Episode 0023, 11/11/2007
Title: Goggle-powered Cell Phones, The Semantic Web is Coming, Document Sharing come to Facebook, Social Advertising
Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the WEEK, Episode 23, recorded November 11th, 2007.
This is Ken Baldauf bringing you this week's technology news and information.
This CourseCast is brought to you by Course Technology. Check out www.course.com for innovative textbooks and creative electronic learning solutions.
Story 1 - Goggle-Powered Cell Phones
Google made headline-grabbing news this week with an announcement that marks the company's entry into the lucrative cell phone market. It's not a g-phone exactly, but rather an open-source operating system and software development platform for cell phones called Android. The emphasis is on open-source, which opens the door to new and creative software development. Along with the release of Android, Google has established the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a consortium of companies that plan to support open standards for mobile devices. So far it has signed up 33 companies including big names such as Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, DoCoMo, Intel, LG, Motorola, and Samsung. Google will be releasing its free Android development kit this week. It is expected that the first Google Android-powered phones will come to market in the second half of 2008. The phones should have rich Internet applications that will drive more consumers to purchase smartphones. Google's Android will compete directly against today's proprietary operating systems: Symbian, Microsoft Mobile, and PalmOS. If widely adopted, Google's Android will give Google an advantage in getting its software and location-based advertising in the hands of consumers. It will also accelerate the market's move towards mobile Internet applications. This week's announcement from Google follows hot on the heels of last week's announcement about Google's OpenSocial, an open-source software development platform for online social networks. Apparently more announcements are yet to come as Google stated that Android and the OHA are the first of two important announcements that Google will be making regarding mobile phones.
Source: "Google unveils cell phone software and alliance" (cnet), "Google Phone Announced As Mobile Operating System" (wired), "Live coverage of Google's Android Gphone mobile OS announcement" (engadget)
Story 2 - The Semantic Web is Coming
This week MIT's Technology Review included an article on new software being released in a couple of months that will help battle information overload. The Web-based tool is called Twine, and it is being developed by a San Francisco company named Radar Networks. Twine will help users tie-together and manage the many digital components of their lives including email, Web sites, YouTube videos, social network content and friends, and other files. Once twine has a library of the digital components of your life, it applies serious artificial intelligence algorithms to learn about your interests, use of data, and relationships with different people. It applies what it learns to assist you in managing your digital content, and finding more interesting and related content online.
Twine provides one of the first tools for consumers that can be classified as the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is a concept that has been discussed and anticipated for years. The Semantic Web differs from today's World Wide Web in that it intelligently identifies and tags online content in a manner that makes it easy to organize, search, and find what you need with little effort. Some believe that the Semantic Web will be the next major paradigm for the Web: Web 3.0. Whatever ends up prompting the next major change in online activities, whether it is the Semantic Web, Rich Internet Applications, or some other as-yet unknown technology, it is clear that most of our computing use will be moving off the PC and into cyberspace.
Sources: "The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream" (TechnologyReview)
Story 3 - Document Sharing comes to Facebook
One of the latest Web 2.0 online services allows Web users to share any kind of document with the online community. The most popular of such services is scribd.com. Scribd, spelled s-c-r-i-b-d, allows members to upload nearly any kind of document: word documents, PDF's music, sheet music, maps, art, ebooks, magazines, slideshows, and spreadsheets, to share with others on the Internet. More recently, docstoc (d-o-c-s-t-o-c) released a document-sharing site for professionals such as lawyers and business people. Now there's a document sharing app for Facebook users called TheCollegeFreeway. TheCollegeFreeway is brand new and being used by college students to share lecture notes, practice tests, problem sets and other school-related docs.
Source: "TheCollegeFreeway — the free way to share class notes, using Facebook" (VentureBeat)
Story 4 - Social Advertising
Facebook released a new advertising platform this week, aptly named Facebook Ads. The new platform lets Facebook users endorse their favorite products. Facebook users can "friend" products, and visit product Facebook pages to download product-sponsored games and services. Interaction between users and products are posted in the Facebook News Feed. So, if I were to friend Ben and Jerry's Ice cream, that announcement would be included in all of my friends news feeds. Not only that, but my Facebook photo might be included in an add for Ben and Jerry's ice cream on Facebook. Personally, that wouldn't bother me too much so long as Ben and Jerry mailed me a case of Cherries Garcia ice cream!
Source: "Facebook launches social advertising — the details" (VentureBeat), Facebook invites ads into user profiles (Reuters)
New Briefs
That's it for this week's CourseCast. Links to this week's stories and many more news and information resources are provided at the CourseCast Web site at www.course.com/coursecasts. Until next time have a great week and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of Technology!