Inside iPhone

Weekly Wrapup: World’s Most Influential Websites, Thanksgiving Apps, New AOL Branding, And More…

john — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:24:15 +0000

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we analyze a list of the most influential websites in the world, look back on the past decade of e-commerce, suggest a list of products that Twitter might like to acquire, review a collection of Thanksgiving web apps, and more. And as usual we check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).
Also read on for a special offer on our next premium report, which we’re releasing this Monday!

Sponsor
The Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by SproutBox:

Pre-Order Our New Premium Report, $100 Discount

Our newest report, The Real-Time Web and Its Future, is just days away from launching! Pre-orders are still available at $100 off the list price.
We interviewed 50 companies, developers and executives responsible for the concepts, protocols, applications and initiatives that make up the Real-Time Web. Based on their insights - and the insights of around 300 industry heavy-hitters and thought leaders at our Real-Time Web Summit last month - we have developed an extensive, authoritative premium report.
Take a sneak peek at the Table of Contents and this sample chapter, and pre-order your report now! On Monday, November 30, the cost of the report will rise by $100.

Web Trends

The Most Influential Websites in the World: Wikipedia #1, Twitter #4 With a Bullet
A year ago we profiled an oddly-named service called ://URLFAN, which we concluded was a good ‘Influence Index’ for the Web. ://URLFAN ranks websites by popularity, based on blog mentions. Unlike analytics services like Alexa or Compete, ://URLFAN doesn’t measure website traffic. It’s similar to Technorati, only ://URLFAN ranks all websites and not just blogs. So, which websites are currently ranked the most influential on the Web?
Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: E-commerce
In this post, we review the past decade of e-commerce and the key trends. Amazon.com and eBay have continued to dominate the online retail market in the United States. However advances in recommendations technology, together with the emergence of social media and mobile commerce, have combined to change the way e-commerce is transacted. In a follow-up post, we looked at current statistics for online retail.
See also: Online Retail Thriving: 8% Growth Expected This Holiday Season
What Apps Should Twitter Acquire?
According to a statement made this week by Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone, the company is interested in acquiring more companies to expand upon their current core set of features. The ecosystem of Twitter applications has exploded and now includes hundreds if not thousands of apps powered by or integrated with Twitter’s service. But which of these apps deserve to become an official company offering?
Firefox’s Plan to Kick the Login’s Butt
Firefox gets distributed social networking and identity management. The good people who work on the revolutionary, open-sourced, and occasionally maligned browser have been hard at work on making cross-site navigation and portable IDs a solvable problem. A discrete button to the left of the URL that can tell users whether or not they are logged in to a particular site and allow them to log in without further navigation. SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ and using social software inside organizations.
Enterprise 2.0: Study Shows Adoption is Real
When you look at Enterprise 2.0, you can see the hype pretty clearly - but what is not so evident is how social computing efforts are faring within corporations and large organizations. That’s what’s striking about the report from the 2.0 Adoption Council. The group did a web survey of its 100 members, with 77 responding. That may seem like a small number to use for any quantifiable conclusion about the state of Enterprise 2.0. But the people who responded lead or help lead Enterprise 2.0 efforts at some of the largest organizations in the world.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.
Ommwriter: Be Alone with Your Thoughts
Between Skype, chat, texts, push news notifications and three screens of scrolling feeds, it’s easy to get distracted while writing an email or post. If you’ve misspelled names, forgotten words or hit send prematurely on numerous occasions, then you probably just need to slow down. Rather than resorting to a life in the woods of hermit-like solitude, you could just take a few moments to think with Ommwriter.
SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Products

5 Mobile Apps to Be Thankful For if You Are Flying This Thanksgiving Weekend
Thanksgiving is generally a horrible day for air travel, but tradition and the sweet smell of Thanksgiving turkey still makes millions of Americans forget the potential horror of being stuck in an airport. If you are one of them, or even if you are just heading to the airport to pick somebody up, here are some mobile applications and web sites than can help you make your Thanksgiving travel less stressful.
See also: How to Prepare Your iPhone for Black Friday and Top 10 Shopping Sites for Gadget, Gear and Geek Gifts
LinkedIn Finally Opens Platform: The Good & Bad News
Two years and a month after announcing that it would launch a more professional-looking developer platform than the wildly successful one at Facebook, this week LinkedIn finally opened up a series of application programming interfaces for other companies to build on top of. Make no mistake about it, though - there’s some good news and there’s some bad news. @BreakingNews: MSNBC.com Will Now Manage Twitter’s Most Popular Breaking News Account
BNO News, the news wire service famous for publishing breaking news stories through its @BreakingNews Twitter feed, announced that it plans to launch a new news wire service early next year. In order to focus on this project, the BNO team will hand over the management of the @BreakingNews feed to MSNBC.com. According to BNO News, MSNBC will provide 24/7 breaking news headlines via BNO’s Twitter feed.
Is Bing Cashback Costing Users Money? Sometimes, Yes
When Bing debuted a feature called Cashback, the product was intended to save users money while they shopped from online retailers. As we told you last month when discussing the program’s early successes, Cashback works by giving users a certain amount of money back every time they search for an item and then buy it from a participating store. But some users have found the opposite to be true. Poll: AOL Reveals New Branding, Love it or Loathe It?
This week AOL revealed a sneak peek at a new branding campaign for their soon-to-be standalone content-focused business. The rebranding effort will officially launch on December 10th when AOL begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange as a separate company from Time Warner, its current owner. The new logos feature a lowercase “aol” on top of various colorful images that range from an orange goldfish to a green scribble. Are the new logos any good?
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
Discuss

Weekly Wrapup: Google Chrome OS, Obama’s Twitter, Blogging Statistics, And More… In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our...
Weekly Wrapup: Apple App Store Stats, The State of Adobe AIR, Book Publishing Revolutions, And More… In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our...
Weekly Wrapup: iPhone 3GS, Real-Time Web Platforms, Social Media Trolls, And More… In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Your Favorite Mobile Apps of 2009 (Reader Survey)

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:10:42 +0000

A year ago we polled you, the ReadWriteWeb community, on your favorite mobile apps. It's become an annual tradition to run this survey, so in this post we're collecting your top 5 lists for 2009. Related posts:

How Do iPhone Users Find New Apps? AdMob just released some data about how iPhone users...
1 Billion Apps Later - Here Are Some of Our Favorites Today, Apple announced that its customers have now downloaded...
iPhone tops JD Power smartphone survey As if there would every be any question about...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

LG / Cyon SU630 caught in the wilds of South Korea

admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:21:07 +0000

Were you shocked and surprised when LG put out a Christmas Edition of its Korea-only LG-SU630? Neither were we — but we are mighty amused that a certain reader named James Roberson was cool enough to take us up on our (joking) plea for pictures of the handset when he came across one at the electronics market in Seoul recently. This isn’t the Christmas edition, but it’s all LG-SU630 — as indicated by the Cyon logo and 8 megapixel camera ’round back. Get a closer look in the gallery below. And for our next request, do you think you could send us a Sciphone Dream G2? We hear they’re pretty amazing. kkthanksbye.

Gallery: LG / Cyon LG-SU630 caught in the wilds of South Korea

LG / Cyon SU630 caught in the wilds of South Korea originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

SciPhone Dream G2 Android charger is best ever Filed under: Handsets, Others One of our favorite intellectual property...
SciPhone Dream G2+ adds WiFi to the Android KIRF madness Filed under: Handsets Months later we're still thrilled at the...
SciPhone shocker! N12 handset features ‘genuine’ Android OS Filed under: Handsets, Others, GSM, CDMA, Android It looks we...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New Swype Technology For Typing Text Launched For Smartphones - Will It Replace QWERTY?

john — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:11:33 +0000

A lot of mobile phones today, including the iPhone, have made typing easier by providing QWERTY keyboards. Related posts:

iTwinge - BlackBerry-Style QWERTY Keyboard for iPhone If you are one of those BlackBerry souls who...
iPhone vs Asus Netbook Extreme Typing Test in a Rally Car If you are a long time iPhone user who...
Qualcomm developing FLO TV accessories for iPhone OS 3.0, other smartphones Filed under: Handsets, Multimedia, Windows Mobile, OS X Qualcomm's fledgling...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New Malicious Worm Attacks Jailbroken iPhones Using Known Vulnerability

john — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:24:41 +0000

After two worm attacks on jailbroken iPhones, one would have expected the vulnerable iPhone users to have reset their passwords. Unfortunately, a lot many still have had their jailbroken iPhones with the root password unchanged as a third worm attack is now being reported. And this time, it is far more malicious.

Warning: Major Flaw with Push Notification Fix for Jailbroken iPhones One of the known issues with the jailbroken iPhone...
Skype Says "No" to Jailbroken iPhones The latest update to the Skype iPhone application delivered...
New Verizon Ad Directly Attacks AT&T Coverage, Claims 5 Times Better 3G Coverage Verizon Wireless launched a new ad campaign yesterday during...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Obama, Kids, & All Tomorrow’s Web Apps: President Focuses on Tech Education

john — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:41:04 +0000

At the White House today, President Obama talked robots, hung out with the guys from MythBusters, and launched a campaign designed to create smarter, techier American kids.

“Reaffirming and strengthening America’s role as the world’s engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation is essential to meeting the challenges of this century,” said Obama.” That’s why I am committed to making the improvement of STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] education over the next decade a national priority.”

Sponsor
The campaign involves key partnerships with organizations from Sesame Street to Sony (whose PlayStation 3 console will be used for strengthening young minds through game design competitions), and it also features help from individuals such as Sally Ride (the first female astronaut) and a handful of digitally focused CEOs.

The Geek-In-Chief is also starting an annual science fair at the White House to inspire and promote young geeks who are doing great things in hardware, software, technology, science, and robotics. We need, he said, to teach children to “be makers, not consumers.

“If you win the NCAA champtionships, you get to come to the White House… We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”

And why do American kids need this level of convincing? Brace yourselves for bad news, patriots: Kids in the U.S. rank in the mid-twenties when scored against 30 other nations for math and science literacy. We are being drastically outperformed in these areas; in a time when technological innovation is the foundation and impetus for a lot of other cultural and economic factors, can we afford to not develop competencies in tech and science?

The President doesn’t think so, and he’s directing funds accordingly. He further announced that the $4.35 billion Race to the Top school grant program will give preference to states that commit to improving STEM education.

Obama hopes the campaign will increase STEM literacy for students, improve the quality of teaching in these areas, and promote better education and work opportunities for underrepresented groups - such as women and minorities - in tech.

In the recent past, we’ve told you about Obama’s financial and moral support for startups, his masterful use of the social web - both as a candidate for the office and as President - and the change, recovery, data, and health care reform initiatives he’s conducted online. He may not personally use Twitter (yet), but he does use a Creative Commons license for his Flickr photos. It seems fairly clear to us that Obama cares about where the country is going technologically, and we hope this focus on STEM education will help us all in the long term.

Check out the President’s 18-minute address, which outlines his plan to use the $260 million-valued campaign to bring struggling American students into world domination:

Check out some of the implementations of the partnerships Obama references above on the Digital Media and Learning Competition website, and look out for Discovery Channel’s commercial-free block of science programming for kids launching next year.

And for those of you with an inclination to volunteer, check out this National Lab Day website matching classroom needs to volunteer expertise. American kids apparently need to learn about phone app programming, entrepreneurialism, and plain old hardware just as much as they need to focus on engineering robots - a favorite topic of teachers, students, and the President, as well.

“I believe that robotics can inspire students,” he said while introducing a student project designed to collect and throw moon rocks. “I also want to keep an eye on those robots in case they try anything.” We officially love you, Mr. President. And yes, let’s get those kids into labs and in front of glowing screens - for the right reasons this time.
Discuss

Weekly Wrapup: Google Chrome OS, Obama’s Twitter, Blogging Statistics, And More… In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our...
Ngmoco Hires Away Sega President Simon Jeffery To Head Up iPhone Game Network iPhone game developer ngmoco is announcing today its own...
12 Companies Targeting Early Tech Adopters Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to explore the latest...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New Smartphone Optimized Version of Google News Launched

john — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:50:01 +0000

Google News has been one of the popular news aggregators on the web, which lets you to read news relevant to your geography as well as personalize your page to read updates on subjects of interest to you. Related posts:

Is Fast Flip Really the Best Google Can Do to Save the News? Yesterday, Google launched Fast Flip - a Google Labs...
Google Search Options Now Available on the iPhone If you are a Google power user, you might...
AT&T, Google trade barbs over Google Voice while FCC listens in Filed under: Software, ATT AT&T filed a scathing letter with...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

AT&T Reveals $65 Million Investment On 3G Infrastructure Around SF Bay Through 2009

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:50:22 +0000

The AT&T network has seen unprecedented growth in its bandwidth consumption over the past two years, thanks majorly to the exclusive iPhone deal with Apple. Related posts:

Analyst: Apple Likely to Extend AT&T’s Exclusive iPhone Deal iSuppli recently published a report in which it predicts...
Rumor: 4 million new iPhones for Q2 2009 Here is the iPhone rumor today: Apple has already...
AT&T in Discussion with Apple to Extend Deal to be Exclusive Carrier of iPhone? The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Randall Stephenson,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Weekly Wrapup: Google Chrome OS, Obama’s Twitter, Blogging Statistics, And More…

john — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:15:26 +0000

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we report on President Obama’s (non)-use of Twitter, take a look at the past decade in the media industry, review the latest statistics about blogging, question if Oxford Dictionary should’ve chosen “unfriend” as its word of the year, and more. We also check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

Sponsor

Subscribe to Weekly Wrapup

You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapup by RSS or by email (form below). RWW Weekly Wrap-up Email Subscription form:

Web Trends

Obama: “I Have Never Used Twitter”
Barack Obama spoke to a group of Chinese students this week at a town hall in Shanghai. The meeting was streamed live, worldwide on the Whitehouse website and on the Whitehouse’s Facebook page. He was asked a limited number of questions by the audience and one was about Twitter, which has been blocked in China since July. President Obama has never used Twitter, despite his account being the most followed there.
Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Democratization of News Media
It’s November 2009 and we’re nearing the end of a decade. It’s been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. The newspaper industry has been particularly affected by the Web. Over the past 10 years, news media has undergone a seachange akin to the invention of the printing press in 1440. How Blogging Has Changed Over The Last 3 Years (Stats)
Reader engagement with blogs has changed dramatically over the last three years, primarily because of the rise of online social networks, according to new numbers released by analytics firm Postrank. Postrank published an analysis based on metrics for signals like comments, trackbacks, shared links and online bookmarks for the top 1000 most-engaging feeds online and for 100,000 randomly selected blog posts in each year since 2007.

Unfriending: Are People Online Shedding Friends? (Debate)
The New Oxford American Dictionary announced its Word of the Year this week. Its selection? unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook. Has Oxford Dictionary made the right selection? ReadWriteWeb’s Founder Richard MacManus thinks not. Marshall Kirkpatrick disagrees with him. Both make their cases in this post and invite you to cast your vote in a poll.

Weekly Wrapup: Facebook vs Twitter, State of the Web, Google Public Data, And More… In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter...
Weekly Wrapup: Google Search Options, Twitter Repliesgate, Web 3.0, And More… In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter...
Weekly Wrapup: State of the Smartphone, Google Me, Oprah on Twitter, And More… In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

TomTom Version 1.2 Released - Includes Support For iPod Touch and First Gen iPhones

john — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:04:14 +0000

TomTom, one of the navigation apps available on the iPhone has just released an updated version. Related posts:

TomTom’s Turn-By-Turn GPS Application for the iPhone with Voice Navigation Released TomTom had announced back in June that their turn-by-turn...
TomTom for iPhone: Turn-by-Turn GPS App with Voice Navigation Coming Soon TomTom demoed their turn-by-turn GPS application for the iPhone...
TomTom introduce full PND navigation to iPhone TomTom’s turn-by-turn navigation app is one of the most...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.