Still trying to get a grip on web 2.0?… sorry, too late – it’s time to move on to bigger and better things. Richard MacManus recently wrote a post about some of the emerging web trends we are seeing in 2009.
Some of the noticeable trends he cites are greater focus on web services (90% of twitter activity happens through its API!), real-time, open data, structured data (semantic web) and personalization.
Below is a quick introductory presentation he put together on this topic.
There´s nothing new about online DJ sets but the guys at play.fm have pulled off a killer online music site. Robin Wauters recently wrote a post about the reemergence of the site and, yes, it does impress. Based out of Vienna, Austria (my birthplace!), play.fm aims to be a hub for DJ studio mixes, radio sessions and event recordings and currently includes a database of more than 12,000 recordings.
I like this site for a few reasons, most notably:
1) It´s free – you can stream hours of music without interruption at no cost (woot!)
2) Beautiful interface – spanking clean interface and super easy to navigate around the site. the player is just as lovely.
3) Track IDs – ever hear a great track during a set and have no idea what the hell it is? now you can try and find out with the help of community members.
4) Buy stuff you like – I love it when there is a clear business model that provides real value for me: I find a track I like. I purchase it. I own it.
play.fm
This video has been getting heavy circulation… but for good reason. Nathan “Flutebox” Lee and Beardyman please the Google employees with their incredible beatboxing skills.
Might take some time to load, but well worth watching.
I had a chance to stop by Innovate! Europe in Zaragoza yesterday for the presentations of the top 10 Master Class Finalists. Lots of solid projects presented with varying focus… everything from web-based “passion” games to enterprise email and collaboration solutions.
Congratulations to all of the participants, in particular, NomaDesk who was recognized as the 2009 winner.
The 10 finalists included:
eBox – platform for managing corporate networks
Proactum – open source enterprise applications
Owlient – online passion games
JobiJoba - job search engine
Nomadesk - virtual file server
Climpact – climate business intelligence solution
Local Data Company – detailed retail data
Calinda – email collaboration and project management software
Arimaz – interactive toy applications
MyPrinting – personalized photo products
Europe’s top 11 10 internet startups have been announced for the 2009 Startup 2.0 event. The finalists will present their projects on Friday April 24 in Bilbao, as part of the Nonick conference. The line-up looks something like this:
CampusMovil, a home desktop
Colnect, a collectors community
Genoom, a family tree network
Gli Affidabili , a yelp-like services 2.0 guide
HelloTxt, a social networks and microblogging aggregator
Koinup, a virtual world
Mobnotes, a geo-aware social utility
SocialWhale, a twitter utility
Trourist, a social network for travellers
Twidox, a document finding and sharing website
Yoolinkpro, a SaaS collaborative intelligence solution for companies
*disclaimer: I work for Genoom
Looking for a live search tool for your blog ? Then check out Sikbox, a light-weight and impressive search application that can be easily embedded to a site with a simple piece of code. We added it to our celebrity site and the results are displayed fairly fast in a very nice, slick user interface. The relevancy of the results is still not perfect, but overall it´s pretty decent.
There is also support for image search and, best of all, it´s free and customizable.
eMarketer posted and interesting report today about media usage by US internet users. Undoubtedly, traditional media is languishing (tv networks, local news and newspapers) and 2009 is poised to hurt even more.
According to the report, the two shiny stars among internet media are social networks (up 9% from 2006) and blogs (up 11% from 2006). Surprisingly, search engine usage has slightly dropped. Another interesting piece that caught my eye is that mobile media consumption in the U.S. has hardly changed and still remains very low at 6%, bottom of the list.
With all the great things happening in the mobile world (browsing + apps + iphone + etc, etc.) it’s hard to believe mobile is so slow to catch on in the U.S., but proves it’s still hard nut to crack.
U.S. Media Trends 2006-2008
Yahoo! just announced the Top Ten Searches of 2008 and it looks like the celebrities still have a mighty presence in the world of search. The results for this year look something like this:
1. Britney Spears (number one again, seven of the last eight years)
2. WWE
3. Barack Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. RuneScape
6. Jessica Alba
7. Naruto
8. Lindsay Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie
10. American Idol
Coincidentally, this week was the launch of our new celebrity news aggregator site called SoSoJuicy.com. This was a fun little project that we created to simply find out what are the top news headlines in the celebrity and entertainment world.
I won´t get into all the details, have a look for yourself. =)
Here´s a good one… NapSounds. Napsounds is a simple website that offers a selection of sleep-inducive sounds to help you relax and take a power nap. Choose “Electronic”, “Classical” or “Nature” to play a free 20 minute sound track for your nap.
This is how they explain it:
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is used in the text, binaural beats induce relaxation state and a smooth overall mix enables you to relax quickly and efficiently with beautiful, energizing, free electronic sounds.
Does it work? Who knows. But they do make a good case for getting horizontal after lunch break.
There are lots of SEO tools out there but this one I actually like. It´s called Quarkbase and provides a quick and dirty snapshot of a website´s key information from various online data sources. Easy to use, nice interface, and great way to spy on other sites.
I came across it via Ann Smart´s post on Search Engine Journal.
