As far as Web services go, Twitter is pretty easy to use. Fill out a brief profile, follow some people and go, right? Well apparently not. Developers at the company have been fretting over the fact that some people still think Twitter is "too hard" to use.
But the solution has proved easy. By simply releasing mobile apps named "Twitter," the company has seen a boost in new users.
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Twitter announced today that the number of total mobile users has jumped 62% since mid-April, thanks to the release of Twitter for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. These apps existed before - Twitter for iPhone is just a rebranded version of the third-party client Tweetie - but they weren't recruiting new users.
"We did iPhone user tests and confirmed that even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called 'Twitter.' This kept them from using Twitter at all," CEO Evan Williams wrote in a blog post titled "The Evolving Ecosystem" today.
Now 16% of new users sign up via mobile, versus 5% before the name changes. Almost half of all active users "make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience," according to Twitter.
Despite the mobile push and recent speculation that Twitter's clients have killed its Web site, 78% of users still access Twitter at least once a month via the Web.
Twitter.com and Twitter's mobile Web site are the top ways users access Twitter, followed by SMS and the official iPhone and BlackBerry clients. TwitPic, the photo-uploading service, and Google Friend Connect, the widget that lets websites feature content from social networks, are also in the top ten ways users access Twitter. Surprisingly, Twitter for Android was not.
The rest of the 300,000 registered Twitter applications have much fewer users, Twitter said. But Williams is encouraged by the growth and variety of apps in Twitter's ecosystem. "These new services help people get the most out of Twitter, contributing to user growth and new business opportunities," he wrote.
Twitter said it now has more than 145 million registered users, although the number of active users is lower.
Microsoft's new mobile OS has shipped to handset makers and will be appearing on phones in time for the holiday season, the company announced today.
The stage is set for Microsoft to either rock the mobile world with a mainstream alternative to the iPhone and Android platforms, rebounding after a string of failures a la Bing, or flop in its attempt to catch up after "missing a cycle."
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The long-awaited update to Windows Mobile is expected to show up on devices from Dell, HTC, Samsung and LG, so there is the possibility that an exciting handset like the Dell Lightning could rekindle interest in Microsoft's mobile offerings.
Windows Phone 7 is designed around tasks with programs pushing information to the home screen. This "hubs" design may lessen the need for third-party apps. But Microsoft is still hoping apps can be evangelists for Phone 7, offering developers tools and an emulator last month for free. Microsoft says the tools have been downloaded more than 300,000 times.
The OS has gotten mixed reviews, including a scathing critique from InfoWorld's Galen Gruman, who called it "a tepid knockoff of a 2007-era iPhone" and claimed it was "a platform no carrier, device maker, developer or user should bother with." Other reviewers praised the OS for its zoomy user interface, integration with Microsoft Office, voice search and other features.
Microsoft has been agonizing over the development of the Phone 7 OS, throwing money at the launch, carefully studying how people use their phones and engineering down to the most minute details. For example, Windows Phone 7 will feature eight keypad tones, so that a user will hear slightly different clicks when typing instead of the same tone repeatedly as is the case with the iPhone.
A Windows Phone 7 preview by InfoWeek in July.
Whether the attention to detail pays off will be decided in a few months by consumers in the general public - who largely pay little attention to the OS pedigree of a phone, and can therefore be trusted to evaluate Windows Phone 7 without being biased by Microsoft's track record.
Apple is holding its annual Fall event today. Historically, these events have always focused on the iPod line. While we definitely expect to see a revamped iPod lineup, the rumor mill also points towards a new Apple TV and a major update for iTunes. A number of pundits also expect Apple to release iOS4 for the iPad today.
To find out what really happens, check out our live blog below. The event is scheduled to start at 10am PT/1pm ET.
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Live Streaming
For the first time in years, Apple plans to provide a live video stream of today's event. By default, this stream will only be available to Mac, iPod and iPad users. There are some workaround for this for Windows users, however, and we also expect to see numerous rogue streams on sites like USTREAM and Justin.tv.
Live Blog
Come back at 10am PT/1pm ET for our live blog of today's event.
VMworld starts in the morning and all eyes will be on what gets announced and how virtualization is extending its reach into the realm of cloud computing.
We sometimes find that during big events there is such a blur of jargon that it can be helpful to do a bit of homework for a grasp on how companies view the actual technologies and the ways they relate.
In that context we went to YouTube and explored how three companies view the relationship between cloud computing and virtualization. We graded each on its explanation.
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Cisco
Cisco Systems Glenn Dasmalchi does a decent job of explaining Cisco's view about the relationship between cloud computing and virtualization.
In Cisco's view, cloud computing and virtualization are separate concepts but do relate. Cisco views cloud computing as a broad range of IT services that are delivered on demand with the ability to scale up and down, depending on the need.
He says Cisco divides virtualization into three categories: network virtualization, storage virtualization and virtualization as it relates to computing.
Dasmalchi does not fully explain how Cisco views the relationship between cloud computing and virtualization. Instead, he seems to dart around the issue of the private cloud and how a virtualized infrastructure provides an opportunity to move data in and between data centers. He does point out that a networking opportunity unfolds as data passes between different points. In a virtualized network, the end points are no longer static. Providing the right level of performance and security plays to Cisco's strengths.
Cisco gets a a B- for its explanation. Dasmalchi dances around the concept of the private cloud without actually saying what it is. But you can see his argument strengthen when he relates virtualization directly to networking, Cisco's obvious core strength.
Citrix Systems
CitrixCTO Simon Crosby crisply explains the company's view on virtualization in private and public cloud environments.
Citrix desktop virtualization services represent its core strength. It acquired XenSource three years ago which put the company into the infrastructure as a service market. XenServer is sold on top of Microsoft HyperV. Crosby uses the video to explain how virtualization aligns the business and users to get access to IT it resources in a pooled environment.
He explains that in a public cloud environment, Citrix markets the Xen platform as an open-source infrastructure. Xen is designed for large-scale multi-tenant environments.
We give Citrix an A-. Crosby is well-spoken and clearly distinguishes between his views of a public and a private cloud. We take a few points off for the explanation of its infrastructure play and use of terms that have a fair dose of jargon mixed in. But, generally, it is pretty clear how Citrix views the relationship between cloud computing and virtualization.
BlueLock
BlueLock uses legos to explain its view on the relationship between cloud computing and virtualization. It's a concise explanation that demonstrates how much the stack is changing.
In the explanation BlueLock CEO John Qualls shows the traditional approach to building an on-premise infrastructure. He then explains how virtualization enables its version of the cloud.
BlueLock is a service provider. It provides the capability to add resources to a virtualized environment. The video clearly shows how cloud computing fits by taking lego pieces that represent the different parts of the stack and how they can be moved, depending on the need.
BlueLock is the winner of the three. We give them an A for showing how the traditional stack is changing. They show how the cloud can be scaled up or down depending on the customer's business needs.
In all, we think this coming year will see a far more clear picture of how cloud computing and virtualization relate. The bridge is being formed. Now it's a question of who can tell the story most effectively. We hope more can emulate BlueLock. There's nothing better than showing what you do. We can watch talking heads all day. The people may be smart but legos are far more fun and something we can all relate to.
Polar Rose, a Swedish-based facial recognition startup launched in summer 2007, is shutting down its consumer-facing service which allowed users to tag people in photos anywhere on the Web. Last spring, the innovative company introduced facial recognition to popular photo-sharing site Flickr by way of a third-party browser plugin. With the plugin installed, Polar Rose users could tag their Flickr photos with the names of their Facebook contacts and then alert those friends on Facebook that they had been tagged. It also organized Flickr photos into pages by person and could recognize people automatically in later uploads.
Unfortunately, this and all other end user-focused services are being terminated as the company switches its focus to its series of facial recognition products. Says Polar Rose's Thijs Stalenhoef, the service was "fun while it lasted."
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Polar Rose Says Goodbye to End Users, Hello to Products
According to Stalenhoef, the response to the facial recognition products introduced during the Mobile World Congress last February has been "phenomenal." These include the company's flagship FaceCloud server platform, mobile face recognition library FaceLib and FaceCore, a core face detection and recognition module for deep integration and other use-cases.
Unfortunately, the company has not been able to focus on the service at polarrose.com due to the popularity of these back-end applications and products. The Polar Rose service hasn't seen a new release in ages and support requests on GetSatisfaction have basically been ignored. "The site, as it stands today, is not up to the standard we set for it when we launched," admits Stalenhoef.
But instead of bringing on new staff to help better manage the consumer service, the company has decided to shut it down entirely. The company will close the service on PolarRose.com on September 6th, 2010 at which point all user accounts and corresponding data, including images downloaded from Facebook and Flickr, will be deleted. The tags sent to Flickr and Facebook, however, will remain in place.
Competition for End Users Ramped Up Over the Years
It's a shame to see such a compelling and interesting service disappear, but Polar Rose has had stiff competition in the consumer space as of late. Google introduced facial recognition functionality into its Picasa photo-sharing service, a Flickr competitor. Windows Live Essentials introduced facial recognition into its latest release. Also, Face.com, a facial recognition technology company, introduced multiple Facebook apps in 2009, including Photo Finder, a facial scanning service for tagging unidentified photos of Facebook friends, and later Photo Tagger, an app which automates the tagging process. And Facebook, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed, hosts five to six times more photos than all competing photo-sharing services combined.
Meanwhile, Polar Rose may be finding its niche as the technology behind the next great facial recognition service or application. For example, last summer Polar Rose partnered with Swedish software and design company The Astonishing Tribe to create an augmented reality concept application called Augmented ID which employed Polar Rose's facial recognition technology in an app that recognized people through a mobile phone's camera in real-time. Earlier this year, the app was re-branded as Recognizr and the company announced plans to ship the app as an Android application in a matter of months. That deadline, sadly, has since come and gone.
As for Polar Rose, it's no longer alone in the licensing game, either, when it comes to facial recognition technology. Rival Face.com launched APIs (tools that allow developers to incorporate the technology into their own applications) back in May of this year. These APIs, free during the early alpha stage of testing, have already been used to power marketing campaigns by Orbit gum and Axe deodorant. Future plans could involve charges - no word yet on that. In any event, despite losing the end user service at PolarRose.com, having multiple companies vying for dominance in the facial recognition space will ultimately be a win for consumers - at least those who aren't creeped out about the technology in the first place.
Last week, Alex Williams posted a list in ReadWriteWeb's Cloud Computing channel of the "!0 Common Mistakes Made by API Providers." Alex's post points to some of the problems that occur in both the technical and the business realms of API development. In the case of the latter, he lists "Poor Community Management" and "Not Recognizing the API as a Core Line of Business" as common business-related errors.
The API has long been seen as a cornerstone of BizDev 2.0, a term coined by Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake. But parallel perhaps to the misconception that "if you build (a product), they will come," is the notion that simply because you've developed an API for your business that you have, in fact, upgraded your business development to that 2.0 level.
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Hunch's VP of Business Development, Shaival Shah has written a post along these lines today, with suggestions on how to "Cannabilize Business Development by Popularizing your API." As Shah writes, the challenge isn't simply to build an API: "the great challenge is how to market your API so that people know a) that it is available, b) how/why to use it and 3) what value they can generate from it."
Shah stresses the marketing of the API and gives the following as goals for doing so:
Developing market awareness about your service and about the availability of your API
Nailing three partner use-cases that are reusable across the market
Establishing metrics for success and developing analytics so you can preserve future monetization options
As Shah notes, the idea of a "self-service" API may be a misnomer, particularly at the beginning, when there are still a lot of "hand-to-hand deals" in order to get those initial partnerships established. From there, Shah invokes the "bowling pin strategy" - finding a niche, then leveraging that to knock down surrounding markets.
Shah argues that this API-oriented business development should be less sales- and more product-oriented. And in the end, suggests Shah describing his own goals for his biz dev role at Hunch, this will "cannibalize" the business development function by popularizing the API.
This week's top story was a no-brainer: the spectacular implosion of Digg's attempted to create a newer, better version of the site. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010: We found 10 videos about the Internet of Things; augmented reality took a trip to the mountains; and Google tested real-time, as-you-type search results. Read on for more.
We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app. As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes.
At Tuesday's Demo Day, the latest batch of Y Combinator startups raved about the experience, the guidance, the resources, the networking that their participation in the incubator program gave them. As of today, YC startups can add another benefit to that long list: priority access to some of Facebook's technologies.
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Y Combinator and Facebook announced today that they'll be teaming up to help encourage and support socially-oriented startups. Facebook says that it will provide "product, technical and design resources to support new Y Combinator companies interested in working with us to build deeply social products, whether a website or an application on Facebook.com. These companies will have priority access to our technologies and programs such as Facebook Credits, Instant Personalization and upcoming beta features."
Facebook once operated its own startup program, the fbFund, but in July said that it had "no plans for future iterations of the program."
By partnering with Y Combinator, says Facebook, it will help foster startups who offer "transformative social experiences." And with priority access to the social networking giant, as well as mentorship from the premier incubator program, future YC startups will no doubt have a solid lead that, as Facebook notes, "others will follow."
Terms that come to describe any new technology can be vague and annoying, especially when marketers start adding a bit of spin.
So we decided to ask for your feedback to see what you think are the worst terms out there in the world of the cloud.
Judging from responses, it looks like most any cloud term gets people a bit irked. But we want to make it official. So we put together a weekly poll on the topic. It seems right to act in a curmudegeon-like fashion for this one. It hit a high of 94 degrees in Portland today. The Bay Area is going through its own scorcher. San Francisco hit a high on Tuesday of 96 degrees. So, with this heat, isn't it also a good time for a good, old-fashioned rant? I mean, where are the clouds when you need them?
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Newsgator'sBrian Kellner pointed to CloudFeed for may of the terms in our poll. Kellner, the company's vice president of of products, also had perhaps the best rant we heard all day:
"The first issue is with the core term. What does it really mean for something to be in the "cloud"? Microsoft has an offering now where you get a bunch of hardware installed in your facility. Or you can have a partner host a platform for you. Is that cloud computing? http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/en/us/cloud-computing.aspx
If you look at platforms like Azure and EC2, you have highly-generic capabilities. You can build pretty nearly anything. On the other hand, if you look at platforms like Salesforce.com and SharePoint Online, you can still build pretty nearly anything but you get some extra capabilities and some extra limitations from utilizing those platforms. Are these all "cloud computing"?"
He concludes:
"Here's my tiny rant on publishing, technology, marketing and noise. Over the last fifteen years of being in the high-tech industry, my observation is that the news generating and distributing people are forced to continuously talk about what's new, and with the era of search (and now link-sharing) behaviors for getting viewership, the motivation to create buzzwords has greatly increased. This is a big part of why we have proliferation of terms like this. The problem is that we quickly get to the point where the words don't mean anything. We consistently hear things like "Social CRM" is hot, but that term has no actual meaning. For the people who actually build real things that solve problems for real people, the motivations that drive the behavior of people who push information is becoming less and less helpful. Maybe I'll come up with some sort of cloud-based secret decoder to translate all the babble. But it will never sell because I won't be able to come up with a clever buzzword name for it... "
Our Top 5
1. Cloud Computing: The term should get an award for the vaguest, abused, misused term of the year. The thing is, we do like the term cloud as a metaphor. It provides a sense of mythology to cloud computing. A sense that it opens us up to new worlds. But that's the dreamy side of the cloud. In reality, the term is used to describe services such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace and every social technology on the planet.
(3. Fill in the blank) as a Service: Platform-as-a-Service? Infrastructure-as-a-Service? How about Anything as a (fill in the blank) Service?
Harvey Matthews, former executive director of the Software Association of Oregon, added a few of his own beauties:
Any phase that attempts to coin a new term to add to the following over-used cloud terminology (fill in the blank below):
"On-demand _____"
"______ as a Service"
"Virtualized ______"
...
4. Mobile Cloud: Is this like a cloud in a Winnebago? Or is cloud-in-a-box better because it is such a wonderful oxymoron. We hear the phrase more often to describe private clouds. Funny...almost.
5. NoSQL: So, now we have a disagreement associated with SQL. How about MaybeSQL?
Microsoft announced new features today to Docs.com, a Facebook app in closed beta that lets users create multi-author Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations for free.
The new features themselves are not earth-shattering, but they show how the team behind Docs.com continues to improve and innovate. The question is, how far will Microsoft go to make Docs.com better before it starts to undermine its flagship Office products?
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Docs.com is part of Microsoft's response to Google Docs, the Web app that revolutionized collaborative editing and introduced people to the idea of letting documents live in the cloud, for free.
Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, outlook and OneNote, costs $279.99 - which seems staggering in the age of so many free Web-based productivity tools.
Microsoft seems to be hoping that Docs.com will convert free users into paid users of Microsoft Office. The company never misses a chance to mention that Docs.com is "built on Microsoft Office 2010" and has "full compatibility with Microsoft Office:"
"The fact that we've been able to adapt the Office 2010 'Web Apps' technology to work directly with Facebook truly speaks to the flexibility and power not just of the Facebook platform, but also of the Office system's rich 'contextual collaboration' capabilities."
Docs.com is just one front in the Microsoft-Google battle over office products. Docs.com seems to be combining the large, engaged (and young!) user base of Facebook with the technology of Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Workspace is a collection of web apps for sharing and collaborating on docs saved on the Web, available for personal use for free.
The features announced today include the ability to tag a document with keywords, search for documents by keywords and authors, and a few tweaks to the interface. The changes are evidence of Microsoft's genuine push to give users a free, Web-based alternative to Google Docs - without making it into an alternative to Microsoft Office 2010.
Docs.com is still in closed beta. To get an idea of how it works, check out the video tutorial.
As far as Web services go, Twitter is pretty easy to use. Fill out a brief profile, follow some people and go, right? Well apparently not. Developers at the company have been fretting over the fact that some people still think Twitter is "too hard" to use.
Microsoft's new mobile OS has shipped to handset makers and will be appearing on phones in time for the holiday season, the company 
The long-awaited update to Windows Mobile is expected to show up on devices from Dell, HTC, Samsung and LG, so there is the possibility that an exciting handset like the 
Last week, Alex Williams posted a list in ReadWriteWeb's Cloud Computing channel of the "
This week's top story was a no-brainer: the spectacular implosion of Digg's attempted to create a newer, better version of the site. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010: We found 10 videos about the 
We recently launched the official 
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At Tuesday's 
Facebook once operated its own startup program, the fbFund, but in July 
Microsoft announced new features today to 