Web 2.0

Adobe's AIR platform is seeing a rise in applications designed to bring Web activity to your desktop. From TweetDeck to Twhirl, Alert Thingy to Feedalizer, a host of new apps have debuted in the last few months, offering the ability to view or post to one or more services including Twitter, FriendFeed, Seesmic, Pownce, Jaiku and lately, Plurk or Identi.ca. But not every AIR app gets all services, and those that support more than one service usually require more than one window to get the job... Read Full Story

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed) Today Twitter made a quiet announcement on their developer mailing list that could have profound implications. On the mailing list, Alex Payne, a leading developer at Twitter gave the following announcement: "I'm happy to announce a minor change to the API that should have a major impact on the Twitter community. The /statuses/update method now takes an optional parameter: in_reply_to_status_id. As you might guess, this allows API... Read Full Story

Recently, a friend asked me to share my experience with Plurk saying that he needed some guidance through it. While not being a "plurkanista" just yet, I do spend my fair share of time there and, thus, am happy to comply with my friend's request. First, this screenshot from Plurk's home page... Note the line, "Tired of your existing Social Networks?" While I don't know if that's a direct shot across Twitter's bow, they hit the nail squarely on the head. (Sorry for mixed metaphors.) It... Read Full Story

In the past few weeks Plurk has released a number of updates in preparation for its upcoming API launch. Improvements include, a new customizable sidebar widget, new starter verbs such as “wonders” and “needs,” a cleaner “All Plurks,” and “My Plurks” navigation, along with a custom search feature. Plurk has even enhanced their competitive ranking system, also known as “Karma” to make the algorithm more fair and balanced. Another feature that Plurk recently implemented that reminds me of the... Read Full Story

Just when you thought Twitter was a dead duck, a flurry of news suggests there’s life in the old bird yet! First up, rumors are circulating that Twitter has acquired Summize. There’s no official confirmation yet, but Summize’s search engine and sentiment analysis of Twitter would certainly make a sensible acquisition. Not so much for the public-facing interface, but for the gigabytes of useful information Summize can feed to Twitter’s developers. Changing focus, VentureBeat reveals that... Read Full Story

Guest Post By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed) Well, the microblogging API space sure got interesting in a hurry. First, on Thursday, Louis Gray reported that Twitter was throttling unauthenticated API requests. This obviously would effect several applications in a very bad way. Later in the day, Dave Winer let everyone know that Identi.ca has implemented the Twitter API. And on Friday, in a surprising move, TechCrunch announced that Twitter is sending the XMPP firehose to new... Read Full Story

Whether Web services leverage RSS, send e-mail confirmations or are indexed by keywords in specialized search engines, it's not too uncommon for any activity you make online to set off a series of actions. When taken out of context, something you said in one place won't make as much sense somewhere else. A sentence fragment or a response might be completely confusing to one audience or at a certain time. With this in mind, best practices would suggest writing in full sentences where possible... Read Full Story

This is our group blog, which is unique because any Zimbio member can post an entry to it. Some members blog about recent news and trends related to the portal topic, others recount relevant personal stories. You can also comment on and rate existing blog entries, to voice your opinion and to help the community identify which members and entries on the portal are must-reads. Got an interesting idea or story to share with other members of this portal? Well, then put on your journalist's cap... Read Full Story