web2

SAN FRANCISCO--At some point during the TechCrunch50 conference it became evident that the Web 2.0 floodgates are no longer open.

Maybe it was when conference co-organizer Jason Calacanis asked one of the panels of judges what they'd thought of a round of pitches from just-launched social-networking start-ups like inbox aggregator Threadsy and photo-sharing iPhone app Clixtr. Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder and former Facebook exec who will be portrayed as a "Silicon Valley bad boy" in the film adaptation of Ben Mezrich's dot-com scandal tome "The Accidental Billionaires," leaned his elbows on the … Read more

Web 2.0 sites that enable people to create content are increasingly used to carry out a wide range of attacks, according to a new security study.

Websense's State of Internet Security" (PDF), released Tuesday, notes that attackers are focusing their attention on interactive Web 2.0 elements. Some 95 percent of user-generated comments on blogs, message boards, and chat rooms are either spam or contain malicious links, the security vendor warned.

"The very aspects of Web 2.0 sites that have made them so revolutionary--the dynamic nature of content on the sites, the ability for anyone … Read more

After participating in a Digital Brand Think Tank in Munich a couple of weeks ago (a lively discussion with 20 marketing executives from Audi, BMW, Google, Continental, and other top-tier brands), I must admit that I’m a bit tired of having to evangelize (or even justify) the value of brands using social media. It is astonishing to me that companies still ask for evidence when the tweet is on the wall. The event showed that there is a new Digital Divide that cuts straight through the ranks of the marketing industry--some executives get the Social Web, some don’t. … Read more

Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's former CEO and current chairman, has been in semi-retirement for the past two years, but you'd never know it from listening to his interview with the BBC's Peter Day. Szulik, ever the revolutionary, talks up open source's opportunity to disrupt conventional software and promote social reform.

As he does so, however, he inadvertently describes Red Hat's winning open-source business model as directly parallel to the Web 2.0 business models deployed by Google and others. While this isn't surprising (I've written about it before), it was the first time … Read more

These days, it's virtually impossible to avoid open-source software. If you're a Web company, don't even bother trying.

That's the message I got from a conversation Friday with Raju Vegesna, evangelist at Zoho, a leading competitor to Google Docs. According to Vegesna, the company--formerly known as AdventNet, now called Zoho Corp.--has been around for 13 years, and has always used free, but not necessarily open-source, software as part of its strategy. The company has released software under open-source licenses before, including the somewhat controversial vTiger project.

With 1.8 million users of Zoho.com, growing … Read more

Randall Bennett, co-creator of The 404 and now the host of TechVi, joins us on today's show to talk about his journey around the globe, a few of his new projects, and how he's saving the world one post office box at a time.

We've had Randall on the show before, but this is the first time we've seen him since he moved back to New York from his brief but productive stint on the Left Coast. What the heck has he been doing this whole time? Well, Randall is a man of many many talents, and he tells us that he's been using those talents for projects including Tech Vi (pronounced vee), a constantly updated tech news outlet with frequent guests that include industry pundits from Engadget, Popular Mechanics, and a couple of lame dudes that have no idea what they're talking about.

Randall also lets us in on some big news in the works for TechVi that actually involves the CNET departed, so be sure to listen closely to hear it first!

Per usual, the second half is all about the latest news in the world of silly tech and beyond. Following up on yesterday's story about the young woman falling through a manhole while texting, we discuss an even worse occasion: a different woman has twittered through a bank robbery! How is that possible? Well, mainly because the trackball on her BlackBerry smartphone fell off, rendering her incapable of doing anything on her phone but twittering out asinine messages like "cant figure out how to call work without a trackball... police just arrived. maybe theyll let me go now." Me, I probably would've twittered something useful, like "OMFG call the cops frealsies, there's an effing gun in my face."

Be sure to listen to the entire episode to hear Randall's hilarious story about how he saved the lives of countless Netflixers by stopping a man from burning down a post office box. New York needs more good Samaritans like you, dude! Also, feel free to leave us a voicemail (a clean one we can actually play on the air, sans caviar) at 1-866-404-CNET!

… Read more

Just when I get consumed by the "destruction" in Schumpeter's "creative destruction," I stumble across something like this note from a new indie band on Dave Kusek's "Future of Music" blog:

TOTAL MADE THIS MONTH USING TWITTER = $19,000 TOTAL MADE FROM 30,000 RECORD SALES = ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

In part, this is a testament to the power of Twitter, but it's primarily an example of how new technology can upgrade old business models, as Kusek points out.

These new tools, such as Twitter, will help the entire music business scale much, … Read more

Some have described Google as an advertising company. This might have been accurate at one time, but given the sheer breadth of Google's ambition and product mix, it's far too limiting a description.

Google is a search company. It's a cloud company. It's a subscription services company. And, as is becoming increasingly obvious, Google is the world's largest open-source company.

Tim O'Reilly has been telling us this for years, but it wasn't until I read this brilliant Keir Thomas article that I appreciated the clarity of O'Reilly's vision.

As Thomas writes, … Read more

Of the formative figures in open source, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Eric Raymond loom large. Arguably, however, few have had as much of a disruptive force as Tim O'Reilly, who has helped to create the open-source market and has spent the last six years reshaping it with his seminal "Open Source Paradigm Shift" and other articles.

In an engaging and informative recent TWiT podcast, O'Reilly revisits the theme. It doesn't break new ground (for O'Reilly), but does highlight, and render somewhat meaningless, the fissures currently running through the open-source community.

Host Randal Schwartz … Read more