The YouTube Government: Why Is YouTube Getting Preferential Trea. Lately, there has been a trend for government agencies and elected officials to put their videos up on YouTube. While we commend them for doing so, we can't help but wonder if this is, in the end, a positive trend. After all, while YouTube is definitely the most popular video sharing site, it is definitely not the only one. Yet, as we reported this morning, Congress is putting its videos on the site now, and President-elect Barack Obama is also making regular appearances on Google's popular video sharing service. In Obama's defense, we have to say, though, that his team put his weekly "YouTube addresses" up on Yahoo and AOL as well, but the default still seems to be YouTube.
Why Shouldn't They Use YouTube? YouTube is not a public service but a commercial enterprise. A stronger argument against favoring YouTube, however, is that it does look like preferential treatment of a service that is already close to being a monopoly. No Ads - But Lots of Status Host Videos In-House? 10 More Future Web Trends - ReadWriteWeb. Our post a few weeks ago, 10 Future Web Trends, received a lot of excellent feedback. The most interesting was from people offering alternative future web trends to the ones we had chosen. In fact there were some grumblings that our 10 picks were not futuristic enough - so in this post let's see if we can address that!
There's nothing smarter than 'collective intelligence' after all... From the comments and trackbacks to the original post, plus some hunting around of my own, here are 10 more future web trends: 1. Integration into everyday devices (suggested by Mark Schoneveld); As examples Mark mentioned your grocery-ordering refrigerator and your health-monitoring bathroom. Commenter #63, Jack, had a nice term for this: "device pervasiveness". 2. 3. In a way, this is what the long-running open source PIM project Chandler is attempting to do - provide software agents. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Robot pic: Tempusmaster. Wakoopa: Most Used Apps of 2008 - ReadWriteWeb. Wakoopa, a social network for software enthusiasts, has released a list of the most used applications of 2008 based on the usage of its members. Wakoopa has not just collated the most popular Windows, Mac, and web applications, but it's also identified newcomers that showed prolific growth during 2008. Two important points to note before viewing the results: 1. Wakoopa is a relatively small community, composed primarily of tech fanatics and early adopters. 2. On Windows, it's no surprise to see Firefox and Internet Explorer as the top two most-used applications. The most popular new application of 2008 has been instant messaging client Digsby, with steady growth throughout the course of the year.
Mac Mail, the Mac's email client, remains popular in 5th place, impressive considering the rapid growth of web-based email clients such as Gmail. In terms of new apps, the Mac welcomed a host of wonderful applications in 2008. Mac vs. Web Summary Online, Facebook usage reigns supreme. Technology: The Year in Review. ABC News: Are Social Networks Sinking? Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008 - ReadWriteWeb. It's a well-known fact that our readers are on the cutting - if not bleeding - edge of technology. But sometimes, it's important to take a step back and realize that the apps to which we've grown so incredibly accustomed are just barely beginning to register with the general public.
With the Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008, we've tried to select the apps that have burst onto the radar of the everyday user this year - or if not quite, then perhaps they will next year. This was a year - after years of build up - in which two major events had worldwide impact on the Web. These events focused the world's attention, had more consumers creating more online content, and had more people online searching for information than ever before: the Beijing Olympics and the US Presidential elections. Many of these apps have those events to thank for their exposure and adoption. This is the third in a series of top products of 2008: Note: We attempted to order this list from most obvious to least obvious. Best Of 2008: Most Underhyped Apps of 2008. Click to view Now that you've seen all the big names and launches of 2008 , it's time to give a nod to the apps that didn't get the attention they should have this past year.
If you're sick of hearing about Firefox and the iPhone and Gmail and Chrome, you're in the right place. Let's take a look at the least hyped software that launched or saw great improvements in 2008, and give 'em the love they deserve. Songbird The open-source, cross-platform music player Songbird was supposed to do for your tunes what Firefox did for your web browsing: free you from the claws of iTunes and offer extensibility and general awesomeness. Back in November, the first release candidate of Songbird didn't quite deliver , but the final 1.0 release this week absolutely did , now that the bird plays iTunes Store purchases and ironed out its major wrinkles.
Songbird was the application most readers cried foul about for being excluded on our first list of best apps in 2008. Dropbox Ubiquity Picasa 3 Evernote Fedora.