Finally, A Windows Mobile Facebook App!
From Read/WriteWeb, popular since 2 months
For users of the Windows Mobile platform, visiting Facebook while on the go meant loading up the mobile web page in their device's browser. Meanwhile, Blackberry users have had their own downloadable app since late 2007. But now, as of today, there is at long last a downloadable application just for Windows Mobile users, FriendMobilizer.Today Macrospecs, Inc. has launched FriendMobilizer, a new software application for Windows Mobile phones which gives you full access to your Facebook accounts. Unlike other Windows Mobile Facebook apps like Snap2Face, which only provides for photo uploads, FriendMobilizer gives Windows Mobile users an app that's comporable to the Blackberry version.With FriendMobilizer, you can view your [...]Go to site
Yesterday we wrote about Enterprise 2.0 from the point of view of the Enterprise, the buyer. The conclusion was that the impact of social media on the Enterprise was very big, addressing the very "nature of the firm". This post looks at Enterprise 2.0 from the point of view of the vendor, specifically startups. This is a 30,000 foot view, but we aim to get past the hype to insights you can use in your startup. Further posts in our recently launched Enterprise Chanel will drill into specific market segments, companies and technologies. Subscriptions are the best revenue you can get. Subscription revenue is more recession proof than advertising and more predictable than traditional enterprise software licensing. As long as you don't mess up, you will have a low churn rate. Then your new subscriptions drive your revenue growthIt is much easier to get subscriptions from a business than from consumers. Sure we all love the idea of consumer subscriptions, the potential is enormous. But do this reality check. How many subscriptions do you pay for? How many current subscription costs would you love to eliminate or drastically reduce? What would your really (no, really) agree to pay for every month? We are in a serious consumer recession in the developed markets that may last a while. What was always hard, just got an awful lot harder. Selling to business is much easier, if you focus hard on the next rule. The other 80/20 rule. 80% of enterprise IT budgets just "keep the lights on". Only 20% goes to new stuff. I learned this in the technology nuclear winter in 2002, when a 20% cut in IT budgets meant that no (zero, nada) new projects were approved. If you can show how to reduce that 80%, you get a better shot at the 20%. That 80% market is a replacement market. You need to know what cost you are replacing. The incumbents are looking at the 20% budget as well and they have the inside track. You have to attack the 80% to make it big."Parallel replacement" is new. The old enterprise replacement market was based on capital expenditure write offs. If the client bought a $1m license fee over 5 years ago, you had a shot at selling another license fee for something "better, faster, cheaper". In the new enterprise world of SAAS and open source, upfront license fees are the exception rather than the rule. Buyers prefer to hold onto the old stuff a bit longer until they can see either an open source or SAAS alternative. Replacement is always very risky, leaving incumbents in control and startups banging outside the door in frustration. So you need to show that you can run in parallel with the existing solution for a period until you are established enough to be a viable, safe replacement. Step 1 is run in parallel, step 2 is replace. This is what Google Apps and Zoho are doing to Microsoft office (I use both Google Apps and MS Office. Even though I use Office less frequently I own a license, so why delete it? When I get a new laptop I will decide whether I need to buy Office). To play this new parallel replacement game you need to a) offer a free entry point (the Freemium strategy) so you get traction with a low cost of sale and b) you need to show one very clear new value proposition that will tap into that 20% budget for new stuff.Have one simple new "blue ocean" value proposition that any business user can understand. You need this to access the 20% of budget going to new stuff. Being "cloudy" is not a value proposition, it is simple]y a way to deliver your value proposition. The incumbent can always launch their SAAS equivalent. Your free entry level just gets you through the door so that you get a chance to upsell to your subscription; free is not a value proposition. You have to show how you will do something really basic such as either a) increase revenue with a low cost of sale or, b) reduce cost on an existing process or c) create strategic sustainable advantage in measurable ways. Most likely you will do this by enabling better collaboration/communication, both within the enterprise but also, more critically, outside the firewall to the "extended enterprise". For a startup, this has to be "blue ocean", a market that has not yet been defined by the incumbents. By its very nature, this means the market size will be very hard to define and there will almost certainly not be recognized external authority that has defined the market size. Smart VC understand that Blue Ocean strategy and precise market size estimates seldom go together.SaaS ++ means that Open Source is no longer a problem. Open Source has been great for buyers but it has also taken the entry level market away in most segments and that trend shows no sign of letting up. That is bad news for a startup looking to sell traditional software with a "better, faster, cheaper plus we try harder" replacement pitch. You cannot undersell Open Source. That has forced many ventures with great software and strong teams into the dead-pool. With a "SAAS ++" offering, you can use Open Source as the base, add a bit of new code and bundle it all up with hardware and service in a monthly fee. Unless buyers really want to do all that in-house, using their dwindling internal IT staff, you have a shot at it. SAAS alone however is not a barrier to entry. Anybody can replicate it. Which means (smart) VC will/should pass. You need the "++" bit as well. That is likely to be something to do with viral, communications and network effects that create a growing user base and proprietary data coming from that base. That is the "magic sauce".You need to become a very good financial and data modeler. You will need some old-fashioned face to face relationship selling to get large enterprises to understand your solution, so that the "powers that be" encourage adoption and do not seek to block it. But the business will grow one subscriber at a time and users convert to subscribers one click at a time. Modeling becomes a core competency. Modeling the costs of all the SaaS components (R&D, hardware, infrastructure software, software maintenance, system and data maintenance). Modeling the cost of subscriber acquisition using SEO, SEM, social networking, conversion from free to paid and inside telephone sales in a highly efficient funnel process that delivers the right $ per subscriber. Modeling the revenue growth with multiple what if variable assumptions. Modeling the ROI for your clients at various levels of adoption.Most external market size projections do not help your business plan. Forrester Research reports that Enterprise 2.0 will be a $4.6 billion market by 2013. That is not nearly granular enough for a real business plan. You are not really in the Enterprise 2.0 market. Saying "we will get 1% of the $4.6 billion Enterprise 2.0" market is totally meaningless and will simply get you shown the door in the VC office. You are in the market of solving a specific business problem, for a specific type of customer, competing against specific incumbents and startups. That is how you need to build a market size, from the bottom up. This is particularly true for "blue ocean" strategies where the market has not been defined by an incumbent. Building the real world, bottom up market size takes real hard work and detailed market knowledge. Look for a small enough market where you can get 20% and take that to 50% share and then leverage that market to get 10% in another market. Rinse and repeat. It is an old formula, but it works. You need VC, they need you but there is a disconnect. Since 2000, most VC have sent any business plan with the word "enterprise" straight to the trash. With good reason. During the nuclear winter, the enterprise IT market was dead as a dodo. Then the big incumbents got into the consolidation game and it looked like you would count enterprise IT vendors on the fingers of one hand. The cost of entry was high, needing expensive sales teams upfront and the revenue was lumpy and unpredictable. Yech. Better to back a few inexpensive developers building a free service that some big vendor would buy and figure out how to monetize. That was a great game for a while. Most VC now view it as in its final innings at best. There is a shortage of buyers, no IPO market, we are in a cyclical downturn for advertising and in a major funk figuring out how social media can be funded by advertising. So VC need Enterprise 2.0. But they have missed the early winners. Very few of the current Enterprise 2.0 startups are venture backed. This is a disconnect. The early players always find it easier to bootstrap than later vendors. Today you need capital to fund the ramp-up and to build distance from competitors as the Enterprise 2.0 market moves from "below the radar" to "early hype" phase, thus dragging more entrants into every category.Vertical is not the same as Horizontal. Classic Web 2.0 services such as Delicious, YouTube and Skype are geared at mass markets. Anything that is more niche has tended to be called "vertical". That is confusing. Vertical means a specific industry such as banking, healthcare or manufacturing and sub-sets of those industries. Horizontal (applying to any industry) should mean a set of common and linked features used by a specific type of person in the company (e.g. accounts payable by Finance, CRM by Sales and so on). The general rule of thumb has been for vertical ventures to be bootstrapped and eventually rolled up into larger entities. VC tend to view vertical as too limited. Horizontal on the other hand is big enough.Know how to deal with secrecy, structure and control needs. Social Media is about being open, loose, unstructured, informal and fun; no ties allowed. Enterprises are about secrecy, structure and control. Ties show that you are serious and fun is for after work. The ties and fun bit is just style. But secrecy, structure and control is real. If you threaten those, many forces within the enterprise will shut you out. It will be like the red blood cells attacking the foreign virus. On the other hand, if you go along with all the secrecy, structure and control rules of the enterprise you will lose the social media benefits of extended enterprise collaboration and innovation. Many people within enterprises understand this and some of them are in a policy-making position of authority. In general, the trend is towards loose, unstructured, "emergent business networks". So "make the trend your friend", but beware of the very strong forces of opposition and deal positively with their legitimate needs.ConclusionWhat is your position in the Enterprise 2.0 market. Do you work in IT in a large Enterprise? Do you work for a large incumbent Enterprise IT vendor? Do you work for a startup that is going to change the Enterprise world? Are you writing about this rapidly emerging market? Do you have unique insights or research to share? We would love to hear from you in the comments and maybe as a Guest Author. Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.You can subscribe now to our special RSS feed for the Enterprise channel. 
We've written a lot of times about developer platforms for the Web and we've reviewed a fair number of them. A web platform at its simplest is an API, allowing external developers to build on top of your web app or product. As we explained in our post APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Cons, "offering an API is a great way to make developer friends and developing for a large Platform has the potential to bring your work to a huge audience." In this post we review 10 promising developer platforms for the Web.We're not talking about the obvious ones either, like Facebook, iPhone, OpenSocial or even Twitter. Those have been covered extensively already. The list below are some of our favorite 'lesser known' web developer platforms. There are bound to be some excellent developer platforms not noted below, so as always please use the comments here to point out your own favorites.Note: the content in this post has been written collectively by members of the RWW team. Also the list below is in no particular order.1. Imeem Developer Platform: Music
Major social networking site Imeem launched a developer platform in March that will enable read/write access to user information and more. Imeem is a site where users can upload music, create and listen to any uploads and blog about music all for free. Imeem pays internet radio-style licensing fees for each time a copyrighted song is played.The new platform is a Flex and ActionScript API that will let developers create customized music players, access activity data and build things like recommendation engines, smart playlists and music games.Read more...2. YouTube Platform: Online Video
The video uploading platform announced by YouTube in March may not have been what many pundits expected but it could mark a major turning point for both YouTube and thousands of other sites around the web.By allowing website owners to combine an on-site video publishing option for their users with the huge number of people looking to discover new content on YouTube, the platform will create a mutually beneficial feedback loop that will breathe new life into both YouTube and the web at large. It's also got potential to show up all the other big platform plays we've seen to date.Read more...3. Fire Eagle: Yahoo's Location Platform
Earlier this month Yahoo announced that the closed beta period for its location platform Fire Eagle had ended and that the service was now open for everybody.. Since then, a number of high-profile services, including Brightkite, Movable Type, Dopplr, and Pownce have implemented Fire Eagle through the numerous APIs Yahoo provides for accessing the service.As we wrote about Fire Eagle when the beta was first announced, it offers API kits in five different programming languages, it's got user authorization protocols already available for web, desktop and mobile apps and it's using the open standards community built oAuth to facilitate faster, more secure mashups. This ain't no cry-baby do it my way or I'm taking my ball and going home framework like the Facebook platform. This is leveraging universal open standards.Note: also see our coverage of the Yahoo! Internet Location Platform, a collection of in-depth geo-location based APIs. 
Read more...4. Mozilla Weave: Web Platform for User Data
Mozilla recently announced Weave, a new web platform that will store users' browser metadata in a cloud environment for access anywhere. Weave is a "framework for services integration" that will, according to Mozilla, "focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences."The basic idea is that browser metadata (things stored in your Firefox profile like bookmarks, history, RSS feeds, usernames and passwords, etc.) is pushed into the cloud and stored on Mozilla's servers. The data is available to users from wherever they get online and users can share information with friends, family, or third parties while retaining control over how, when, and if the info is shared.
Read more...5. Live Mesh: Microsoft's Multi-device Platform
The new Live Mesh service launched in April as an invite only "technology preview". It is Microsoft's attempt to tie all of our data together. Live Mesh synchronizes data across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but theoretically it will extend to mobile and other devices in the future) as well as to a web desktop that exists in the cloud. It can sync data across devices used by a single users, as well as create shared spaces for multiple users. On the surface, Mesh is a lot like competing file sync services such as Dropbox, SugarSync (which we covered in January), and even Microsoft's own FolderShare product. But what sets Live Mesh apart is its platform approach.Essentially, Live Mesh is a collection of feeds (which can be expressed as ATOM, JSON, FeedSync, RSS, WB-XML, or POX). Every piece of data entered into a user's Mesh -- be it a file, a folder, a message, a user permission, or a new device -- is rendered as a piece of information in a feed. The feeds are then synced with other devices that are part of that Mesh following rules for how to sync each particular piece of information (i.e., File A may sync with Users 1, 2, and 3, while File B may only be told to sync with Users 1 and 2).Read more...6. Hakia's Semantic API
Semantic search engine Hakia announced in June a set of APIs that opens up their natural language processing and search platform to developers. Hakia's Syndication Web Services really comes in two parts: search queries, which allow developers to add web search functionality leveraging Hakia's five billion page index, and XML feed calls, which give developers access to Hakia's underlying natural language processing technology. The latter of the two is clearly the more compelling of the offerings.What is more interesting are the XML feed calls that Hakia is offering that give access to their underlying NLP engine. Read more...7. Iceberg: Everyone Can Program
There was a time when only technically-savvy people knew how to create content and publish it to the internet, but the rise of easy-to-use blogging and CMS systems changed that. Today, everyone can be a publisher. Now, Iceberg wants to bring that same democratization to programming. In fact, that's their vision for Web 3.0 - the web where everyone is a programmer.Build an App in 3 MinutesIn June Iceberg launched publicly. Although the focus is on business applications, like CRM or PM tools, you can interface with anything that offers up a web service. For enterprise environments, instead of using Iceberg as a service, I.T. departments can download and use Iceberg offline, behind the firewall, to work with their in-house servers, like Windows SQL server for example.Read more...8. Cascada Mobile: Anyone Can Build a Mobile App
In July Cascada Mobile launched a platform called Cascada Breeze, allowing anyone to take their idea from thought to app in about fifteen minutes. Well, maybe not anyone - the apps are built using HTML, so you would have to have some rudimentary web programming knowledge to use their platform. Still, you have to admit, that's a lot easier than using a professional development platform.With Breeze, you can build, test, and distribute mobile J2ME apps that run on hundreds and handsets. And these are "real" apps, too - fully integrated mobile applications with their own icon, not just mobile widgets. Read more...9. Android: Google's Open Mobile Phone Platform
We said we wouldn't discuss iPhone, but we can't help mentioning Android - because of its potential to really open up the up-till-now closed mobile phone platform ecosystem. Earlier this week we reported that the HTC Dream, the first handset to run Android (aka "the Google Phone") has been approved by the FCC. In the documents provided, it appears that we have now a release date for this highly anticipated phone: November 10th, 2008.
Google has been encouraging developers to create applications for Android and rewarding them for doing so with cold, hard cash with the Android Developer Challenge. (See our previous coverage here). This has led to numerous third-party applications ready to flood the market when the phone goes to launch, regardless as to which developers win the big prizes (Pictured: Teradesk App). According to PCWorld, Google Developer Advocate Jason Chen told the Android breakout session at May's Google I/O event that developers won't need to get Android applications certified by anyone nor will there be any hidden APIs accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators. Even the phone's homescreen and widgets will be customizable - that's a much different take than the locked-down iPhone - and one that caters to users who like to make their phones their own.Read more...10. Meebo: Web Instant Messaging
Unlike most other platforms in the news these days, the Meebo Platform is a closed one. As at December more than 300 companies had registered to build applications but only 39 had been accepted into the program. Most are multiperson gaming apps, the rest video and voice chat apps. Companies chosen to participate in the Platform work closely with Meebo to assure high-quality integration of their applications, the company says.The Meebo Platform is the third step in the vision for the company, after building a basic web IM service and then integrating that service into other sites through tools like MeeboMe and MeeboRooms. Read more...We hope you enjoyed this overview of 10 promising web developer platforms. For more about the theory and practice of platforms, check out Marshall Kirkpatrick's post So You're Launching a Platform: After Ubiquitous APIs - What's the Next Frontier?. A good companion piece is Picking a Platform: 5 Issues to Consider. Also read Alex Iskold's classic March '07 analysis When Web Sites Become Web Services.Top image via ottonassar 
No matter how you feel about FriendFeed, you can't argue with the fact that it has been one of most popular services among the early adopter set this year. For social media enthusiasts, the site fulfills a need to be always sharing, always active, always involved. In some cases, this led to a self-imposed information overload scenario - there was so much good stuff going on at FriendFeed that it was hard to turn away. But then, as people discovered the service's ability to hide items, they were able to better craft the FriendFeed (over)flow to their needs. Yet the issue of noise still remains one of the service's biggest hurdles. Although built-in filtering and 3rd-party apps like Noiseriver try to address this problem, they still require a lot of tweaking, which equates to time. For some, this issue becomes a deal-breaker - too much noise, not enough signal. Others claim to love the noise and, by the number of likes and comments they leave, it's apparent that they do.Just recently, we polled the Twitter audience about their love (or not) of FriendFeed by asking the following question: "If you could only answer YES or NO, how would you answer this question: "Do You Love FriendFeed?" The reason for posing the question this way to not allow for qualified responses like "well, the service has potential, but at the moment it...." or anything of that manner.In the end, the responses were decidedly mixed, and surprisingly, a lot of NO's turned up. At final count on Twitter it was 16 NO's to 10 YES's. (Of course, on FriendFeed, the ratio was a bit different...and, as is typical on FriendFeed, a conversation ensued.) While most FriendFeed users agree that the service is great for sharing content and starting conversations, a good many will also admit that FriendFeed hasn't yet hit the sweet spot when it comes to combating info overload. Growing or Fading?So where does that leave FriendFeed now? On the one hand, you have people like Steve Rubel claiming that he now has over 5000 people following him on Friendfeed - 60% of what he has on Twitter. That certainly seems to show promise for the FriendFeed service. Even with all of Twitter's issues, the service is bordering on mainstream, having already been used for presidential debates, MTV awards shows, and for tweeting news from the Mars Rover. For FriendFeed to even come close to rivaling Twitter numbers, there must be something there. However, on the other hand, you have the king of early adopters himself, Robert Scoble, sharing a post in Google Reader entitled "Why Have I Been Neglecting FriendFeed?" by Kyle Lacy. In the post, Lacy cites information overload, burnout, and increased work responsibilities among other things, as reasons for his neglect. But what's really interesting is the comment Scoble left when sharing the feed:
Wait! Stop the presses! Robert Scoble tired of FriendFeed?! If Scoble is the canary in the coal mine of social media, what does this mean for the rest of us? (Note: he appears to have gotten over this). Still, we wonder - is a FriendFeed burnout on the horizon? Or is it only a matter of FriendFeed adding a feature or two to skyrocket it to uber-success? Now that we've taken the poll of a small Twitter (and FriendFeed!) audience, we thought it would be good to take the pulse of a wider audience that includes our decided readers here on RWW. We hope that you'll not only answer the poll, but share your overall thoughts in the comments - be them here or on FriendFeed. We support both. What do you think of FriendFeed? ( polls) 
Continuing our coverage of the mainstream web, in this post we look at some of the most popular websites for kids. We've gathered information from a recent report (pdf) from Nielsen Online, via Marketingvox, which studied the online habits of Britons under the age of 23. We also polled friends of RWW via Twitter.The Nielsen report concluded that entertainment sites have the greatest affinity with under 12s, games sites for 12-17 year-olds, and student and video sites for 18-22 year-olds.We're all familiar by now with the latter 'young adult' demographic, who are big users of social networks and video sites like YouTube. But let's look more closely at what the under 12 and 12-17 year old demographics are using on the Web.< 12 yrs Like Entertainment; TV Networks Dominate
The above table is ranked according to percentage of <12 yrs in the audience, so the sites listed aren't necessarily the largest ones. Also as it's a British study, somewhat predictably the BBC has the 2 sites with the largest audience. Despite those caveats, one trend is crystal clear here: most of the most popular sites for under 12's come from television. These brands dominate the list of top websites for this age group: Nick, Cartoon Network, the BBC's CBBC and CBeebies and Disney International. So the Internet, for under 12s, is very much about entertainment and unsurprisingly TV networks use the Net to extend their brands.
It's interesting also to note that there is potentially big money for startups targeting kids, in terms of acquisitions by the big tv networks. Just last year Disney paid US$700M to acquire virtual world Club Penguin, one of the sites listed above. And needless to say, kids love it. RWW reader Richard Lusk says that "my daughter (12 yrs old) LIVES on Club Penguin." Many other friends of RWW listed Club Penguin too (see list below).The site at the top of the list, with 32% of UK Unique Audience Under 12, is Swedish fashion community site Stardoll. At this site, users can dress up and play with dolls virtually. Membership is free and the company states that most of their users are girls between the ages of 7 and 17. Stardoll says that it has around 16M users. It's had about $10M in funding so far from the likes of Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital Partners, so it is another example of how big the Internet market for kids is.
Recommendations from Friends of RWWMany of RWW's readers are parents (including yours truly), so we asked on Twitter what other sites kids under 12 use. In my household, MyLittlePony and interactive pet games have been popular. Here is what others say, and we encourage you to add more in the comments to this post...Mari Silbey noted that on HighlightsKids.com she can "do hidden pictures with my 2-almost-3-year-old. It's great."Mikko Alasaarela said that his three under 12's "use game sites like miniclip, orisinal, kongregate, fantage." He also pointed out that "one of the most popular social networks for that age group is Habbo."Shana Albert concurred with Mikko, saying that her son loves Habbo.Nathan Hull said that "My nieces (4 and 7 yrs old) love pbskids.org"Josh Morgan said that "yoursphere is a new one for kids. It's deal is that all participants are vetted."Lidija Davis told us that her 9-year old boy loves gamespot.com and that he "visits all the time to get cheats for DS, Xbox". Lidija also said that he likes Club Penguin and Runescape and online games in general. Lidija noted too that YouTube is popular with under 12's - although, wary of the dangers, she said that "luckily my little people ask me to check first".Jonathan Fields told us that his 7 year old daughter likes "club penguin, webkinz, stardoll, myscene, playhouse disney, pbsKids, and, of course, her blog".Kevin Marks suggested runescape. He also listed toontown, webkinz, neopets, club penguin, and YouTube.Andy Coffey tweeted that "my 6y/o loves lego.com".Don Reisinger reminded us that Disney carries a lot of spyware!Mike Brown said that Club Penguin is "hugely popular with our 6 and 10 yr old and lots of their friends".Ben Tremblay suggested "http://pbskids.org/ and http://pbsparents.org/ There's also http://www.pbskidsplay.org/ but it's frabbed".Online Gaming Big With 12-17 Year Olds
In this age group we start to see social networks make an appearance. In the UK, Bebo is very popular and so it's no surprise to see it ranked #1 in terms of users in the above table. In the US it would probably be MySpace, although we have no data for that.But the biggest trend in this demographic is that online games sites - for example RuneScape, FreeOnlineGames, AddictingGames and MiniClip - are most popular with 12-17 year-olds.The Mobile Web is also popular, with mobile phone social networking site Frengo (our earlier coverage) having the highest percentage (26%) of 12-17 year-olds amongst its audience in the UK.The Nielsen report noted that "as children hit their teenage years, general entertainment sites tend to make way for games-focused sites".ConclusionFor under 12's, entertainment rules. But there seems to be social networking aspects to that too, judging by the popularity of Club Penguin and StarDoll. After the age of 12, online gaming becomes more popular, and general social networks like Bebo and Facebook enter the scene. The Mobile Web is popular in the 12-17 age group too.For more analysis about how kids use the Internet, check out Sarah Perez's great analysis Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web. Please add more website suggestions for kids in the comments, and let us know what you think of these Web trends for the younger generation. Image: pixelrobber 
One of our favorite Australians, Lachlan Hardy, twittered an interesting question today: What are the three things online that are exciting you most? Lachlan was asked this question as part of a newspaper article in the Sydney Morning Herald. His own answers were interesting, but he also got a great response from commentors on his blog. So we thought we'd ask the same question (well, slightly re-worded) here on ReadWriteWeb. The three web apps most exciting me currently are: Imeem (I'm enjoying exploring this admittedly trendy music site, especially the playlists), soup.io (an underrated lifestreaming app, better than Tumblr IMHO, with full-text feeds and loads of ajaxy goodness), and... Cuil. No I'm kidding about the last one. The third is Basecamp (the online project management service that keeps our RWW business on track and organized; maybe stretching to call it 'exciting', but as a business app it does the business).Lachlan said that his favorite 3 things online were Twitter (www.twitter.com),Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) andFire Eagle (www.fireeagle.yahoo.net).There are literally thousands of great web apps to choose from, many of which have been profiled here on RWW. Tell us your current 3 favorites in the comments. We'd especially love to discover new things that may be flying under the radar...Cat photo: Kevin Steele 
Sharing web pages in a conversation shouldn't be as tricky as it is. Sometimes you're on the phone, or speaking to a group of people and there isn't a handy way to bring people along with you from page to page and then let them have easy access to those pages after the conversation is through.Enter Agglom, a simple little service built by Italian developer Enrico Foschi. It's a Firefox plug-in that will make sharing a list of links far easier than it's been before.How It WorksAgglom is a remarkably easy way to create a "slide show" of live links that you can share with other people. See the screencast demo we recorded below. For those who prefer to read, there's a text description after the video. After downloading the plug-in, you can click on the Agglom button at any time. It captures all the URLs from each tab in your browser. After making some admin decisions, including public/private or password protection, you receive one link that you can share with anyone else. They can then follow through the slide show along with you, access it later, get any changes made to it by RSS, leave comments and suggest additional links. It's simple but looks quite useful.Presentation Is PowerfulEarlier this month we wrote about five lightweight apps that are useful for web consultants and trainers. If we had known about Agglom then (we just discovered it today via the blog CleverClogs) it would have made a great fit there as well.The web is changing so fast and there's so much information available that providing accessible ways clearly show people what you're talking about is the best way to help friends, family and co-workers wrap their minds around the powerful new tools now available.Agglom is simple - that's good. It also looks quite useful. That's a sweetspot for applications these days. Can you imagine using it? We can. 
Everything is moving to the cloud. As we enter the third decade of the Web we are seeing an increasing shift from native desktop applications towards Web-hosted clones that run in browsers. For example, a range of products such as Microsoft Office Live, Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree, DabbleDB, Basecamp, and many others now provide Web-based alternatives to the full range of familiar desktop office productivity apps. The same is true for an increasing range of enterprise applications, led by companies such as Salesforce.com, and this process seems to be accelerating. In addition, hosted remote storage for individuals and enterprises of all sizes is now widely available and inexpensive. As these trends continue, what will happen to the desktop and where will it live?This is a guest post by Nova Spivack, founder and CEO of Twine. This is the final version of an article Spivack has been working on in his public Twine.Is the desktop of the future going to just be a web-hosted version of the same old-fashioned desktop metaphors we have today?No. There have already been several attempts at copying the old-fashioned "files and folders" desktop interface to the Web, but they have not caught on. Imitations desktops to-date have simply been clunky and slow imitations of the real-thing at best. Others have been overly slick. But one thing they all have in common: None of them have nailed it. People don't want to manage all their information on the Web in the same interface they use to manage data and apps on their local PC. The Web is an entirely different medium than the desktop and it requires a new kind of interface. The desktop of the future - what some have called "the Webtop" - still has yet to be invented.The desktop of the future is going to be a hosted web serviceIs the desktop even going to exist anymore as the Web becomes increasingly important? Yes, there has to be some kind of place that we consider to be our personal "home" and "workspace" -- but it's not going to live on any one device. As we move into a world that is increasingly mobile, where users often work across several different devices in the course of their day, we need unified access to our applications and data. This requires that our applications and data do not reside on local devices anymore, but rather that they will live in the cloud and be accessible via Web services.The painful process of using synchronization utilities to keep data on our different devices in-synch will finally be a thing of the past. Similarly an entire class of applications for remote-PC access will also become extinct. Instead, all devices will synch with the cloud, where your applications, data and desktop workspace state will live as a unified, hosted service. Your desktop will appear on whatever device you login to, just as you left it wherever you last accessed it. This shift harkens back to previous attempts to revive thin-client computing - such as Sun Microsystems' Java Desktop - but this time it is going to actually become mainstream.The Browser is Going to Swallow Up the DesktopIt's a classic embrace-and-extend story - the Web browser began as just another app on the desktop and has quickly embraced and extended every other application to become the central tool on everyone's desktop. All that remains is the desktop itself - and the browser is quickly making inroads there as well. In particular Firefox, with it's easy extensibility and huge range of add-ons, is rapidly displacing the remaining features of the desktop. If these trends continue, will the browser eventually swallow up or simply replace the desktop? Yes. In fact, it will probably happen very soon. There just isn't any reason to have a desktop outside the browser anymore. What we think of as "the desktop" is really just a perspective on our information and applications - it's really just another "page" or context in our digital lives. This could easily exist within a browser. So instead of launching the browser from the desktop, it makes more sense to launch the desktop from the browser. In this way of thinking, the desktop is really just our home page - the place where we do our work and keep up with our world. The focus of the desktop will shift from information to attentionAs our digital lives evolve out of the old-fashioned desktop into the browser-centric Web environment we will see a shift from organizing information spatially (directories, folders, desktops, etc.) to organizing information temporally (feeds, lifestreams, microblogs, timelines, etc.). The Web is constantly changing and the biggest challenge is not finding information, it is keeping up with it. The desktop of the future is going to be more concerned with helping users manage information overload - particularly the overload caused by change. In this respect, it is going to feel more like an RSS feed reader or a social news site than a directory. The focus will be on helping the user to manage and keep up with all the stuff flowing in and out of the their environment. The interface will be tuned to help the user understand what the trends are, rather than just on how things are organized.Users are going to shift from acting as librarians to acting as daytraders.As we move into an era where content creation and distribution become almost infinitely cheap, the scarcest resources will no longer be storage or bandwidth, it will be attention. The pace of information creation and distribution continues to accelerate and there is no end in sight, yet the cognitive capabilities of the individual human brain are finite and we are already at our limits. In order to cope with the overwhelming complexity of our digital lives, we are going to increasingly rely on tools that help us manage our attention more productively -- rather than tools that simply help us manage our information. It is a shift from the mindset of being librarians to that of being daytraders. In the PC era we were all focused on trying to manage the information on our computers -- we were acting as librarians. Filing things was a big hassle, and finding them was just as difficult. But today filing information is really not the problem: Google has made search so powerful and ubiquitous that many Web users don't bother to file anything anymore - instead they just search again when they need it. The librarian problem has been overcome by the brute force of Web-scale search. At least for now. Instead we are now struggling to cope with a different problem - the problem of filtering for what is really important or relevant now and in the near-future. With limited time and attention, we have to be careful what we look for and what we pay attention to. This is the mindset of the daytrader. Bet wrong and you could end up wasting your precious resources, bet right and you could find the motherlode before the rest of the world and gain valuable advantages by being first. Daytraders are focused on discovering and keeping track of trends. It's a very different focus and activity from being a librarian, and it's what we are all moving towards.The Webtop will be more social and will leverage and integrate collective intelligenceThe Webtop is going to be more socially oriented than desktops of today -- it will have built-in messaging and social networking, as well as social-media sharing, collaborative filtering, discussions, and other community features.The social dimension of our lives is becoming perhaps our most important source of information. We get information via email from friends, family and colleagues. We get information via social networks and social media sharing services. We co-create information with others in communities. And we team up with our communities to filter, rate and redistribute content.The social dimension is also starting to play a more important role in our information management and discovery activities. Instead of those activities remaining as solitary, they are becoming more communal. For example many social bookmarking and social news sites use community sentiment and collaborative filtering to help to highlight what is most interesting, useful or important. Sites such as Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Slashdot, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Twine, and many others, show that collective intelligence may be the most powerful way to help individuals and groups filter content and manage their attention more productively. The power of many trumps the power of one. The desktop of the future is going to have powerful semantic search and social search capabilities built-inOur evolving Webtop is going to have more powerful search built-in. It will of course provide best-of-breed keyword search capabilities, but this is just the beginning.It will also combine social search and semantic search. On the social search dimension, users will be able to search their information and rank it via attributes of their social graph (for example, "find documents about x and rank them by how many of my friends liked them.") Semantic search on the other hand will enable more granular search and navigation of information along a potentially open-ended networks of properties and relationships. For example you will be able to search in a highly structured way -- for example, search for products you once bookmarked that have a price of $10.95 and are on-sale this week. Or search for documents you read which were authored by Sue and related to project X, in the last month. The semantics of the future desktop will be open-ended. That is to say that users as well as other application and information providers will be able to extend it with custom schemas, new data types, and custom fields to any piece of information. Interactive shared spaces will replace foldersForget about shared folders -- that is an outmoded paradigm. Instead, the new metaphor will be interactive shared spaces. These shared spaces will be more like wikis than folders. They will be permission-based environments where one or many contributors can meet, interact synchronously or asynchronously, to work on information and other tasks together. There are many kinds of shared spaces already in existence, including discussion forums, blogs, social network profiles, community sites, file sharing tools, conferencing tools, version control systems, and groupware. But as we move into Web 3.0 these will begin to converge. We will store information in them, we will work on information there, we will publish and distribute information through them, we will search across them, and we will interact with others around them.Our next-generation shared spaces will be nestable and linkable like folders, but they will be far more powerful and dynamic, and they will be accessible via HTTP and other APIs such as SPARQL enabling data to be moved in and out of them easily by other applications around the Web.Any group of two or more individuals will be able to participate in a shared space that will appear on their individual desktops, for a particular purpose. These new shared spaces will not only provide richer semantics in the underlying data, social network, and search, but they will also enable groups to seamlessly and collectively add, organize, track, manage, discuss, distribute, and search for information of mutual interest.The Portable DesktopThe underlying data in the future desktop, and in all associated services it connects, will be represented using open-standard data formats. Not only will the data be open, but the semantics of the data - the schema that defines it - will also be defined in an open way. The value of open linked-data and open semantics is that data will not be held prisoner anywhere: it will be portable and will be easy to integrate with other data. The emerging Semantic Web and Data Portability initiatives provide a good set of open standards for enabling this to happen. Due to open-standards and data-portability, your desktop and data will be free from "platform lock-in." This means that your Webtop might even be portable to a different competing Webtop provider someday. If and when that becomes possible, how will Webtop providers compete to add value?The Smart DesktopOne of the most important aspects of the coming desktop is that it's going to be smart. It's going to have to be. Users simply cannot handle the complexity of their information landscapes anymore - they need help. There are a range of tasks that the desktop should automate for users including: organizing information, reminding users when necessary, resolving data conflicts, managing versioning, maintaining data quality, backing up data, prioritizing information, and gathering relevant information and suggesting it when appropriate. Most other features of the future desktop will be commodities - but intelligence will still be difficult to provide, and so it will be the last remaining frontier in which competing Webtop providers will be able to differentiate their offerings.The Webtop is going to learn and help you to be more productive. As you use it, it's going to adjust to your interests, relationships, current activities, information and preferences. It will adaptively self-organize to help you focus your attention on what is most important to whatever context you are in.When reading something while you are taking a trip to Milan it may organize itself to be more contextually relevant to that time, place and context. When you later return home to San Francisco it will automatically adapt and shift to your home context. When you do a lot of searches about a certain product it will realize your context and intent has to do with that product and will adapt to help you with that activity for a while, until your behavior changes.Your desktop will actually be a semantic knowledge base on the back-end. It will encode a rich semantic graph of your information, relationships, interests, behavior and preferences. You will be able to permit other applications to access part or all of your graph to datamine it and provide you with value-added views and even automated intelligent assistance.For example, you might allow an agent that cross-links things to see all your data: it would go and add cross links to relevant things onto all the things you have created or collected. Another agent that makes personalized buying recommendations might only get to see your shopping history across all shopping sites you use.Your desktop may also function as a simple personal assistant at times. You will be able to converse with your desktop eventually -- through a conversational agent interface. While on the road you will be able to email or SMS in questions to it and get back immediate intelligent answers. You will even be able to do this via a voice interface.For example, you might ask, "where is my next meeting?" or "what Japanese restaurants do I like in LA?" or "What is Sue's Smith's phone number?" and you would get back answers. You could also command it to do things for you -- like reminding you to do something, or helping you keep track of an interest, or monitoring for something and alerting you when it happens.Because your future desktop will connect all the relationships in your digital life -- relationships connecting people, information, behavior, preferences and applications -- it will be the ultimate place to learn about your interests and preferences.Federated, open policies and permissionsThis rich graph of meta-data that comprises your future desktop will enable the next-generation of smart services to learn about you and help you in an incredibly personalized manner. It will also of course be rife with potential for abuse and privacy will be a major function and concern.One of the biggest enabling technologies that will be necessary is a federated model for sharing meta-data about policies and permissions on data. Information that is considered to be personal and private in Web site X should be recognized and treated as such by other applications and websites you choose to share that information with. This will require a way for sharing meta-data about your policies and permissions between different accounts and applications you use.The semantic web provides a good infrastructure for building and deploying a decentralized framework for policy and privacy integration, but it has yet to be developed, let alone adopted. For the full vision of the future desktop to emerge a universally accepted standard for exchanging policy and permission data will be a necessary enabling technology.The personal cloudOne way to think of the emerging Webtop is as your personal cloud. It will not just be a cloud of data, it will be a compute cloud as well. When you need to store or retrieve information it will provide that service. When you need to do computations, it will provide that to you as well. The cost of harnessing the capabilities of your cloud may be based on a monthly subscription or it may be metered, or it may be ad-supported. Your personal cloud will have a center - provided by your main Webtop provider, where your address will live -- but most of its services will be distributed in other places, and even federated among other providers. Yet from an end-user perspective it will function as a seamlessly integrated service. You will be able to see and navigate all your information and applications, as if they were in one connected space, regardless of where they are actually hosted. You will be able to search your personal cloud from any point within it. It will look and feel like a single cohesive service.The WebOSNo discussion of the future of the desktop would be complete without delving into the topic of the WebOS. The shift from desktop to Webtop - the move from a local desktop to a hosted desktop - is a necessary step towards the entire operating system moving to the Web as well. Many of the services that comprise an operating system are already available as Web services, but they are not yet integrated into a single cohesive WebOS. However it seems clear that the major players are aware of this opportunity and are positioning their services to capture it. Just as the desktop OS wars were won by capturing the "high ground" of the desktop, I would not be surprised if the same principle holds in the battle to own the WebOS. Whomever wins the Webtop will win the whole stack.Who is most likely to own the future desktop?When I think about what the future desktop is going to look like it seems to be a convergence of several different kinds of services that we currently view as separate.It will be hosted on the cloud and accessible across all devices. It will place more emphasis on social interaction, social filtering, and collective intelligence. It will provide a very powerful and extensible data model with support for both unstructured and arbitrarily structured information. It will enable almost peer-to-peer like search federation, yet still have a unified home page and user-experience. It will be smart and personalized. It will be highly decentralized yet will manage identity, policies and permissions in an integrated cohesive and transparent manner across services.By cobbling together a number of different services that exist today you could build something like this in a decentralized fashion. As various services integrate with each other it may simply emerge on its own. But is that how the desktop of the future will come about? Or will it be provided as a new application from one player - perhaps one with a lot of centralized market power and the ability to launch something like this on a massive scale? Or - just as with the previous desktop hits of the past, will it come from a little-known upstart with a disruptive technology? It's hard to predict, but one thing is certain: it is going to happen relatively soon and will be an interesting process to watch.Image via Arnaldo Licea 
Pandora is an internet radio service that allows you to create your own radio station based on songs and artists that you like. While you can't necessarily pick and choose what you'll hear on the service, you can fine-tune your radio station's tastes by giving the songs that Pandora recommends a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Pandora on the iPhone is one of the best applications for streaming music and finding new tunes. So, what will the service's 1 million plus users do if Pandora pulls its own plug?The Battle of MusicFounder Tim Westergren has stated that the service is approaching a "pull-the-plug kind of decision" for the service. Why is this happening? Last year, web radio giants were hit with outrageously ridiculous fees by a federal panel for every song that would be played on their stations. This caused a lot of services to either shutdown, or go through what Pandora has been experiencing for the past year. In doing so, it seems the financial problems the music industry has set out to create in order to win the constant battle between rights, piracy, and copyrighted music, are working.Last Stand, Last ChancePandora's founder is waiting for a ray of light in a fight being led by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.). Berman is attempting to arrange a few last-minute deals between web radio stations and SoundExchange, the organization that represents artists and record companies that would reduce the the recent fees. However, Westergren isn't going to hold his breath for too long, stating that, "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money." We don't blame you Tim.What Will You Do?There are plenty of petitions floating around the web to help the cause, but the law is the law and petitions may not help matters in this situation. We'd be saddened to see Pandora close it's doors. While services like Last.FM aren't showing any of the same signs, we wonder if the same fate may be in the not-so-distant future for our other favorite music services. If it were, what will you?Pandora company profile provided by TradeVibes 
The iTunes App Store is a bit of a big deal these days. Several new applications pop up in the iTunes store every day. With hundreds of apps to download from it can be time consuming to sort through them all. Unfortunately, there is no try before you buy option for any of the iTunes apps. So, if you happen to see one that looks interesting, but requires you to shell out your hard earned cash, app reviews really come in handy. While the iTunes App Store features reviews from others, sometimes you just want a second opinion. Today, ReadWriteWeb brings you 4 iPhone/iPod app review sites.What's On iPhone?What'soniphone is not only a great iTunes apps review site, but also a great web apps review site. With a team of engineers, writers, medical professionals, culinary artists, home makers, What's on iPhone will help anyone decide on an app. Reviews start off with an overview of the application and follows up with their personal take on the app, a mini review, and the final verdict.iUseThisIf you not only want reviews of an app, but also want to know how many people are really using it, iUseThis is your site. You can register for iUseThis to keep a log of all the apps you're using. However, the site is best for finding out the most popular of two apps. For example, if you're trying to make a decision between two or three note-taking applications and wanted to know which one may have been downloaded the most, iUseThis is a great place to find out.AppVeeAppVee is a recently launched application review site. AppVee aims to do things a little differently by providing users with a personal review of the app and also ratings for the apps. Ratings range from ease of use and features to the app's user interface. I've already spotted quite a few app reviews that I haven't seen elsewhere on AppVee.Apple iPhone SchoolApple iPhone School is a great app review site for both the App Store apps and jailbroken apps via Cydia. There's a great selection of app reviews currently available for both sources. If you're looking for a particular app review check out the site's sidebar for categories and more.More Than EnoughNow you'll never have to complain about needed more reviews for an app. With over 4 sources including the iTunes App Store itself, you're all set to make a safe decision on whether or not to buy a particular app. Did we miss any sites? Let us know what your favorite iTunes App review sites are! 
Google had a bad week in cloud computing, with serious downtime in Gmail, Blogger and Spreadsheet. Back in July it was Amazon that was embarrassed with their S3 outage. If you measure on total downtime, cloud computing still looks good compared to traditional hosting or in-house data centers. But that glosses over the psychological and market confidence issues, when a problem hits everybody at the same time. In contrast, when was the last time you heard about a massive Skype outage? Maybe it is time to look more seriously at P2P?Well, actually about one year ago Skype did have a problem. But it was minor in comparison in terms of impact compared to the Google and Amazon outages. Skype claims over 9m people online right now, so this is major validation for P2P scalability and reliability.P2P Innovation in StartupsThis week we also saw the launch of Wuala, a P2P Cloud Storage solution (our review here).Earlier, we reviewed a P2P approach to search (Faroo) and a P2P approach to video sharing (Metaaso). With the exception of Skype, these are all tiny little start-ups. Interestingly, they have all originated outside America:Skype - telephony - EstoniaWuala - storage - SwitzerlandFaroo - search - GermanyMetaaso - video - India.This geographic origin may not be coincidental.You need $ gazillions to be a Cloud Computing Platform. Those server farms cost a lot. Skimping, or misjudging demand, leads to outages, slow response and other confidence-killers. This is a game for the big boys - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, AT&T, Sun. These are all American firms, with access to plenty of capital. Disruptive innovation usually comes from start-ups that are starved for capital. You replace capital with technical innovation. That was true for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, AT&T, Sun as well when they started.That is why I have believed for some time that P2P is the next big disruptive technology at the infrastructure level. P2P and BigcosDisruptive technology sometimes needs support from big companies as well. Fortunately for P2P, 3 very big companies would benefit greatly from more use of P2P as infrastructure - Microsoft, Apple and Intel. It's a great way to mop up those underutilized desktop CPU cycles. And attack the cloud computing incumbents.Historically, P2P start-ups have tended to focus on music sharing and have been hurt by legal issues, but they have been fine technically. Skype makes P2P respectable and proves that scalability does not have to be an issue. Skype is taking on one the biggest and most entrenched industries in the world and millions of people increasingly rely on Skype as a mission critical alternative to landlines or cellphones. P2P: Next Big Thing for InfrastructureP2P infrastructure could play very well behind the enterprise firewall. It reduces CIO security fears about too many cloud based apps outside the firewall. This is important for P2P start-ups. They would need a lot of capital to go to market entirely with a consumer/SOHO offering. If they can get enterprise adoption at the same time, then they can accelerate cash flow and reduce need for funding.Watch the P2P space. It's the next big wave of innovation at the infrastructure level. 
Platforms like WordPress and Movable Type democratized the process of self-publishing. With these tools, everyone could be a publisher and it didn't require advanced technical expertise to do so. Now, the next revolution for publishing is to bring that same ease of creation to the process of building social networks. With Six Apart's recent release of Movable Type 4.2, that revolution has begun. The new release provides DIY tools for building your own social networking platform which includes member profiles, forums, friending capabilities, rating of content, and more. WordPress isn't too far behind, either - a new platform called BuddyPress, is being built on the WordPress core. Is this the future of blogging? Or is this the future of web publishing altogether?Movable Type 4.2
With the latest release of Movable Type 4.2, publishers can easily add forums, community blogs, and group blogs to their site. Site members can establish customizable profiles with avatars and can follow their friends. Given the correct permissions, community members can submit content for publishing on the site for the admin to approve. Those submissions will then display next to the comments on the submitter's user profile. Site members can also vote on content they like, too, a feature MT is calling "Digg in a box." In addition to the changes in MT, Six Apart has also introduced a new plugin called "Action Streams." This plugin is very much inspired by FriendFeed, as it lets you aggregate and share your content from around the social web. In other words, Movable Type has just introduced their own self-hosted lifestream. (We had a feeling this was coming).
An Action StreamBuddyPress
So where is WordPress's social network? It's still under development. Unlike MT, social networking with not be a feature of WordPress - instead, the WordPress MU core is being used to build out a next-gen publishing platform called BuddyPress . Essentially, BuddyPress is a set of WordPress MU specific plugins, each adding a new feature. When complete, BuddyPress will offer extended user profiles, private messaging, groups, friends, status updates, albums, as well as something called "the wire," which sounds a lot like Twitter. Goodbye Blogging, Hello Social Web?With both of the big players extending their traditional blogging platforms to offer social networking features, you have to wonder if traditional blogging is on its way out. For many years, web pundits have been saying that social networking would gain in popularity to such an extent that it would become a feature, not a destination in and of itself. These latest designs from MT and WordPress seem to prove that point. 
In fact, even on today's blogs, publishers have already been adding social networking features to their sites through the use of blog plugins that offer things like FriendFeed integration, for example. (Case in point: RWW has integrated with FriendFeed). Also, by adding Disqus as a site's blog commenting system, bloggers were including a social network of sorts, as well. Like with MT 4.2, Disqus users can establish profiles, follow users, and track their comments across sites from one page. More Profiles To MaintainThe only problem with MT and WordPress going the social networking route is that they are adding yet two more social networks where you will have to establish a profile, find and add friends, etc. Where's Facebook Friend Connect? Where's Google Friend Connect? Where's your portable social graph in all this? These new publishing platforms will power the social web of the future, but without tools to make all these disparate social graphs meld together, the people who are actually participating will become even more frustrated than they are today. The need for data portability is even stronger than ever, but we need there to be a clear winner in the game before our lives can improve. 
Unit Testing isone of the pillars of Agile Software Development. First introduced by Kent Beck, unit testing has found its way intothe hearts and systems of many organizations. Unit tests help engineers reduce the number of bugs, hours spent on debugging, andcontribute to healthier, more stable software.In this post we look ata dozen unit testing tips that software engineers can apply, regardless of their programming language orenvironment.1. Unit Test to Manage Your Risk
A newbie might ask Why should I write tests? Indeed, aren't tests boringstuff that software engineers want to outsource to those QA guys?That's a mentalitythat no longer has a place in modern software engineering. The goal of software teamsis to produce software of the highest quality. Consumers and business users wererightly intolerant of buggy software of the 80s and 90s. But with theabundance of libraries, web services and integrated development environmentsthat support refactoring and unit testing, there's now no excuse for software with bugs.The idea behind unit testing is to create a set of tests for each software component.Unit tests facilitate continuous software testing; unlike manual tests, it's cheapto perform them repeatedly. As your system expands, so does the body of unit tests.Each test is an insurance that the system works. Having a bug in the code means carrying a risk.Utilising a set of unit tests, engineers can dramatically reduce number of bugsand the risk with untested code. 2. Write a Test Case Per Major Component
When you start unit testing, always ask What Tests Should IWrite?The initial impulse isto write a bunch of functional tests; i.e., tests that probe different functions of the system. This isnot correct. The right thing is to create a test case (a set of tests) for each major component.The focus of the test is one component at a time. Within each component, look for an interface -a set of publicly exposed behaviour that component offers. You then should write at least one test per public method.3. Create Abstract Test Case and Test Utilities
As with any code, there will be common thingsall your tests need to do. Start with finding a unit testing for your language. For example, in Java, engineers useJUnit - a simple yet powerful framework for writing tests in Java.The framework comes with TestCase class, the base class for all tests. Addconvenient methods and utilities applicable to your environment. This way, all your tests cases can share thiscommon infrastructure.4. Write Smart Tests
Testing is time-consuming, so ensureyour tests are effective. Good tests probe the core behaviour of each component, but do it with the least code possible.For example, there is very little reason in writing tests for Java Bean setter and gettermethods, for these will be tested anyway.Instead, write a test that focuses on the behaviour of the system. You don't need to becomprehensive; create the tests that come to mind now, then be ready to come back to add more.5. Set up Clean Environment for Each Test
Software engineers are always concerned with efficiency, so when they hearthat each test needs to be set up separately they worry about performance. Yet setting up each test correctlyand from scratch is important. The last thing you want is for the test to fail because it used some oldpiece of data from another test. Ensure each test is set up properly and don'tworry about efficiency.In cases when you have a common environment for all tests - which doesn't change astests run - you can add a static set up block to your base test class.6. Use Mock Objects To Test Effectively
Setting up tests is not thatsimple; and at first glance sometimes seems impossible.For example, if using Amazon Web Services in your code, how can you simulate it in the testwithout impacting the real system?There are a couple of ways. You can createfake data and use that in tests. In the system that has users, a special set of accountscan be utilised exclusively for testing.Running tests against a production system is risky: what if something goes wrong and youdelete actual user data? An alternative is fake data, called stubs or mock objects. A mock object implements a particular interface, but returns predetermined results.For example, you can create a mock object for Amazon S3 which always reads files from your local disk.Mock objects are helpful when testing complex systems with lots of components. In Java,several frameworks help create mock objects, most notably JMock. 7. Refactor Tests When You Refactor the Code
Testing only pays if you really invest in it. Not onlydo youneed to write tests, you also need to ensure they're up to date. When adding a new method to a component, you need to add one or more correspondingtests. Just like you should clean out unused code, also remove tests that are no longerapplicable.Unit tests are particularly helpful when doing large refactorings. Refactoringfocuses on continuous sculpting of the code to help itstay correct. After you move code around and fix the tests, rerunning all the related testsensures you didn't break anything while changing the system.8. Write Tests Before Fixing a Bug
Unit tests are effective weapons in the fight against bugs.When you uncover a problem in your code, write a test that exposes this problem beforefixing the code. This way, if the problem reappears, it will be caught with the test.It is important to do this since you can't always write comprehensive tests right away.When youadd a test for a bug, you're filling in the gap in your original tests in a disciplined way.9. Use Unit Tests to Ensure Performance
In addition to guarding correctness of the code,unit tests can help ensure the performance of your code doesn't degrade over time.In many systems slowness creeps in as the system grows.To write performance tests, you need toimplement start and stop functions in your base test class. When appropriate you canuse a time-particular method or code and assert that the elapsed time is within the limitsof the desired performance.10. Create Tests for Concurrent Code
Concurrent code is notoriously tricky andtypically a source of many bugs. This is whyit's important to unit test concurrent code. The way to do this is by using a system of sleeps and locks.You can write in sleep calls in your tests if you need to wait for a particular system state.While this is not a 100% correct solution, in many cases it's sufficient. To simulate concurrency in a moresophisticated scenario, you need to pass locks around to the objects you're testing.In doing so, you will be able to simulate concurrent system, but sequentially.11. Run Tests Continuously
The whole point of tests is to runthem a lot. Particularly in larger teams where dozensof developers are working on a common code base, continuous unit testing is important. You canset up tests to run every few hours or you can run them on each check-in of the code or just once a day (typically overnight).Decide which method is the most appropriate for your project and make the tests run automatically andcontinuously.12. Have Fun Testing!
Probably the most important tip is to have fun. When I first encountered unit testing, Iwas sceptical and thought it was just extra work. But I gave it a chance, because smart people whoI trusted told me that it's very useful.Unit testing puts yourbrain into a state which is very different from coding state. It is challenging to think aboutwhat is a simple and correct set of tests for this given component.Once you start writing tests, you'd wonder how you ever got by without them. To make tests even morefun, you can incorporate pair programming.Whether you get together with fellow engineers to write tests or write tests for eachother's code, fun is guaranteed. At the end of the day, you will be comfortable knowingyour system really works because your tests pass.And now please join the conversation! Share unit testing lessons from your projects with all of us. 
Staff researcher David François Huynh has created an interesting tool for browsing semantic database Freebase, called Freebase Parallax. Written up by ZDNet's Oliver Marks, the video Huynh recorded demonstrating Parallax (below) will knock your socks off.Unfortunately, actually using Parallax demonstrates just how far from solid Freebase, one of the semantic web's poster children, really is. The idea is to allow you to apply multiple filters for your searches and embed live charts in a blog. It's a beautiful idea, check out the video.Here's the video below, if you find yourself saying "get to the point already," then skip to about 1:30 in the timeline.Freebase Parallax: A new way to browse and explore data from David Huynh on Vimeo.Unfortunately, when we tried out a number of searches in Parallax, very few subjects were well populated at all. We found duplicate subject titles where one held solid data and the other didn't, but even that was a best case scenario. In search after search, we found next to nothing in Freebase.The example above is nice, but let's say I want to find out something about black women scientists. No luck. History of the internet? Not much information there. Venture Capitalists? Blank profile pages.This ought to work. Freebase has taken more than $50 million in venture investments, they have a small army of volunteer and computer scientist contributors, they've got robots pumping their database with information automatically. There are now 60% more articles in Freebase than there are in English Wikipedia. So what's the problem?We wrote last week about ontological concerns about the semantic web, but Parallax shows that there are more superficial problems. An unfriendly UI has been Freebase's excuse for a long time, despite recent improvements to it. We love the idea of the semantic web, but give it's grand daddy website a usable UI like Parallax and we're left questioning just how much there really is inside Freebase anyway.For an alternate view see Alex Iskold's Freebase: Dispelling the Skepticism, and some fault here may lay in the coolness ratio of the video to the Parallax app, but for now - we feel inclined to look elsewhere for the "semantic web killer app."Disclosure: The author has consulting relationships with a number of pre-launched semantic web companies. 
When you hear the word "semantic" you likely think of the semantic web - the supposed next iteration of the World Wide Web that features structured data and specific protocols that aim to bring about an "intelligent" web. But the concept of semantics doesn't necessarily apply just to the web - it can apply to other things as well, like your desktop...or even your Excel spreadsheets, according to Ian Goldsmid, founder of Semantic Business Intelligence, whose new app, SDS, brings a semantic system to spreadsheets. Semantic SpreadsheetsThe problem with spreadsheets that their system is trying to address has to do with those who need to derive data from multiple spreadsheets (two or more). Although it's easy enough to perform sorts, build macros, and create formulas within one spreadsheet, when needing to compare values in multiple spreadsheets the process becomes more difficult. The company's app, The Semantic Discovery System for Excel, or just SDS for short, will look for similar columns or rows between the sheets and then "semantically" connects them. They don't appear to just be throwing that term around either - the app uses the same W3C Semantic Web technologies (RDF, OWL, SPARQL) to help you capture "meaning, intelligence, and knowledge" from the data saved in your spreadsheets. Do We Need Semantic Desktop Apps?Does SDS solve a business problem that is not yet being addressed through current technologies? In my experience, the short answer to this question is "no." (But wait, there's more...)Typically, when a business has need of comparing and analyzing large amounts of data, the solution is to turn to a database product that can then be queried and from which custom reports can be pulled. And a business doesn't need to spend a lot of money on a robust solution to do so - even a smaller business can create a database by using inexpensive desktop software. However, the difference between using a database technology and "semantically connecting" some spreadsheets comes down to for whom this product is being built. In the past, databases and other business intelligence apps were built as if the creators knew that the only person using them would be an I.T. guy or gal. SDS, instead, aims to satisfy the needs of the non-technical end user. Is this another example of tech populism at work? It certainly looks like it. Yet, in this case their market is small - a non-technical user who's also a power user with Excel? There's usually some overlap there. Not to mention, by the time you've achieved "power user" status, you've often also figured out how to do more complicated things in Excel...like, say, formulas that work across spreadsheets, for example - the very pain points this app is trying to address.Still, it's an interesting concept to think of taking the semantic web capabilities and integrating them into everyday programs to add a layer of intelligence to these programs as well. Done correctly, it could improve the capabilities of our favorite software apps without making the programs overly complex, which is what typically happens when you add more features.What do you think? Is the Semantic Desktop (that is, semantically-enabled desktop apps) right around the corner? Or is this product and those like it too niche to find an audience? Let us know what you think in the comments. 
Atlassian Confluence, makers of one of the most popular enterprise wiki solutions, has just announced Microsoft Office and SharePoint integration in their latest release, Confluence 2.9. With these new tools, users no longer have to know the technicalities of wiki markup or even how to use the included rich-text WYSIWYG editor in order to make changes to the wiki - they can simply open up a Microsoft Office document instead. Also, with the addition of the SharePoint connector, Microsoft's well-known collaboration and document sharing platform gets a big dose of Enterprise 2.0 goodness, which is sure to please the end users. However, Confluence makes I.T. happy too, thanks to their inclusion of tools - like LDAP integration and administratively controlled permissions - that are designed just for the needs of the enterprise.Office ConnectorThe Confluence Office Connector provides seamless integration between their enterprise wiki and Microsoft Office. Users can now edit the wiki in Microsoft Word...and even Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint, too. The experience for the end user is intuitive; they simply open a document, make a change, and click "Save" just like they already know how to do. There's no big learning curve here which means users are more likely to adopt the technology instead of relying on their old methods of managing and sharing files. And since those older methods are likely to have been either via network file shares or as inbox-clogging emails, the Confluence solution can help I.T. transition everyone to SharePoint while also helping in the fight against email overload. With the Connector deployed within Team Sites, wiki editing is finally easy and that alone make it a vast improvement upon the wiki that's provided with SharePoint out of the box.
SharePoint ConnectorOriginally released in beta form to a limited number of testers back in 2007, today Confluence's SharePoint Connector is officially available to everyone. Although the company offers a hosted solution as well, most I.T. departments are more likely to integrate the Confluence deployable software with SharePoint server instead (or other systems via the API) to build upon the solutions they already use in house.
The companies that have already adopted Confluence include several big names that you're sure to have heard of: Bank of America, Sun, Adobe, Cisco, IBM, SAP, Intel, Seagate, E*Trade, Citigroup, Microsoft, EMC - the list goes on and on, a veritable "who's who" of the world's top enterprises. In total, there are over 6000 enterprises currently using Confluence today, yet the pricing still makes it easy enough for even smaller companies to consider the software, with solutions that begin at $1200 for 25 users (or $600 for academic institutions.) Learn MoreTo learn more about the new Office Connector and see it action, check out this video from Atlassian: 
Often people start a company without any clear idea of whata company is. Entrepreneurs closet themselves in the garage and start writing code.While the modern tech world could not exist without obsession, artistic inspiration and crazy engineers,there's more to a startup than passion.To make an idea really powerful, a startup needsto become a real company. In former days, this might have meant bureaucracy, andlots of financial and legal infrastructure. Today'stech companies are simpler, but still require a set of rules, and you need a rudimentaryunderstanding of business law when forming a corporation. In this post, we explore the basicsbehind corporate entities, stock, financing, and the key non-technical infrastructureevery companyshould have.Business Entities
There are several ways of conducting business inthe United States. The most basic is aSole proprietorship,which is essentially self-employment. A sole proprietor, such as a grocery store orrestaurant, assumes full legal liability for thebusiness, but all income is direct personal incomeand is taxed once.Another form of business is a Partnership. This is a venture between severalindividuals who share in the profits. Partnerships, and particularly Limited Liability Partnerships (LLP),are created to address the personal liability issue with proprietorship. With LLP only one or a coupleof partners assumes the legal liability.Corporations are a separate legal entity. When a corporation is sued, ingeneral the individualsbehind it (shareholders, directors, management) are not impacted. This legal protectioncomes at a price - double taxation. Companies have to pay tax and only then can pay salaries and dividends to the shareholders.In recent years, people have been incorporating in two principal ways - LLC and Inc. LLC is a limited liability corporation,a hybrid between corporation and a partnership.LLC enjoys the legal status of a corporation, but has a taxation-like partnership. It is a great way to incorporate before you know how big your companywill become. The caveatwith LLC is that you can't have more than a certain number of shareholders (typically around 70). For this reason, Venture Capitalistswould normally not fund an LLC because it's impossible to take such a company through an IPO (Initial Public Offering).Most tech startups end up being C-Corp or a corporation (often,you can start with LLC, then convert to a C-Corp right before raising substantial funding). A corporationis the most sophisticated business entity. It is a powerful but complex vehicle,with flexibility. Shareholders, Directors and Management
A company starts with incorporation - a process of forming. These daysit's cheap (around $300) and straightforward.You can either incorporate on your own or, better, utilise your accountant or lawyer.You incorporate in a particular state, usually Delaware with its liberal laws and taxation policies.You don't need to live in Delaware to incorporate there, but you do need to also declare your existence to whatever state(s)you plan to operate in. The corporate laws vary substantially, so ask your lawyer andaccountant about regulations in your state.After incorporation, you issue a stock - a unit of ownership in the company. In startups before funding,there is little reason to spend time on issuing shares, because when financingcomes you'll need to reissue.Easiest is to declare that you have 100 shares of common stock and divide it between the founders asagreed prior tostarting a company. There are three principal types of participants in every company - shareholders,directors and management. Shareholders,or the owners, vote and elect the board of directors, who set long-term strategic directionand appoint executive management. The management (CEO, CTO, etc) is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the company. While you might find this 3-tier structure initially confusing, it does make sense.In large companies directors are mostlyoutsiders. Directors represent the interest of shareholders and hold management accountable for the performanceof the company. In a large corporation, typically the CEO is also a President or Chairman of the board, but the restare directors outside the company. For small startups, the situation is simpler.You are a shareholder, a director and a manager of your own company.Key Documents
In a startup, you need to understand when to wearthe hat of a shareholder, director or a manager. Looking at a company from the perspectiveof key legal documents helps you do that.The first document is Articles of Incorporation,which declares the kind of entity, state of operation, classes of stock, and number of shares.The next is a ShareholdersAgreement, which typically discusses the rights and obligations shareholders have insituations like sale of the company, sale of stock, or death of a shareholder.And Corporate Bylaws is the guide by whichthe board operates;it specifies who can be a director, how often meetings are held, how voting isdone.The employees of the company - e.g. CEO, VP of Design and Software Engineers - all signan agreement.These days, employment agreements typically consist of a short offer letter and a lengthy non-competition agreement.The letter outlines the position, salary, vacation, and other benefits. The letterasks the employeeto obey standard corporate rules and regulations. In addition, a lot of startups offer employees stock options - a wayto earn the right to buy a stock in a company.Legal and Finance
A first-time entrepreneur will find thelegal complexity and accounting for a corporation overwhelming.It is essential to hire lawyers and financial professionals. There is a saying amoung startupsand VCs that a good lawyer pays for him or herself, despite the fact that hourly fees arewhopping.There are three kindsof lawyers needed in a tech startup. A corporate lawyer drafts the basic documents andwill advise on daily matters. A deal lawyer specializes in financing and sales transactions.Andif you have intellectual property to protect, then you'll need an IP lawyer. Financials of a startup can be split into daily simple things and annual complexmatters.For a startup, it is ideal to get a bookkeeper - a person to take