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Early bird registration for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 is almost over. You only have a few more days to get your tickets for just $295. Click here to get your ticket at this special price. The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit will take place May 7, 2010 , in Mountain View, California and will be an exploration of the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. Sponsor As with our first event, the Real-Time Web Summit last October, the Mobile Summit will be in the 'unconference' format. We discovered in October that the unconference is a perfect complement to our brand, because it encourages a high quality two-way dialog. Not only that, but the knowledge and ideas that came out of our Real-Time Web Summit were practical and useful - we got a lot of great feedback about that. As with our previous event, the Mobile Summit will be facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin , who in my opinion is the best in the business at this style of event. We're using the same venue too, the beautiful Computer History Museum. Mobile was one of our top five trends last year and continues to undergo explosive growth , so our aim with this event is to help you navigate the opportunities. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of mobile! Because it will be you - the attendees - who ultimately set the agenda. You can begin adding your suggestions now. We will have two main tracks at this Summit, Development and Business . Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks: Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. If you're a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in helping sponsor this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information on the sponsor options. The ReadWriteWeb team is excited about our second event and we can't wait to discuss the opportunities in Mobile with you on May 7. You can find banners and logos to link to our event here , if you're so inclined. We hope to see you on May 7! Discuss
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Mobile Summit Early Bird Pricing - Only One Week Left!
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Auto manufacturer Toyota launched a new Twitter-based portal called Toyota Conversations tonight and the site is getting a whole lot of press. Most people are focused on how the site seems to contain more positive Tweets than the world at large, but there are a lot of negative links on the site as well. We got a look at the back-end infrastructure of the Tweetmeme portal system and have screenshots displayed below. These aren't for the Toyota project in particular, but they are the same tools being put to use in a different campaign. We know you feed and data geeks fantasize about building the ultimate feed moderation system. Check out the one that Toyota put down no small sum to get to use. It's a nice combination of heavy duty and easy to use, just like you'd expect for a big corporate customer like this. The best news? This system will be opened up to the public soon. Sponsor No Cover Up Here Below, an item page for a popular link shared about Toyota. Below is what appears to be the company's direct response. Thus the name of the site, Conversations. Easy to Use Logic Chains Tweetmeme portal customers set up complex combinations of rules for which tweets to display using what company founder Nick Halstead calls "a mini-programming language - with a drag + drop interface for setting them up. Rules can be based on tweet, text from the story, title, meta data from the story, geo location data, twitter users who are tweeting...almost any data that is associated with twitter and the linked story that we spider as well. Each channel can have a number of chains - each chain can work separately - but be valued differently - i.e. have a confidence factor associated with it." The Big Dashboard in the Sky This is what Tweetmeme HQ looks at, standing on top of all the channels. The ten person team calls its big set of rules "the pickle matrix". Every time someone Tweets a tweet with a new link in it, or a Retweet, that data is thrown against the pickle matrix. That's the field "access count." Then an optimized process of rules are matched. "The data isn't the problem," Halstead says, "it's the number of rules we put against it. This is 1,000 times more powerful than Twitter's Track or search because we can apply tens of thousands of rules to every Tweet we see." Halstead's company got a big boost from this deal, but Tweetmeme has been cash-flow positive for at least the last 3 months. "I think the more interesting fact," he says, "is that I started this company for the sole purpose of doing this and companies are now only just starting to recognize the value in this kind of proposition. I think that shows how far social media has grown up. And that you have to stick at what you know is right - even if people ignore it to start with." No word yet on when this system will be opened up to the public, but used in conjunction with other media types like Toyota has it sure seems like there's a lot of potential here. Disclosure: FM Publishing, a partner in the Toyota project, is also RWW's advertising network. Discuss
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What the Tweetmeme Toyota Portal Looks Like Under the Hood
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from-the-story,
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pickle,
public,
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Toyota,
Tweetmeme
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It was a few years ago that the World Internet Project stated that "broadband changes everything." The next evolution of the Web no doubt is largely being driven by the amazing user experience and functionality delivered by the iPhone and other smartphones. iPhone applications are no longer just toys for techies! This week we looked at examples of health and fitness iPhone apps , and 2010 Winter Olympics iPhone apps . Today we check out what's being delivered by government. Sponsor These app posts aren't about listing the "best" iPhone apps in a given category. That's because deciding which app is best for you really depends on your requirements. For example, if you are looking to a government agency to help you find the nearest library, you're not interested in an application that allows you to calculate mortgage rates - even if we recommended it. So what we're doing is showing examples of available functionality. Government agencies around the world are notorious for delivering less-than-optimal website experiences. This is often due to a government agency, rather than citizens, driving website requirements. There are other factors, such as legislation, that demand transparency and leads to the publishing of multiple documents that the majority of people could care less about. As a result, government domains have bloated to unbelievable sizes, and some governments such as those in the U.K. and New Zealand have adopted consolidation policies. Based on this example, we have to admit we were expecting that governments would simply port their same, less-than-optimal website experiences to the mobile Web. However, we were able to uncover a few intriguing mobile government apps that are, to our delight, useful and usable! Reporting an Issue to Government GoRequest is a location-aware iPhone application that allows a person to log an issue with their local government. The app is free and submits issues directly into the issue tracking system. The user experience is top notch - simple and task oriented. Unfortunately, it is only available in 22 cities so far in the U.S. For the lucky ones that live in these enlightened locations, you are able to select from a list of potential issues as broad as Road Kill (Dead Animal on Roadway), Graffiti, Accidental Spills, Illegal Dumping, Abandoned Vehicles, Police Non-Emergency, Ice Removal From Gutters and more. Once you have selected the issue, you can enter a description and take a photo of, for example, the dead animal. The application detects your location automatically. America's Most Wanted The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched, of course, an app for its Most Wanted list. The app lists the Top Ten Most Wanted, the Most Wanted Terrorists as well as a list of top missing kids. If you have information about one of the Most Wanted, you can submit a tip to the FBI. The app also provides links to FBI Tweets and its YouTube and Facebook pages. Unfortunately there is no sharing functionality incorporated into the app. The application was built by NIC, which is a provider of outsourced eGovernment portals. Government Data On Steroids NYC Way is a great example of application developers taking all the open government data they can find and turning it into something useful - although we question the usability. NYC Way was pointed out to us by Adam Greenfield on his recent visit to Wellington. The best way to describe this app is that it's an application portal to 32 useful applications that offer New York City-specific location-based services. You can use it to locate the nearest free Wi-Fi, coffee shop or restroom, report an issue to city officials, or learn safety tips. Although the user experience as a portal is something to be desired, the functionality and helpful data available is truly mind boggling - a Swiss Army knife for finding your way around New York City. This app portal has benefits for locals and tourists alike. The Saving Grace? There is still the risk that government agencies will approach mobile much like they have approached the Web. Fortunately, the constraints - such as cost of development, screen size, functionality and file size - that are inherent in developing for the iPhone and other smartphones may be the saving grace that forces agencies to think twice about users' real needs. You can read more ReadWriteWeb coverage of the iPhone here , and the mobile Web here . And don't forget you can download the RWW iPhone application here . Do you have a favorite government app on your smartphone? Are small, regional agencies better at creating user-friendly apps, or do federal agencies do it best? Let us know in the comments! Building photo credit: Ivan Petrov Discuss
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The Man on Your iPhone: 3 Government Apps Done Right
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winter
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If an agency has ever pitched you on outreach to women's blogs and they don't mention the BlogHer network, there's something wrong with them. BlogHer and its 2,500 contributing blog affiliates are celebrating the network's 5 year anniversary with the combined traffic of 21 million unique visitors per month and some huge lessons learned along the way. ReadWriteWeb spoke to co-founder Elisa Camahort Page to find out what it's like to run a women's network in a man's world. Sponsor According to the Catalyst Census , "From 1995 to 2005, the average rate of increase in women's representation on Fortune 500 corporate boards was, on average, one-half of one percentage point per year. At that rate of growth, it would take another 70 years for women to hold approximately 50 percent of Fortune 500 board seats and reach parity with men." Page explains that the market was ripe for BlogHer from the very beginning as media began to latch on to the idea of women's representation in technology, science and business. In 2004, Page and co-founders Lisa Stone and Jory Des Jardins created the BlogHer Conference in an effort to answer the media question - where are the women bloggers? As the conference came to fruition, the three were immediately flung into the spotlight with media coverage from CNN and MSNBC. Says Page, "We knew then we were on to something and we decided to make it a business." A year later the conference lead to a publishing network and a diverse range of female bloggers joined forces with the trio to promote discussion across their domains. After 18 months of bootstrapping with their own funding, the co-founders raised $3.5 million from Venrock and have since raised an additional $13 million to build out the 20+ topic channels. The network currently syndicates to iVillage , Oxygen.com and BravoTV.com . While other publishing networks of this size often opt for a wholly automated system of content aggregation, home page features and related blog links, BlogHer has a commitment to curation. Says Page, "It's not just about the traffic, we want to ensure that diverse voices come through in order to generate more discussion. We've got a headline editor who looks for topics we want to explore and we take care to feature interesting content." Featured pieces are then served across the publishing network to the 2,500 affiliate blogs and relevant pieces are linked alongside a blog owner's own content. When asked what keywords (other than "BlogHer") drive the most traffic to the network, Page replied, "Women are not a monolithic block who think, act or buy in the same way. It differs from week to week, but for instance, in 2008 the keywords all revolved around the election or the economy. The areas of interest that drive traffic are not much different than other blogging networks." The one topic that rally's Page's diverse community is female representations in the media, workplace and of course, on the Web. In the backlash against a particularly bad YouTube campaign launched by Motrin , BlogHer was among the first communities to retaliate with a Motringate. The consumer trust, distribution and collective spending power of the BlogHer community is enough to make or break a household brand. As Page and her co-founders begin experimenting with targeted feed and podcast programs, advertisers may find even more opportunities to test their mettle in this female media landscape. To check out the network visit blogher.com . Discuss
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Where Are the Women Bloggers? They're Driving Your Sales
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Startups,
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