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Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

Are We In A Tech Bubble? Here’s The History [INFOGRAPHIC]

13 Jul


We’ve spent the past year wondering whether we’re currently in a tech bubble akin to the last decade’s dotcom boom.

Mashable has offered facts and opinions on both sides of the question. We’ve heard that the current boom is much different from the heyday of the late 1990s and that we have cause for confidence.

But we’ve also heard (from the likes of legendary investor Warren Buffet, no less) that the newest crop of tech darlings are highly overvalued at worst and unpredictable at best.

And we’ve even asked you, our readers, what you thought about current startup valuations and funding amounts. (Most of you responded that you were not optimistic about the future of the tech startup ecosystem.)

Now here are a few straightforward graphs and charts (created by KISSmetrics and FeeFighters) to help you get some better perspective on the issue. Clearly, the dotcom era was a different beast. But looking back on that insanity should help temper our excitement about new technologies with realistic revenue expectations.

Click image to see full-size version.

Top image courtesy of iStockphoto, patrickheagney

More About: bubble, investment, startups, tech bubble, technology

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Could Kickstarter Be Better Than Government Grants for Artists?

17 Jun


Artist Molly Crabapple has just been given $17,000 to lock herself in a paper-covered room for five days and make art until the walls are covered.

But that sum didn’t come from the National Endowment for the Arts or a wealthy patron; Crabapple, like many in her subversive art-making shoes, turned to Kickstarter to find funding for the stunt.

In her Kickstarter proposal, she outlined the basic premise of the project, dubbed “Molly Crabapple’s Week in Hell.” Anyone who donated a dollar to the effort would get to watch a live stream of the whole five-day shebang. Anyone who pledged $10 or more would get to name an animal for inclusion in the artwork; donations of $20 or more would get an actual piece of the ink-filled paper sent to them. And backers who fronted $1,000 or more would get an absinthe-infused lunch with the artist.

Crabapple set a $4,500 fundraising goal; so far, the total raised is $17,000 — enough to make a short film about the project, which Crabapple says will debut online shortly after Crabapple’s Week in Hell wraps.



Why Art Needs the Web


This is a project that Crabapple says could never have existed without the Internet.

“I mean, before the Internet, I could have gotten a room and markers,” she told Mashable in an email. “But funding it? Pre-selling an entire body of yet-to-be-created-art in an alternative space? Even the logistics of finding the space and gathering my staff would have been infinitely harder offline”

Historically, the kinds of projects that do best on Kickstarter are actually film and music. Over the past two years, these two categories have accounted for more than $32.7 million in fundraising — more than every other category combined.

Crabapple says the Week in Hell is her third Kickstarter project. She did a Kickstarter proposal last year to help fund SketchyCon, a gathering of organizers for Crabapple’s unique life drawing events, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School. And she did ker second Kickstarter project just a couple months ago to fund a stop-motion paper puppet film.

“An artist like me (ie a poxy illustrator who dropped out of school) has basically no chance with the grant system, and Kickstarter has been amazing for helping me bring my most ambitious projects to life,” said Crabapple.


Why Grants Don’t Work


While entrepreneurship projects such as the ill-fated Diaspora do exist on Kickstarter, they get relatively little attention on the site when compared to the overwhelming popularity of the arts. For artists who seek funds to further their dreams, the crowdfunding model of Kickstarter is something of a godsend. Gone are the lengthy, difficult grant application processes and the endless pitching to would-be patrons.

As Crabapple told us, “I once sat through the introductory session for applying for a Brooklyn Artists Grant. In between the forms filled out in 8-plicate, having to have a nonprofit organization sponsor you, and the fact that the grant was forbidden from covering the entire cost of the project, I figured it was probably just easier to earn the money.

“A Kickstarter is populist and fast, where a grant is elitist and foot-dragging.”

Crabapple said she was surprised, though, that the project got so much interest and so many pledges.

“Week in Hell is a deeply personal project, and there’s always a risk of those coming off as horrifically wanky. I posted it with some trepidation on Sunday at midnight, and woke up to find it funded. In my fever dreams I never would have imagined such an incredibly warm, generous response.”

Keep an eye out for the Week in Hell event, as well as subsequent photos and film, to take place from September 3 through 8 in a secret location in Manhattan.

Image courtesy of Facebook, TheLegion

More About: funding, fundraising, grants, kickstarter, Molly Crabapple, National Endowment for the arts, NEA, trending

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Robert Gates gets the last word on WikiLeaks

01 Dec

I've expressed skepticism about whether WikiLeaks will actually lead to greater foreign-policy transparency. That said, l'affaire WikiLeaks has generated just a smidgen of greater candor from at least one U.S. policy principal. Here's Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the fallout from the cable dump:

Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: “How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel." …

Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets.

Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation. So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.

Hat tip: Jack Goldsmith.

 

300,000 Largest Websites Visualized with Favicons

25 Aug


An interesting visualization over at Nmap.org shows the favicons of the 300,000 biggest websites on the Internet (according to Alexa), with the size of the favicons corresponding to sites with the most traffic.

The data has been gathered through a “large-scale scan of the top million websites,” performed in “early 2010″ using the Nmap Security Scanner, a powerful network scanning tool used by many online security professionals.

The smallest icons, explain the folks from Nmap, correspond to sites with approximately 0.0001% reach, and rescaled to 16×16 pixels. The largest icon belongs to Google, and it’s 11,936 x 11,936 pixels large; for comparison, Mashable’s favicon (located below and to the left of Facebook) is 640 × 640 pixels large. Of course, to explain Google’s icon in its full size, you need to check out the zoom-enabled, interactive version.

The visualization is also available as a humongous poster, available here.

[via Gizmodo]


Reviews: Facebook, Google, Internet, Mashable

More About: Alexa, favicon, visualization, website

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What Identities Are We Using to Sign in Around the Web? [INFOGRAPHIC]

07 Jul

The days of having a separate login and password for each online service we use are behind us. Now, you can log into most sites and services using your social network’s ID.

The most popular social identities are Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, but are they always being used in the same way? The infographic below, courtesy of social optimization platform Gigya, shows that users trust different identities on different services. For example, users are most likely to log on to entertainment sites via Facebook, but when it comes to news sites, the login of choice is Twitter. Furthermore, the infographic shows what profile data is available to services after users log in using various online identities.

Check out a bigger version of the infographic here.



Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter

More About: facebook, gigya, Google, online identity, social networking, twitter, Yahoo

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Amazon Patents Social Networking System, Winks at Facebook

17 Jun

social networks clutter imageThe United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Amazon a patent for a “Social Networking System.” Amazingly enough, the description of the patent sounds, well, pretty much like any social network we’ve seen over the years, including Facebook.

The description of the patent is as follows:

“A networked computer system provides various services for assisting users in locating, and establishing contact relationships with, other users. For example, in one embodiment, users can identify other users based on their affiliations with particular schools or other organizations. The system also provides a mechanism for a user to selectively establish contact relationships or connections with other users, and to grant permissions for such other users to view personal information of the user. The system may also include features for enabling users to identify contacts of their respective contacts. In addition, the system may automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts.”

Replacing the word “system” in the paragraph above with “Facebook” reveals, once again, how flawed the U.S. patent system is. This patent was invented by Brian Robertson and Warren Adams — the same two guys who founded social networking service PlanetAll, which Amazon acquired in 1998. Alas, not seeing potential in the service, Amazon shut it down in 2000, but decided to revive it by filing a patent application in May 2008.

Now, let’s look at some of the other social networking-related patents. Four years ago, Friendster patented — you guessed it — “social networking.” It was described as a “system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks.”

Friendster was awarded several more patents for certain aspects of social networking over the years, Facebook patented the newsfeed three months ago, and we’ve seen many other patents that supposedly cover the fundamentals of social networking over the years.

So, after all this, who owns the patent for the social network? You tell us, cause we have no idea.

[via TechFlash]

image courtesy of iStockphoto, drflet



For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook




Reviews: Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: amazon, facebook, patent, social networking

 

Amazon Patents Social Networking System, Winks at Facebook

17 Jun

social networks clutter imageThe United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Amazon a patent for a “Social Networking System.” Amazingly enough, the description of the patent sounds, well, pretty much like any social network we’ve seen over the years, including Facebook.

The description of the patent is as follows:

“A networked computer system provides various services for assisting users in locating, and establishing contact relationships with, other users. For example, in one embodiment, users can identify other users based on their affiliations with particular schools or other organizations. The system also provides a mechanism for a user to selectively establish contact relationships or connections with other users, and to grant permissions for such other users to view personal information of the user. The system may also include features for enabling users to identify contacts of their respective contacts. In addition, the system may automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts.”

Replacing the word “system” in the paragraph above with “Facebook” reveals, once again, how flawed the U.S. patent system is. This patent was invented by Brian Robertson and Warren Adams — the same two guys who founded social networking service PlanetAll, which Amazon acquired in 1998. Alas, not seeing potential in the service, Amazon shut it down in 2000, but decided to revive it by filing a patent application in May 2008.

Now, let’s look at some of the other social networking-related patents. Four years ago, Friendster patented — you guessed it — “social networking.” It was described as a “system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks.”

Friendster was awarded several more patents for certain aspects of social networking over the years, Facebook patented the newsfeed three months ago, and we’ve seen many other patents that supposedly cover the fundamentals of social networking over the years.

So, after all this, who owns the patent for the social network? You tell us, cause we have no idea.

[via TechFlash]

image courtesy of iStockphoto, drflet



For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook




Reviews: Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: amazon, facebook, patent, social networking


 

Rotten Tomatoes Now Integrated with iTunes

21 May

Popular movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is now integrated with Apple’s iTunes Store, giving viewers the chance to instantly see the rating of a movie in the form of a popularity gauge called the Tomatometer.

Rotten Tomatoes is a popular site that’s been around since 1998, and it was been acquired by Flixster early this year. It takes the reviews of professional movie critics around the world, counts the positive (fresh) and the negative (rotten) reviews and turns them into a percentage-based grade.

Now, you can see the Tomatometer in movie descriptions on iTunes, along with a couple of blurbs taken from some of the top critics’ reviews. It’s a great way to quickly check out whether a movie is worth watching; if you want more info, you can jump to Rotten Tomatoes for more reviews with a click.

[img credit: visualdensity]



For more entertainment coverage, follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook




Reviews: Facebook, Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter

Tags: itunes, Movies, rotten tomatoes

 

How Facebook Became Twice as Fast (But Still Not Fast Enough)

19 Feb

There’s an interesting post today at Facebook’s engineering blog, detailing how Facebook’s engineers managed to make the site two times faster in a six-month period — from June of 2009 till the beginning of 2010.

It’s an interesting (albeit somewhat technical) read. In short, Facebook’s primary concerns were shortening network time (the time it takes for data to be transmitted between the user’s computer and Facebook) and render time (the time it takes the user’s web browser to process a response from Facebook and display the page). They managed to speed up the site primarily by reducing the number of cookies and cutting back on JavaScript.

Finally, they divided a typical Facebook page into parts (which they call pagelets), which can be loaded one after another (instead of waiting for the entire page to load. From the post:

“Over the last few months we’ve implemented exactly this ability for Facebook pages. We call the whole system BigPipe and it allows us to break our web pages up in to logical blocks of content, called Pagelets, and pipeline the generation and render of these Pagelets. Looking at the home page, for example, think of the newsfeed as one Pagelet, the Suggestions box another, and the advertisement yet another. BigPipe not only reduces the TTI of our pages but also makes them seem even faster to users since seeing partial content earlier feels faster than seeing complete content a little bit later.”

While this is nice to know, it’s hard not to notice the recent user complaints that Facebook is slower than ever (it’s been that way for me, too). Of course, the Facebook experience is different for users in different countries, so it’s hard to say whether it’s a global problem, but one thing is certain: With Facebook’s userbase growing the way it does, keeping the site fast enough will always be a challenge.


Reviews: Facebook

Tags: facebook, social media, social networking, trending, Web Development

 

Google Analytics get faster, better

06 Dec

One very annoying aspect of Google Analytics has always been the delay it can add to your page load -- you can let the page render by putting the script at the bottom of the page, but still some users will sit and wait for the page to finish loading, and others click through before GA registers the visit at all. Well, finally it looks like they've worked out a solution to this problem: asynchronous loading!