problems that people endure. Also it's still early stages in "health 2.0" - i.e. for some the Web may be of little use. But the Web is increasingly enhancing healthcare - certainly it is very useful with a condition such as diabetes, which is common worldwide and is something that can be managed on a daily basis.I'm sure I've missed some health 2.0 and/or diabetes resources, so please add in the comments. Also if you want to discuss how the Web has helped you (or not) with a health issue you've experienced, then feel free to leave a comment.Top image: Diabetes Trophy, by PhotoPieces

  Small business website creation service Homestead announced tonightthat it has been purchased by Intuitfor $170m. In addition to Intuit's personal and small business accounting software, and the company's partnership with Googleto integrate services like Maps listing and AdSense buys, Intuit customers will now presumably be able to put up websites quickly and easily with Homestead. It's starting to look like an end-to-end service, putting Intuit's hands in the middle of a whole lot of businesses books, both virtual and otherwise.Homestead released support for Macs and AJAX last year, but it this small business website creation software being scooped up as a hot commodity? Probably not like it would have been had the deal gone through during the late 1990s. Homestead raised money from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Intel in 1998, then $17.5 million in a 1999 second round, another $10 million from Verisign and others in 2001, and $5.4 million more in 2002. So we're talking at least $35m in funding over multiple rounds and almost 10 years. It's at best a 5X exit but probably one that everyone is relieved to see happen. It's also a good example that even with an undeniably smart business model, loads of backing and the ability to survive the first bubble - a company like Homestead can take ten years to see an exit.

  Reuters is reportingthat Fox Interactive Media President Peter Levinsohn said Monday that his company is in the discussion stages of creating an ad network, internally dubbed "FIM Serve," that would service all of News Corp.'s online properties. Eventually, the ad network would be opened to non-News Corp. properties."We're well down the path in terms of discussions with some of the other News Corp properties to do ad serving," Levinsohn said at the Reuters Media Summit today. "Ultimately we'll take the company off network and become an ad network for assets outside of the News Corporation empire."Earlier this month, FIM's MySpace unit announced its so-called 'HyperTargeting' ads, which use MySpace user profile data to target ads across 100 categories (with plans to expand to 1000). Could HyperTargeting eventually find its way outside of the social network and on to other Fox Interactive Media or News Corp. properties and beyond?FIM controls a number of media sites likely popular with the MySpace demographic, such as Photobucket, Flecktor, AskMen.com, IGN, AmericanIdol.com, and FOXSports.com. Their sites reach the fifth largest audience in the US, according to comScore, with 84.2 million unique visits in October. Targeting to users visiting from MySpace based on their profile data could be very helpful for increasing advertiser ROI, and using internal social networking data to target ads on external sites was something that many people speculated Facebook was up to prior to the announcement of SocialAds and Beacon.FIM Serve could launch "as early as the first half of next year," according to Levinsohn, and if it includes HyperTargeting, would it cause the same sort of backlash that Facebook is seeingfrom privacy rights groups over its Project Beacon?

  At the Reuters Media Summit today Fox Interactive Media President Peter Levinsohn said that Fox is planning some additions to MySpace in the next few weeks aimed squarely at Facebook. One of the most compelling, is the site's plan to let users create more than one profile to keep their contacts separate -- for example, friends, family, and business. The additional profiles will let you "express yourself in all those different segments," said Levinsohn.Though Levinsohn tempered his remarks by indicating that he thinks there exists space for more than one social network (he even admitted to having a Facebook profile, saying, "Facebook I use more to communicate with people at work... Frankly I find MySpace substantially more entertaining."), it appears as though MySpace may be after the business social networking crowd -- in spite of Levinsohn's comments about using Facebook more at work.MySpace parent company New Corp. has recently been rumored to be interested in acquiring LinkedIn, but as we've written, business networking is still a relatively untapped market. One of the main reasons people cite for not utilizing mainstream social networks like Facebook for professional networking is that there is no way to group contacts -- you can't easily keep your business profile separate from your personal profile, and no one wants their boss snooping at their vacation photos (we've all heard the tales of employees busted for goofing off on Facebookor being fired for naughty photos on MySpace).By allowing users to segment their profiles -- especially if they could be controlled from a single access point -- MySpace would take a step toward becoming a viable platform for more serious networking. Further, college-aged MySpace users would likely be happy to be able to share their lives with their families without having to share the party photos they want only their friends to see.Of course, what makes any social network tick is users, and I'm skeptical that anyone would ever use MySpace for serious business networking (anyone other than a musical act, that is). As Bernard Lunn said last month, LinkedIn is already looking "like a winner." It's hard for me to believe that the frenetic, media-oriented experience of MySpace would ever translate well for business networking. If competition for LinkedIn, Xing, Plaxo, etc. is going to materialize from the mainstream social networks, I think Facebook is probably the best candidate given their cleaner, more professional look (application clutter notwithstanding).That said, there is certainly the possibility that my speculation is off and that MySpace is not looking to move in that direction, and is making these changes purely for their current audience to be able to keep party photos away from mom. Or, that News Corporation really is interested in buying LinkedIn as a backdoor way into the business networking space and this development is unrelated to that space. Another interpretation is that MySpace is trying to capitalize on Facebook's recent privacy woesby giving their users at least the illusion of more control over who sees their profiles.

  While real TVin the US struggles over how much of a cut traditional, professional content writers ought to get from online and new media revenue - the venerable TVGuide announced today the winners of its inaugural Online Video Awards. The funniest video online according to the judges there? SNL's Dick in a Box. Originally aired in December 2006, the video is apparently believed to be funnier than any of the countless shorts posted online over the last 11 months. It is very funny.The awards were based on 1.75 million votes, and the judgment of TVGuide editors. Awards were given in 18 categories, from Funniest Web Video (D.in a B.) to Best Original Web Drama Series ("Sanctuary"). The full list is available in the press releaseand the videos can be viewed through a pageload-heavy viewer on the TVGuide site. TVGuide uses the full text of the name Dick in a Box throughout the site and press release, but serves up a censored version of the actual video itself.How is Old Media Adjusting?There doesn't appear to be a wide variety of sources from which nominees were selected. The vast majority of the nominees come from big, traditional media or other major establishment players online. The headline winners were all mainstream TV hits already. That isn't without exception, and perhaps I'm just bitter about the fact that CBS's Clark and Michaelbeat out the creative genius of Chad Vader. So far, at least, I haven't found Clark and Michael funny at all.EpicFu: This Episode With 2 Million+ YouTube Views - but No TVGuide LoveFunnyOrDie.com, Will Ferrel's site backed by GooTube investors Sequoia Capital, was named the best comedy site. Most people I've talked to say that entire site has been a vastly overpriced, one-hit wonder.Online video reporter Liz Gannes puts it more plainlywhen she writes that "there’s not a little guy in sight." Gannes points out the more independent minded online video awards at the forthcoming Winnies.It would be reactionary, of course, to say that all made-for-TV TV is bad TV and TV made for the web is good TV. There are plenty of quality cross-overs, but the TVGuide awards seem to overstate the case and be short on discovery of new content in the new medium.Truth be told, there's a whole world of new online video sources and pundits out there. TVGuide has a huge brand and is obviously driving some traffic online already - but I'll take Digg videoand Stumble Upon Videoinstead any day.TVGuide, you're going to have to do better than this.

  The New York Timesis reporting that ABC News and Facebookhave formed a partnership that will bring ABC political coverage to Facebook while lending social networking cred to the old media network. Part of the alliance has Facebook signing on as a sponsor of the ABC Democratic presidential debate on January 5th, 2008 in New Hampshire -- just days before that state's primary election and after the Iowa caucuses.Both ABC and Facebook are late to the party. CNN and YouTube were the first told hold a new-meets-old media mashup debate(the Republican version will be held this week), and MySpace teamed with MTV for their ongoing candidate dialogues.New media technologies are taking a bigger role in US election politics than they ever have, with candidates blogging, posting videos, using social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and Twittering. A stop at the Googleplex for an interview with Eric Schmidt has become an almost required campaign event this election cycle, and even web tech-focused blogs like TechCrunch are getting in on the act by interviewing US presidential candidates (today they talked with Barack Obama).However, even as we're seeing an unprecedented use of web 2.0 technologies in campaign politics, it's unclear how much of it is making a difference. CNet's Caroline McCarthy is skeptical. She notes that while the Facebook group "One Million Strong for Barack Obama" has 164,000 members, a parody group for television personality and author Stephen Colbert has over 1.5 million -- and crossed the million mark in just over a week. And though the New York Times and Washington Post both have Facebook applications, the most popular remain fun time wasters dealing with music, movies, games, and annoying your friends, not serious apps that deliver news.For all the hype surrounding social networks, and even all the apparent buzz candidates can build on them, it is dubious whether there will be an actual benefit at the polls.This is something we have noticed as well. In August, we wrote thatthough the Internet has provided a cost-effective way for candidates to get their message out, and has given a platform for long-shot candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul that has allowed them to stay in the race, the numbers seem to indicate that Internet celebrity does not necessarily translate to the polls (though, with no ballots cast, we'll have to wait to see if that holds up).The ABC Facebook pageactually has a chart confirming some of these discrepancies by comparing support from the candidates' official Facebook pages to the results of a recent ABC News poll of likely voters. For both parties, the polled front-runner nationally is not the leader on Facebook (for Republicans the data is more out of sync than for Democrats). As a commenter surmised on our Web 2.0 Election post, this may have something to do with the international nature of social networks versus the domestically targeted nature of the presidential opinion polls.Further, the most recently completed ABC News/Facebook political poll (asking What is "the number one issue [you] look at when evaluating Presidential candidates") drew just over 1,000 votes. With over 17 million users in the US over voting age (according to Facebook's ad targeting tool), 1,000 participants in an open poll is a microscopic number. To echo Caroline McCarthy, maybe ABC News can pull it off, but I'm incredulous.What do you think? Can social networks really make an impact with political campaigns? Are ABC and Facebook too late to the party?

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Blue_Beanies_Pop_Up_Around_the_Web_Today_in_Support_of_Standards';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Today has been declared Blue Beanie Day, an only slightly tongue-in-cheek day for supporters of web standards to show their solidarity with the cause. Originatingin the mind of Douglas Vos, founder of Facebook’s Designing With Web Standards Group, the day uses a blue hat as its symbol in honor of Jeffrey Zeldman, author of the landmark book Designing with Web Standards. Zeldman wears a blue beanie on the book's cover.You might see blue hats on the heads of your friends' Twitteravatars, if you work in an office perhaps someone there is geeky enough to be wearing a blue beanie (maybe you should ask them about it - or perhaps it's you!) and there's a Flickr group dedicated to blue beanie photos(the most recent 20 of which are playing on the right, followed by a nice video of Jeffrey Zeldman).Web standards are something we write about a lot here at ReadWriteWeb. We've gotten great feedback on posts about new standards like OpenIDand OAuth. Most people, though, think of the W3C standards for CSS and HTML when the phrase is used. Belgian web design rock star Veerle Pieters has a good post todayexplaining her personal relationship to web standards and Blue Beanie day.There are new standards being developed all the time. Old and new standards work together. That's the theory anyway, I'd like to see some informed discussion on Blue Beanie Day about the Google-led OpenSocial. To what degree does it build on and to what degree does it seek to replace existing standards?Why Are Standards Interesting?Whether it's a new or old standard, the idea is the same: standardization creates a playing field that supports innovation by making scalability possible. Standardization makes life easier for users and for developers, enabling a higher level of abstraction because a common foundation has been established and there's no reason to reinvent the wheel with every new website. Standards are also important for web pages to be usable in other formats, so it's important for both accessibility and mobile. That's how I explain it, how do you?If this is a topic of interest to you, check out the new site at DataPortability.org. It's an early gathering of thought leaders concerning standards for data portability.

  So-called "Black Friday," the day after the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, is the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season, and this year online retailers saw traffic surge with shoppers spending over 4/5ths of a billion dollars on Thursday and Friday alone. According to comScore, shoppers plunked down $272 million online on Thursday, and $531 million on Friday -- an increase of 29% and 22%, respectively, over the same days last year.IDG reportsthat price comparison sites also claimed a huge increase in traffic over the 2006 holiday shopping kick-off. PriceGrabber saw referral traffic up a reported 47%, while Shopping.com watched its referrals increase 61%.One thing that seemingly hasn't changed: the hottest product. The Nintendo Wii continued to see torrid sales and dominated searches at online retailers, and video games as a category saw sales leap 134% this year. Microsoft's new line of Zune media players placed second among holiday shoppers at PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, and eBay (based on searches for consumer electronics Thursday and Friday).Online retailers can only expect today to be even busier. What started as a marketing gimmick a few years ago, "Cyber Monday," in which online retailers give additionaldiscounts to shoppers (many of whom are connecting to the Internet from work for the first time following a long weekend in the US), appears to have gained industry-wide acceptance. Shop.org, an electronic retail trade group, reports that72.2% of online retailers will participate in Cyber Monday. That is a significant increase over the 42.7% who participated just two years ago. Some retailers, such as Wal-Mart, plan to offer online deals all week, skipping the Monday tradition altogether.72 million consumers plan to shop online today, according to BIGresearch, and comScore predicts revenues of over $700 million, which could be the start of an online shopping season some see reaching $30 billion this year.Will you shop online this year? Have you taken advantage of any online deals yet today? Did you shop online on Friday?