Tech Concepts to know for 2008

Machines are getting smaller, handier—and much, much smarter. Think we forgot something?

AT&T is now largest provider of Wi-Fi hotspots


Well this should come as good news for iPhone owners. AT&T announced plans today to purchase Wayport, a Wi-Fi provider that caters to a number of businesses including McDonalds and an impressive array of Hotel chains such as Marriott and Four Seasons.

Google at 10

As Google recently turned 10 years old, some analysts and investors began to say the company was suffering from early signs of maturity. Google's growth rate, while still brisk, has slowed significantly and is expected to slow more because of the economic slowdown.

London to New York in 45 minutes

Passengers will be able to fly through space from London to New York in 45 minutes by the middle of the next decade, experts believe.

The Clouds are coming

The cloud was omnipresent at the Web 2.0 Summit as industry executives discussed the migration from the client to millions of virtualized servers as the information pipe.

Next Einstein

A vision: only Africans will solve Africa's problems.
A solution: mathematics ans science lead to peace and prosperity.
An opportunity: the next Einstein can be African.

10 Online Photo Editors to bookmark

Online image editors are in a rage these days. Everyday, you hear about the release of a new online photo editor that claims to be the next big thing. Check out this listing.

Mac Mini coming soon?

Apple customers awaiting their new MacBook Airs may have to wait a little longer than they had thought, but potential Mac Mini customers should sit tight.

Bookmarking...a shared experience

BookmarkG is a new bookmarking service that aims to fill the gap left by mainstream bookmarking utilities by focusing on groups. Users can create their own group, invite friends, and begin adding links with tags, ratings, and metadata that can be searched.

50 web sites to add to your bookmarks

When it comes to the Internet, we're creatures of habit – Google for search, Hotmail for email, Twitter to stay in touch.

Here's a list that will give you pause to add on to your bookmarks.

Can Sun make it?

Sun Microsystems is on the ropes. The New York Times says so, the hallway conversation starts and ends with “too bad”, and the wagons appear to be circling around, or rather, behind Jonathan Schwartz, leaving him outside the fort as the gates are closed. Read the rest of this article here.

Ning's Infinite Ambition

It isn't just a site where users can build their own social networks -- Ning is a model of how to create a perpetual growth machine.

Sony Try's to Catch Up With Apple

Even with a former Steve Jobs lieutenant driving innovation, Sony still hasn't captured its rival's cool.

Mobile Simplicity

Alltel's new Celltop platform brings much-needed simplicity to the mobile device. Frog Design reflects on the process and results.

The deadline for people to submit ideas for the initiative, called Project 10^100, was Monday. Google employees will now sift through the ideas, submitted in 25 languages, and choose 100 semifinalists by January 27. Funding for up to five winning ideas will be awarded in May.

Check out the YouTube video for more information.

Scissors for the internet

This app lets you clip bits of the Web including text, images, and videos, all without having to download any software or register for an account. The first time you use it via its tiny bookmarklet, it simply creates an account for you, which can be claimed later on.

Read the article then visit Snipd.

Now you can compose music with your browser!

Fledgling musicians looking to ditch expensive composition software might want to check out Noteflight. It's a composition community that lets you put together musical scores right in your browser--that is, as long as you know what you're doing.

Facebook: Trouble in paradise?

Some sobering analysis comes today from pundit Michael Arrington, indicating that the social network may be unable to keep its bank accounts in sync with its rapid growth.

Google makes modifications to deal with complaints

Researcher challenges Google after finding names and e-mail address of JotSpot users via Google search and wins--Google changes that and turns everything private.

Sony patents sound - sensing PS3 controller

Rumors are flying regarding Sony filing a patent for a break-apart controller that works with motion and sound.

How Did Mac Fonts Get Their Names?

One day Steve Jobs stopped by the software group, as he often did at the end of the day. He frowned as he looked at the font names on a menu. "What are those names?", he asked.

First look at Windows 7's User Interface

Microsoft gave the first public demonstration of Windows 7.

Sling.com To Launch

SlingMedia’s ambitious new video portal, Sling.com, is set to launch on November 10

A Sneak Peek at New Google Analytics

Google has polished up their Analytics service and added 7 brand new features (currently in Public beta) that really takes Web Analaytics to the next level.

Don Tapscott addresses The Horizon Project 2008

Data Personality is Important for Web Personalization

It has not been a lack of effective technology that has held back this new culture of open data sharing, but rather business models that have been over-reliant on laying a proprietary claim to some portion of that data.

Seth shares his thoughts about tribes

According to Godin, Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have. The new opportunity is that it's easier than ever to find, organize, and lead a tribe. The Web has enabled an explosion of all kinds of tribes - and created shortage of people to lead them. This is the growth industry of our time.

What is Wegor?

Wegor is a community site for sharing travel experiences. You can share your travel photos, describe your experiences in the travel blog and mark your journeys on the map.

Download Everything!

FilesTube.com is a search engine designed to search for files in various file sharing and uploading sites. This rapidshare search engine offers searching with options of different file formats and with the metadata information it has collected the results are high quality and relevant.

Bountii

A price search startup that claims to have "built a search engine capable of finding shoppers lower and more accurate prices than any existing price comparison service". The search is currently limited to electronics and appliances but will expand to include other products.

Quitter

A new service, called Qwitter, has debuted today, allowing users to find out when others stop following them on Twitter. From time to time, you are going to lose followers, whether it be because you have said something that your followers don't agree with, or because they no longer find your tweets relevant or interesting. Services like Facebook and Twitter intentionally don't expose the data for when someone de-friends or un-follows you because it can potentially be a sensitive issue. Qwitter is trying to tap into the "too curious for their own good" market.

Create No Download Screencasts in Seconds with Screen Toaster

The service is to screen capture software what Tokbox is to Skype - most of the functionality you need, without any downloads.

Their demo video, which was created with the software, shows how easy it is to use. Click start, bring up a different website, and click a Option-S to record. Hit Option-S again to stop recording, and it is instantly uploaded to the site in Flash for review and, if you like it, publishing. You can also set the screen recording size manually with a different key combination. And you aren’t limited to recording web pages, you can move the recording area off browser.

The service is written as a Java web applet and works on any OS that has the Java runtime. Vides can be embedded and viewed with the Flash plugin, like any online video service.

Last two quarters rough for VMWare

VMWare is a market leader in virtualization software, but can't seem to catch a break.

Firefox for mobile

How would you like to be among the first to get touchy-feely with the next mobile browser everyone's talking about?

Now here's a directory

A directory of web 2.0 applications and services

All the financial headlines and data the web has to offer



Aggregates the latest headlines from over 20 of the leading financial websites as well as each of the stocks that you choose to follow. Complimenting the headlines are daily stock charts and quotes as well as embedded detailed information and data for each company. Streetread Mobile, which just recently launched, offers all of this functionality and data but inside a mobile-friendly, fast-loading interface (compatible with any internet-enabled device).

Mogulus

Create live, scheduled and on-demand internet television to broadcast anywhere on the web through a single player widget. Service comes in two flavors: free (ad-supported) and pro (white-label, no-ads, pay for usage). Unique features include the ability to mix multiple live cameras, imported videos clips, and overlay graphics. Producers can broadcast live from a mobile phone; use a customizable flash player with integrated chat; and develop a branded channel page on Mogulus.com that incorporates interactive chat.

Feedly

A more social and magazine-like start page/RSS reader for Firefox.

Various Web 2.0 businesses that will do well in a down economy

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopins offers his insights to 5 Web 2.0 businesses that stand a shot at making through the current economic downturn.

Mobile multimedia discussions from your computer or phone. Check out their blog site.

The SixtyOne [beta]

A community for people who love new music. Sign up to earn reputation for rating and recommending good music, bookmark songs and create personalized radio with your favorite artists, discover music with friends or follow others with similar tastes.

You License

An online music community offering free music licensing and giving music artists a platform to showcase and sell their music. Content buyers are then invited to search, bid for musical content and license the rights to them directly from the artist.

Sun and Social Media

This is the perfect starting point to find out just what Sun, as a company, has to offer students today. It covers everything from tech to Eco-responsibility, jobs to social media, this is the first student page that tells the Sun story from a student perspective.

5 Ways To Sell Social Media to Your Boss

Here are some suggestions for ways other companies have used social media tools. Consider how these could apply to your business. Be creative and don't think about what you could do - think about what your customers want. Then determine which social media tools can help you deliver what they want.

'Ask' and you shall get faster


Ask.com is cleaning up its act a bit with the latest (the 11th, I'm told) major update of the search engine, which launches on Monday.

New Xbox to streamline games store

The new Games Store will provide every game with its own comprehensive page, complete with tabs displaying screenshots, trailers, information about the title, and all available downloads pertaining to the game.

Nokia is gunning to be No. 1 on the mobile web


With its series of new Internet phones, the global leader in handset sales aims to outrace rivals.

Now you can track green news on Twitter

Here are some of the "green" feeds you can keep up with on Twitter. Some simply provide instant links to freshly published stories, while others mix in commentary and personality. Check out who they're following to find even more feeds.

Smush.it

Yahoo, which has considerable expertise in maximizing Web site performance, has long offered advice on how to speed up sites up by minimizing photo size. Now it's released a tool to help Web programmers automate the process.

The Web-based tool, called Smush It, can perform multiple operations to shrink graphics file sizes without impairing visual appeal, Chris Heilmann of the Yahoo Developer Network said.

iPhone 2.2: Safari Redesign

With the iPhone v2.1 software out of the door, Apple is hard at work on v2.2. From this first glimpse it looks like Apple, now that the major bugs have been squashed, is adding some new features.

Cisco uses social media to make routers sexy

In March of this year, Cisco launched the ASR 1000 Router Series. No big deal, but for the fact that it was delivered completely via social media.

Five ways to use social media to reach people who don't use social media

Are you trying to reach audiences who've never visited a social networking website because they don't trust them? Here are some interesting strategies to change that mind set.

Amazon Kindle...2

Amazon makes enhancements to it's popular product.

CEO Guide To Technology

Podcasts covering such topics as Corporate Cloud Computing, Guide to Widgets, Guide to Video Blogging, and more.

Web 2.0: The New Guy At Work

Silicon Valley loves its buzzwords, and none generates more buzz today than Web 2.0. Unless you're a die-hard techie, though, good luck figuring out what it means. Web 2.0 technologies sport strange names like wikis and mash-ups. And the startups hawking them -- Renkoo, Gahbunga, Ning, Squidoo -- sound like Star Wars characters George Lucas left on the cutting-room floor.

Info 2.0 Enterprise Mashups

This blog provides a forum for industry experts to discuss the technologies, concepts, and strategies that undergird Info 2.0 and the value that Web 2.0 mashups bring to any enterprise.

The Android wars begin tomorrow

T-Mobile's debut of the first phone to use Google's Android OS will give the first real glimpse of whether its backers' hopes for a mobile phone revolution are realistic.

Giving Second Life a second look

Companies are beginning to rethink Second Life. Find out how Joni West has revived Second Life as a place to engage customers.

Jabber



Cisco announced today that it has acquired Jabber, an open-source IM and presence protocol used by Google Talk and Gizmo, for an undisclosed sum.

Cisco will try to use Jabber as a means of improving its messaging offerings in the business world. Jabber's technology enables collaboration across a wide array of presence systems such as, Microsoft Office Communications Server, IBM Sametime, AOL AIM, and Google, which made it an ideal target for the company.

3GSM: Nvida next-generation mobile phone interface

ExitReality is a new technology that has made the entire Internet 3D. By creating an instant 3D world from any web page, ExitReality adds a new dimension to the Internet.

Live Search + Powerset = boost



Microsoft's purchase of Powerset is now starting to plant the seeds for a more powerful search engine.

As a product of Aircell LLC, Gogo provides all passengers access to the Internet, email, text messaging and corporate VPNs from the comfort of their seats while airborne. Aircell has been authorized by the FAA and FCC to use cellular frequencies for inflight broadband communications, leading a Wi-Fi revolution 35,000 feet above the ground. Think of it as a mobile hotspot, equipped with twin turbines and 50,000 lbs of thrust.

Demofall08

DEMO is the launchpad for emerging technologies both as conferences in the U.S., Europe, and China and as a news and information Web site. DEMO conferences and news coverage are where digital entrepreneurs and investors change the game and stay ahead of the curve.

Emerging technologies and new products introduced at DEMO conferences are hand-selected from the spectrum of the global technology marketplace. DEMO conferences have earned a reputation for consistently identifying technologies that will disrupt current markets and change how people use digital technologies.

N96 and N78 get Fring support


Bummed out because the N78 doesn’t offer VoIP compatability right out of the box? Fear not - Fring has got you covered. Apparently using their own VoIP client rather than the Nokia-made client (which Nokia decided not to build into the latest N-series devices) required by other services, Fring has added support for both the N78 and the N96.

If you’ve got an N78 or by some sort of trickery already own an N96, you can grab Fring here.

Tab sharing is now elegant

Are you a fan of widgets? Do you enjoy having lots of small Web apps at hand, arranged into a sort of customizable start page whose features are eminently drag-and-droppable? If so, you might want to give TabUp a few moments of your time. Designed to give users various standard components like news and weather feeds to things meant to be accessed by groups or communities of fellow users. The basic act of tab sharing is how the service’s creators regard its social dimension.

Need help finding that new startup?

Despite the reams of new job postings being released day in and day out, the treachery of the job search has been greatly facilitated with online engines and listing services. And specific to the tech sector, sites like Dice, and even various new media publications have really put strong emphasis on niche positions and connecting the seeking with the seekers. Still, having to browse multiple sites for something like a spot within a startup isn’t especially easy. Enter, HotStartupJobs.

Instant messenger for your social networking site


The toksta* IM is a feature which is available at any time, anywhere. For a chat room, the user must first start a separate application. In addition, users can only chat to people who are in the very same chatroom at the same point in time. On the other hand, toksta*'s instant messenger makes it possible to chat to all users directly via their profile, without having to start an extra application first. Therefore, it doesn't matter what the user is doing in your community at that time or on which site he is. He is informed immediately about the chat invitation. In addition, the toksta* IM also supports audio/video chats as well as text messages.

Docstoc

Docstoc is the premier online community to find and share professional documents. Docstoc provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety of categories including legal, business, financial, technology, educational, and creative. All documents on docstoc can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded for free.

Review Docstoc at YouTube.

SMS service for the public

Tatango, the ad-supported group SMS service previously known as networkText, spent the last few months in a private beta following a functional and visual overhaul and a round of funding by Bellingham Angel Organization. Now everyone is free to get in on the group texting good times; they’ve opened the doors to the public.

The service is very simple to use.  Check out their blog site.

Promotions made easy

Giving away products can be a logistical pain. For instance, when we give away a T-shirt or laptop, we have to go through hundreds of comments, contact the person, and do a lot of manual processing. A new Y Combinator startup called ContestMachine that just launched makes giving stuff away as easy as putting a widget on your blog.

You create a contest widget by entering all the details of the giveaway: prizes, deadlines, rules. Winners can be randomly chosen by ContestMachine or judged by the blogger. It automates the process of creating giveaways, and opens up contests to any blogger or small business who has a Website. The service is free to try out for up to two contests a month, and then charges $9 a month or $90 a year for more contests.

Draw me a picture

Meet the artist behind the comic written to explain Google Chrome. ..Scott McCloud, and then check out his comic on Google Chrome.

iPod nano 4G?

The Web site MacNN says it has confirmed that there is indeed such a thing as the fourth-generation iPod Nano.

Qik is a mobile video casting service that sees competition from Kyte, Flixwagon, and Livecast.

Qik enables live video casting from a cell phone via any 3G/GPRS/Wi-fi Internet connection. Currently based in Foster City, Qik has been in testing since November 2007. Unlike sites where you have to wait for the video to be uploaded, Qik streams the video straight into the site with a delay of as little as half a second to two seconds.

Overlay.TV is an interactive media company that provides an online video platform. This platform enables users, content owners, and e-commerce sites to monetize and customize their video assets by overlaying contextual information directly onto video and linking to external websites.

Anonymize your phone number

LetsCall.Me is a smart new service for giving out your contact information to others without actually revealing it. At sign-up you get a special vanity URL and the option to have it direct callers to whatever number you provide. People who have your URL and want to call you can simply enter in their phone number and it will call that number to connect them to yours.

Unlike some other services that offer de-centralized calling (see GrandCentral, Jaxtr, JaJah, and iNumbr), LetsCall.Me preserves the caller's number so you can see it before picking up.

Updated Google Piscasa now identifies faces

The phrase 'putting a name with a face', has never been more true.

Socialcast is the only SaaS provider of self-service corporate social networking communities. Our software unites traditional intranet features with social messaging technology to empower employees to expand, create and share knowledge across the enterprise.

Google Chrome

Google has confirmed on its blog that it will launch its new Chrome browser today.

Google said it would be launching Chrome in 100 countries, but it will only be in beta in Windows (Google said Mac and Linux versions were coming soon).

The move by the search giant, although the blog does not say so, is clearly a direct shot over the bow of Microsoft (MSFT), which dominates the browser market with 74 percent share.

Get remote files access

Sugarsync, a pricey but excellent file-syncing and backup solution has a new iPhone application that's downright cool. It gives you access to all the files stored on computers linked up to your Sugarsync account. Better yet, it provides instant updates when a file has been touched by you or another user by utilizing some spiffy push technology.

Android Market, Google's Response to Apple's App Store

Mobile software operating system Android is coming soon, at least on one device–and that device will have a way for third-party applications to get access to users. The Google-led software initiative will offer a service called Android Market, a way to find, maybe purchase and download third-party applications (and maybe other content?). This is like what Apple’s App Store is for the iPhone and iPod. But there are some differences.

Facebook Live Feed

Facebook has recently launched a new feature that takes aim at life-streaming sites FriendFeed and Twitter. Facebook's Live Feed is an evolved version of its hugely popular News Feed feature.

Are you into user interfaces?

Take a look at these 10 very futuristic user interfaces. There are several videos included, so this ones is good to have a little break on what ever you are doing and get some inspiration and new ideas flowing.

There's just too much good stuff to start listing those here, so click on to see all 10 cool UI concepts, nicely listed for you.

iPhone + RSS reader

If you are looking for perfect RSS reader to your iPhone - then Newstand from omz:software is your answer.

Don't worry that there is no lite or free demo version for this in the app store, I can promise that this will be the best 4,99$ you can spend on a RSS reader (that's 3,40 in euros ;).

Newsstand is a full-featured RSS reader for your iPhone with a unique interface. Skim over the latest headlines on a beautiful shelf of newspapers and magazines in landscape orientation or use the powerful Mail-like view in portrait mode to read and organize feeds.