http://cache.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png http://gawker.com/tag/web 2.0 to english http://gawker.com/tag/web 2.0 to english In response to my Web 2.0 for Idiots PowerPoint slide, commentarian nealsid writes: "How about the part where 'you help make it' but 'they make the money?'" More »
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A reader emails in response to our Web 2.0 to English series, "I fail to see the problem with Tim O'Reilly's primer. Anyone who's not an idiot needs no further explanation." As a Reader's Digest contributor, here's the condensed version of your email: Fail. For the rest of us idiots, I've whipped up a chart. More »
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Loveable crankster Dave Winer unwraps the etymology of Google's OpenSocial platform. More »
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Roommates, MySpace TV's online serial that launches Monday, is like JenniCam without the tedious waiting around. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=313352&view=rss&microfeed=true WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Twine, Powerset, and Freebase are all doing dense demonstrations about the "semantic Web" — basically, improved search. I'd swear I've heard all three startups say that their systems analyze Wikipedia to understand connections between terms, a phenomenon one calls the "semantic graph." The short version? These startups read Wikipedia so you don't have to. More »
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WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon, the nerdy duo working on programming standards for opening up social networks, are presenting a thoroughly less nerdy version of their usual presentation. I chatted with Fitzpatrick, now an engineer at Google, who said he realized he needed to dumb it down for the audience of people wealthy enough to afford the $3,595 ticket price at this conference. The simple metaphor they came up with to explain the problem of closed social networks? Instant messenger. "If Brad is on Yahoo and I'm on AOL, we still want to talk to each other," explains Recordon, who's now at Six Apart, Fitzpatrick's old company. The social graph? "Who my friends are," Recordon sums up. OAuth, the network-ID standard Recordon and Fitzpatrick are championing? "The valet key for the Web," says Fitzpatrick. I can just hear the rich guys in the audience thinking, "Great, kid. Go park my car already." (Photo by CottonCandy) More »
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J. Craig Venter is the scientist whose startup beat the government-funded Human Genome Project to mapping a single person's entire DNA. Whose DNA? Duh, Venter's! On the last morning of the Web 2.0 Summit, Venter brought the audience up to date on the faster-than-Moore's-Law advances in reading and writing genes. More »
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Bulldog-cute entrepreneur Jason Calacanis dogs the Web 2.0 Summit's panel of search-engine optimization experts: "People are coming up to ask questions and the guy keeps saying, 'Well you have to do social work on Digg and Reddit, but it's complicated and we need to talk about it.' During the panel he said, 'It's complicated, we should talk about it after the panel.' I'm sure folks will come to his office and he'll say, 'It's complicated, sign this contract and we can start working on it.'" More »
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Raw numbers from today's Web 2.0 Summit: Federated Media, which sells ads for top video shows Ask a Ninja and Diggnation, claims to pull checks ranging from $10,000 to a cool million from advertisers. But if you're a unknown starting out, don't expect more than two to four dollars for every thousand of your viewers, say panelists here. Plus, you'll argue with ad buyers about how to measure your audience and their return. Advertisers will pay most for the classic "host endorsement," where the Ninja or Diggnation's Kevin Rose talks about their product during the show — a format widely used in the early days of TV. (Radio newsman Paul Harvey remains the master of the host endorsement, as proven by the Neutrogena products that pack my bathroom.) The takeaway from today's panel: Don't quit your day job yet. In 2007, advertisers still haven't opened up to spending big video bucks online. More »
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Harvard and Oxford prof Jonathan Zittrain's Web 2.0 Summit workshop this morning, "Web Two Point No — And You Thought Microsoft Was Bad," hits on something few people think about: All the social-network information and messages flying around Facebook, MySpace and AIM are stored and retrieved through proprietary systems — at the whim of the proprietor, as Zittrain puts it. It's a sharp contrast to the email, Usenet groups and IRC channels of yore, which were generally open networks with many points of access. In this respect, Zittrain sees Facebook as the new Compuserve, a members-only resource. Even its myriad apps are built to the company's programming specs, and Facebook can change the terms of the deal for competitive advantage anytime. Be afraid — be moderately afraid. More »
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