Thursday, May 10, 2007

2007 Web 2.0 Awards Announced May 9,2007

Over 200 Web 2.0 Sites in 41 Categories
Rated, Ranked and Awarded

"Our team reviewed hundreds of sites in the Web 2.0 sphere to uncover the best in each of 41 categories. From there, we assembled a team of 25 of the most knowledgeable, well-respected experts in the field to vote on the winners."

Go to the site»

Award Categories



  • Health

  • Hosted Wikis

  • Lists and Polls

  • Mapping

  • Marketing

  • Mashups

  • Mobile Technology

  • Music

  • Online Desktop

  • Organization

  • Philanthropy

  • Photos and Digital Images

  • Podcast Services


  • Professional Networking

  • Questions and Advice

  • Real Estate

  • Retail

  • Search

  • Social Networking

  • Social News

  • Social Tagging

  • Start Pages

  • Travel

  • Video

  • Visual Arts

  • Web Development and Design

  • Widgets


StartUp 2.0 ...

StartUp2.0 is a competition of European web 2.0 sites whose objectives are to promote and reward the European startups (either created or willing to do so in the future) that work in the field of 2.0 technologies.

The technical committee and Internet users will vote for all sites and select 15 among them. These nominees will be officially presented in an event in Madrid on May, 10th. Each project's team will have 5 minutes to present its website.
Here is the list of the top 15 European Web 2.0 projects, which will be presented next Thursday in Madrid. The information below was provided to Read/WriteWeb by the organizers:

Panoramio.com (http://www.panoramio.com/): Photo-sharing of geolocated photos. Panoramio offers 2 Gb of free storage for photos. The site has 330.000 registered users and 1,1 million geolocated photos.

11870.com (http://11870.com/): "a real-life delicious" where you can remember and share with your friends all kind of places (from business to sculptures) around the world using comments, tags, photos and videos. Launched in feb 07, reached #1 in technorati.

Trivop (http://www.trivop.com/): Trivop is the first videoguide for the hotel industry. it's a mashup with video, map and comments from users (through tripadvisor). We are convinc that video give travellers the transperncy they need before booking as today just a few photos is not sufficient enough. We want to become the youtube of the hotel industry.

Tupalo (http://tupalo.com/): Tupalo is a social mapping network for local and independent culture, allowing members of elusive niche cultures to add, rate, review, search and tag their favorite local businesses in major cities around the world via PC or Mobile devices.

Personalised Information Environment (http://www.musorajanlo.hu/): A new internet application developed by a hungarian team can virtually learn what kind of tv shows and movies do the users like, and make recommendations for the following days accordingly. Musorajanlo.hu applies the latest technologies: machine-learning and data-mining, all executed on a grid.

hipoqih (http://hipoqih.com/): hipoqih.com is a system composed by a Web and plugin for mobile devices that allows to record alerts and URLs associated to any geopoint in the planet. These alerts can be seen automatically in terminals with the plugin when approaching that geopoint, so that the information arrives when you get to the place that interests you.

nvivo.es (http://www.nvivo.es/): Gig based social network. Its main objective is that you never loose that gig again. Follow your favourite bands and coolest venues of your city, met other fans and interact adding comments, tags, joining and attending gigs and get or ask for all the gig info you need. With Musicbrainz, last.fm, Google Maps and 11870.com mashups. Live music fans never got that easy.

soziety (http://www.soziety.com/): soZiety is a language-learning social network based on Skype. soZiety is a great, dead simple method people can use to have fun learning a language while meeting new people and making some bucks.

Properazzi - the property search engine (http://www.properazzi.com/): Properazzi is a crawler-based web 2.0 property search engine for all of Europe. We launched in March 2007, and currently list 1.8 million sale and rental properties in 45 European countries, in all European languages and currencies. We're backed by Mangrove Capital Partners (Skype, Quintura, Nimbuzz). We've got a highly international team and are based in Barcelona, Spain.

Menéame (http://www.meneame.net/): Meneame is the leading Digg-like website in Spanish. It helps anybody promote news from any source by creating new pages according to users's votes. It was launched in 2004 from Mallorca.

SlideBurner (http://www.slideburner.com/): SlideBurner allows you to share and discover easily slideshows/presentations (PowerPoint or OpenOffice files). Upload your files and they can quickly be viewed online in any web browser on any platform. You have full control on the security of your slideshows; you can select precisely the person who can access your data. You can also create groups around your fields of interest. Moreover, the site is multilingual; for the moment it is available in French and English.

Sclipo (http://sclipo.com/): Sclipo is a Social Skills-Network based upon user-generated videos: Users can share and promote their skills through video and connect with other users based upon skills they care about. Sclipo is a platform for any kind of skills, such as cooking, well-being, technology or sports. All content is 100% user-generated and evaluated. SCLIPO stands for: Skills + CLIP + yO (=I)

Anywr.com (http://www.anywr.com/): Anywr is a web and mobile system that offers simple, yet powerful services for managing contacts, calendars, events and communications virtually from anywhere: using browsers, mobile devices or any other of the over 750 million compatible devices available today.

5min (http://www.5min.com/): 5min is a place to find short video solutions for every practical question, and is also a place for people who want to share their knowledge. 5min's vision is simple: any solution can be visually explained in 5 minutes. Users of the 5min platform will benefit from a visual illustration of any solution through a Smart Player. Unlike all of the video sites on the net, 5min created a video player that is adjusted specifically to the instruction field.

QuestionForm (http://questionform.com/): questionform is a web application for creating, publishing and analysing online surveys and forms.

Newsvine New Design

A Much Smarter Front Page
What good is a news site that doesn't adapt to the way you use it? The new Newsvine front page puts you in control of everything. Want your original Newsvine content at the bottom and your New York Times stories at the top? No problem. Want twice as many headlines? Also not a problem. If you can drag and drop, you can design your own front page in a matter of seconds.

Local Headlines and Weather
Newsvine Live
The News in Pictures
External RSS Feeds: You can now add any news source in the world to your Newsvine front page with just a simple click on the big green "Add News Module" button. From the New York Times to the BBC to Techcrunch, it's all there just waiting to be added.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Top 17 Search Innovations Outside Of Google

"There are an abundance of new search engines (100+ at last count ) - each pioneering some innovation in search technology. Here is a list of the top 17 innovations that, in our opinion, will prove disruptivein the future. These innovations are classified into four types: Query Pre-processing; Information Sources; Algorithm Improvement; Results Visualization and Post-processing.
[Some of these innovations are present in various Google properties, but are either missing or available only in limited form in the main search page, as noted below.]"...
More»
Written by Nitin Karandikar

Business Quotations On Leadership

"Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader's success. He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively."
– Norman Allen

"Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it."
– Warren Bennis

"Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important; 2. Promote a vision; 3. Follow the golden rule; 4. Admit mistakes; 5. Criticize others only in private; 6. Stay close to the action. Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire."
– Christian Nevell Bovee

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

"A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done."
– Ralph Lauren

"The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with assistants and associates smarter than they are. They are frank in admitting this and are willing to pay for such talents."
– Amos Parrish

"Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader."
- Publius Cornelius Tacitus

More»

Monday, May 7, 2007

Silverlight Poll Results: Majority Impressed, But Not a Flash Killer Yet


"Last week's Read/WriteWeb poll asked what you thought of Silverlight, Microsoft's newly improved rich internet app plug-in that was launched to (unusually) rave blog reviews at MIX on Monday. Some people even said that Silverlight leaves Adobe's Flash technology in the dust, which is a big claim to make given that Flash is still extremely popular with designers - and for users it's a slick rich media browser plug-in. Also the days of usablity 'gurus' complaining about Flash splash pages is mostly gone. Nowadays Flash is used to create compelling multimedia browser experiences. So to my mind, Flash still reigns supreme - until such time as we see similar ubiquity and/or outstanding browser experiences from Silverlight."...
More»