Web

As the virtual watercooler remains abuzz about the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, it was a bit of a twist to come across this National Public Radio piece on a Toronto-based Web site that's making millions by helping people have affairs.

AshleyMadison.com is apparently the largest dating service of its kind--its kind being those that hook people up who are already taken, sans the stigma of being a cheater. The site's tagline: "Life is short, have an affair," according to NPR.

It's also worth noting the question NPR put out there for discussion: "Is … Read more

News sites carrying coverage of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's resignation faced an onslaught of traffic Wednesday, but demand on the servers paled in comparison to earlier in the week when news of the sex scandal first broke.

Spitzer, who developed a reputation as a bulldog while attorney general for the state of New York, was a hot news topic on Monday, when allegations surfaced that he had hired high-priced prostitutes.

And on Wednesday, the former attorney general turned governor announced his resignation, a move that comes early in his term.

The New York Times, for example, faced a … Read more

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, isn't satisfied living on his past laurels. At every opportunity he talks up the Semantic Web, which he calls the "Web of the future."

In a recent article in the Times Online, he said that what Google has done so far pales in comparison with what the Semantic Web will bring. Social -networking leaders Facebook and MySpace will eventually be trumped by networks that connect all types of things, not just people, he said. To be clear, he wasn't saying that Google is doomed.

In the … Read more

Google is stepping up its recruitment of developers with a two-day workshop called Web Forward in May at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Among the major platforms, there is a battle for the hearts and minds of developers. More developers means more applications, which means a more substantive platform, as well as an ecosystem that feeds the Google advertising engine. Microsoft held its Mix 08 conference last week aimed at bringing developers to its emerging Web platform with Silverlight, IE 8 and FeedSynch.

Richard Waters of the Financial Times talked to senior Google product manager Tom Stocky about the … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--The South by Southwest Interactive Festival's 11th Annual Web Awards, which honors online innovations that saw their official launches in the previous year, kind of flew under the radar. Sure, an awards ceremony was held on Sunday night, but it unfortunately had to compete with a number of parties, dinner get-togethers among old friends, and a Twitter-organized bowling outing. And when it came to press, the Web Awards were largely eclipsed by reports surrounding the Mark Zuckerberg interview earlier that day.

But the Web Awards did indeed happen. Accolades were given out in 21 categories, ranging from "… Read more

We are living in the era of crappy live TV and people are noticing at last. The impending launch of Hulu has me thinking about what exactly it is that makes watching broadcast TV almost unbearable. First, let me clarify that I don't think that the content sucks, just the way that it is served up. I think that I have broken the problem down into three major points: ads, schedule, and attention.

Commercials have long been a point of pain in any TV watcher's experience. They are a necessary evil. Without the commercials, there is no … Read more

We were lucky enough to get a chance to play with one of AOL's works-in-progress, a version of the company's popular Web mail service done entirely in Microsoft's Silverlight. It was briefly shown off at Mix '08 last week, but is not due to get into your hands for another month or two--where it will be an opt-in alpha before going out to everyone else when Silverlight 2.0 leaves beta.

In its current form it doesn't look a whole lot different from the regular version of AOL's mail. The big difference is in the … Read more

Ex-Googler start-ups are coming out of the woodworks. And now there's one more.

Steffen Mueller, an ex-Google product manager from Munich, Germany, has launched his own version of Web search with a dash of the social. Mueller and a few friends from Germany started Topicle, which launched in beta on Monday.

The site lets anyone create or edit their own search engine on any topic--recipes, mortgage news, New York City or even peanut butter. People create a search topic and then choose the Web addresses from which Topicle will search. (Topicle uses Google search APIs to produce its search … Read more

While Google receives lots of attention for its suite of Web applications, and Microsoft waits on the sidelines, Zoho continues to add new components to its Web suite.

The latest addition to the suite, which already includes modules for everything from documents and spreadsheets to CRM and wikis, is Zoho People, a human resource management application.

Zoho People, currently in beta, includes the usual HR functions for administrators and employees, with modules for organization, recruitment, forms, and checklists (work flow). In addition, Zoho Creator has been integrated within Zoho People, allowing users to customize the application.

Zoho People joins Zoho … Read more