web2

Live blog schedule for Web 2.0 Summit

We'll have team coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit, which starts in San Francisco this morning. Look for analysis posts following the major talks and product launches, and tune in to our Twitter feed of happenings at the conference. Also, there will be live running commentary during a few key sessions. Check back here, on Webware.com, for live coverage:

Speaker Live blog time Jerry Yang of Yahoo. Interview by John Battelle Wednesday, Nov. 5, 4:50 p.m. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Interview by John Battelle Thursday, Nov. 6, 1:45 p.m. Launch Pad: Web 2.… Read more

Web freeloaders can breathe easy at Web 2.0 Summit

With warnings of doom coming from Web investors, and CEOs cutting back on staff in order to focus their companies on revenue, I am not expecting the Web 2.0 Summit, which opens this Wednesday in San Francisco, to be the happy and upbeat affair it's been in years past. People at the conference will be taking a dispassionate look at the business models of the services under discussion this year, as opposed to focusing on user growth amd technology innovation.

This will be interesting, since many of the most popular Web 2.0 services are free. Going into … Read more

"Design Thinking" and marketing

I was interviewed by BrandWeek the other day for a story on the recent hype around “Design Thinking” in marketing. They were looking for a skeptic and found me. First of all, it is worth noting that the term “design thinking” is of course a clever marketing buzzword. It’s ironic that marketers themselves embrace it as the next big thing as it doesn’t create a new marketing paradigm so much as it proves that marketers are prone to being persuaded by their very own tricks. “Design Thinking” has become a brand, and brands are all the more powerful … Read more

Security Bites 120: When social networks host malware

In this week's Security Bites podcast, Robert Vamosi speaks with Ryan Naraine, security evangelist for Kaspersky and Zero Day blogger for ZDNet, about malicious software.

Naraine recently spoke at a conference on emerging security threats sponsored by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center about the increasing risks of malware on social networks, such as Facebook pages that to lead people to Google pages with additional links to malware sites (a two-step infection process), and the more straightforward approach of Facebook being used for botnets.

In this podcast, Naraine and Vamosi talk about the changing nature of threats today and … Read more

Inviting the audience to be part of the film

If you think you know what a movie is, get ready to have your assumptions dashed to pieces.

That's because of Breathe, a multimedia, multipart film project that is in the works from the London-based social entertainment company, Expanding Universe.

Equal parts cinema, alternate-reality game (ARG), dance club, and social network, Breathe is Expanding Universe's attempt at both redefining existing entertainment genres and inventing entirely new ones.

At its most basic level, the project is a multistage, interactive murder mystery with a time line, said Yomi Ayeni, Expanding Universe's creative director.

But Breathe, which the company hopes … Read more

Yahoo!'s Open Strategy steps toward data portability

TechCrunch yesterday posted a thoughtful review of the Yahoo! Open Strategy, a strategy that gets us very close to the data portability that many have been advocating for years. Will it be enough to save Yahoo!?

In a way, it doesn't have to. Part of the allure of open source, open standards, and open data is that it removes the need for any particular company to be the be-all, end-all to a customer's experience. While this may not sound like a winning sales strategy, it's definitely a winning user strategy.

TechCrunch writes:

As part of its strategy … Read more

Pop!Tech: What's next (year)? Redesigning America - transparently, together

(Credit: Plan Spark)

Now that the exhaustively inspirational Pop!Tech 2008  is over, it’s worthwhile taking a look at what’s next, in other words, at the conference's theme for 2009. The organizers’ choice is pretty telling and may be indicative of a larger shift among not only the elite thinkers gathering at Pop!Tech, but also broader public opinion. Succeeding this year’s theme “Scarcity and Abundance” will be “America Reimagined,” a “top-to-bottom look at America’s opportunities, its challenges, and its future” that promises to explore what it means to be a “superpower in the … Read more

There is more to Web domination than Web 2.0

Over the past few months, I've found that a too healthy regard for my own party line on open source occasionally kept me from seeing--or, at least, stating--truths about how to go about building an open-source business.

It turns out that there is more than one good way to "burn the boats."

Judging from Tim O'Reilly's latest post about the cloud, it looks like I'm not the only one to turn a useful trend into an all-consuming principle.

In O'Reilly's case, the principle is Web 2.0. It's a good idea with serious implications for building businesses on the Web, but it has come to explain too much for him. He dismisses cloud computing's potential to harness big systems to earn gargantuan returns (and monopoly power) on the Web. He suggests instead that Web 2.0--the harnessing of collective intelligence and the concept that applications improve the more people use them--is the key to "market domination" (my words, not his).

However, as pointed out astutely by Nick Carr, O'Reilly's single-best example of Web 2.0 dominance--Google--actually disproves his thesis. Google is a classic example of a proprietary business, not a Web 2.0 business. In an effort to see all roads leading to Web 2.0, O'Reilly fails to see that it's just one road among many, as Carr points out:… Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: The layoff notices keep coming

In today's headlines, the economy worsens and tech companies try to cope. For some that means laying off employees. Rafe Needleman, editor of Webware.com, talks with CNET News' Charlie Cooper about what's in store for Web 2.0 in the face of a volatile economy.

Listen now: Download today's podcastApple, Psystar agree to dispute resolution process

Rumor: New touchscreen BlackBerrys on the wayReport: Google calls on advertisers to tout Yahoo ad deal