Web Review 2.0

Blantonio.us

2007-05-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

Home of the Marc and Jay show Podcast. A daily read that is easy and entertaining. A great blog to add to your daily list of visited blogs. Click here to visit Blantonious

Tags, Hags & Other Things That Go Bump In The Night by Brad Eden

2006-09-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I wrote in my blog about tagging and the future of folksonomy. I knew then that social tags would change the face of the internet as we knew it. For the internet marketer, it is imperative that we continue to adapt and make use of Web 2.0.

Technorati: There may be 100M blogs by January: If it seems like everyone has a blog, that is not quite true. It is only a still-hefty 51.2 million people. That is according to a new study by Technorati, the site that has been tracking blogs, bloggers and the so-called blogosphere for several years. According to new numbers issued by the site last week, the blogosphere has increased 100-fold over the past three years and could reach 100 million by February 2007. Technorati claims that the blogosphere now doubles every five to seven months. Some 1.6 million blog posts are monitored every day, and about 175,000 new blogs per day pop up. About 39 percent of those are in English, while 31 percent are in Japanese and 12 percent are in Chinese languages.

Big growth for Yahoo's del.icio.us web site: Del.icio.us may not be mainstream yet, but the social bookmarking site is getting increasingly popular among a very desirable crowd for advertisers, young readers with six-figure household incomes. According to data released Friday by Hitwise, the web site market share was up 122 percent from January to July of this year, although that still ranked just No. 6,793 in internet-wide visits. During the four weeks that ended Aug. 5, 59 percent of visitors were male and 41 percent of those men were ages 25-34. Thirty-six percent of web site membership are from households with incomes ranging from $100,000 to $150,000 a year, versus 13 percent for the average internet population. Del.icio.us allows users to share links to their favorite music, reviews, blogs and more, with some 50 categories to choose from. It was launched in 2003 and purchased by Yahoo two years later.

Tags & Folksonomy: Latest Internet Trend There is a new branch of the Web growing like a well organized storm cloud. This recent trend on the Web can be used to strengthen your presence with major search engines and reach an active audience that is highly interested in your content. Welcome to the world of "folksonomy" and "tagging." What is Folksonomy and Tagging? Folksonomy is a combination of the words folks and taxonomy meaning "people classification management." This allows users some level of control over how the web is organized. One of the most popular tools of the folksonomy concept is tags. Tagging, in the context of this article, is the process of labeling a piece data with metadata.

Using Tagging & Folksonomy to Advertise: Three of the most effective sites currently using tags and/or folksonomy are: Del.icio.us, digg.com, and technorati. Each of these sites is a major player in the folksonomy world. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking web application that is growing very fast in popularity. With a free account, del.icio.us users can submit and access all of their bookmarks from any computer with Internet access. By submitting and tagging your own web pages, you instantly give access to thousands of other users with interests in the same tags. Encouraging site visitors to submit your selected webpages to their own del.icio.us bookmark page is a very good way to get more exposure to del.icio.us users. Submitting to del.icio.us is instant and it creates meaningful relevant links important to the major search engines. Digg.com is mostly a technical news site. If you are familiar with the Web phenomenon Slashdot, then digg will remind you of that geek culture. The difference is that ALL of digg's content is created, submitted, and judged by its audience. If your page, blog or online article is good enough to be "dug" by digg users, you could receive literally hundreds of unique visitors immediately. Virtually any participation (comments, submissions, links in your profile) can get your site traffic from digg. The beauty of digg is that it is so popular that many submissions to digg can instantly dominate some keywords on search engines such as google.com.

Technorati.com is a power house in the world of tagging. If you have a blog, Technorati should become one of your favorite search engines on the World Live Web. Many Technorati Tags are beginning to dominate the Web by having constantly updated, fresh blog content on highly focused subjects. The beauty of Technorati is that blog application such as blogware and others are completely integrated with it allowing blog categories to be instantly tagged and syndicated into the blog search engine. Any blog can be manually added as well to technorati's very open tagging system. Like digg, even if you only happen to get a trickle of traffic from technorati itself many times the link value alone will sky rocket the speed in which your site rank in the search engines. There are many other folksonomy sites that can help you with "tag syndication." With its encouragement to get users to submit their own RSS feeds as content, My Yahoo! is a great way to increase traffic and links. Web applications like TagCloud integrates RSS and tagging while wikipedia.org is method of allowing social webpage and content development. All these methods and many more have two great things in common 1) they are free (as of this writing) and 2) they give the power to reshape and categorize the Web to the people. If content is King then content management is the the kingdom.

News Doggy

2006-06-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

www.newsdoggy.com - News Doggy fetches and Diggs for all the best stories in Digg.com. A quick and easy way to get great stories without wastig time searching through all the junk.

Web 2.0 List

2006-03-30T08:18:00.000-08:00

A link to all the web 2.0 websites. AJAX star rating system. Alexa ranking, delicious, published sites in digg. http://www.web2list.com/

43 THings

2006-03-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

Social Goal setting. What better way to make complete your goals than by sharing them with the world. 43Things Write down your goals People have known for years that making a list of goals is the best way to achieve them. Why is that? First, getting your goals in writing can help you clarify what you really want to do. You might find you have some important and some frivolous goals. That is OK. You’ve got space for 43 Things on your list. Not every one of them has to change the world (but save room for the ones that might). Get Inspired What do you want to do with your life? It is not an easy question to answer – and you shouldn’t have to answer alone. Browse 43 Things to find out what others want to do. You might find some goals you share. Click the “I want to do this” button to add a goal to your list. Got an idea for a new goal? Just type it in the text box on the homepage or at the bottom of any page on the site. Bam. Now, it’s your thing. Share your progress We all have stories about what we care about. Writing down your progress on a goal can help someone else learn about something you both want to do. When you see a goal you’ve achieved, click on the “I’ve done this” button and share a story about how you did it.

Yahoo Voice Just released

2006-03-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

Download the new Yahoo messenger just out today (March 22, 2006) and make VOIP calls like skype. Phone In and Phone Out. Make calls for 2 cents or less anywhere. Get your own phone number and receive calls on your computer for just under $30 a year. Coming late to the game will take some hard work to get people to switch but if you use Yahoo messenger it may make sense for you. Go here to get Yahoo Voice

9cays beta - Group Email

2006-03-22T08:13:00.000-08:00

9cays a group email application developed by the folks at alien camel. 9cays makes it simple to start a conversation between a group of people - the conversation can be viewed and managed via their web application. You can start a conversation before you even signup to try it out with three other people. The interface seems very simple to use and a good way to keep track of convesations. I have tried this with gmail and sometimes I am so lost in a conversation sthat I have to explode the whole thread to figure out who responded to who and if they don't hit reply all it starts a new thread and you get completely off the subject.

Give it a try and see what you think.

BubbleShare (beta) Photo sharing with voice annotations

2006-03-17T09:32:00.000-08:00

Bubble share is another photo sharing site with the addition of voice tagging. Create galleries and annotate with voice describing your pictures. Quick registration will get you up and sharing in no time. Once you have created your gallery you can share it and send an email with the url to freinds and family. If you add it to the public community everyone will have accesss to view your photos. The tools to change sequence, add text captions, record voice annotations is really done well. The one drwawback is the Google Ads down the side of the viewing pages. But you got to make money somehow. BubBleshare

AirSet - Group calenadrs, contacts and lists for your Groups

2006-03-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

:: Share calendars, contacts, lists and more :: Manage all your groups from one place :: Sync with Outlook and Palm desktop :: Relax. Your data is secure and private

I have been waiting for this since the mid 90's. I tired different apps that were available from Yahoo and others but nothing came close to the functionality. Having several different things in life to schedule things against it is really a challenge to keep them all together and readily available where ever I am. I am just getting my groups setup but I am already able to track work, kids, and other interests in separate groups and give

Box.net - Get a free box and put stuff in it.

2006-03-14T09:19:00.000-08:00

Get a free 1GB account to store data, photos, or whatever you want. You can also upgrade your box to 5GB for $4.99 a month or 15GB for $9.99 a month. There is also an API for developers to integrate Box.net storage into thier web applications. box.net Here are some of the useful things you can do with Box Save backup copies of important filesAlways have a backup plan to prevent data loss in case of computer failure. Move documents between your computersUse your Box to transfer files so that you can work on them in any location. Setup sub-accounts for multiple user accessA perfect solution for small businesses and workgroups requiring collaboration. Store photos and other important memoriesRelax! Your priceless files and photos are always safe. Share files or create online photo galleriesHassle-free sharing; show off your vacation photos or send a file to a friend! The interface is very clean with no ads. Box only supports Windows 2000 or better and MAC OSX.

GOOWY - Email, Calendar, Widgets and More

2006-03-13T07:26:00.000-08:00

A way to manage your digital lifestyle. First you'll need to get a free account with Goowy. Once you have that which only takes a minute to setup your ready to check out all the cool information Goowy has to offer. The first thing I did was download and install the Goowy desktop application.

With the Goowy desktop I could immediately check email (which you can use Goowy or import your Gmail or whatever) get to my contacts, calendar, Read news and Blogs (Although I did get a system error once) and manage your Desktop minis. What's a mini you ask? Well minis are little boxes and balloons you can cover your desktop with. Here's a screen shot of minis.

Currently you get 2GB of space you use for email, but there are some other features coming soon. Integrated messaging to use all your different messenger accounts and file storage. The program looks nice and so far unobtrusive but quick to access.

Skobee - Making plans simple

2006-03-10T17:41:00.000-08:00

This one couldn't have come up at a better time. With Spring approaching fast I like to have tons a cookouts and get togethers. I signed up for an account and started inviting the inner circle of my closest freinds to join up. Already I have 2 cookouts planned, and a couple NCAA basketball tournement parties.

The site interface is very nicely done. Simple and straightforward. They do a nice job of using the Google Maps API to incorprate a map of the event location.

Get on and start making plans. Skobee

Microsoft Windows Live

2006-03-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

Windows Live is a new set of Internet software and services designed to put you in control of the information, relationships and interests you care about. Windows Live will make it easier for you to connect with people, and to quickly find the information you need, more safely and securely, whether you're on your PC or on the go. Very easy to add content but you have to look around to find good stuff. I really like the portable favorites. There is also an idea page that touts a bunch of cool stuff but that is yet to be seen. I'm sure there will be a monthly charge. And to charge isn't very Web 2.o-ish at all. You can play with the beta here Windows Live One more point to make is that they do have a great url for this. How much easier could it get http://www.live.com/ Makes ya wonder what kind of coin they spent to get that one.

diggdot.us All your favorite Blogs and Social bookmarks in one place

2006-03-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Now that I have covered some very popular Web 2.0 spaces its time to introduce a very cool mashup. diggdot.us combines the articles and bookmarks from 3, make that 4 sites and continuously updates tham here in one Place. The basic premiss of a mashup is taking data from 2 or more sources and presenting it in a new way. diggdot.us takes data from Slashdot, Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us/popular and creates an all in one place to read your favorite blog and social boomarks. Once you signup you have the ability to add or remove which sites feeds show up. This is pretty nice since I pretty much just want my Digg and Slashdot stuff. If you are addicted to these sites like I am you will very quickly incorporate diggdot.us into your daily "to surf" list.

Flickr Photo Sharing site for the masses

2006-03-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

Flickr is the photo sharing site of the net savvy. You can share your photos amougst freind, family and even complete starngers. You can tag your photos so you can easy find them later of allow others to find them when they search. Once you sign up for a Flickr account with an email address and password you can start uploading photos right away. Then you can share tehm, tag them and allow others to comment on them. You are able to upload 6 photos at a time through your web browser of download the client photo uploader. One of the best thing I ran across is the services page which are links to sites that use Flickr API to mash things up and give it to you a different way. You can check them out here http://www.flickr.com/services/ So let me here what you think of Flickr. Send in your comments. Get out there and share! http://www.flickr.com

2006-03-06T06:38:00.000-08:00

Through My Way's "My Choice" settings page, you get Direct, One-Click Access to any Email Account, Chat Room, Portfolio, Calendar or Group on the Web! On My Way we give you choices. The choice to use our own features, or to establish direct, one-click access to features and services that you use on other sites. Check it out here http://www.myway.com The choice is yours: My Search My Way offers not one, but FOUR of the Internet's leading search providers. Choose from Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and LookSmart as your My Way primary Search Provider. My Email Don't need another Web-based Email address but want to access your Hotmail account through My Way? Simply establish a primary Email account and all My Way Email links will take you directly to the sign in page for that account. My Chat Connect with the chatters of your choice directly from My Way. Designate a primary Chat page, and we'll take you there straight from My Way Chat links. My Portfolio Like the Portfolio you've set up on Yahoo!? Don't want to create a new one on My Way? Just create a primary Portfolio and all My Way Portfolio links will click through to the Web-based Portfolio that you have selected. My Calendar Always stay just a click away from your online calendar while using My Way. Choose your primary Calendar (Yahoo! or MSN) and we'll provide your with direct access from My Way Calendar links. My Groups Want to keep tabs on your favorite online Groups? Establish a primary Groups provider and all My Way Groups links will take you directly to your Groups sign in page. Changing your setting: You may change your primary Email Account, Chat Room, Portfolio, Calendar or Group at any time by clicking within the "My Settings" box at the bottom of every My Way page.

Nuvvo - Learning something new

2006-03-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

Nuvvo is your way to teach on the web. Everyone knows a little bit about something, and this free, AJAX-enhanced eLearning web service is designed to bring out the teacher in all of us. Sign up and build a course in minutes; advertise your course on our eLearning Market to get the word out. Get teaching with Nuvvo, Web 2.0's answer to eLearning. I caught wind of this site when I was listening to a POD cast from The Web 2.0 Show. The POD cast is an interview with John Green of Savvico, creator of Nuvvo. After hereing about the concept and ease of use I had to give it a try. I must say it is very slick. In fact I am working on another project and this will be used as our educational offerings portal. Next step is to take a course to see how it goes. If your into teaching this is the easiest way to bring your materials to market hands down.

MySpace - Social Media Super Giant

2006-03-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

This is the mother of all social networking sites these days. Reportedly MySpace gets twice the pageviews of Google. I have been using MySpace for a couple months now and it has proven to be a good way to meet new people. Recently thier have been a couple of older men charged with luring young girls on the site. As any parent would I strongly encourage you to talk with your kids and keep tabs on what they are doing on the internet. MySpace gives you a page that you can cusomize with tweaks using style sheets in your about me section. You can post information about yourself, what your interests are, where you work, what school you graduated from and areas of interest to network with others with similar interests. One more caution. Be aware of the information you provide is visible to everyone. PLease please use discrection. Seems like some of the services go down but I guess in the grand scheme of things when you have a site that big and that visited your bound to have problems. Just how popular is MySpace? According to a story on CNBC, 220,000 new membes join each day and 5 million each month. MySpace revenue comes in the for of Ad revenue. $220 million a year in Ad revenue. Now you understand what an empire MySpace is. Take it for a spin and post comments on what you think. http://www.myspace.com

DIGG - Where social bookmarking, blogging and RSS come together

2006-03-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do. Check it out! http://www.digg.com So simple yet so incredibly good! I really Digg Digg.

del.icio.us - Keep Share Discover

2006-03-01T17:18:00.000-08:00

del.icio.us. Keep all your bookmarks in one place so you can find them. Share your favorite bookmarks with others. Discover new places you haven't been. http://del.icio.us Yahoo bought del.icio.us and has now created anotehr Silicon Valley web millionaire. I think the site has a very nice concept and one that I searched for, for a long time. One thing that could use a little work, ok a lot of work, is the look. Functionally it works great but its just not very apealing to look at. Of course the best and most important feature is the browser button so you can quickly add sites on the fly. I look for nice advancements at del.icio.us in the furutre.

Newsvine.com Get smart here!

2006-02-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

Newsvine: Get Smart here! Ever read a news article and want to put your two cents in? Well now you can. Newsvine is currently in Beta and is by invite only. The concept behind Newsvine is you can read stories from sources all over the web. Once you are ready to contribute, you can then add comments to stories and be a part of the news and voice your opinion. With your account you get a blog to write your own stories. Oh and your pages that you write Newsvine says you get 90% of ad revenues from your pages. You can also seed stories that you run across in your Net travels to be included on Newsvine. Newsvine is certainly on my list of regular sites to visit and be a part of the news.

YouTube

2006-02-27T10:48:00.000-08:00

YouTube: A video Blog where you can upload your own short movies, home videos or any other video that you want. The videos are converted to Flash for small file size and quick load time. Take it for a test drive at http://www.youtube.com But I must warn you. You can kill major time search and watching stupid little videos that are halarious. No shortage of features / filters. You can view most viewed, most discussed, top rated, recently featured, most recent or random. You can also search, subscribe of drill down through chennels or groups and even subscribe to channels or users. Included on each video page is an embedded player script as well as the permenant url to the video. Here is what the Embedded player looks like. I'm giving YouTube a golden seal of approval.

Bloglines: Search, Subscribe, Share and Publish

2006-02-26T12:59:00.000-08:00

Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install -- simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing your account any time, from any computer or mobile device. And it's FREE! Cleck it out here http://www.bloglines.com This site allows you to search for feeds and subscribe to them so you can keep up on current information. The site is very easy to use and has an extensive help section. I was able to quickly add 8 of my favorites tech blogs and start reading the posts in less than a minute. There are a couple different methods to add feeds when you are logged in. Search millions of entries in their directory, enter the feed url or if you know the username of a blog posted n Blogger, Live Journal or Xangas. All in all this site give you the ability to organize all your news in an easy to digest format so you can keep up with the hussle and bussle of the information age. This site get the Web Rev 2.0 seal of approval.

So what is Web 2.0?

2006-02-23T17:52:00.000-08:00

You can't get very far these days on the Internet without interacting a bit. You have to specify preferences, give some information about yourself or submit some kind of data to really get the full experience of the Web. Enter Web 2.0. So what is web 2.0? Is it just a term used because the Internet has been around long enough to say that we are through a first phase? According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 is not completely described as a technology but rather new things that are becoming popular. Using different technologies and putting a new spin on existing things using API's Web 2.0 is a way of saying things just keep on getting better on the Internet. I have to agree! Web Review 2.0 is here to help sort it all out. Enjoy!

Website Reviews 2.0

2006-02-23T10:28:00.000-08:00

The internet is morphing into some very exciting stuff these days. Gone are the days of Web Sites ran by Webmasters and site administrators. Today's Websites and the Internet for that matter is ran by the community. My plan is to visit new and exciting sites and become a community member of those sites to give an objectionable review of the site.