It's no secret that we at ReadWriteWeb have a lot of love for startups that make their homes outside Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.
Over the last year, we decided to make a few videos spotlighting some unique, unexpected locations where startups thrive, where tech scenes are vibrant, where cooperation outstrips competition, and where creativity runs rampant. One of the first cities we'd like to introduce you to is home to between 150 and 170 startups as well as a thriving entrepreneurial and creative community. Welcome to Boulder, Colorado.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
With the startup accelerator program at TechStars acting as a lightning rod, this area has grown from an earthy university town to a true hotbed of innovation. In certain parts of downtown, you can't throw a rock without hitting some startup's offices, and I could barely walk three blocks without bumping into at least one entrepreneur, developer, or designer working at a company such as Threadless or AOL.
We interviewed a couple of local startup advisors and one startup team about the culture and community in Boulder. Watch and listen to what they have to say; there are more than a few reasons tech-minded residents love this gorgeous mountain town.
In an ironic twist of fate for 2009, Fox's IGN Entertainment, a company known for its game reviews of products like Zombie Apocalypse acquired What They Play. The newest member of Fox Interactive is touted as the "family guide to video games" and offers reviews, warnings and suggested products. Under the umbrella company of What They Like, What They Play uses the "Entertainment Software Rating Board" (ESRB) to warn parents of games containing explicit lyrics, cartoon violence and drug references.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
In an age when gross-out sites like goatse are just a click away, a number of services offer parents the information they need to find quality online entertainment. While past generations were raised on unfiltered television and video games, today's parent take a more active role in the process of media consumption.
AOL's PlaySavvy: PlaySavvy is another site that offers parents a chance to check out age-appropriate kids games. Similar to What They Play, this site lists the ESRB ratings next to games and information is categorized by topic and gaming system. Products for console favorites like Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii are often featured on the site. AOL also offers parents daily articles and a section to view the most popular games.
Parents' Choice: Established in 1978, this site is run by the Parents' Choice Foundation - a nonprofit organization that offers awards to the top children's media and toys. Some of the award categories include websites, video games, DVDs, software, television programming and toys. This site definitely skews towards narrative-based educational materials. If your kid has a shorter attention span, you might want to visit PBS Kids instead.
Common Sense Media: Common Sense media is a nonprofit organizations dedicated to offering parents reviews and suggestions on appropriate content. The group produces movie, website, TV, game, book and music ratings as well as a number of educational tools for classroom use. The site can be personalized for kids between the ages of 2-17 years old and it's available in English and Spanish. This site tends to weigh the benefits of mainstream media sites.
PBS KIDS Island: This site offers parents reading resources, videos and games in English and Spanish. While the majority of the content is best queued up by a parent or teacher, the videos are of particularly high quality and completely commercial free.
National Geographic for Kids: This site offers kid-friendly games, videos, stories and activities for nature lovers. The same photography that has made National Geographic a hit with grownups is likely to please kids. Not surprisingly, the video content is equally compelling. Discovery Kids offers a similar experience and is a great site for visual learners.
Totlol: Totlol is a parent-moderated version of YouTube. The site offers video options specifically designed for children and even offers "age optimized interfaces" to ensure that kids of different ages get the most appropriate content. In 2008, ReadWriteWeb covered Totlol's beta launch. As of today the site charges a $3 per month subscription fee or $54 until your child grows up.
In 2009, when Ray Ozzie stepped into the ring with the news that Microsoft was launching a full-on social lab, it was clear that the Enterprise 2.0 movement was moving into a new phase.
Now comes the question of what effect Microsoft will have on the way Enterprise 2.0 evolves and what roles the players that are early to the game will play in its future.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
Ozzie is Microsoft's chief architect and one of the most respected people in tech circles. Lillian Cheng will lead the Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs and report to Ozzie. Cheng is a luminary in her own right, leading a number of research efforts for Microsoft, including the Vista UI.
FUSE will combine three labs: The Creative Systems Group, which has been led by Cheng, and the Rich Media Labs and Startup Labs, now commandeered by Ray Ozzie.
In an email to Microsoft employees this week, the message was pretty clear about the direction the company will take with its technology development. In essence, the tea leaves say that pretty much every product at Microsoft will include social or sharing features. FUSE will serve as a resource for the product groups. In Ozzie's words:
Myriad scenarios involving the notion of 'social' have now gone far beyond communications and collaboration and are transforming experiences that are key to our customers and key to our business, in leisure & entertainment; productivity & teamwork; experiences extending how we use the OS itself.
The three groups being combined have concrete skills and code in areas where 'social' meets sharing; where 'social' meets real-time; where 'social' meets media; where 'social' meets search; where 'social' meets the cloud plus three screens and a world of devices.
FUSE Labs will bring more coherence and capability to those advanced development projects where they're already actively collaborating with product groups to help them succeed with 'leapfrog' efforts. Working closely with (Microsoft Research) and across our divisions, the lab will prioritize efforts where its capabilities can be applied to areas where the company's extant missions, structures, tempo or risk might otherwise cause us to miss a material threat or opportunity.
Microsoft's apparent deep commitment will create a rising tide for the Enterprise 2.0 movement, which is already in full swing. A number of best-in-breed applications are being used by business people. Microsoft's high-profile commitment will further fuel interest in these applications.
Part of this is just the natural order that is taking place. Corporations have historically relied on document-based systems such as Sharepoint. Web pages reflect the next extension, but they, too, are essentially a form of a document. Enterprise 2.0 is forcing a change by fitting social layers that surface information from traditional data silos. That shows no sign of slowing down. FUSE will push the effort forward in its work with the product groups. It will be a wholly different kind of approach that has its roots in IT more than in the business departments.
A Different Development Burden
Microsoft faces a different developmental burden than what faces the young best-of-breed companies that are building social applications for their business customers.These companies are building products from scratch that they can quickly change without worrying about software upgrades. Their products will continue to fill a gap for the business manager. This means that the Enterprise 2.0 movement will see a dual form of growth, both from business and IT departments.
How Will The Customer Fare?
Perhaps more interesting will be the changing dynamics for Microsoft customers. I spoke with Tim Young, CEO of Socialcast about this topic. The advantage of social technologies is their ease of use and how they fit into a line of business. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools can be treated as an expense. They perform a service. Business users like that model. The applications are easy to use and affordable. They do not require an IT team to put in place.
Business users have been free to use these technologies at will. They have been pretty much ignored by the IT Department. But recently, Microsoft has been pressuring their IT contacts to upgrade to Sharepoint 2010.
People we speak to say that IT is now starting to ask business users about the social technologies they are using. IT is skeptical to some extent. They have relationships with Microsoft that are important to maintain.
But unlike in the past, business users are the early technology adopters and hold a bit of power. They have started using social technologies and are not looking back. They have crossed the chasm and are looking to employ these applications even more. The news from Microsoft just proves that the social enterprise is here to stay.
Microsoft is not in such a bad space. Companies are still heavily reliant on spreadsheets and email. Documents remain the crown jewels of the organization. Their social offering only stands to improve with FUSE now in place. Several companies, like Jive Software, are integrating their products with Sharepoint, providing an edge they previously did not have.
We expect Microsoft will play a heavy hand in how Enterprise 2.0 evolves. But the foundation has already been established to some extent without them. They have their own allies in the enterprise. Now it's just a question of how fast the culture shifts.
During my visit to MIT earlier this year I met up with Henry Holtzman, Chief Knowledge Officer of the MIT Media Lab. We discussed the Internet of Things, which Holtzman has been actively involved in since the 90s. Holtzman said that consumer apps for Web-connected objects are becoming more common; he refers to this as an emerging "ecology of devices." There are many real world objects being connected to the Internet nowadays, he said, and they are beginning to act in concert.
Read on to find out which Internet of Things products have most impressed Henry Holtzman lately, plus we explore some of his own projects.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
I started off by remarking that the Internet of Things is ramping up in 2009. Holtzman replied that it's been many years in the making - for example he did a project back in 1997 involving putting RFID tags onto Pokemon figures. Indeed Holtzman created a commercial company in 1998 to output Internet of Things products.
Consumer Electronics 2.0
A Wired article from February 2000 outlines how Holtzman founded Presto Technologies in 1998, with fellow MIT Lab professors Andrew Lippman (see our recent post featuring Lippman) and Michael Hawley. The Presto network embedded RFID tags in objects. It was an early version of Internet of Things.
The vision for Presto was to make it an e-commerce tool - "products become roving portals for the companies that make them," according to the 2000 Wired article. While it was too early for that vision to transpire fully, Presto is still operating. One of its current products, PrestoPass, allows consumers to make purchases "by simply waving a card, key tag, or even a wristwatch."
Nowadays Holtzman refers to this trend as "consumer electronics 2.0." He cites an MIT spin-off company, Ambient Devices, as one to watch in this area. One of their products is the Ambient Clock, which can hook up to your Google Calendar.
Henry Holtzman's Favorite 2009 Products
As we've been reporting here on ReadWriteWeb this year, there are plenty of Internet of Things products making their presence felt in 2009. I asked Holtzman which products from the current era have particularly impressed him?
He replied that he really likes Violet, the company behind the Nabaztag (a cute robot rabbit that can deliver anything from ambient information, through lights and sounds, to verbal information). We reviewed Violet back in May.
Touchatag (formally known as Tikitag) is another company to have impressed Holtzman. As we wrote in February, Touchatag allows you to program your own RFID tags so that they can do anything you want. Holtzman said that he's been very impressed by the decisions the company has made, for example using adhesives. He also likes their 'web 2.0 savvy' - they host everything, but let the users create the content.
Internet of Things Concepts & Issues
I asked Henry Holtzman what other concepts are interesting him currently, as well as what issues are still to be overcome in the emerging Internet of Things.
He talked about using sensors as an "additional sense," by putting a tag reader on people. Not dissimilar to another Media Lab project we wrote about recently, a wearable internet system which aims to become a "sixth sense." Holtzman said that possible uses for sensors on people include: finding objects (for example your keys), raising an alert (e.g. a safety warning), a memory assist device, being a bridge between what you do in the real world and what gets recorded on your social network (e.g. Facebook updating when you're in certain locations; which we mentioned here).
As for issues: while currently light and temperature sensors are popular, Holtzman thinks that we need to do better job with location. But this is where RFID comes in.
One big issue that Holtzman is concerned about is identity. He told me that mobile phones that interact with objects using NFC (Near Field Communication) will need to work out how to federate around the same ID for a user. This is perhaps similar to the identity issues that the browser-based Web has.
Privacy and security are two other important issues that Holtzman has been focusing on of late.
It was great to speak with Henry Holtzman - someone with extensive experience, both theoretical and practical, in the Internet of Things. Let us know your own thoughts in the comments.
We've now compiled the main points into a single presentation, available on Slideshare and embedded below. You can view the presentation in full screen by clicking the "full" button at the bottom of the presentation. You can also download the presentation as a Powerpoint file. All of the links in the presentation are clickable, should you wish to explore a certain topic more.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
A study released earlier this year by Anderson Analytics looked into the demographics and psychographics of social networking users on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn with a goal of providing marketers with information about users' interests and buying habits as related to their network of choice. The end result is a detailed look at the profiles and habits of social networking users on the web today.
Some of the study's findings echo things we've already heard. For example, Facebook users tend to be old, white, and rich. MySpace users are young...and fleeing. Other info is new: Twitterers are more likely to have a part-time job, LinkedIn users like to exercise and own more gadgets.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
The Anderson study sampled over 11,000 GreenfieldOnline panelists (an online survey community) over an 11 month period to understand social networking services' (SNS) reach and overlap among the U.S. Online Population. In May, the company surveyed an additional 5,000 panelists of which over 1,250 participated in an in-depth attitude and usage survey. They then grouped the participants into two categories: those who use social networks and those who don't. To be considered a social network user, the participant had to use one of the sites in question in the past 30 days.
Of course, not everyone is devoted to one social network alone. The study found that there is some overlap between sites, as shown in the chart below.
Social Networkers, in General
Out of the 110 million Americans (or 60% of the online population) who use social networks, the average social networking user logs on to these sites quite a bit. They go to social networking sites 5 days per week and check in 4 times a day for a total of an hour per day. Nine percent of that group stay logged in all day long and are "constantly checking what's new."
Interacting with Brands
When it comes to brands online, the study found that:
52% of social networkers had friended or become a fan of at least one brand,
17% felt positive when seeing a brand on a social network,
19% felt negative when seeing a brand on a social network,
64% were neutral or didn't care about brands on social networks,
20% would like to see more communication from brands online,
35% would not like to see more communication,
45% were neutral or didn't care.
Social Networking Myths Shot Down
A couple of interesting things that came out of the study included the debunking of some social networking myths. Social networkers are not as interested in friending strangers or creating "fake" friends to boost their ego. Out of the group, 45% connect only to family and friends and another 18% will connect only to people they've met in person. In other words, two-thirds are connecting to people they actually know. Only 10% of those surveyed said they will friend anyone.
Also interesting is that only 15% of social networkers say they log on at work, thus debunking another myth about how prevalent social network use is at the workplace.
Non-Social Networkers
The study revealed the reasons why some online users aren't into social networks. Surprisingly, it's not because they hate technology - they spent just as much time on the web as the networkers do. Instead, they don't use social media because either they don't have the time, they don't think it's secure, or they think it's stupid. Yet even out of the time-starved group, 22% report they'll start using social media in 3 months and 27% said they'll start using it in a year.
Continue to Part 2 for details on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Sometimes, it feels like terms we thought had some meaning really don't apply as much anymore.
Take the term "social media," as an example.
It's like every SEO marketer decided that "social media," was the ticket to a sweet consulting gig. Just look at Twitter. You find a lot of social media experts with tens of thousands of followers. Kind of feels like you are looking down a street filled with hucksters.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
Social media once served as a term to help people understand the concepts that have risen over the past several years. It helped people understand the tools that can be used to gain a web presence. But the term took too broad of a meaning.
At some point, a nervous rush ensued. Everyone needed a social media strategy. In the process, the term and the rush for "social media" adoption became ripe for satire:
A More Holistic Approach
But that's only part of the story. The other, more accurate story, reflects a trend toward a more holistic approach in the enterprise. Social media may only represent the tools we use but social computing reflects a deeper view of how the enterprise will adopt this new generation of lightweight technologies. We disagree that executives will continue to shun the term "social." If they continue to do so, they will be swept out by a generation of far more modern managers.
Still, companies lack the capabilities and the discipline to develop operations that integrate lightweight applications into the enterprise. They need help. They use the new tools available but lack the experience for implementation. There is a need for more community managers who can help with the overall approach. These people are not "social media" managers. They use social media tools to help join a culture that is fragmented in part due to the "data silo" approach that has become predominant in the enterprise.
We spoke with the people behind two consulting companies about their approach to social computing in the enterprise: Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 and the Dachis Group.
Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0
Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 is a new consulting company started by Dion Hinchcliffe and Michael Krigsman. The enterprise, in their view, is still wary of social computing. They are primarily concerned about risk, control and trust.
To succeed with social computing, the enterprise has to work toward three major goals:
Address key business concerns
Demonstrate business value
Acquire social computing competency
Both Krigsman and Hinchcliffe are respected members of the Enterprise 2.0 community. Hinchliffe is the founder of Hinchliffe and Associates. Krigsman leads Asuret, a company that focuses on project intelligence and risk navigation. They work exclusively with Socialtext, led by Ross Mayfield. Socialtext predates the Enterprise 2.0 movement.
Their approach is a combination of Hinchliffe's 20 years of experience as an enterprise architect and Krigsman's long time work examining IT failure. Socialtext is their de-facto technology environment, which they chose after a review of about 70 companies.
The company begins its project by gathering intelligence, followed by tool integration, community management development and a degree of project intelligence to define the risks involved.
"We gather strategic intelligence to avoid the downsides and reduce project waste," Krigsman said in an interview. "We leverage best of breed social tools and build social computing competency."
Dachis sees the enterprise going through an age-old transformation. Traditional software is essentially adapting to a new age. They call their approach: "Social Business Design."
Social Business Design, as they view it, is the process of creating socially calibrated and dynamic business systems, process and culture. That's a mouth full but it reflects the enterprise demand for measured systems that show people are being productive and getting the work done.
Unlike Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0, Dachis is technology agnostic, partnering with vendors when it makes sense.
The Dachis approach puts a large emphasis on the need to focus on process, culture and technology. This means creating a plan for systems architecture, helping companies adapt to the cultural changes involved and all the aspects of the enterprise that need to be taken into consideration. This means understanding issues about governance and having a pretty keyed in measurement strategy.
Here's their slide deck. It's a long one but it moves along. Pretty good, overall:
Social media is still a term we use. But it has become so cliche that it is somewhat of a turn off. It's important to distinguish that the people who have championed the cause for social computing are often deeply involved with the "social media" community. They are important people in the enterprise who should be sought for leadership in bringing the world of social computing to the ways we conduct business.
Social media sounds too much like buzz hype. We need to get down to business. Social computing is a good thing. But even better is the proof that these practices work so we may use tools that help get the work done.
According to a new report from Cambridge University (PDF), students aren't interested in being able to read eBooks and eJournals on their mobile phones. Instead, users are far more interested in opening hours, location maps, contact info, and access to the library catalog. Most respondents were also far more interested in getting alerts by text message than being able to use library resources over the mobile web.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
According to the researchers, libraries that serve colleges should invest in text alerting services, and text reference services instead of mobile web services. With text alerting services, users could receive alerts when books are due, for example, while text reference services would give students access to the library reference desk over SMS. The report also advises libraries to allow mobile phone use in their buildings, "as long as they are set to silent or to flight mode."
It is important to note that the researchers only surveyed users at Cambridge University and the Open University, so these results are somewhat skewed and only apply to the U.K., where text messaging is even more prevalent than in the United States.
The report, however, also found that users of more advanced phones like the iPhone are far more inclined to read e-books on their phones than users of feature phones (no surprise there, given the difference in screen estate and quality). In the end, though, the report argues that it is currently "not worth libraries putting development resource into delivering content such as e-books and e-journals to mobile devices at present."
Too Conservative?
While these recommendations seem reasonable based on the survey data, we agree with Lorcan Dempsey, a library blogger and Vice President of OCLC, who argues that with the advent of better eReaders and the iPhone, these survey results will probably look very different in just a few years from now.
As Sarah Bartlett from the Panlibus blog points out, the recommendations in this report are anchored in the past (getting SMS alerts about due books, for example), while now would be a good time to "re-imagine the library and its services."
While some libraries are often conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies, we would think that starting to adopt some of these technologies like e-books and better mobile services now would help these institutions to remain relevant in a future where those large buildings in the middle of campus are already turning more into places for study groups to meet up and grab a cup of coffee than centers of academic research.
CC-licensed image used courtesy of Flickr user umjanedoan.
This week ReadWriteWeb is running a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest Web trends of 2009. So far we've explored these trends: Structured Data, The Real-Time Web, Personalization, Mobile Web / Augmented Reality. The fifth and final part of our series is about the Internet of Things, when real world objects (such as fridges, lights and toasters) get connected to the Internet. In 2009, this trend has ramped up and is adding a significant amount of new data to the Web.
In this post we'll see how companies as big as IBM and as small as Pachube are building up this new world of Internet data and services.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
What is The Internet of Things?
The Internet of Things is a network of Internet-enabled objects, together with web services that interact with these objects. Underlying the Internet of Things are technologies such as RFID (radio frequency identification), sensors, and smartphones.
The Internet fridge is probably the most oft-quoted example of what the Internet of Things will enable. Imagine a refrigerator that monitors the food inside it and notifies you when you're low on milk. It also perhaps monitors all of the best food websites, gathering recipes for your dinners and adding the ingredients automatically to your shopping list. This fridge knows what kinds of foods you like to eat, based on the ratings you have given to your dinners. Indeed the fridge helps you take care of your health, because it knows which foods are good for you.
However, we're not quite at that level of sophistication yet in the Internet of Things. As we discovered in our Internet Fridges State of the Market in July, current Internet fridges are more about entertainment than utility.
IBM and The Internet of Things
One of the leading big companies in Internet of Things is IBM, which offers a range of RFID and sensor technology solutions. IBM has been busy working with various manufacturers and goods suppliers in recent months, to introduce those solutions to the world.
For example IBM announced a deal at the end of June with Danish transportation company Container Centralen. By February 2010, Container Centralen undertakes to use IBM sensor technology "to allow participants in the horticultural supply chain to track the progress of shipments as they move from growers to wholesalers and retailers across 40 countries in Europe." Specifically this refers to transportation of things like flowers and pot plants, which are very sensitive to the environment they travel in. Having sensors as part of the entire travel chain will allow participants to monitor conditions and climate during travel. Essentially it makes the travel process very transparent.
Pachube: Building a Platform for Internet-Enabled Environments
IBM is a leading bigco active in the Internet of Things. At the other end of the spectrum is a small UK startup which has impressed us a lot this year: Pachube. It was one of 5 Internet of Things services that we profiled in February and we followed up with an in-depth look at the service in May.
Pachube, (pronounced "PATCH-bay") lets you tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments both physical and virtual. In a blog post by Tish Shute, Pachube founder Usman Haque explained that Pachube is about "environments" moreso than "sensors." In other words, Pachube aims to be responsive to and influence your environment - for example your home.
Conclusion
What's the point of all this new object data from the Internet of Things? As well as the new types of functionalities it will enable, such as health monitoring by Internet fridges, the sheer amount of new data about an object should lead to better quality goods and better decision-making by consumers. For example when you buy a loaf of bread from the grocery store, it will have its own RFID tag - which theoretically can tell you when it was produced, when it was packaged, how long it traveled to get to the store, whether the temperature during its travel was optimal, the pricing history of the product, what the precise ingredients are and associated health benefits (or dangers), and much more information.
That ends our look at the 5 biggest trends of the Web in 2009. First thing next week we will post a round-up, along with a downloadable presentation.
Let's say you're a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. You want to get up to speed on the social media activity in your market, as fast as you can. Or perhaps you want to sell things to candlestick makers online, or you're a journalist writing a story about blogging butchers, or maybe you've got some kind of weird baking fetish or academic interest.
Is there any way to ramp up your knowledge of these fields, fast, other than the "Google and wander" method? We think there is. Below you'll find step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for the process we use when we want to get smart about a new field in a hurry.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
Works With Just About Anything
We'll use the field of Education as our example, because there is a lot of activity there and we presume we've got more educators as readers here than butchers or candlestick makers. These methods can be applied to discovering the hottest people and topics in social media in any field, though.
If you doubt that these kinds of steps could help in your line of work - check out this post, where we found the best work-related RSS feeds for Fire Inspectors and Physical Therapists, just to prove that we could.
In the following 13 steps, we'll walk you through how we identify top blogs on any topic, how we quickly figure out what their most popular recent posts have been about, how we incorporate their blog archives into our knowledge about the field and how we find where else they are participating in conversation around the web. Going through the whole process takes us less time than it took us to write this post.
No end of variations are possible, of course, on this method - but we expect a lot of readers will find this useful. People new to social media are often frustrated when they are told to "join the conversation" - because they aren't sure where to find the conversation. Here's how we find and track the most popular conversations in niche fields. Popularity isn't a perfect judge of quality by any means, but it's a good place to start from.
Is this post a cheat sheet? Maybe, but we think of it as a way for you to make your cheat sheet on whatever sector you follow.
Find The Most Popular Blogs in Your Field
There are many different ways to identify the top blogs in a given field, systematically, but some methods work better than others depending on the niche you're looking at. We compared six of our favorite methods in this post. Here, we found that visiting http://delicious.com/tag/blog+teaching gave us good results. By default the URLs are listed in reverse chronological order - the most recent items that anyone has bookmarked and have ever been called both "blog" and "teaching" will appear first. In the image above you can see that we're running two Greasemonkey scripts called Autopagerize and Sort By Popularity. Greasemonkey is really easy to use, see our post How to Learn to Use Greasemonkey in 5 Minutes.. These scripts let us open multiple pages of bookmarks all at once and then sort them in order of popularity.
So we did that, then scanned down the top several pages of most popular items tagged both "blog" and "teaching." We tried words other words like "education" as well. Each time we found a good site, we copied the link to it and went to step two.
Add The Feeds to a Reader
We like to use Netvibes to build collections of feeds because it's easy. Click on "add items" then "add feed" and paste in the link to the top blog you found. Netvibes will auto-discover the RSS feed for the site, often multiple variations but it shouldn't matter which one you choose. We pick "RSS 2.0" just because it's the most standard. Add it to your page and then go back to Delicious to find more sources.
We repeated the discovery step until we found about 10 good blogs to subscribe to. Then we visited those blogs and looked at their "blogrolls" or sidebar links to their favorite blogs. We found a number of good sources to include in our list that we had never heard of before. One was a good looking blog about education and technology that was written in Spanish, so we grabbed its feed and ran it through Mloovi.com to have it automatically translated into English, then put that translated feed into Netvibes.
Once you've got a good collection of top blogs in that Netvibes "tab" it's time to get it out of there. You can read the blogs in Netvibes, but there's more that we're going to do with these blogs. When you're in the "add feed" screen, you'll see an "OPML Export" link. OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is the format that reading lists are imported and exported from feed readers in. It's really simple. Export it to your dekstop and then move onto the next step below. We're now going to edit an OPML file - but don't be scared! It's easy, we promise. Anyone can do it.
Pull Out Your New Tab's Feeds
This step assumes you've using Netvibes, or some other start page, for other things in addition to this project. If that's not the case, skip to the next step. We use Netvibes for a number of different things, so when we put together a new collection of feeds in it and want to export them, we have to deal with the fact that our whole collection of feeds in all our tabs gets exported. Simply search for the title of your tab in the file, then delete everything outside of that section! Everything except the very beginning and end of the file, that is. You can see what it should look like below, in the next step.
The Top of the OPML File.
Don't delete the document type declaration of the body tags. Rename the title of the file and resave your document. Now don't you feel smart? That was really easy though!
Now to Find the Hottest Posts from Those Top Blogs
Now that you've got an OPML file of the most popular blogs in your field, you can take that file over to Postrank.com and import it. You'll need to create an account, and the service doesn't allow you to manage multiple OPML files, so you may need to create a new account for every time you do something like this. I just create a new account with a GMail alias. Did you know that as while other apps, like Postrank, think that emailmarshall@gmail.com, emailmarshall+1@gmail.com and emailmarshall+2@gmail.com are all different emails - Gmail considers them the same thing? It's true, that's an alias and all emails sent to any of those will end up in the same inbox. So I create a new account for each OPML file (silly, but that's how you've got to do some of these things) and then import my new OPML file.
Rank the Blog Posts With Robots!
Once you import that OPML file from your desktop, you'll probably notice that Postrank has seen some of the feeds and not seen others. You should probably come back in an hour once they've processed the remaining feeds. What are they doing? They are checking every item in every feed to see how many comments it has, how many inbound links, how man times it's been bookmarked in Delicious or Digg, how many times people Tweeted about it, etc. It's then ranking each item in each feed on a scale of 1 to 10, relative only to the other items in that same feed.
What does this mean? It means you can have Postrank show you only the most popular posts in each of these top blogs, as determined by the blogs' own communities of readers. That's valuable information! It's a very fast way to get up to speed on the latest hot topics in your field and by subscribing to the feeds filtered for popular items, you can pay peripheral attention to this field but know that you'll never miss a really big story. Thanks Postrank!
If you're interested in the Greatest Hits of Top Education Bloggers, here's the OPML file we built with the feeds we've found so far: Top Education Blogs - Greatest Hits. Just right click and save that link, then upload it to your feed reader.
It's no secret that we at ReadWriteWeb have a lot of love for startups that make their homes outside Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.
In an ironic twist of fate for 2009, Fox's IGN Entertainment, a company known for its game reviews of products like Zombie Apocalypse acquired 
In 2009, when Ray Ozzie stepped into the ring with the news that Microsoft was launching a full-on social lab, it was clear that the Enterprise 2.0 movement was moving into a new phase. 
During my visit to MIT earlier this year I met up with 
The vision for Presto was to make it an e-commerce tool - "products become roving portals for the companies that make them," according to the 2000 Wired article. While it was too early for that vision to transpire fully, Presto is still operating. One of its current products, PrestoPass, allows consumers to make purchases "by simply waving a card, key tag, or even a wristwatch." 
Over the last week we ran a series of posts outlining the five biggest Internet trends of this year: 
Sometimes, it feels like terms we thought had some meaning really don't apply as much anymore.
According to a new report from Cambridge University (
The Internet fridge is probably the most oft-quoted example of what the Internet of Things will enable. Imagine a refrigerator that monitors the food inside it and notifies you when you're low on milk. It also perhaps monitors all of the best food websites, gathering recipes for your dinners and adding the ingredients automatically to your shopping list. This fridge knows what kinds of foods you like to eat, based on the ratings you have given to your dinners. Indeed the fridge helps you take care of your health, because it knows which foods are good for you. 
One of the 
IBM is a leading bigco active in the Internet of Things. At the other end of the spectrum is a small UK startup which has impressed us a lot this year: 
Let's say you're a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. You want to get up to speed on the social media activity in your market, as fast as you can. Or perhaps you want to sell things to candlestick makers online, or you're a journalist writing a story about blogging butchers, or maybe you've got some kind of weird baking fetish or academic interest.
Is there any way to ramp up your knowledge of these fields, fast, other than the "Google and wander" method? We think there is. Below you'll find step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for the process we use when we want to get smart about a new field in a hurry.
