Blog Roll

Google recently announced an extension framework for Chrome, adding the ability to run extra software in the browser. It’s a feature many had long considered missing from Google’s browser — and one that has been key to Firefox’s popularity. But with the Chrome extensions, Google is doing much more than just playing catch-up with Firefox. An extensible browser is the missing piece of a much bigger puzzle: By tying its App Engine to Google Apps (more details in the App Engine blog), the company has delivered a complete ecosystem for cloud ISVs.

All software ecosystems need four basic things:

1. A platform — A complete cloud platform is distributed, ubiquitous, and works both offline and on. App Engine lets developers build the server-side portion and not worry about scaling. And Chrome’s extensions let coders build a cross-platform user interface that leverages the Gears framework to work even when disconnected.
2. Rich APIs — All those apps can use authentication, chat, OpenSocial, calendaring, Checkout, search, mapping, and other Google services. That makes it easy to build rich apps with familiar components.
3. Administration — Google Apps lets an administrator purchase, provision and manage permissions for an app. Deployment is easy: Once you’ve found the app you want in the Google Marketplace, just click the “add” button, then install the Chrome extension.
4. A market — Google Apps has 10 million active users and is signing up some 3,000 new companies a day, according to Matthew Glotzbach, product management director of Google Enterprise.

With the Chrome extensions, Google has made it possible for ISVs to launch ready-made niche applications for the cloud. It’s the same thing Facebook did with its API and Salesforce did with AppExchange; in Google’s case, ISVs now have a turnkey channel that can reach small businesses easily.

The ability to let Apps customers buy third-party software isn’t quite ready yet. “Now, Google Apps administrators can also deploy several new Google applications hosted on App Engine to members of their organizations with Google Apps Labs,” said Pete Koomen, product manager for App Engine.

So for example, a dentist’s office could use Google’s Docs suite for word processing and spreadsheets, but also buy third-party apps from Marketplace — one for patient scheduling, and another for invoicing. They’d all work smoothly together, online and off, using the Apps/Docs/Chrome ecosystem.

With Google looking to find revenues beyond advertising, monetizing those 10 million accounts has got to be a big priority. Selling third-party applications can’t be far off. Of course, these apps will work with any browser. But they’ll likely work better with Chrome and its extensions.

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Distributed social networking - where users can connect their profile, friends and other data across multiple sites - is still a relatively new concept and not fully developed. There are plenty of companies and projects vying to be a major piece of the distributed social networking puzzle. The big Internet companies have initiatives such as OpenSocial (Google), Facebook Connect, MySpace Data Availability, Yahoo! Open Strategy. There are also smaller company and open source projects such as DiSo and Noserub (we explain these below).

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For users the following scenario explains the end goal, albeit too simplistically: in a distributed social networking world you would be able to access your Facebook friends in MySpace, and vice versa. Of course, it's far from a perfect world and the Facebook-MySpace sharing scenario in particular is unlikely to happen any time soon. But slowly social networking is beginning to open up - and not just in the major social networks either.

We spotted an interesting screencast in the ReadWriteWeb Friendfeed room, The Future of Tech, that explains distributed social networking more.

Distributed Social Networking - An Introduction from pixelsebi on Vimeo.

The screencast was created by Sebastian Küpers, an Open Web and Virtual Worlds Evangelist from Germany. He starts by explaining that profiles are a building block of social networks - for example there's a lot of useful profile data in his Facebook account that he'd like to use elsewhere. Friends/contacts, messaging, groups, and activity streams are other building blocks of social networks, explained Sebastian.

He mentioned two projects that are aiming to create distributed social networks by using open standards - DiSo Project (our coverage here and here) and Noserub (a German app). DiSo is basically an umbrella project for many of the leading open standards in the social Web currently - microformats, OpenID, OAuth and more. Noserub describes itself as a "protocol" and uses standards like OpenID, RSS and FOAF.

Sebastian outlined the following use case: if you are a MySpace user and want to add someone who isn't a MySpace user to your friends list, right now you can't. But if MySpace supported the open standards that Noserub, DiSo and others are advocating (microformats, OpenID, etc), then it would be possible for MySpace to support that scenario.

Key Differences Between DiSo/Noserub and OpenSocial/fbConnect

One question that people have about distributed social networks, which Sebastian might like to address in a future screencast, is what is the relation between open source projects like DiSo and Noserub, and 'open data' projects of the bigcos such as Google's OpenSocial and Facebook Connect? Chris Messina, one of the founders of DiSo, pointed out one key difference in DiSo's Google Group in June:

"Our model is rather different than OpenSocial as I understand it, as we're trying to architect this in such a way that anyone can host their own friends list (for example) and not necessarily defer to Google, MySpace, etc... for starters."

So for DiSo, they are using the Wordpress blogging platform as their main vehicle for now. However in the same message, Chris mentioned that he's "personally very interested in the overlap between DiSo and fbConnect and OpenSocial." See also Marc Canter's comments on DiSo, because Marc's "open mesh" theories are very relevant here.

If Everything is So Open, Why Can't We Connect Yet?

There is confusion right now because all the commercial vendors are positioning themselves as open - yet they don't necessarily connect to each other! For example Google has been using the term "Open Stack" to explain what OpenSocial is doing. OpenSocial is still in development and it's important to point out that Google doesn't 'own' it, although it is obviously driving it. But OpenSocial isn't being used by key players like Facebook and Microsoft; and when it is being used by bigcos it can be buggy - a RWW commenter recently remarked that MySpace's OpenSocial implementation is "incredibly buggy". So the fact that all of the main pieces of the distributed social networking puzzle are still in beta, goes some way to explaining why ordinary people can't connect many of their profiles just yet.

We'd like to get some more feedback on distributed social networks in the comments - how would you explain the key differences between DiSo/Noserub and OpenSocial/fbConnect to people? How do you see all the different projects connecting together eventually?

Note: the idea for this post came from the ReadWriteWeb Friendfeed room, The Future of Tech. Thanks to Sebastian Küpers for posting it. If you're want to inspire the RWW crew to write posts on certain topics, our Friendfeed room is a great place to let us know! Thanks also Zee for managing that room for us.

The New York Times’ Claire Miller attended a Churchill Club function to fete Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. In an onstage interview, Williams talked about many different aspects of his micro-blogging service, which now has 6 million subscribers. First of all, wow — that is an impressive jump in the number of subscribers.

More importantly, Williams talked about why he chose not to sell to Facebook when the Palo Alto-based startup offered to buy it for $500 million in stock. “It definitely made sense — the strategy we talked about with them — but it wasn’t the right time.” Or the right price. Here’s why:

Facebook offered $500 million of its stock, or roughly 3 percent of the company based on an inflated $15 billion in valuation. In October 2007, when Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, it valued the social network at $15 billion. Since then various different reports have emerged which point to a more somber valuation of $5 billion. Three percent of $5 billion actually works out to about $150 million. Given that Twitter was valued between $80 million and $120 million in its last round, the monetary incentive just wasn’t there to sell to Facebook.

More importantly, Twitter’s rejection of Facebook shows that the fast-growing social network has a new headache: Using its stock as currency to acquire companies that can play a meaningful role in its future isn’t going to work.

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Freelance tech writer Megan McCarthy just landed one of the coolest jobs on the new web, editing semi-automated news aggregator Techmeme. The hire was made last month but just announced today in a blog post by site founder Gabe Rivera.

McCarthy's new job is really interesting in a number of ways. Rivera says with her addition "it really feels like the age of the news cyborg has arrived." It's also very interesting because of who McCarthy is. Most of all it's interesting because it's an absolute dream job for any tech news junky. We discuss the hire in depth over on Jobwire, our site dedicated to covering new hires in tech and new media.

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Two of the biggest challenges facing our society — economy and climate change — are so intertwined that it is virtually impossible to solve one problem without fixing the other. To eternal optimists, these challenges also offer opportunity and we are seeing that with major investment interest in alternative energies from folks as diverse as energy baron T. Boone Pickens to former Vice President Al Gore.

The cleantech movement is vital for our little corner of the world. If today’s broadband pipes are the 21st century highway system, electric power is the engine that keeps the traffic moving. From expensive data centers and large central offices, to routers and switches and all the way down to our iPhones — every single device depends on electricity. If we want our technical nirvana, we need to figure out ways to reduce our energy footprint.

We will explore some of these themes at Green:Net our one-day conference that will be held in San Francisco’s Golden Gateway Club on March 24, 2009. At the conference we will look at how software, the web and communication networks will help companies shape the future of our electrical system, deliver transportation infrastructure, create social movements and help reduce carbon emissions.

A team led by Katie Fehrenbacher, editor of our Earth2Tech blog, has helped put together the agenda for this conference. Here are some of the topics we are going to be exploring at the conference:

• Dotcom to Greenboom
• The Green Web Effect
• Green Data Centers: Low Carbon Diets for Your Data Center
• The New Networked Car
• Power Grid 2.0

Among our scheduled keynote speakers are:

• Bob Metcalfe, Inventor of Ethernet, General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners and proponent of Enernet, the energy network.
• Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist

Other confirmed speakers include:

• Saul Griffith – Co-founder of Makani Power, Squid Labs, Potenco and Wattzon, and MacArthur Prize Winner
• Jonathan Koomey – Professor, UC Berkley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Dr. Albert Esser – VP of Data Center Infrastructure Group, Dell
• Rob Aldrich – Principal, Energy Efficient Solutions, Cisco
• Bill Vogel – CEO, Trilliant
• Andy Tang – Director of Smart Web, PG&E
• Sunil Sharan – Smart Grid Director, GE
• Erin Carlson – Director, Yahoo for Good, Yahoo!

In days to come we will be updating the list of speakers and will update the conference web site accordingly. The event will also include a startup launch session, which will introduce 10 up and coming startups that are leveraging digital technologies for green aims. Speakers from companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell, Cisco, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Foundation Capital, JP Morgan, GE and Pacific Gas & Electric have also been added to the event schedule.

You can register for the conference at the conference web site, which also details information about schedule, speakers and the venue itself.

See you in San Francisco in March 2009!

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Updated: Yahoo, one of the largest web sites on the planet, is being plagued by series of problems related to Domain Name System (DNS). A test using Gomez’s testing service shows error messages in certain cities such as Chicago. Others are experiencing slower access to Yahoo web sites, including the home page. There is already some chatter about this on Twitter, where people are pointing to problems with Yahoo Finance pages. If you have experienced these problems do let me know in the comments. I am going to try and talk to Yahoo and get to the bottom of it as quickly as I can.

Update: In response to my inquiry, Yahoo sent over an official statement via email, which reads:

“Yahoo! experienced a disruption in service earlier today that affected users in some geographic areas. We’ve addressed the issue and full service is now available. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

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As expected, the FCC said today it will take up the issue of creating yet another wireless network, and set rules on cable pricing and programming, at its Dec. 18 meeting. As commenter Tom Evslin pointed out, the alternative wireless broadband network proposed is slow, will likely be filtered and will deliver yesterday’s technology in five or 10 years into the future. However, the rule-making on cable could be a win for consumers.

The cable efforts have the potential to bring more independent channels to cable systems as well as create rules designed to halt the disputes that arise between cable companies and content providers that can leave consumers without broadcast channels and force them to pay more for channels they once received as part of a cheaper package. Looks like Kevin Martin’s last fight as FCC chair will be against T-Mobile — which opposes the wireless efforts — and the cable guys.

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Today we came across Visual Explorer, a new browser that wants to provide users with a better, more tightly integrated browsing experience. Similar to what Flock does with Firefox, Visual Explorer is built on top of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and provides users with a new user interface, as well as a number of new features. While Flock focuses on integrating lots of social media services, Visual Explorer tries to provide its users with a more extensive set of general browsing features such as live previews for tabs or an enhanced download manager.

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Because of its dependence on Internet Explorer, Visual Explorer is only available for Windows. There, however, it will run on any version of Windows, including Windows 98, ME, NT, and 2000.

Features

Among Visual Explorer's more interesting features are its built-in themes, content filters, and its ability to use IE add-ons. Unlike the latest versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google's Chrome, Visual Explorer does not feature any private browsing modes, but it does feature an interesting 'cloaking mode' which hides the browser after it has been inactive for a set amount of time.

Some of Visual Explorer's other interesting features that are not available in IE7 or the latest public beta of IE8 are its ability to save web pages as images, an enhanced download manager, and easy access to RSS subscriptions (though no integration with third-party RSS readers).

Oddly missing, however, is a bookmark bar where you can drag-and-drop your most often used bookmarks for quick and easy access. Visual Explorer also doesn't support IE8's Accelerators.

Just as Slow as IE8

Just as expected, when we ran Visual Explorer through the SunSpider benchmark, the results were identical to those for Microsoft's IE8 - and just as unimpressive, especially when compared to Google's Chrome or the latest nightly releases of Firefox 3.1. It is worth pointing out, however, that the Visual Explorer, just like IE8, feels just as fast as Google's Chrome when browsing regular web sites.

Can it Find its Niche?

The browser market is obviously huge, so even getting a small piece of this pie would be a huge success for Visual Explorer. Other companies like Maxthon and Flock have been able to carve out a niche for themselves, and Visual Explorer might be able to do the same by giving users who need to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer more flexibility and useful features than the original product.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit entity behind the immensely popular Wikipedia, just announced a new project that is meant to make it a lot easier for inexperienced authors to contribute articles and edits to the project. To do this, the Wikimedia Foundation just received a $890,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation. The project will focus on making the user interface for editing and writing Wikipedia articles easier to use for less tech-savvy contributors.

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While there are already numerous browser extensions that try make editing Wikipedia articles easier, the default interface and markup language of the Wikipedia can be quite intimidating for first time users.

Helping First-Time Authors

As Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, points out in the announcement, most of the current Wikipedia authors have a "moderate-to-high level of technical understanding." This, however, excludes a large number of potential contributors who aren't very tech savvy, but would like to participate in the project.

The Wikimedia Foundation will use this grant to create a team of developers and user interface designers that will work on reducing barriers of entry for first-time authors. Specifically, the team will look at hiding the more complex elements of the user interface from users who don't need to deal with them.

To us, this seems like a worthwhile project. Anybody who has looked at the markup language for the Wikipedia knows that is anything but intuitive and that there is quite a learning curve involved before one can start to contribute anything more than simple edits. Reducing these barriers of entry will allow a whole new group of users to contribute their knowledge to the project.

Microsoft Data Center Chief Mike Manos posted a blog entry yesterday on the company’s vision for next generation data centers. The blog post (and the accompanying animated video) has extensive details on how Microsoft envisions building the data center of the future — and it definitely has some of the “trailer park” modularity and scalability attributes that I mentioned in my post last week.

Some of the key features of the Generation 4 Modular Data Center design are the use of an innovative spine infrastructure for cooling, power and connectivity; the use of pre-fabricated and completely modular server containers and buildings; and ambitious goals for energy efficiency (an average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.125 for all data centers by 2012).

By putting forth its plans for the Generation 4 Modular Data Center, Microsoft is simultaneously throwing down the gauntlet in the data center arena and showing its cards. By openly sharing its data center plans it is taking the technology and thought leadership away from Google in the critical area of Internet and services infrastructure. At the same time, in somewhat typical Microsoft fashion, it is asking (or perhaps requiring) the industry to standardize on its data center design approach. Given its influence and buying power with vendors it may get its wish.

Viewing this information in conjunction with announcements of the Azure Services Platform and Office Live, there is no doubt that the giant in Redmond is aggressively focused on delivering enterprise cloud computing. To top it off, market timing could not be better for Microsoft, as its hordes of cash and diversity of enterprise products should prove one version of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rule.”

Related stories:

• Inside Microsoft’s Internet Infrastructure & Its Plans For The Future
• GigaOM Interview: Ray Ozzie

Want to know more about the rapidly changing Cloud Computing landscape? Preview our Cloud Computing Briefing or purchase the full version.

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YouTube is announcing today that video publishers will now have more than 25,000 new songs to choose between for their video soundtracks. The songs are provided by independent music licensing firm Rumblefish and are available using YouTube's AudioSwap feature.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/YouTube_Adds_25k_New_Songs_to_Publishing_Tool';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';Rumblefish is a Portland, Oregon based company that provides music for film makers, marketing firms and others. Is it just a lot of elevator music? Searching through the company's own online catalog, MusicLicensingStore.com, our first impression was relatively positive. You can even search for well-known band names and get suggestions for similar sounding unknown groups.

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How It Works

AudioSwap was launched as an experimental feature in February of 2007, with a fairly limited selection of songs separated by genre. If YouTube gives AudioSwap more prominent placement on the site, we suspect this could be a very big hit. The feature replaces the entire audio track of a video with the selected tune, an approach that will admittedly suit some people better than others.

We hope that YouTube will add a search function similar to the one on the Rumblefish site; the project would get a lot more traction if users could search for big names in music and get recommendations of similar bands they haven't heard of before.

Music licensing is an active if complicated market online, with major labels doing deals over the past year with both YouTube and MySpace. Video publishers interested in getting off the beaten path of mainstream music and doing so legally at no cost to themselves could find the newly expanded AudioSwap of great interest.

Following on the heals of YouTube's Global Symphony project, the Rumblefish announcement is another example of how much room for innovation still exists in online video.

Starting today, companies and trademark holders can start registering their own .tel domains. However, unlike most domain names, .tel domains are severely restricted by Telnic, the main registrar for these domains. Users and companies can only put up their contact information on these sites and they can only do so through Telnic's own forms.

In some respects, these domains are similar to GoDaddy's SmartSpace or Chi.mp, only that these two products are far more flexible.

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During the current 'Sunrise' phase, only trademark holders can register .tel domains. The general public will have to wait until the 'Landrush' phase, which starts on February 3, 2009.

Online Phonebook

At its best, .tel domains could become something like an online phonebook, though the minimal amount of flexibility will surely disappoint many potential users. In its current state, .tel users can't even add their own logos to these domains.

GoDaddy and Chi.mp

GoDaddy and Chi.mp might be targeting a slightly different audience, but users get far more flexibility with these products, including the ability to aggregate their activity on social networks and to apply different themes and logos to their profiles.

In the end, the success of the .tel domains will depend on third-party developers. If other websites, social networks, or mobile phone address books start supporting these domains (and those of Telnic's competitors), then this might become an easy way to keep address books up to date. But then, you could also do this with any service that provides you with a vCard.

Can it Work?

In an age where the Internet is still synonymous with .com addresses (or their local equivalent) for the vast majority of users, it remains to be seen if these .tel domains will find a lot of takers. Also, the average price for .tel domains for individuals we found from US registrars was around $20, which is a lot more than most people pay for their .com domains - and those give their owners a lot more flexibility.

With the rise of app-laden smartphones like the iPhone and Google's Android OS, now on T-Mobile's G1, many penny-pinching shoppers have downloaded barcode scanning applications onto their mobile devices. These apps allow consumers to compare the prices of merchandise on a store's shelf to competing stores in the area just by taking pictures with their smartphone's camera. The prices are instantly retrieved and displayed on the mobile phone so consumers can know before they buy if they're getting a good deal.

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Although consumers may be catching on to this barcode-scanning trend, some stores are still in the dark. For example, a Target store in Michigan recently requested a shopper to stop scanning merchandise, saying it went against store policy. The customer reported the event to the application's makers, Big in Japan, whose app Shop Savvy is a popular download for Android handsets.

Big in Japan called the Target store in question and spoke to the manager, who indicated that she was not aware of the policy. We also contacted Target's corporate headquarters to confirm Target's policy, or lack thereof, but we first had to explain the application to the company representative. They had never heard of such a thing before! (As it turns out, Target has no policy whatsoever on barcode scanning their merchandise.)

The same customer also noted they had visited Sam's Club, where they demonstrated the application to a store employee who seemed "confounded that such technology even existed," wrote the user.

Instant Price Match Is Retail's Future

Although this is just anecdotal evidence from one customer, it's entirely believable that without concrete store policies in place, you're going to encounter rogue employees here and there who have no idea what you're doing and will ask you to stop.

On the flip side, stores that do get hip to this trend may decide to implement store policies that ban scanning, once they realize that customers could discover their high prices. A post on AdLab for example, a blog about advertising and marketing, suggests retailers do just that. They also recommend retailers should consider investing in a a cell phone jammer. They even provide a "No iPhones on Premises" sign for printout.

That doesn't seem to be a very proactive way of dealing with the technology. In fact, it reminds us of how both the music and movie industry attempted to quash the pirating of songs and films: they just tried to make it stop. Instead of going a route destined for failure and trying to shut down barcode scanning altogether, retailers could choose to embrace the trend. They could offer easy-to-find barcodes on their promotional items with signage encouraging customers to compare the price instantly with other stores in the area. They could make barcode scanning the new advertising circular.

Hopefully, stories like those of the Shop Savvy customer will remain isolated incidents and no other store employees will bother customers looking to save money. If you've used barcode scanning applications and have experiences to share, please let us know in the comments.

Japan’s second largest wireless carrier, KDDI, has taken the plunge into the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, by building an LTE overlay on top of its existing CDMA network. KDDI is using equipment from Nortel and Hitachi for the fourth-generation wireless network, which will be operating by 2010. For those of you in the U.S. eager to see what the 4G future holds, Verizon is expected to start deploying LTE in 2010 as well. Vendors such as Ericsson expect LTE to be widely deployed in 2012. As a footnote, KDDI also has a WiMAX network deployed in parts of Japan that it has said it plans to begin operating next year. If the two technologies are ever to merge, perhaps we can watch that unfold in Japan.

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Dimdim, the easy-to-use web conferencing tool that delivers live presentations, whiteboards, voice and video, has just exited their beta period today. With the exit, the service has also added features like co-browsing and their new SynchroLive Communication Platform which automatically scales performance. The feature which you might be the most excited about, though, is Dimdim's decision to release their source code.

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The New Platform

With the new SynchroLive Communication platform, the service is now more scalable while keeping all live communications synchronized, no matter whether you're sharing audio, video, files, or web pages. This was one of the areas where Dimdim stumbled in the past. When we used it here at RWW for sharing our desktop with our readers during our testing of Chrome, the audio and video weren't matching up. That problem is, supposedly, no more. (We'll have to do another live demo and find out!) Says the company, the platform now makes it possible for five audio streams to be recorded, where before Dimdim only supported recording one.

The platform also allows for the new co-browsing feature to work. With this, a presenter can share their web browser with viewers who can then also be made presenters in order to browse along with the original presenter. The co-browsing allows for scrolling up and down, but does not track mouse movements, so it is not as good for using your mouse to point to an element of a web page. However, when you just want to share material on the web with a group - say, for example, a professor teaching remote students, it would be a good solution.

Open Source Dimdim, "Liberty"

Also launched today with the release of Dimdim 4.5 is the launch of "Liberty," the Open Source Community Edition of the new commercial hosted version. Liberty's complete source code will be made available under a GPL3 license with no limit to the number of attendees, meetings, or mashups that can be created. Liberty is also available as a downloadable VMWare Virtual Appliance.

The Open Source version also integrates with other web applications, including:

• Zimbra: Dimdim now offers a free zimlet for Zimbra's open source email system;
• Moodle: Dimdim is integrated with version 1.9 of Moodle's Course Management System;
• SugarCRM: Dimdim is integrated with the leading open source customer relationship management system,
• Claroline: Dimdim is embedded within with the collaborative learning environment.

More Enhancements

Those who have used Dimdim in the past will notice some subtle UI changes in the newest version including a smaller top frame and revamped menus on the left. Drop-down arrows have been added to those menus for easy access to files and shared web pages, too.

In the future, Dimdim will also allow for skinning changes and templates. Because Dimdim's service-oriented architecture is composed of a handful of different services (screen sharing, audio streaming, video, etc.), the platform makes it possible to use customize the look and feel of the Dimdim interface and create a template just for your needs. If you're only sharing web browsers, for example, you could turn all the other features off. The templates created by Dimdim users could then be shared with each other. Dimdim says these new features will be available sometime early next year.

In addition to the no-cost Open Source version, Dimdim will continue to offer a free version for meetings with 20 or fewer people. Dimdim Pro 4.5 starts at $99 per year for unlimited meetings plus video chat.

With the relative freedom provided by laptops, mobile devices, and more affordable transportation, people have become more migratory and, yet, better at remaining connected - or at the very least, accessible. Nowhere is this more evident than in the tech sector, where individuals are jetting back and forth to attend events or meet up with coworkers halfway across the world.

And when it comes to keeping track of the techie crowd and their travels, Dopplr is one of the best resources around. Now, they're giving users a view into some of those travel patterns with Dopplr city pages.

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Dopplr has been testing the pages internally for some time. Now, they're exposing them to the Dopplr users. As the name implies, these new pages provide a visualization of annual visitor activity for practically any city on Dopplr. There are metrics, as well, including information on fellow travelers in town, the number of trips to the city overall, the number of trips for the given day, local time, and interesting facts - like from which cities people are generally visiting.

Looking at even a few pages reveals some interesting trends. Austin, Texas, USA, for example, gets a heavy influx of Dopplr users in March. Why? The annual pilgrimage to the SXSW interactive festival. Portland, OR, USA, by contrast, shows a definite uptick during the summer months. London, Paris, and Tokyo have steady traffic throughout the year. (Obviously, I could spend hours just thumbing through these cities.)

But there's something else interesting happening here - which Marshall Kirkpatrick mentioned recently. To make the reports a little more aesthetically appealing, the city pages pull in images of the respective cities from Creative Commons licensed content held on Flickr. Not only does it provide more context for the city, it offers yet another venue for Flickr users to showcase their work. All thanks to Creative Commons.

Unfortunately, while the image concept is laudable - and often beautiful - many of the randomly selected photos tend to obscure the graphs of the travel data. So, if you're looking for beautiful images, you're in luck. But if you want to read the data, sometimes you're going to have to strain to see it.

Nonetheless, Dopplr city pages are well worth a visit. It's great to see Dopplr exposing some of the interesting data points that the company has been accumulating about its user base. And I'm a firm believer that any time this sort of data is made accessible, it's always wise to take a cursory look, for my own edification.

To see city pages in action, register or log in to Dopplr and search for the cities that interest you - or try clicking through some of the cities from your trips.

You've got enough to do. And learning a new task management system - as helpful as that might be - is rarely on your list of tasks to complete. But what if there were a task management system that was simple and intuitive, enabling you to scratch that "get organized" New Year's resolution off the list a little early? Deadline may be that app.

Designed to take natural language commands via Web, email, and IM/Jabber, Deadline exudes task management simplicity.

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To use Deadline, simply establish an account and start populating it with your tasks and - of course - the deadlines for those task. But don't worry about some arcane nomenclature. Deadline has enough intelligence to understand common date formats as well as simple, natural language commands like "tomorrow," "next week," and "next Tuesday." And if the command is too cryptic, the app will ask you to clarify.

Not into the Web interface? No problem. You can also send tasks to Deadline via a unique email address. Simply address the email to Deadline and fill out the subject with the task and date. Or add Deadline to your GTalk/Jabber friends and start loading up your tasks via IM.

Getting reminders is just as easy. They arrive via IM and email, alerting you that you have tasks due. And if you're into a little more warning, you can track your tasks via an authenticated RSS feed or add your task list to an iCal compatible calendar. There are even top secret feed URLs for adding open RSS feeds to systems - like Google Calendar - that don't support authentication.

Admittedly, the simplicity may be far too simple for some. But for those who are looking for a straightforward task management system, Deadline seems to satisfy a number of common requirements. What's more, if you're a former Sandy user, I think you'll find Deadline picks up right where Sandy left off.

To try the application for yourself, register for Deadline.

Updated with correction: A few months ago, Sequoia Capital doused the ever-ebullient Silicon Valley with a bucket of ice cold reality when it laid “good times” to rest. Today, one of Sequoia’s all-time stars laid a big wreath on that grave in the pages of The Wall Street Journal: Google. And while it didn’t implicitly state that it might face tough times next year, comments by its CEO amount to a proverbial bear call, which could mean bad news not only for Google but also for the rest of the media and advertising sector.

“We have to behave as though we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal. It seems like a prudent move. But I see it as a big red flag and I think Schmidt is preparing us for what could be a terrible 2009. The WSJ says that Google executives have been preparing for slower growth for a year but that “the economic crisis is forcing them to step up their efforts.”

According to conventional wisdom (and investors), Google is the best-positioned company to survive and perhaps thrive in the current advertising slump. If the leader of the pack is feigning ignorance about its chances, what can one say about mere mortals?

I find it hard to believe that a company that keeps world-famous economist like Hal Varian (who muses on the economy and Google’s prospects often on the investor calls) doesn’t know. As a company, Google collects enough data on a daily basis that it can take a fair pulse of the broader economy. Remember, they could accurately track the spread of flu across America just based on searches, so why can’t they track economic sentiment? Additionally, it sells ads to everyone from mom-and-pop shops to consumer durable goods giants and as such it has a fair idea on the degree of tightness with which people are holding their billfolds. They have enough intellectual horsepower on campus to put two and two together.

Beyond Schmidt’s statement, one has to look at their other moves, such as plans to slash 10,000 or so of their contractors, slowing cap-ex investments and killing off projects. These point to tough times for the company that has lived a lush life so far.

Projects that are too pie-in-the-sky are going to be killed. Schmidt calls it the “dark matter.” Google Lively and Google SearchMash are two of the many projects which will soon not matter. Google is contemplating killing off Google Notebook and Google Audio Indexing as well. Google Page Creator has given way to Google Sites. In that vein, Google is going to prune overlapping products. No more the 20-percent time for pet projects for engineers, though it might come back once the economic wheel churns. These are smart and prudent moves even if they are prompted by desperate need to control costs and meet their numbers.Update: I totally misread the WSJ post and made an incorrect interpretation. In other words, I totally messed up about the 20 percent timing thing. A commenter from Google was quick to point out that the 20 percent rule still stands and I am just flat-out wrong. This is what Schmidt said, which I misread:

He says the company is “not going to give” an engineer 20 people to work with on certain experimental projects anymore. “When the cycle comes back,” he says, “we will be able to fund his brilliant vision.”

I know it might sound hokey, but the rich don’t stop driving their Aston Martins just because the price of gas is going up. They do so when they are not as rich! The same analogy holds for Google and its cost-cutting efforts. Just remember how much of PR they milked out of their 20-percent philosophy. They are essentially eating a cow-pie on that. (Now I am the fool for making the wrong assumption on the 20-percent philosophy, though the rest of my sentiment still stands.) They wouldn’t be doing this unless things are really really REALLY tough.

Google needs to keep its sales machine going at a time when it is facing the same malaise as that of the broader market – slowing spending on marketing and advertising. There is some argument that Google is going to win because of their performance-based advertising system.

While that is true to some extent, what happens when the economy goes into a deep freeze? If you don’t have the money to splurge on a large-screen plasma TV, there is little chance you are going to search for that, and thus there are fewer opportunities for Google to sell more ads against those searches. Of course, if there is no intent to buy amongst the searchers, then there is less inclination to click on those ads as well. And that is not good news for Google.

Google, of course, is going to try and meet its targets by taking more out of the pocket of its “adsense” partners and undercutting competitors. The WSJ points out that the company is focusing heavily on display, mobile and other ad opportunities, which can only mean bad news for their rivals.

Related: Why Silicon Valley Should be Worried

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