Web Startups Reboot 'London 2.0'
53679
The city's development scene starts fresh after the dot-com crash, and the Future of Web Apps conference offers proof. Robert Andrews reports from London.
199817
(InfoWorld) - Web 2.0 has come to search engine optimization. Or rather, search engine optimizers have discovered Web 2.0. That's according to experts who spoke on Monday at the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle. "We all go to Google and Yahoo and MSN and Ask.com and make them work for us, that's our job," said Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, an SEO (search engine optimization) consulting company. "Our job is now extended into this new realm." Fishkin and others said that they're carefully using social networking sites to improve traffic to their customers' sites and build their brands. By attracting more traffic and links, sites can improve their search rankings. Some of the social networking sites Fishkin likes to use are YouTube, Wikipedia, Yelp, MySpace, Flickr, and Technorati. Other sites, such as Digg, Del.icio.us, TechCrunch, and Reddit, can also be used to boost brands and awareness through viral marketing, he said. "Social media marketing is about going out to Web 2.0-style sites and approaching them with the mentality of 'I'm going to contribute to this community,'" Fishkin said. That's an important distinction because marketers that use Web 2.0 sites in ways that counter the community's accepted use can run into trouble. "If you break these rules, users get nasty," said Neil Patel, author of the Pronet Advertising blog andÂ CTO at ACS, a search engine optimization company. "They'll keep pestering you and really ruin your life." For instance, a company that submits lots of its own content, creates multiple accounts in order to vote repeatedly, adds biased content, and asks friends for votes will run afoul of most communities, he said. But Patel also had advice for how marketers make the sites work for them. For instance, he recommends working hard to grow your "friends" list. If a marketer submits content and a lot of people vote on it, that marketer should add those people to their friends list. "Or, if you vote on stories and others vote on the same, they probably have similar interests" and could also be added as friends, he said. Also, becoming a top user on one site can translate onto others. Patel is well known on Digg, and when he goes onto Netscape, people there recognize him and then "show me love," he said. MySpace can also be a good outlet to build a brand and improve a company's online presence, said Cindy Krum, senior SEO analyst at Blue Moon Works. Companies can have MySpace profiles for different brands or products or even for specific people at the company who may be well known. Videos, coupons for free stuff, games, and podcasts are all good content for attracting people to MySpace pages, she said. "It's especially powerful because [social networking sites] allow users to publicly affiliate themselves with a brand in a way that is highly visible to their peer set," she said. While some companies may think that their target customer doesn't fit with the demographic of people using many of these social networking sites, the experts say participating in the sites is still worth it. "It's a jump-off point," said Todd Malicoat, an Internet marketing consultant at Stuntdubl, an SEO consulting company. "It may not be my audience at Digg, but if they like what I have to say, it will get to Techmeme, and then I'll get in front of the demographic I really want to go after." They all agreed that social networking sites can really improve a company's online reputation, but only if used carefully. Patel's ultimate words of wisdom: "Do what is ethical, don't jeopardize your brand, think long term."
134311
Nearly one-fourth of companies are now using Web 2.0-social networking software in some form.
430286
There was a dream that was web 2.0...sob Comment Silicon Valley's onanistic elements have been in vinegar-stroke mode for an age over the tussle between Google and Microsoft to invest in $15bn profit-lite social networking phenomenon Facebook.â¦
222648
Live from the San Francisco Web 2.0 Summit, Rafe Needleman and company.
469378
(InfoWorld) - Call it the second Internet bubble, a Web 2.0 revolution, or just a resurgence in really useful tools for busy end-users -- Web applications are catching on quickly. The advantages are clear for applications that work well on the Web: Anytime and anywhere access to your data, good application speed over a broadband connection, automated backups, and streamlined user interfaces that are far easier to use than the bloatware of yesteryear. Well-known services, such as Plaxo.com and Basecamp.com, offer to mobile users the added benefit of being able to tap into their contacts or projects from a smartphone. One of the most compelling reasons to use applications on the Web is that they are almost all free -- at least for now. Here are a few new -- or at least lesser-known -- Web sites that can serve as good replacements for equivalent desktop software. In this roundup, I'll cover the features that make each one noteworthy and offer a few ideas for other candidates worth exploring. Gliffy Gliffy is a flow chart and diagram application that works exactly like Microsoft Visio. To create a flow chart, you just drag icons onto the document area. You can then use arrows and other pointers to create the chart. Like many full-blown Web apps, Gliffy allows you to collaborate with other users by sharing your flow chart in a public workspace. Brainstorming sessions, marketing demos, or just a clear plan on how to implement a hardware or software rollout in a large company become quick and easy -- there's no desktop client to install or site registration to think about. Although Gliffy lacks the pizzazz of a commercial application -- some of the icons for creating a networking flow chart, for example, look too simplistic -- the Web application ran without any problems in both IE7 and Firefox. It does lack a way to quickly align objects or rotate them in set increments using a modifier key. As with most Web apps, Gliffy stores your diagrams automatically and introduces new features without requiring an upgrade. Priscila Melendez, a senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, is a Gliffy user. "I used Gliffy when working on a marketing effort to share network security diagrams with other team members who were off-site," Melendez said. "The ability to share the images created and then to be able to save and use them in publications and documents makes this a great collaboration tool. I believe the way diagrams can be generated and shared is the greatest asset, especially as more companies are starting to open up to telecommuting." ThinkFree Anyone who relies heavily on a word processor for business communication, project documentation, or even just quick cover letters probably already knows the features they like best. For me, one feature that is obviously missing from Web word processors -- including ZoHo Writer and Google Documents -- is the inline spell checker. ThinkFree, billed as "the best online office on earth," distinguishes itself by offering a spell checker -- and it even has custom dictionaries. When you misspell a word, ThinkFree adds a red underline that you can click on to select the correct spelling. It might seem trivial, but because this feature is missing from many other online word processors, it's a definite plus. Of course, ThinkFree Office offers a bevy of additional features: 1GB of storage for documents, Microsoft Office read-and-write support, a global search for both public and private documents and two options for word processing -- a quick edit function with a limited (but more intuitive) feature set, and a power edit mode with more advanced functions. ThinkFree supports word processing, spreadsheets, and online presentations. It uses Java, which means it should support multiple browsers, but at press time, it didn't work with the latest version of Firefox 2. In Internet Explorer 7, all three beta apps worked without any crashes. YouSendIt One of the nagging problems of Web e-mail is that there is no progress indicator that shows you when a large attachment is transferring to the recipient. In Microsoft Live Mail and Gmail, you just wait until you return to the inbox. Even in Microsoft Outlook, the progress bar isn't terribly accurate about how long it will take to send a large attachment. And it's also a guessing game as to whether the recipient can receive a large file or not. One solution to this problem is YouSendIt. The free version allows you to send a 100MB file to any recipient -- neither the sender nor receiver has to register for an account. What I like about YouSendIt more than other options like DropSend.com and MailBigFile.com is that it actually works. I tested about 10 files, each one to a different recipient, and they all worked flawlessly. Other services tend to stall or lose track of the upload. YouSendIt offers scaled membership levels for different transfer capabilities. The $4.99-per-month Plus version, for example, can send attachments up to 2GB in size. There's also an enterprise-level version with extremely high bandwidth so that once you transmit the file, it will become available as a fast download for other corporate users. GrandCentral Think of GrandCentral as a more intuitive and Web-enabled alternative to fixed mobile convergence, allowing you to use one unified phone number for work, home, and cell phone. Granted, it's not an enterprise application with an application programming interface that you can tie into corporate networks, and there are no security features for corporate compliance. But for sales agents or other mobile workers who want more control of their voice communications, GrandCentral works perfectly. Once you understand the benefits of unified messaging -- that people trying to contact you call one number, but all of your phones ring at the same time -- you can go well beyond this core functionality to personalized greetings by phone, call recording, call screening and blocking, and a unique feature called RingShare that plays something different than the traditional "ring ring" sound for callers while they wait for you to pick up. You can even program it so different groups of people hear different sounds. Xdrive Some laptop users have learned the harsh reality of magnetic-media storage: Your local disk can fail, and if you don't have a recent backup for Outlook, your business documents and even seemingly trivial settings like Internet Explorer bookmarks, there's no way to retrieve lost data. Some external storage drives, such as the Western Digital MyBook, provide an Internet storage option, but they're hard to configure and use. Xdrive.com has a new beta service called Web Backup that offers more control over online backups. Just register at xdrive.com (AOL users, just log in with your AOL account) and click on the Beta button and then click Web Backup. You can configure Xdrive to archive documents, photos, and even IE favorites with just a few clicks. Unlike competitors like Mozy.com, it runs entirely on the Web, so you can use it on any computer to archive the contents of that PC. Xdrive is entirely free and comes with 5GB of storage. You can also upload a large file and then share the link with a co-worker so he can download it. An ancillary service called Xdrive Shows is an online presentation system for photos of business slides. Web apps or Web 2.0? You might wonder: what's the difference between a Web application and Web 2.0? Some would say "not much." But Web 2.0 is a broad term that implies usefulness and social engineering. Twitter.com is a good example of a Web 2.0 site because it doesn't look like a desktop application running on the Web, yet it's useful and has a distinct social aspect. Meanwhile, a Web application is less about connecting with friends or even connecting to other Web services and more about being productive. Some people believe that sites like Twitter.com could be part of a short-lived fad and that they don't appeal as much to the business user. John Brandon is a freelance writer and book author who worked as an IT manager for 10 years.
60307
From an online travel organizer  to a real estate pricing game, the ideas of the newest Web  entrepreneurs are still finding attentive ears.
713439
By JESSE NOYES Lycos founder and well-known venture capitalist Bob Davis isn't all that worried about a Web 2.0 bubble.
23050
IT has never been able to prove it's true value to the business, and as such it is treated as a cost center, which is the first thing to get cut in poorly run companies. But with Web 2.0 booming, all the assumptions that you hold about IT should be put on notice: change is in the air. Web 2.0 companies have had to grow their own technology for economic functionality. Free means crap right? Wrong. How many of you keep Yahoo! Mail running on your BlackBerry's along with Exchange because you know Exchange will be down sooner or later?
413794
A Silicon Valley startup aiming to catapult wikis into the mainstream and transform the editable Web sites into an application development platform has attracted a flood of interest for its product beta.
499189
Wanted to blog about this  but I'm about to walk out the door for the night.  "As the number of blogs, news services and other syndicated sources of online information balloons, a new crop of start-ups has emerged promising to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. And venture capitalists and veteran Internet investors Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway are right behind one of them."  "Rojo, a San Francisco start-up in the blog aggregation business, "is wrapping a communications capability around content consumption," said Andreessen, Web browser pioneer, Rojo investor and Opsware chairman. "And the killer app for the Internet is and always has been communication.""  ...  "Rojo founders Chris Alden, ...
535368
Location-based services are trying to revamp the Web experience to be less cumbersome on mobile devices.
571718
Ten years ago last Wednesday, Cafe Cyberia, billed as the world's first Internet cafe, opened in the West End of London.
379653
Today at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference,  Fatdoor&#8482; (www.Fatdoor.com),  a new community networking Web site dedicated to helping people get to  know their neighbors, launched its service in the San Francisco Bay  Area.
85434
The authors of Uncov, a recently-shuttered blog that heaped abuse upon many Silicon Valley startups, have unveiled a startup of their own. Called Persai, it's a sort of search engine that promises to help users find content that interests them.
720533
Looking to bring Web 2.0 technologies to business, the company is introducing a "team collaboration" suite.
581280
TechWeb - CEO Jonathan Schwartz outlines his company's vision for supplying existing and future Web 2.0 companies with the open source tools they'll need.