"Web 2.0" entries

Four short links: 9 April 2012

Four short links: 9 April 2012

Ebooks Numbers, Data Monopolies, Single Sign On, and Large Network Use

  1. E-Reading/E-Books Data (Luke Wroblewski) — This past January, paperbacks outsold e-books by less than 6 million units; if e-book market growth continues, it will have far outpaced paperbacks to become the number-one category for U.S. publishers. Combine that with only 21% of American adults having read a ebook, the signs are there that readers of ebooks buy many more books.
  2. Web 2.0 Ends with Data Monopolies (Bryce Roberts) — in the context of Google Googles: So you’re able to track every website someone sees, every conversation they have, every Ukulele book they purchase and you’re not thinking about business models, eh? Bryce is looking at online businesses as increasingly about exclusive access to data. This is all to feed the advertising behemoth.
  3. Building and Implementing Single Sign On — nice run-through of the system changes and APIs they built for single-sign on.
  4. How Big are Porn Site (ExtremeTech) — porn sites cope with astronomical amounts of data. The only sites that really come close in term of raw bandwidth are YouTube or Hulu, but even then YouPorn is something like six times larger than Hulu.

What to watch for in mobile web apps

How WebGL, device APIs, and ample experimentation will shape the future of mobile web apps.

Sencha's James Pearce discusses the most promising mobile web app technologies and explains why device APIs could make the web a lot more interesting.

There are bigger issues surrounding the .gov review

The efforts behind .gov reform go beyond domain management.

The U.S. federal government's web reform effort isn't just about reducing the number of websites and saving associated design or maintenance costs. It's about improving citizens' access to information and services.

What lies ahead: Gov 2.0

Tim O'Reilly on open government's next phase and similarities to Web 1.0.

Tim O'Reilly recently offered his thoughts and predictions for a number of areas we cover here on Radar. In this segment he discusses open government's shift from theory to practice.

Four short links: 17 December 2010

Four short links: 17 December 2010

Systems Programming, Peer Review, Web Mining, Facebook Design

  1. Down the ls(1) Rabbit Hole — exactly how ls(1) does what it does, from logic to system calls to kernel. This is the kind of deep understanding of systems that lets great programmers cut great code. (via Hacker News)
  2. Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates (Royal Society) — peer-reviewed published paper that was initially reviewed and improved in Google Docs and got comments there, in FriendFeed, and on his blog. The bitter irony: Royal Society charged him €2000 to make it available for free download. (via Fabiana Kubke)
  3. Bixo — an open source web mining toolkit. (via Matt Biddulph on Delicious)
  4. How Facebook Does Design — podcast (with transcript) with stories about how tweaking design improved the user activity on Facebook. One of the designers thought closing your account should be more like leaving summer camp (you know a place which has all your friends, and you don’t want to leave.) So he created this page above for deactivation which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%.

Hiring trends among the major platform players

The battle for the Internet's points of control requires amassing talent.

Consistent with the recent flurry of articles about hiring wars, many platform companies have increased their number of job postings. Winning the battle for the Internet's points of control requires amassing talent.

Getting closer to the Web 2.0 address book

The answer to a long-running problem lies in data, not an application.

Given that so much diverse and overlapping information about each of us is spread between applications, why are simple actions — like automatically reacting to known friend requests — still not possible? The answer, notes Terry Jones, lies not with a new application, but in a ball of data. (Part 2 of a 2-part series.)

Dancing out of time: Thoughts on asynchronous communication

Why asynchronous communication scales, and what we can do with that power.

Terry Jones examines the core differences between synchronous and asynchronous communication, and he looks at how technology has given asynchronous methods tremendous reach. (Part 1 of a 2-part series.)

10 Lessons for Gov 2.0 from Web 2.0

How can the power of the web solve the world's most pressing problems?

Web 2.0 Expo New York highlighted a number of Web 2.0 principles and trends that also have relevance to the Gov 2.0 space. Here's a look at the connective tissue that binds these two worlds.

Points of Control: The Web 2.0 Summit Map

Internet companies are jockeying for positions that will benefit them for years to come.

In our planning for this year’s Web 2.0 Summit, John Battelle and I have expanded on the metaphor of “the Great Game,” as we explore the many ways Internet companies at all levels of the stack are looking for points of control that will give them competitive advantage in the years to come.