In this article, you learn about the Facebook phenomenon, where it came from, and what you can do with it.

What Is Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking website. To flesh out this definition a bit more, it’s an online community—a place where people can meet and interact; swap photos, videos, and other information; and generally connect with friends, family, coworkers, fellow students, fellow hobbyists and enthusiasts, and numerous others in their social network. Facebook connects people within cities or regions, work or school, home or abroad, and so on. Built on an architecture of profile pages that allow individual users to share information about themselves and communicate with others, Facebook seeks to create an environment in which members log in regularly to keep track of what friends and colleagues are doing, share their own activities, interact about interests and hobbies, send messages, and join groups and networks—just to name a few things.

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GOOGLE HAS released to developers an early version of a complex colaboration and communications tool that consolidates features of e-mail, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, and multimedia management, as well as document sharing.

Called Wave, the Web application is the equivalent of a Swiss army knife for consumer online services and is possibly one of the riskiest and most ambitious endeavors Google has embarked on.

At its core, Wave Jets people create a document to which multiple users can add rich text, multimedia, gadget applications, and feeds, and do so concurrently, much as people interact on, say, instant messaging. Users can roll back these “waves” to view the evolution of the document.

In the works for about two years, Wave could draw people away from the company’s other products (Blogger, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, Picasa, and Sites), and from similiar products by competitors such as AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

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Every age brings new wars, and every war brings public expressions of collective grief and respect for the dead. My parents’ generation had the Vietnam Memorial, and their parents’ generation now have the National World War II Memorial. Our generation has fought a very different, very difficult war in the Middle East over the past eight years; as of today, one memorial offers perhaps the most comprehensive and deeply detailed picture of the human cost to date.

A new app, Map the Fallen, gathers and aggregates information on war casualties in the Middle East from U.S. and coalition nations, giving dead servicemembers’ names, ages, pictures, hometowns, places of death, and the cause or incident of death.

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The app mashes up data from Google Earth 5.0, the Department of Defense’s Statistical Information Analysis Division, icasualties.org, MilitaryTimes.com’s Honor the Fallen, the Washington Post’s Faces of the Fallen, Legacy.com, GeoNames.org, and other sites to create an interactive digital map of casualties from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

There are links to memorial sites where users can sign guestbooks, leaving comments about the departed. The app also includes links to releases from the Department of Defense and local obituaries or other press coverage, when available. Map the Fallen allows users to “fly” around the globe from the dead soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine’s hometown to the place where he or she was killed. Users can also use the timeline feature to visualize how many casualties occurred at any one time or during any period of time from 2001 to the present day.

The map also includes icons pointing out places, books, news articles, photos, or other data that are geographically relevant.

Users can also record and save video “tours” of available data.

Undoubtedly somber, probably (for most of us) unbearably sad, the project is the result of four years’ work by Sean, who develops geospatial content for the Google Earth Outreach team.

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Omgili, which we reviewed in 2007 as a top alt search engine, has focused on culling results from the weird corners of the web: Forums, boards, discussion groups - basically, anywhere you’d find purely or mostly subjective information. It’s the polar opposite of Google search, which is practically a peer-reviewed journal by comparison.

Their latest release, Google@Omgili, features a sweet mashup with Google search, giving users a well-rounded look at the fair-and-balanced web alongside social buzz from and about sources such as blogs, newsgroups, video-sharing sites, forums, discussion boards, Q&A sites, and review sites.

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“We mashed the familiar Google interface (and excellent results) and added many unobtrusive useful features on top,” wrote CEO Ran Geva in an email yesterday. “The interface is not crowded by results from more resources. Instead, it offers you a deeper insight about your search query with a click.”

The translation function isn’t amazing, but for trending or hot-button topics, the results can be quite interesting.

The basic Google@Omgili search yields traditional web results with discussions that link to each result:

Once a user clicks on the “discussion bubble” next to the link, he can preview some of the social chatter linking back to that particular result:

Users can also choose to refine the search to show results from, say, forums and discussions only:

This product also incorporates the True Knowledge API and integrates Snap.com’s service to give users a snapshot and video/RSS/Wikipedia previews. And of course, users can choose any number of social sites to share Google@Omgili with their networks (but not to share specific search results, which is disappointing) and can choose to add Google@Omgili to their search bar.

Although the original Omgili search offering calls to mind many, many social/forum search engines - most of which have financially struggled or failed, see Twing and Delver - the Google mash gives this engine a much more interesting and useful product.

Overall, it’s a nice way to see which links are generating (or supporting) subjective online conversations and might be a good tool for tracking down topic experts or sources. On the other hand, it might also be a way to get mired down in the chatter from forum crazies. Six of one, a half dozen of the other - after all, whether you’re brilliantly insane or insanely brilliant, you’ve got to post your theories and rants somewhere, right?

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We spoke recently with Joshua Baer and Bryan Menell of Capital Factory, a technology incubator/accelerator based in Austin, Texas. Capital Factory puts on an intense 10-week summer program that gives participating startup companies up to $20,000 in cash, more than $20,000 in free services, and mentorship from a group of successful entrepreneurs. The program culminates in a demo day when the startups present to investors, the press, and the world. For more on incubators, see our post on Josh Catone.

Incubators are local by nature. So we wanted to find out more about the innovation scene in Austin. We also wanted to get Capital Factory’s take on how the incubator model is changing.

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Listen to the Interview

Download the MP3.

Questions and MP3 Guide

If you are an entrepreneur in Austin, take time to listen to the whole interview. Get to know these guys before you meet them. For everybody else, here follows a quick summary.

Question:: Do you see different types of startups in Austin compared to the ones in the Valley?

Skip to 2:18 in MP3.
Summary: This is defined by the success stories in Austin because that is where the mentors and angels mostly come from. Dell is huge and is a nice mix of tech and consumer. Austin also has enterprise vendors such as Trilogy and Vignette, and some successes in gaming.

Question:: What advantages and disadvantages does a venture starting out in Austin have?

Skip to 5:20 in MP3.
Summary: Advantage: cost. It costs less to start in Austin than in the Valley. But unlike, say, India, it still operates in the biggest market (the US).
Perceived disadvantage: harder to raise capital. That is changing, and Capital Factory is one of the reasons, less because of the small amounts of capital it provides than because of the bridge it has become to the capital sources in Austin.

Question:: What does a modern incubator do? How is this different from what incubators did in the dot-com era?

Skip to 7:30 in MP3.
Summary: Because of the 10 times reduction in costs to start a Web venture, the issue is less about cash (which is all that those earlier incubators provided) than about access to the people who help with execution. Joshua and Bryan seemed to shy away from using the word “incubator” because it got a bad rep in the dot-com era, and preferred the term “accelerator.”

Question:: What market segments excite you today?

Skip to 10:45 in MP3.
Summary: Niche markets in which the entrepreneurs have superb domain skills. Capital Factory looks for capital-efficient companies with a clear path to early profitability.

Question:: What is the single most important characteristic you look for in an entrepreneur?

Skip to 14:50 in MP3.
Summary: Passion.

Why Talk to Capital Factory?

If you are talking to the company to get $20,000, you’re missing the point. The reason to talk to Capital Factory is to get access to its team. Not only can these folks help you get on the right track, but when you are on the right track they can open any door you need in Austin.

Recent Investments

Capital Factory announced these investments in April:

• Cubit Planning: environmental reports at the click of a button.
• FamiGo: mobile games that bring the family together.
• Homstie: person-to-person marketplace for storage space.
• Hourville: marketplace for services by the hour.
• petzMD: website for pet health, from A to Z.

Feedback

What is your take on the innovation scene in Austin?

Do you have a good incubator/accelerator where you’re based?

Listen to the Interview

Download the MP3.

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The Catholic Church isn’t exactly known for its speedy adoption of new technologies, but today the Vatican launched a new web portal, as well as a Facebook app to coincide with the upcoming 43rd World Communications Day. In addition, the Vatican also announced an iPhone application. The iPhone application has not been approved by Apple yet, (we assume that even the Vatican’s apps gets scoured for porn and profanities), but the Facebook app is available now.

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iPhone App: Not Approved Yet

None of these apps look to be groundbreaking in either design or functionality. The iPhone/iPod touch app, once approved, will give users the ability to watch videos and hear speeches by Pope Benedict XVI, as well as other content from Catholic events worldwide.

Facebook App: Boring

The Facebook app, which is currently loading very slowly, is also not exactly the most groundbreaking app either. Facebook users will be able to send and receive 20 different virtual postcards of the Pope, with texts available in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish (with Latin being conspicuously absent here). According to the app’s description, installing it will allow you to “Spread friendship with the Pope and become a witness of Christ in the world through the web.”

In January this year, the Vatican also launched its YouTube channel, though so far, none of the videos posted there have gone viral yet.

Disappointment: Can’t Poke the Pope

For now, however, users who were hoping to get a chance to poke the Pope or even just friend him on Facebook are out of luck, as the Pope does not have an official Facebook profile, yet.

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One of the web trends we’re noticing this year is more location-based mobile phone applications - i.e. apps that know where you and/or your friends are and utilize that data in some way. Some of this activity was fueled by Google’s entrance into the market as a serious player, in February when Google Latitude launched. Latitude allows you to share location-based information with friends. We’ve also covered a number of innovative location-based startups, including Bliin, Toaí, Parallel Kingdom, Radar and Visible Past (our coverage) and Wikitude (our coverage).

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Perhaps the pick of the startup bunch at this point is Brightkite, which we named as our pick for Most Promising Company for 2009 last December and included in our Top 10 Mobile Web Apps of 2008. Brightkite is a device agnostic, SMS-based application that lets you "check in" at various locations in the real world and see who else is there, has been there, and who is nearby.

As we’re nearing the halfway mark of 2009, we decided to find out what location-based applications the ReadWriteWeb community is using. We asked for feedback on our Twitter account @rww, (which we recommend you follow, to participate in upcoming surveys and get the latest tidbits about web technology).

Brightkite and Google Maps / Earth got the most votes. Let us know your favorite app in the comments.

Favorite Location-Based Apps of RWW Readers

Note: we haven’t linked the companies, but please use your favorite search engine if something catches your eye.

@CleverClogs @Glympse lets you share your dynamic GPS map location with someone for a preset period of time.

@petercowan google earth. hands down. no contest.

@OlafLewitz Google Maps, because I find nearly everything I need.

@dvint 1am loving sky map on the G1 - see the latest version, it is now a google app & google maps

@sherrymain Google latitude b/c of network effect, others on it. But I have an iPhone, so I can only track/update online

@selviano www.buzzd.com, a mobile LBS app that has covered several times. They launched a new WWW portal yesterday

@iamrehman My Local Traffic guide for The southern Swedish Province Skåne .. The app is called skånetrafiken.

@Lambday Google Street View xD

@dingman google maps w/ GPS routes, direction to X from current location, MOST USED APP EVER by me

@thillerson Another vote for Brightkite for sweet useful mobile apps

@Judd6149 Brightkite. It is simple to use (from my iPhone) . When it is used to is max capabilities it is quite engaging and useful

@mvarroyoI am a big fan of loopt. the facebook & twitter integration was one reason i liked it so much. it just works now, so I stayed with it

@dc2fla favorite location-based app - Google Earth, hands down. Intuitive, easy to use for mapping, research, virtual wandering, discovery

@theReviewGuy aroundme iPhone app becauz it’s dead simple with 2 clocks to destination

@pixelpooch iWant has been pretty good to me with all the travel I do makes it easy to find whats near by also provides yelp reviews on restaurants

@richardram Google Earth combined with Earthbridge, Voda 3G and a Dell Mini 9 with the GPS turned on, a real-time, virtual tour awaits.

@evakennedy76 iMapMy by MapMyFitness. I also use mapmyrun.com pretty regularly.

@grahamclarke: Google Earth - rich data layers, easy to use, combination of satellite imagery and user submitted photos, cool

@jaredwsmith: For me it’s Brightkite: The concept of "placestreams" is fascinating and incredibly useful. Brightkite can, if the data’s populated for a location, give me great context when talking about a place — I show someone the stream.

@KindSoles gmail’s weather theme. My computer sits infront of a window so it’s cool to see it change with the weather on a day to day basis.

@drnormal shizzow.com is social, has a mobile web interface, quick search for locations and of course, Twitter integration (a must have)…

@dekkerd @brightkite. multiple easy ways to update, shows what’s happening around me and my friends. plays nice with other services

@ajleon No question right now it’s @brightkite, GREAT community, Gmap Integration, easy to post pics and make friends, great UI

@ITSinsider I like Brightkite. It’s easy and I like the Twitter integration. I "check in" all the time so the kids know where I am.

@melleez TwitIQ easy peasy lots less work

@josh909 Brightkite due to twitter integration, and good GUI

@Socialbees prob yelp iphone app b/c it’s so often saved me from potentially terrible dining exp & turned me on to great places while traveling.

@missinglink browser only, none (maybe brightkite), but mobile, google maps is the best one I’ve seen, loopt and brightkite are close for social

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Real-time social search outfit OneRiot today announced their API and partnership program for adding real-time search capabilities to browser add-ons, desktop applications, social websites and other services.

The mind reels at the possible use cases for such an API: Blogs and news sites could track and serve real-time, hot-topic links. Businesses could turn out impressive buzz-monitoring applications. Social action networks could use it to spread the word on civic engagement. Almost any site or organization could imaginatively and profitably employ OneRiot’s instant link-indexing algorithm (which we think actually works better than many similar products). It just happens that TwitterBar was the first.

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“We have plenty of very interesting partners,” said Tobias Peggs, OneRiot’s business initiative frontman. He revealed an additional two partnerships: Firefox/IE search add-ons WebMynd and Surf Canyon.

Peggs continued, “The real-time results are much more buzzy than static results, which pushes user adoption much more because the results resonate with what users want. Real-time search results can inform a discussion users are having with their friends.”

TwitterBar, the first OneRiot partner, is a Firefox add-on that allows users to send Twitter updates directly from the Firefox address bar. Although the TwitterBar functionality is currently “very alpha” (to coin a kind, new term for early-launching tech) the implications of instantly gleaning and sharing real-time results are fascinating, especially considering that social web sharing boosts a link’s OneRiot score.

“If you look at the real-time search players out there,” said Peggs, “the key for them is to get distribution. Clearly, a number of users are going to turn up at MyRealTimeSearchEnginge.com, but the way to drive user adoption is to distribute. You need to be very confident that you can scale. What the API does is prove that OneRiot is a company that believes they can scale.”

Why is OneRiot so confident in its ability to scale? While Peggs wouldn’t comment on back-end server tech specifics, he did say, “We have got a world-class team of search experts. We have more PhDs than you can shake a stick at. They have invented some really smart ways to process an incredible amount of social signals in real time and deliver results back. It’s a combination of team and technology that’s backed up by internal testing. We know what we can support, and we’re excited for other partners to adopt it and start hammering away.”

The OneRiot API is for developers of looking to enhance their user experience with realtime web search powered by OneRiot. The OneRiot API is free and available by request.

We look forward to seeing who takes on this opportunity. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots of the OneRiot API in action:

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Visible Past is a location-aware learning environment being developed at Purdue University. It is based around the idea that data can be organized using space and time attributes. The team behind the project believes that Visible Past can be used as a learning tool in schools and museums.

Practically speaking, Visible Past is a mix of virtual reality, location-based data and a wiki approach. So users of the system not only receive information, but can contribute to it too. Features include social networking and content rating/review.

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The key concept is probably that every piece of data in the system is tied to a location and is time-stamped. All of this data is put into its georeferenced wiki (gWiki), built using MediaWiki.

Naturally, because it’s a wiki the Visible Past system is read/write. Visible Past claims to open "read/write capabilities to all clients capable of reading and rendering georeferenced data," such as Google’s Maps and Earth, NASA’s WorldWind, location-sensitive mobile devices, and immersive VR environments such as Purdue’s Envision Center CAVE. It also makes heavy use of wiki content from the likes of WikiPedia, Wiktionary, WikiMedia Commons. Everything is accessible via an Internet-connected device.

The way Visible Past works is as follows:

"…as a user moves through space (virtual, real, mapped), information tied to locations on the earth will be revealed to them as they approach those locations. Once revealed, the information can be edited and resubmitted (to greater or lesser richness depending on the client), consumed, or ignored. see this Demo page for a video clip of the client functionality we’re developing."

You can browse by keywords, location or time. In regards to how location and time data is captured, that is done via GPS (e.g. on mobile phones) or through virtual reality locators.

Privacy advocates will be wary about the project’s tagline, "Where information searches for you". Because the system tracks your location and time, it essentially follows you whereever you go. This is what many location-based web apps do, such as Brightkite. Although most of these apps ensure that the user has sufficient control to turn off and delete their data if they want to. That’s the key thing with location-based apps, the user must remain in control.

In any case, in a learning environment - which is what Visible Past is aiming for - it’s probably a good thing if information finds you. As of now Visible Past has a limited set of models, such as one of Ancient Rome as it appeared in Antiquity (cca 400 AD), however it’s a technology to keep your eye on as we move further in a location data based Web.

Slideshow from Slideshare

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In New York City, on the 16th floor of the Roger Smith Hotel, we caught up with social media superhero Baratunde Thurston, web editor for The Onion.

Thurston started getting into this whole “Internet” thing in simpler times when the social web was called Usenet. He now carves out his niche at the overlap of the Venn diagram of comedy, politics, and tech. As an official Internet oldtimer who makes it his business to stay relevant, he has particularly useful insights on the business of curating applicable content with great efficiency and timeliness.

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“I remember,” he said, “back in 1996 or 1997, when you could finish the Internet… You could stay up until two or three in the morning and go to sleep and know, ‘I read the Internet today.’” Simpler times, indeed.

So, with the mind-boggling multiplicity of blogs, news sites, and social networks, how does a professional netizen maintain cultural and technological relevance? And what tools does the modern, socially cognizant webmaster use to track and optimize traffic in real time? Call us cruel, but we prefer you watch the video and hear it all firsthand.

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