WEBBY WORLD

Over the next few weeks we'll be reviewing a number of Web product categories on Read/WriteWeb, summarizing what's happened in 2007 - and what to look forward to in 2008. We're starting with the Web Office, a market that underwent a lot of changes this year. Our definition of Web Office is: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. Probably the biggest change was that Google Apps ramped up this year, starting with the release of Google Apps Premier in February. And 2007 continued the trend of acquisitions in this market, which started in 2006 with the likes of Writely and JotSpot. In 2007 Yahoo acquired Zimbra and Google acquired a number of small startups - including GrandCentral (online telephony service) and Zenter (presentations software). The biggest disappointment of the year in ...

The emergence of the next generation of Internet technology and applications has led to the coining of the term Web 2.0 to indicate that the Internet now has more capabilities than ever before. The Internet media companies such as Google, News Corp, and Yahoo are just some of the leaders taking advantage of this with the introduction of new services and applications. This revival of the Internet has also led in part to the re-emergence of the Internet economy, and more specifically e-commerce. The increase in broadband connections is another factor that has led to this revival according to BuddeComm. Revenue from the large range of content and services available from the Internet is rapidly increasing globally; travel, gambling, adult content, music and health services are particularly popular, and social networking services are flourishing. It is estimated that by 2010 more than $US2 billion will be spent on social network advertising in the US alone. The Internet economy is increasin...

Cross-platform Availability and Portability Flash Player is available for all the major operating systems: Windows Mac OS Linux Solaris Also, it comes preinstalled with Mac OSX and Windows XP . So the users of these platforms don’t even need to download it! There is also Flash Lite , which enables the viewing of Flash content on mobile devices like cellphones and PDAs. Just take a look at all the mobile phone manufacturers that are incorporating Flash Lite into their devices (currently more than 140 cellphones are Flash-enabled): Fujitsu Hitachi Kyocera Mitsubishi Motorola NEC Nokia Panasonic Sanyo Sendo Sharp Siemens Sony Ericsson Toshiba Still not convinced? Well, there is even more - the PDAs : Microsoft Pocket PC and Sony CLIE. Can there be more? Sure. Let’s not forget the consumer electronics : the iRiver U10 media player and the Kodak Easyshare-One Zoom Digital Camera are Flash-enabled, like some set-top boxes too. Oh, wait, I didn’t tell you yet which bro...

We have spent more than 40 hours tapping around the iPhone screens in an effort to find issues with the applications. This was not an easy task. The OS X graphical interface and applications are extremely solid! The bugs range from minor display issues to application crashes. All 68 are should be reproducible by every iPhone owner! Category Description Serious Bug The screen will begin flashing off and on when the proximity sensor detects an object for only one second. To reproduce, call a friend -> press the home button -> slowly run your hand over the proximity sensor near the receiver (not the speaker on the bottom of the phone). Move your hand more quickly if the screen turns off and back on once. Move your hand more slowly if the screen doesn't turn off at all. The trick is to cover the sensor for about 1 second. Stop the screen flashing by covering the sensor again for more than 1 second, pressing the home button, or launching an application. The expected resu...

It’s easy to spot revolutions or major events in the past. The shrinking of computer parts in the 70s, the PC revolution of the 80s that led to the Internet explosion of the 90s, etc. At the beginning of the new millennium, we had at our fingertips millions of pages of information. It wasn’t a question of ‘is it out there somewhere’, it was a question of ‘it’s out there, how do I find it?’ Enter Google. Google wasn’t the first search engine, nor was it the last, but it quickly became THE search engine because they did something different. Google created a search engine that took all of that information and made it useful and relevant. They did it not by teaching the machine to do it, but instead by teaching the machine to observe what we humans were linking to. By tapping into the social side of information, Google quickly became the best search engine for finding the information in the sea of content. So the latest ‘big thing’ has been the socializing of the Internet. We now find sit...

Apple has launched a Web site for developers of its recently released iPhone. Part of the Apple Developer Connection, the Web site outlines guidelines and Safari compatibility when making applications for the iPhone. Developers hoping to make applications for the iPhone have to do so inside of Apple's Safari Web browser. By using Web 2.0 applications Apple says developers can make applications that look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone. Building applications this way also provides integration with iPhone applications and services including making a phone call, sending an email, and displaying a location in Google Maps, according to Apple. The development guidelines provides several topics including Understanding User-iPhone Interaction; Use Standards and Tried-and-True Design Practices; Integrate with Phone, Mail, and Maps; Optimize for Page Readability; Ensure a Great Audio and Video Experience; Know What Safari Supports on iPhone; Connect With Web Developer...

So you've bought the domain, you've got some great sales copy, ensure your meta and alt tags are doing they're job, have a few graphics thrown in for good measure and are all set to publish your design to the web. Right? Wrong. But though you're on the right track, you might have overlooked what research is now calling one of the most crucial elements in site design: color. Having the right color scheme might be one of the ways to make or break your site. Since you only have about the first ten seconds of a user's attention span, you need to ensure that what they first see catches their eye. The fact that the users are visiting your site means you've got the core elements of design on target, but now you have to keep them there. True, you'll need great a great sales pitch and copy but don't underestimate the importance of a color's pyschology. Colors mean different things to different people and can symbolise different things in different cultures. F...