Webware

If you can't visit beautiful Davos this week, there's always the Internet.

(Credit: CC Andy Mettler/World Economic Forum)

In case your invitation to the exclusive World Economic Forum got lost in the mail, you can stop feeling so down about it. The closed-doors event in Davos, Switzerland, has loosened up a bit, thanks to the Web and the whole "transparency" thing that's been trendy for the past few years.

Besides, you can bet a few people will be blogging photos from their iPhones anyway.

This year, the World Economic Forum, which runs Wednesday through Sunday, has chosen to take advantage of just about every kind of social-media app you can imagine.

Broadcasts of many of the forum's panels and discussions are being streamed live on the Web by video start-up Mogulus, with an official Twitter account providing alerts and updates as to which global luminaries are talking at what times.

You can also go to a Flickr photo stream, check out a Netvibes page that aggregates...everything, and chat with other armchair philosophers in a FriendFeed room.

Plus, there are live broadcasts from CNN.com.

Two formally sanctioned "citizen reporters" have been chosen to attend through social networks. One won a MySpace/Wall Street Journal contest, and one won a "Davos Debates" video contest sponsored by YouTube. The MySpace delegate, Rebecca McQuigg of Los Angeles, is blogging at the MySpace Journal site, as well as on a Wall Street Journal blog. YouTube videos from the summit will come from contest winner Pablo Camacho, a Bogota, Colombia-based writer and singer.

Many of the notable attendees are on Twitter, and you can track them with a Twitter search for the hash tag #davos. That'll bring you to a flood of updates, breaking news stories, and general observations on the first Davos gathering since the markets crashed in the fall.

"Here there is a smaller crowd, even more techies than usual, rampant fear and pessimism, and much talk of social responsibility," journalist David Kirkpatrick posted to his Twitter account on Wednesday.

MessageLabs documented a drop in spam eight times less than normal in the 12 hours immediately following the takedown.

(Credit: MessageLabs)

Internet hosting site McColo disappeared on Tuesday. Along with it went thousands of pieces of spam, thanks, in part, to investigative work by Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs.

For about four months, security experts have been collecting data about McColo Corp., a San Jose, Calif.-based Web hosting service that may have been used by by the cyber underground, according to the The Washington Post. Krebs said that the McColo hosting company had been responsible for up to 75 percent of all spam spent.

Security vendor MXLogic said it was seeing about a 50 percent decline in spam volume as a result on Wednesday.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks, a company that monitors botnet activity, speculated that McColo vanished at around 9 a.m. Eastern time on November 10. Botnets are frequently used to relay spam, and McColo may have hosted some of the command and control servers necessary to coordinate spam campaigns.

Adam O'Donnell, writing on theZDNet Zero Day blog, speculates that the spammers might regroup in Eastern Europe.

The Post credits Benny Ng, director of marketing for Hurricane Electric, an upstream provider for McColo, for pulling the plug on the company. Another provider, Global Crossing, declined to comment, telling Krebs the company "communicates and cooperates fully with law enforcement, their peers, and security researchers to address malicious activity."

Something similar happened in September when another hosting site, Intercage/Ativo, was shut down by its upstream providers.

Discount online retailer Overstock.com announced on Thursday that it will be selling its products outside the United States for the first time.

"We're actually right smack dab in the middle of integrating," Jake Bailey, Overstock's director of international sales, said in an interview with CNET News.com on Thursday. No final date has been given for the launch of international sales, but Bailey said it will be before the end of 2008.

The Salt Lake City, Utah-based company has inked a deal with E4X, which runs a service called FiftyOne Global Ecommerce. The partnership has enabled Overstock to start billing and shipping to a total of 34 new countries--Canada, as well as 33 European nations. FiftyOne lets a participating retailer ship to a U.S. address and receive U.S. currency, while the buyer pays in his or her home currency.

Not all of Overstock's products will be able to be shipped overseas. Some bulky products, like massive HDTVs and large pieces of furniture, will continue to be available only in the States. But, Bailey said, "for the most part, it's going to be the bulk of our product offering."

Panelists get together at the Web 2.0 Expo to talk about design led by Aaron Marcus (who is donning a horn-tipped hat).

(Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

The last panel sessions for day two of the Web 2.0 Expo just wrapped up. One of my favorites was global design trends, a panel discussing the Web design around the world. In my less than two years of tracking Web apps, I've seen a huge shift in the look and feel of mainstream sites, as well as seeing a slew of services that have pushed what I thought was possible on the browser.

There can, however, be huge differences between two versions of the same site in different countries. A good deal of what's important is localizing a service to folks who are using it, which is one of the reasons the Korean version of MySpace looks different from its U.S. counterpart.

Jimmy Kim from Nexon, who was on the panel noted that Google has just a 5 percent take in Korea's search engine market, while other flashy services get more clicks because of updated looks. Kim compared it to two competing gas stations on opposite corners of the street with gas that's the same price. Kim says the one with more "bling" gets the extra customers--and it works the same way for Web apps that attempt to get into the Korean market.

Localization's not as easy as changing the language, though. Kelly Goto of Gotomedia noted that every culture uses the Web in a different way, and sometimes you need to fine tune a site to make it match whoever's viewing it. Sites like Facebook who are just now beginning to expand on foreign language support and conversion have begun to tweak small items by having users to some of the legwork to translate--making sure your motto isn't accidentally insulting the mothers of your users.

Also discussed: bandwidth, and more importantly--designing your apps with it in mind. Bandwidth has been one of the deciding factors in iPhone Web apps, with the limitations of AT&T's EDGE network keeping some richer, media-centric apps from working without a Wi-Fi connection. Likewise developers who are aiming to create sites in other markets need to not only localize their sites for the country, but also its data networks.

You can read more about the panelists on the description page here. Stay tuned for more Web 2.0 Expo coverage on Webware and on CNET News.com.

Related: Twitter Japan launches, with ads

Microsoft is giving a booster shot to its Health Solutions Group, announcing on Monday plans to acquire clinical workflow software developer Global Care Solutions.

The acquisition of Global Care Solutions, based in Bangkok, Thailand, is designed to enhance the management of clinical workflow, medical records, billing and regulatory compliance at hospitals and other medical facilities. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Global Care worked with Thailand's Bumrungrad International Hospital to design its system, which serves more than 1.2 million patients a year from nearly 200 countries. The hospital uses Global Care's system to manage scheduling and medical records in multiple languages.

Peter Neupert, vice president of Microsoft's Health Solutions Group, noted in a statement that Global Care's "state-of-the-art health information system" allows patients to see a doctor within roughly 17 minutes after arriving at Bumrungrad.

Is Thailand gearing up to be the next India for tech resources? Get those passports ready.

The goal of Tree-Nation is to plant 8 million trees in sub-Saharan Niger, Africa, the world's poorest nation.

The sunny Web site, based out of Barcelona, Spain, provides social networking for would-be huggers and planters of trees. You can donate between $14 to $106 per tree, and then track and map its growth via GPS and Google Maps.

Working with ecologists in Niger, Tree-Nation will nourish the sprouts of the baobabs, acacias and other species in a nursery before transplanting them outside. Although desertification threatens most of the land in Niger, the trees grow in places that receive enough rainfall to support them. Their roots are meant eventually to reach into underground aquifers, bringing otherwise untapped water to the surface and improving the soil.

Tree-Nation maps each member's tree with a personal message.

Tree-Nation says it has planted 5,000 trees so far, with 74 members responsible for 10 more trees in the past day. Organizers of last week's Web 2.0 Summit planted a tree for each attendee via Tree-Nation.

Tree-Nation is one of many Web-based services built to address global warming, pollution and poverty (see also alternative gifts, Kiva, Google's cleanup weekend, and WiserEarth). Such online tools are changing the face of philanthropy, connecting people with causes in parts of the world where they may never travel, and helping people to find others nearby who share charitable interests.

If you prefer to ditch the tech tools and support trees closer to home, Plant Health Alternatives, based out of New Jersey and exhibiting at last weekend's Bioneers conference, offers classes in "tree whispering." The company's backers claim that you can help failing trees sprout new leaves just by talking to them. How's that for social networking?

(via Treehugger)

I admit it, I don't know the meaning of the word fishizzle.

Russell Simmons

(Credit: Russellsimmons.com)

I know it's popular with the hip-hop generation, a group that a new community site called Global Grind is pursuing. Plenty of people complain how young urban hipsters degrade the English language with their patois. I would suggest that the new venture is better off with words like fishizzle than by polluting the mother tongue with phrases like the following:

"Global Grind is a next generation start page solution that gives users the ability to aggregate content, wrap community around that content, utilize a proprietary relevance engine that 'bubbles up' relevant content based on the activity of the users and have access to curators..."

This woeful passage, found in a press release issued Wednesday by Global Grind to announce the launch of its site, not only obscures meaning but robs the Web site of any hint that it might be fun. Moreover, press releases like this remind me of Bubble 1.0. That's when dot-com companies of the late 1990s attempted to pump up their silly business plans with trendy buzzwords and jargon.

Is that what's happening with Global Grind?

Global Grind is backed by Russell Simmons, a co-founder of DefJam Recordings and one of hip hop's elder statesman, and Jim Breyer of venture capital firm Accel Partners. The site enables users to aggregate RSS feeds, podcasts, favorite videos and widgets.

There's not much here that's not offered at Facebook or MySpace. On the site's front door are a few tabs and empty video players. There's no information describing what the site does or how to use it. Apparently, this company is planning to ride its "hip hop" moniker and the pedigrees of its backers. Blah.

Or should I say: fishizzle.

I'm at the San Francisco New Tech Meetup tonight, immersed in Web 2.0 startupville. Tonight's lineup of pitches:

Conduit. A utility for making toolbars to go with your blog or site. We recently covered the tool's new capability that lets the user swap between different toolbars they've installed. The concept is interesting: It lets site publishers put their sites into toolbars. I didn't expect users to take up this idea, but the company's executives report strong growth and more than 12 million users.

SezWho. This is an interesting system that allows users to rate other users' content, like their uploaded videos and blog comments. It's distributed, so if you have a good reputation as a contributor on one site and then you go to a new site, you good reputation can go with you, as well as links to all your contributions on other sites. Requires site owners to install links or plug-ins on their site, and SezWho then gets all the data, which it distributes to member sites. Interesting, since it knocks a few bricks out of the walls that sites tend to build up around their user bases. Very good for the new media powerhouse: the blog network.

US4real. Yet another real estate mashup that combines data on cost of living, crime, school performance, etc., with real estate and rental listings. It's a bit rough at the moment, and there are several very well-funded companies in this space. Also, it returns data only by city, not neighborhood--that's not specific enough. It does appear to have a comprehensive listing of houses and rentals, though, and it has a cool feature that flags houses whose prices have dropped a lot recently. Also, it will let you draw an outline around an area you're interested in, and will e-mail you when houses on it go up for sale. Cool.

GlobalMotion. This is a wiki focused on locations, maps, and geotagged images. It's an interesting way to navigate geodata, and it reads in location-tagged images already on EveryTrail, Panoramio, and Flickr, which is kind of neat. A good question from the audience, though: Why not just contribute this functionality to Wikipedia, which already has about 200,000 entries about locations? The answer wasn't very satisfying.

CrazyMenu. This was my favorite site of the evening. It's a utility for business lunching. It helps you corral co-workers together for a lunch, decide where to go, and even create group orders that you can transmit to your restaurant before you get there. Since I love lunch, I look forward to trying this out. Great idea.

Carbon footprint, energy use, green tech: some phrases that won't be going away. From gasoline prices to global warming, we're likely to become more aware of what energy we burn up, just as most of us now have some sense of whether we're eating wisely (or not).

Front page of carbon calculator

(Credit: earthlab)

Just today the Live Earth concert folks e-mailed me a link to their carbon calculator. This one walks you through several pages of simple questions about how you live, and especially how you travel. This calculator was built by Earthlab.org. They want to know the size of your dwelling, your car if you own one, energy bills, airplane and daily travel. After going through their process, I can't imagine how bad an airline pilot would look, environmentally speaking.

My score on the Earthlab quiz: 301, and 11 tons of carbon. So I'm clearly doing my bit to warm the planet. Live Earth folks say they'll post overall test scores and more information on 7-7-07.

Then there's this site, which gives you the really bad news--how many planets humanity would need to supply energy if everybody lived as you do. My score: 6.3 planets. I think that translates into a couple more solar systems 'cause I don't get the sense there's a whole lot of oil, coal or biofuels to be had out beyond Venus. I could probably do nicely with a tiny sun, however.

Then the Yahoo folks have built a carbon dioxide emissions calculator. My score was pretty much the same as what I got from Earthlab...until I added in my infrequent air travel. From a few plane trips: 21.8 tons of carbon dioxide. Where are the calls for solar planes? Or goose-powered, or human-paddled balloons, or something? How about those Star Trek transponders that would beam you up? Could they be energy efficient? No crappy airline "food" either.

Altogether these sites are: depressing, educational, geared to getting you to do something about your consumption patterns. Turn off your work computer when you are done for the day (or night). Carry your own shopping bags. Use alternative energy when possible. Use efficient bulbs and appliances. Walk more. Freak out over air travel. All good advice. And aimed at making each of us less of a carbon bigfoot.