eMediaOne

Comedy website The Onion has released an iPhone application called The Onion Microfiche Reader. It’s pretty cool. The app lets you flip through very short joke-headlines in an interface that looks like the old microfiche readers. There’s no satire news stories associated, just funny headlines. The Onion understands that “you must be very busy to have such an important phone.”

The app also offers easy download of the company’s video and audio podcasts and easy sharing on Facebook and Twitter. It’s definitely worth the 99 cents they are charging for it. Unless you’re broke, in which case don’t bother.

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Will this “flip through the stories” application end up making more money than Google’s too-serious (yet light-weight) Fast Flip, launched yesterday? That doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibilities.

Discuss

Jive, a leader in “social business software” for enterprise collaboration and community platforms, has added social media expertise to its repertoire. Through social media monitoring tools from Radian6, the new Jive Market Engagement lets companies track and respond to the social Web in real time.

Radian6 is the kind of software that we’ve called the future of social media monitoring for businesses. By integrating it into software known for collaboration under the control of the enterprise, Jive is wasting no time in trying to connect its customers with people outside company-run communities.

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A few of Jive’s competitors in the community platform space, such as Lithium, have added the ability to integrate social networks like Facebook and Twitter into their corporate sites. But Jive clearly prefers to use software that already shows prowess in a feature set, rather than develop something from scratch.

Just like the integration of SAP’s BusinessObjects for analytics, Jive chose to take advantage of competence Radian6 has in social media. By including its technology Jive can use RSS feeds, Google alerts, and email between employees to track blogs, forums, photo and video sharing sites, as well as popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

In the past Jive has stressed creating a channel of communication between customers in a community and employees in an intranet. Now they’re adding a connection to parts of the Web outside the corporate control, and we think that’s a big step for enterprise software platforms.

There are plenty of companies who’ve recognized the importance of Twitter and Facebook for business. But Jive is offering the first complete line of communication from social networks to customer communities and collaborative software behind the firewall.

Discuss

According to Ask.com spokesperson Nicholas Graham, while companies are expected to help community organizations, it’s not unheard of for these cause-related partnerships to also benefit the companies. After donating $25,000 to Autism Speaks through a targeted awareness campaign, 80,000 visitors changed their Ask home pages to Autism Speaks-related skins and 63% of campaign visitors became permanent users. Despite the fact that the promotion lasted only a few days, Ask saw a 10% increase over other holiday and non-cause related skinning promotions. In anticipation of October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Ask is building upon its community successes and teaming up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure in “Search for the Cure”.

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The search company is donating up to 50 cents per consumer who successfully answers a health fact and reskins their Ask homepage with a breast-cancer related graphic. The skins display a series of questions that challenge consumers’ understanding of breast cancer prevention, early detection and treatment. The campaign will last until the end of October and all proceeds will benefit Komen for the Cure and their mission to eliminate breast cancer. Similar to this Ask campaign, GoodSearch also runs cause-related campaigns in order to benefit charities. Rather than switching out page skins, GoodSearch users specify one of 83,000 charities and 50 per cent of all advertising-related payouts are designated to the charity of choice.

Says Ask spokesperson Nicholas Graham, “Health and reference are already two of our strongest verticals. It makes sense for Ask to team up with Komen and increase awareness amongst our 50 million monthly visitors.”

According to the American Cancer Society, there are about 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States and women have a 1 in 8 chance of developing invasive breast cancer. While there are a number of breast cancer-related corporate partnerships, only a few are fully embraced by health advocates. In recent years, environmental health organizations have formed the Think Before You Pink campaign as a backlash movement against companies that work on pink ribbon campaigns but manufacture products linked to the disease. Because Ask specializes in delivering information to its consumers, a public information campaign on breast cancer seems like a great fit.

Says Graham, “When you engage a community of users, the service becomes more robust. It makes a positve difference in the online and offline world.” To change your skins and support Komen for the Cure visit the Ask Skins gallery.

Discuss

Here we go with this week’s ReadWriteWeb events guide. Remember to download the calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

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12 September 2009: New York City

Twestival

Twestival, famous for harnessing the power of social media to bring people together for great causes, is hosting a star-studded event in New York City, in association with Brooklyn Bowl and Flavorpill, benefitting non-profit CampInteractive. CampInteractive is a local non-profit that empowers at-risk, inner-city youth through the inspiration of the outdoors and the creative power of technology.

100% of all money raised through ticket sales will go towards CampInteractive.

With stars in abundance, NYC’s “Celebrity Bowling” tournament represents a unique opportunity for Twestival-goers to bowl with entertainment elite. Participants are invited to purchase a special group package that will score them a lane to bowl with a star.

The night will be packed with live performances featuring some of New York’s most exciting emerging artists, including Twestival favorite, Eclectic Method.

Buy your tickets now!

21 – 23 September: San Diego, California

DEMOfall 09 Conference

DEMOfall 09 promises to showcase the most comprehensive portfolio of credible emerging technologies, vetted by VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall and leading technology analyst Chris Shipley. Alpha Pitch, a new DEMO program, puts you in front of the most promising entrepreneurs with products in the alpha, prototype, and development stages of their life cycles. These are pre-revenue companies that have no more than one round of seed funding and are ready for your investment dollars.

DEMO is the launch pad of emerging technology and a true market performer for visionary investors, entrepreneurs, and industry influencers alike.

ReadWriteWeb readers pay only $1996. Save $500 off the standard fee by registering before August 15th.

22 September 2009: London

Realising the Benefits of Web 2.0 in Financial Services

If you are responsible for marketing, compliance, e-business, customer communications, or internal communications at a financial institution, you won’t want to miss this series of events:

The UK’s first conference focusing specifically on Web 2.0 in Financial Services:

• What is happening now? Current applications and experiences of social media in the financial services market;
• Hear how social networking is changing the approach of firms to marketing, PR, and customer interaction;
• Explore opportunities to enhance internal communications, process improvement, and compliance;
• Understand the developing legal and regulatory framework for Web 2.0;
• Identify the next steps for social media in financial services.

ReadWriteWeb readers get a 20% discount. Use the code KM6298RRWEB.

22 – 23 September 2009: Singapore

Social Networking World Forum — Asia

This two-day conference hosted by the Social Networking World Forum – Asia features key speakers from social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, and more.

• Joint exhibition combining social networking and mobile social networking formats
• Evening networking reception
• Discount for early booking (expires August 21st)
• Free pass for exhibition only

22 – 23 September 2009: Melbourne, Australia

Marketing Now!

On September 22-23 a movement of highly engaged, passionate thought leaders and professionals will gather in Melbourne to demonstrate the power of social media for business today. Marketing Now! brings together the best of the best in new marketing innovation in two intensive days of interactive training designed to empower a new generation of change agents and business leaders. Marketing Now! will change the way you think about communications by equipping you with the tools and insight to foster advocacy and community for your business.

Follow Marketing Now on Twitter for conference updates.

30 September 2009: on Twitter

Twittamentary

Update: Call for submissions of stories and videos is now open. In this documentary, filmmaker Tan Siok Siok peels away the hype and explores the human dimensions of how lives connect and intersect, and then are affected and changed, as result of encounters on Twitter.

Twittamentary is created in the open spirit of the Web. Twitter users are invite to contribute ideas and videos to the film. When the film is completed, it will be released online under a creative commons license. In other words, you are both the contributor and the audience.

The 24-hour storytelling event on 30 September 2009 shares the videos submitted up till then in a round-the-clock marathon in which participants get to watch the videos online, rate and comment on them, and tweet about them.

2 October 2009: Seattle, Washington

ExpressionEngine Roadshow

The ExpressionEngine Roadshow is a traveling conference designed to bring together experts and users to learn ExpressionEngine techniques and share insider tips. Now in its second year, and second city, the 2009 conference will be a full day event. The show runs from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm, with breakfast before, a party after, and lunch in between, all included in the price of admission. Follow @eeroadshow on Twitter for the latest details.

8 October 2009: San Diego

Mobile Application Stores conference

As a partner seminar of Intenational CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment, the Mobile Application Stores conference will focus on the tremendous opportunities in the mobile apps stores eco-system. The event is designed to give a complete understanding of how to capitalize on this exploding market.

Participants will discuss strategy and deployment in application stores such as Apple (iPhone), Google (Android), RIM (Blackberry), Nokia (Ovi), Palm Pre, and Microsoft, as well as other emerging application stores. To learn more, visit www.mobileapplicationstores.com or write to events@nextvisionmedia.com.

22 October 2009: London, England

Cloud Computing World Forum

The Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event for professionals to learn and discuss the future development and integration of cloud services. This one-day conference will provide a focused platform for the global cloud computing industry.

The Cloud Computing World Forum is the place to meet all the key decision makers from all of the cloud service providers in one place. Show highlights include:

• Hear from leading case studies on how to integrate cloud computing into working practices,
• Learn from the key players offering services in the cloud,
• Benefit from pre-show online meeting planner,
• Evening networking reception.

23 October 2009: Durham, North Carolina

The Social Media Business Forum

The Social Media Business Forum will feature national and local speakers from marketing companies, technology companies, and social networks discussing ways in which business communications have changed because of social media. Sessions will look at internal and external communications methods for both B2B and B2C companies and provide actionable takeaway items for attendees to immediately implement in their businesses. The forum targets business owners, executives, business communicators, key organizational stake holders, and anyone interested in gaining practical knowledge about social media.

Early bird registration is $125 until September 18, and $250 thereafter.

4 – 5 November 2009: Raleigh, North Carolina

Internet Summit 2009

Internet Summit ’09 will feature over 75 speakers, including representatives of major Internet brands such as Twitter, Pandora, Google, Salesforce.com, Digg, Technorati, CBS Interactive, Huffington Post, Blogger, Tree.com, and many more.

Topics will include social media, blogging, real time, mobile, video, search, online advertising, e-commerce, analytics, the cloud, and more.

Join over 1200 entrepreneurs, senior marketers, and executives in the conversation about the future of the industry and how to capitalize on the shifting dynamics of the Internet and tap into its unlimited business potential.

9 – 10 November 2009: Santa Clara, California

Social Networking World Forum — California

This event taking place at the Santa Clara Convention Center actually consists of three conferences: two days dedicated to social networking, one day dedicated to enterprise social media, and one day dedicated to social TV. Key speakers include social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, and more.

• Joint exhibition combining social networking and enterprise social media formats
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Discount for early booking (expires September 25th)
• Free pass for exhibition only

10 – 13 November 2009: Las Vegas

PubCon Vegas

PubCon Las Vegas is a multi-track educational conference hosted by SearchEngineWorld & WebmasterWorld. PubCon events are for thought leaders and professionals in search engine and Internet marketing to gather and to share best practices in the design, development, promotion and marketing of their Internet businesses and brands. PubCon London 2009 is a social networking event.

11 – 12 November 2009: Denver, Colorado

Defrag 2009 Conference

As online data is growing and fragmenting at an exponential pace, individuals, groups and organizations are struggling to discover, assemble, organize, act on and gather feedback from that data. In the largest sense, we’re all looking to augment the pace at which we achieve insights on raw data — to accelerate the “A-ha” moment.

Defrag explores the intersection of topics like:

• Business intelligence
• Business process management
• Social computing and analytics
• Next-level discovery
• Enterprise 2.0
• Next-gen email
• The semantic Web

1 – 3 December 2009: London, England

Online Information & IMS 2009

Online Information and IMS together create the largest event dedicated to the information industry. Consisting of an exhibition delivering over 9,000 visitors from 70 countries, a conference and a show-floor seminar program, the event provides an annual meeting place for the global information industry.

Online Information is once again set to play host to thousands of information professionals, information end-users and publishers from around the globe, meeting suppliers of online content, e-publishing, and library management solutions. IMS provides a forum for IT, business, and information management professionals to find unlimited, relevant advice, educational content and compare solutions under one roof. Attend IMS and meet suppliers of content management, search solutions, and Web 2.0 technologies.

15 – 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

1. Social Networking World Forum
2. Enterprise social media
3. Social TV World Forum
4. Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

• Full workshop program within exhibition area
• Evening networking reception
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Free pass for exhibition only

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

Discuss

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze the 5 biggest trends of 2009 on the Web, review the iTunes and iPhone announcements made by Apple during the week, tell you about a new WordPress feature that makes blogs more real-time, and more. We also check in on our two new channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

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The ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management is a premium report for businesses seeking to engage with online communities. It is a 75 page collection of case studies, advice and discussion concerning the most important issues in online community. You will also get a companion online aggregator that delivers the most-discussed articles each day. All of this is available for purchase at a price of $299. You can download a free sample section of the report here.

Top 5 Web Trends of 2009

This week ReadWriteWeb ran a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest Web trends of 2009. Click each story below for the full-length posts:

1. Structured Data

Structured data is rapidly becoming a feature of today’s Web. Companies like Thomson Reuters and Google are enabling data to be structured, and new types of products (like Wolfram|Alpha) will make use of structured data in ways we perhaps can’t imagine right now.

2. The Real-Time Web

This has been probably the most hyped trend of 2009. The Real-Time Web has become a core part of many Internet products this year: Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Google, Delicious, WordPress, and many others.

3. Personalization

Personalization has long been a buzzword on the Internet. With the glut of information on the Web circa 2009, personalization in this era means providing effective filters and recommendations.

4. Mobile Web & Augmented Reality

Clearly mobile devices are an increasingly important way to access the Web. What’s perhaps most encouraging however, is the entirely new class of mobile apps we’re seeing. Augmented Reality is the most obvious example. It’s been a big year for mobile, with much promise to come.

5. The Internet of Things

The fifth and final part of our series is about the Internet of Things, when real world objects (such as fridges, lights and toasters) get connected to the Internet. In 2009, this trend has ramped up and is adding a significant amount of new data to the Web.

Other Web Trends

Forget the iTunes LP, Apps are the New Album

The “iTunes LP” was just one of many new iTunes features revealed this week. Butit has a heavy burden on its shoulders. It’s supposed to revitalize the music industry by encouraging consumers to once again purchase entire albums as opposed to single tracks. However, innovative artists are already discovering how to monetize their music while engaging fans in new ways that have nothing to do with a re-imagined LP. Instead, the “interactive format” of the future isn’t the album, it’s the app.

In 8 Years, Online Video Consumption Will be Measured in Exabytes

One exabyte is a billion gigabytes. It’s one quintillion bytes. And yes, “quintillion” is a number so large, it almost seems made-up. But that’s how much online video will be consumed by 2017, according to new reports from U.K.-based research firm Coda. Actually, to be precise, they’re claiming that mobile broadband users accessing the net via laptops and netbooks will consume 1.8 exabytes of video. Per month.

How Facebook Beat MySpace: From College Dorm to Platform

Two years ago Danah Boyd described Facebook as “hegemonic” and MySpace as the haven of “subaltern” teens. Whether Boyd intended it or not, Facebook became characterized as the privileged space of college kids and MySpace was plagued with the perception of lowbrow tackiness. But now, according to a recent Hitwise blog post, Facebook is not only beating MySpace’s traffic – it’s the second ranked site overall in the US behind Google.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

A Word from Our Sponsors

We’d like to thank ReadWriteWeb’s sponsors, without whom we couldn’t bring you all these stories every week!

• Mashery is the leading provider of API management services.
• Domain.ME, the official registry for all .ME Domains.
• Codero, Dedicated Hosting with Backup & Managed Services.
• Faroo, Real-Time search.
• Groupsite.com, How Groups Make Things Happen.
• Crowd Science gives you detailed visitor demographics.
• hakia is a semantic search engine.
• Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
• Aplus provides web hosting services for small business hosting needs.
• MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
• SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ and using social software inside organizations.

Salesforce.com Service Cloud 2: Customer Service for the Social Web

Salesforce.com is best known for its CRM and its cloud computing platform. But according to the company its fastest growing product is Service Cloud, a kind of SaaS customer service software meant to replace the traditional call center. Salesforce.com has launched the second version of Service Cloud, which incorporates new capabilities for handling content as well as a close connection with the social networks.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Design for Startups: The Aesthetics of Web Apps in 6 Questions

Look and feel is the first thing we see and notice about most web apps and is often critical to an app’s user experience, adoption, and ultimate success. We chatted with a panel of expert aesthetes in the space, including Spymaster designer Eston Bond, veteran creative director Rich Barrett, designer/developer Warren Benedetto, Mike Rundle of 9rules and Beak fame, and the Paul du Coudray Lowdown. Here’s what they had to say about developers doing double duty as designers, trends they’d like to see disappear, and how aesthetics can help a startup sink or swim.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Products

It’s Only Rock and Roll: Steve Jobs is Back, iPhone 3.1, iTunes 9 & iPod Updates

Steve Jobs returned to a standing ovation at Apple’s annual iPod event this week, where Apple introduced version 3.1 of the iPhone OS and the next version of iTunes. With iTunes 9, Apple introduces a Genius-like recommendation feature for apps, a major redesign, ‘iTunes LPs‘ that will bring liner notes and artwork to digital albums, and app management for the iPhone and iPod touch built in to iTunes.

See also: iPhone 3.1: Some Nice Tweaks – Augmented Reality Still Only Semi-Supported

WordPress Just Made Millions of Blogs Real-Time With RSSCloud

All blogs on the WordPress.com platform and any WordPress.org blogs that opt-in (using this plug-in) will now make instant updates available to any RSS readers subscribed to a new feature called RSSCloud. RSSCloud is an element that’s always been present in the RSS 2.0 spec but has drawn new attention with the rise of interest in the Real-Time Web.

Android Market Passes 10K Apps; Marshall’s 5 Favorites (With QR Codes)

Google’s Android mobile operating system isn’t as popular as the iPhone, but its application marketplace is wide open and one service tracking Android apps reports that there are now more than ten thousand available. In this post lead RWW writer Marshall Kirkpatrick outlines his five favorite Android apps so far, along with QR codes you can scan.

Facebook Open Sources FriendFeed’s Ultra-Fast Real-Time Web Framework

Facebook announced this week that it has released Tornado, the real-time web framework that powers FriendFeed, as open source code. According to Facebook’s David Recordon, Tornado is one of the core infrastructure pieces that power FriendFeed’s real-time functionality.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Discuss

European music service Spotify is one of the most highly anticipated applications coming to the U.S. The service, best described as a streaming music version of iTunes, consists of both desktop software as well as complementary mobile applications for Apple’s iPhone and the Google Android platform. Already, the service is wildly popular overseas in its current markets which include the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Spain, Norway and Finland where it has accumulated over 5 million users. There, the company offers two versions of its service – a free application and a premium, ad-free subscription version.

According to recent reports, however, Spotify may do things a little differently when it reaches the States. Says Andres Sehr, Spotify’s global community manager, the company is considering going the “freemium” route for the U.S. market.

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Why Freemium?

“Freemium” is a word coined to describe a business model where basic services are free while special or advanced features are available for a fee. That’s a slightly different spin on the business model Spotify uses today. Currently, Spotify offers its European users a choice between a free, ad-supported application and a paid app which costs around about €10 (around $16.60) a month. With a Spotify “freemium” service, however, there would be just the one application in which users would pay for the extra features they want to use. Details on how exactly this would work and what features would come at additional cost is still unknown. Sehr says it’s far too early say at this point. Also unknown is whether this “freemium” model would forgo the monthly subscription fees in favor of the premium upgrades.

In an interview published today in the Wall Street Journal, Sehr explained why the company is considering making this sort of change. “The U.S. is a completely different market, and the competition landscape’s different,” he said, adding that “when we launch there, it’ll definitely be a challenge for us.”

What Sehr is referring to is the particularly crowded market here in the U.S. where services like Imeem, Pandora, Last.fm, and many others are already well-known and popular destinations for streaming music online. In other words, Spotify isn’t just rivaling iTunes in the U.S., it’s going up against a number of other companies doing nearly the same thing, too.

Spotify on the Mobile

Where Spotify has an edge over its competition is on the mobile front. Although there are plenty of streaming music applications available for both the iPhone and Android platforms, Spotify’s app does things a little differently…and considering the glowing reviews, better. Instead of simply providing a streaming radio of sorts based on a user’s musical preferences, Spotify’s mobile users can actually pick and choose the songs they want to listen to and build a custom playlist. That playlist can also be streamed when the mobile device is offline thanks to Spotify’s caching technology.

For this reason, there were originally concerns that Apple would reject the streaming music app because selecting tracks, making playlists, and playing music offline puts it in direct competition with iTunes itself. Those concerns were soon discovered to be unfounded as Apple recently approved the app for distribution via App Store – a decision no doubt influenced at least in part by FCC scrutiny over the company’s app approval process and anti-competitive tactics.

While the initial launch of the Spotify mobile iPhone/iPod Touch app is only in the European counties where Spotify is currently licensed, the Apple “seal of approval” means that (in theory), Spotify won’t have any trouble making it into the American App Store, too. That is, once they get the American licensing agreements worked out.

Although the company already has European deals with Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI and it solidified an American licensing agreement with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) in July, its the Stateside licensing agreements that are holding up the service’s U.S. launch. Still, the company remains optimistic and expects to make its American debut later this year or in early 2010.

Discuss

Collecta, the real-time search startup we reviewed in May and again in June, is releasing their API today and announcing that the developer of the best application will receive a MacBook Pro.

“The API is really simple to integrate,” said Collecta CEO Gerry Campbell in a phone conversation yesterday. “It works very similar to the Twitter search API. We enourage that as a standard and wanted to make sure developers could easily pick it up and use it.”

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Campbell had an interesting take on Collecta’s approach to the ever-more crowded real-time search space.

“Our focus is real web search,” he said, “not just the social web. We’re looking across the web everywhere to find timely items.”

And while other real-time search engines, such as OneRiot, have PageRank-eqsue algorithms involving backlinks and user influence to determine search results, Collecta’s results are ranked solely on timeliness.

“We believe really strongly in relevance. We’re just going about it in a different way. If you want to offer real-time search, you have to be true to the timeline. We give you not the summary of the story, but the story as it unfolds.”

Campbell said this type of result is good for searches on entities and events, and he and the rest of the Collecta team feel the API could be put to great use in weather or fantasy sports applications.

“We think publishers will find this very interesting to use for evergreen or static stories as a widget or sidebar,” he continued.

API calls are limited to 5,000 per hour for developers who have not established a relationship with the company, and Collecta does plan to charge for high-level API usage as part of their revenue model.

The company was funded by True Ventures to the tune of $1.85 million and is still figuring out how the product will be monetized.

“Obviously, we’re building a business here” said Campbell.”‘I ran search at AOL… I’m pretty well-versed in search-related business models.”

Although he noted that the startup is “still getting all the players on the field,” Campbell did reveal that the basis for Collecta’s business strategy will be offering creative solutions to brands and advertisers. “The reason I love search is because it’s the number one place where user value and advertiser value are completely aligned. When users are coming and looking to buy something, I expect there to be those opportunities in this kind of search, as well.”

Discuss

Steve Jobs returned to a standing ovation at Apple’s annual iPod event today, where Apple introduced version 3.1 of the iPhone OS and the next version of iTunes. With iTunes 9, Apple introduces a Genius-like recommendation feature for apps and 30,000 premade ringtones for $1.29 in iTunes. Version 9 of iTunes has also seen a major redesign. The application and the iTunes store now look much cleaner. Apple also introduced ‘iTunes LPs’ that will bring liner notes and artwork to digital albums (the much rumored ‘cocktail’ feature), as well as an app management for the iPhone and iPod touch that is built in to iTunes.

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Note: we will continue to update this post until the end of the event.

iTunes 9: App Management, iTunes LPs, Extras

During the presentation, Jobs stressed that the Genius feature in iTunes will now be applied to other areas in iTunes. Jobs also announced that Apple has now received over 27 million libraries from its uses, each with about 2,000 songs. Building on top of this database, Apple is introducing ‘Genius mixes’ in iTunes 9. You can now basically create Pandora-like radio stations with the music you already own by giving iTunes a few songs or artists to start out with.

The iTunes store is also getting a make-over, though the most important new feature here is that Apple is introducing ‘iTunes LPs’ – the much rumored ‘Cocktail’ feature that will bring artwork and liner notes and other ‘memorabilia’ back to digital music (as long you purchase it through iTunes, of course). Apple is also extending this concept to movies and will bring DVD extras to movies in the iTunes store.

The store itself now looks a lot cleaner, and it does feature the rumored ability to send out tweets and Facebook status updates about songs.

We will have a closer look at the new iTunes and iPhone 3.1 update once it launches later today.

Home Sharing

In addition, Apple announced that users can now share songs, movies, and TV shows with up to 5 authorized computers in a household. Apple always allowed users to share songs on a local network, but this new features takes this a bit further as it also allows users to automatically transfer purchases between different computers on a home network.

Manage iPhone Apps in iTunes 9

iPhone and iPod touch users will also be happy to hear that iTunes now allows you to manage your apps directly in iTunes, making it far easier to arrange icons on the small screen than every before. iTunes will now give you an overview of all the pages you have filled with apps on the iPhone and lets your reorganize those apps right from within iTunes. You can also move a complete page around.

iPhone Games

During the second part of the event, Apple gave iPhone and iPod game developers a chance to showcase a number of new games, including the upcoming iPhone version of Madden 2010, Riddim Ribbon (a new take on the Guitar Hero/Tap Tap Revenge music genre and maybe the most interesting game demoed today), Assassin’s Creed, and Nova, a new first-person shooter from Gameloft.

Discuss

Google just released an update to its cutting edge developer version of Google Chrome that adds a lot of polish to the way Chrome handles extensions. Interestingly, while the stable versions of Chrome are still stuck with the 2.x series, the versions in the developer channel are now already designated as 4.x versions. At this point, users of the developer channel version can already easily install extensions, change themes, sync bookmarks, and profit from a faster rendering engine, while users of the more conservative stable version don’t have access to any of these features yet.

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Among other things, Google has now made extension management a lot easier and if you use the dev channel version, just type in “chrome://extensions/” and the new extension management interface will pop up.

In addition, Google has also added some new features for extension developers, including the ability to “load an extension and pack an extension” more conveniently.

A small ecosystem of Chrome extensions is already growing up around Chrome, even though only a small number of Chrome users are currently able to use them. Once Google enables these extensions for all users, they will be able to use a wide range of them. The absence of extensions has held back a lot of users who may want to use Chrome but rely on certain extensions. Now, however, it looks like it’s only a matter of time before all Google Chrome users will be able to tap into this growing extension ecosystem.

Given how stable both the beta and developer channel versions of Chrome on Windows are at this point, we hope that Google will soon upgrade the stable version to the 3.x or 4.x series, as they offer a lot more functionality. The Mac and Linux versions are currently still somewhat unstable, but at least the Mac version has now become quite usable.

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All blogs on the WordPress.com platform and any WordPress.org blogs that opt-in will now make instant updates available to any RSS readers subscribed to a new feature called RSSCloud. There is curretnly only one RSS aggregator that supports RSSCloud, Dave Winer’s brand new reader River2. That will probably change very soon.

RSSCloud is an element that’s always been present in the RSS 2.0 spec but has drawn new attention with the rise of interest in the Real Time Web. The element was just added to the WordPress code this afternoon. The implications of this big vote of support go beyond reading WordPress blogs; this is the kind of traction that new technologies can leverage to gain support in many different applications.

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Supporting feed readers will now be able to request updates from WordPress blog feeds as soon as they become available, instead of polling a server periodically to check for updates. The feature is already being rolled out, several WordPress users report seeing the cloud element in the source code of their RSS feeds.

This is like the difference between checking your email every once in awhile and using a Blackberry to get new emails pushed to you as soon as they are sent. The subscription method of RSSCloud works more like Instant Messaging than the old method of polling feeds for updates each time you fire up your feed reader.

Google Reader, the dominant RSS aggregator on the market, began a limited implementation a related protocol called PubSubHubbub last month. Facebook-acuired FriendFeed worked with Google on that system.

Now RSSCloud has a posse. Half a million blogs are created each month on WordPress and if Google Reader keeps taking its sweet time checking those blogs for updates instead of turning on support for RSSCloud, it’s going to look slow as mollassas.

Real time updates could enable several things. Faster distribution of blog posts, more compelling conversations in real-time and a renewed timeliness for blogging vs. services like Twitter are all likely consequences. The list of possible technical developments on top of RSSCloud could be as open-ended as the developments enabled by the core of RSS.

RSS has made blogging viable by freeing readers of the requirement of visiting each site they are interested in. It has made podcasts subscribable. It has make wiki change notification trackable outside the mess of the email inbox. It has made search a persistant action, instead of a one-off occaisional delayed reaction.

Now RSSCloud could add a real-time dimension to all of that. The paradigm just got a very big vote of support.

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