We write this for you, the tired, the weak and the weary, the dogged attendees of the South By South West festival in Austin this weekend. We know that you're exhausted, but it's not from the booze, the parties or the product pitches - it's the endless location based check-ins. If only someone had solved this in time, right?

From what we can tell, the folks over at Brightkite have the solution with Check.in, but have yet to release it to the achey-thumbed, smart-phoned masses.

Sponsor

According to the splash page we found at Check.in, the app, which looks to be for both iPhone and Android, will be the "one checkin to rule them all".

"Check.in takes the hassle out of checking in on multiple services," the page reads. And at the bottom, we're told that the service is "made by Martin May, Brady Becker, and Jordan Harband of Brightkite after severe check-in fatigue."

When you take a closer look at the sole image on the page, which depicts a Check.in app on both iPhone and Android, we can see that the service appears to handle check-ins for Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite, and we would assume others are on the way. But we have to wonder how it would check in to Gowalla, as the company's API is currently read-only.

Check.in would be the first of its kind in the market and would surely co-opt a large amount of traffic and make the "severe check-in fatigue" that much more manageable.

When we first wrote about this at the beginning of the month, the only response we received was "no comment". We asked again today, but have yet to receive any comment. We've also asked the folks over at Gowalla and they had this to say:

"We currently do not allow write access to our API. For now we're excited to see creative use of the read API while we continue to polish our own native clients."

If this service is in the pipeline to be released soon, it looks like Gowalla would not be included in the check-in service and that would be a shame. It's only Friday and there are a number of days left to SXSW Interactive, AKA "Nerdfest 2010", but wouldn't it be that much more enjoyable if you didn't have to spend the first 10 minutes any time you arrived somewhere new checking in?

With that said, we have to wonder how much we would lose out on the features now offered by these services. Will Check.in also offer tips, photos, check-in commenting and all of that or will it just let us broadcast our location? For now, we'll just have to wonder, but either way, fear not, a solution looks to be on the way.

Buzz, Google's controversial attempt to unseat Facebook as the most mainstream of social activity stream readers, just made some much-needed changes that Facebook could learn from as well.

Buzz users now have more granular control over what social interactions with content trigger an email sent to their email inboxes and explicit explanations for why each piece of content was sent by email to them. These changes are a good start but ought to extended into the body of Buzz as well.

Sponsor

Just like most Facebook users can't explain the difference between the new algorithmically filtered News Feed and the raw bulk flow of the Live Feed, Buzz too could benefit from explaining the mystery behind the magic. As social networking analyst danah boyd said at the opening talk of SXSW today, privacy online is grounded in user control.

Buzz violated the basic understanding of email as private when it surprised users by layering the new social network on top of their private Gmail. By granting users more control over information, today's changes are a small move in a better direction.

Why Not Give Users The Tools to Drive Their Own Experience?

Might social activity stream participation become more mainstream if users had clear and more complete control over what they see, what they expose and to whom? Many people believe that users are incapable of dealing with too many settings and need these decisions made for them. Perhaps it's just a user experience challenge, though. Nobody said creating the ultimate interface for mainstream users to drive their online activity was going to be easy.

Google's move with Buzz today looks like a nice first start. Hopefully it will be extended beyond the Buzz and Gmail relationship.

See also: How Google Buzz is Disruptive: Open Data Standards

Upon first glance we were skeptical. Generally when someone says they're launching a business directory it's an SEO play with little value to users. Nevertheless, the small business web directory is a pleasant surprise. The group is providing a variety of useful resources to help startups integrate services and scale up their internal operations.

Sponsor

Launched at last year's SXSW, the small business web is a group of software as a service companies that have joined forces to offer cheaper services to clients. Companies like Batch Blue Software, Freshbooks, Mailchimp, Shoeboxed and Outright have been integrating APIs in order to help businesses flourish. This week's launch will help startups stretch their dollars even further.

If you were fiddling with multiple platforms to manage your finance, human resources and analytics tools before, the directory can help you fix this through third party service integration. While a number of resource lists are available for accounting and domain management services, this collection is geared specifically towards productivity and life hacking. To check it out visit thesmallbusinessweb.com.

During today's SXSW keynote, social media research Danah Boyd, who works for Microsoft Research New England and is a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, talked about online privacy. Specifically, she focused on how users can navigate issues around online privacy and how developers can help them to do so.

Sponsor

Boyd, who has researched how mainstream users use social media for the last couple of years, argued that developers have to focus on questions about privacy and publicity as they use and develop these new applications and experiences. According to Boyd, privacy is not dead and users care about it - both online and offline - and often react quite violently when their expectations of privacy are broken.

Google Buzz: Privacy Fail

Looking at the example of Google Buzz, which she called a "privacy fail," Boyd argued that Google didn't do anything technically wrong when it release Buzz. Instead, Google made a number of non-technical mistakes that interrupted a set of social expectations its users had.

Google's mistakes:

• Building a public system in an environment that most people consider to be private (their email service). A lot of users actually believed that once they started using Buzz, Google would expose all of their private emails to the world.
• Google assumed that users would simply opt out if they didn't want to participate. A lot of Google users, however, thought that they would cancel their Gmail accounts if the opted out of Buzz.
• Technologists assume that the optimal solution is the best and forget about social rituals. Boyd noted that users expect to be able to choose their friends, for example, a social ritual that Google interrupted when it automatically populated its users Buzz accounts with people they tended to send a lot of emails to.

To explain these issues, Boyd distinguished between articulated networks (address books, Facebook, Twitter), behavioral networks (based on common behavior, location, etc.) and personal networks. According to Boyd, people don't necessarily want to bring all of this info together (which Buzz did). Instead, they want to be able to separate different groups.

It's also important to remember that private and public are also not always clear binary opposites. While technology often makes it looks like this, in real life, things tend to get a lot messier. If you are out in a café, for example, you are in a public space, but you expect a certain community to be there - while you don't expect others to be there - and you still expect a certain degree of privacy while you are talking to your friends.

Facebook's Privacy Fail

Users generally don't handle change well, which can have serious privacy implications. When Facebook asked its users to reevaluate their privacy settings a few months ago, the default choice was "everyone." People encountered the Facebook popup with a notification about these changes, however, clicked through without reading it and suddenly all of their data was public. According to Facebook, only about 33% of users made changes. As Boyd noted in her talk, most Facebook users simply didn't understand the privacy settings.

Public by Default, Private by Effort

By default, most conversations on social media services are now public, while making them private takes a conscious effort. By and large, teenagers, according to Boyd, are more conscious about what they can gain by being public, while adults worry more about what they could lose. That, however, can lead to shortsighted decisions and have serious consequences - something developers need to think about as they create their social media applications and especially aggregators.

The Public-By-Default Environment is Not the Great Democratizer

Just because something is publicly accessible, for example, doesn't mean that people want it to be publicized. The launch of Facebook's news stream, fore example, caught users by surprise as it broke the social contract on Facebook. While the data in the news stream had always been available, aggregating it violated the privacy expectations of most users. Developers, according to Boyd, have to ask themselves how the people whose content they are remixing and aggregating would feel if all of this data was suddenly available in one place.

What Can Developers Do?

• There is no magical formula: privacy exists in social contexts and these contexts are complex and change constantly. For technologists, this is what makes it so hard to deal with these problems. Developers, said Boyd, have to learn to navigate these complexities and interact with their users. Developers also have to consider that privacy slip-ups can have real-world consequences for users.
• Developers have to ask themselves how they would feel if this information they aggregate would be disclosed. Just because you can see somebody, doesn't mean they want to be seen.
• Wanting privacy is not about having something to hide, but about control and creating space to open up.

It's SXSW weekend so you may be pretty burnt out on conferences - or just sick and tired of hearing about them - but if you're in New York City this week, don't miss what's sure to be a profound and fascinating conversation between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus.

How do you like your events calendar? As a world map? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Sponsor

12 – 16 March 2010: Austin, Texas

SXSW Interactive

An incubator of cutting-edge technologies, the SXSW Interactive Festival offers five days of captivating keynote presentations, panel sessions, book readings, Salons and Core Conversations that provide hands-on training as well as big-picture analysis. In addition to the business opportunities at the Trade Show and Exhibition and the hands-on gaming fun at the ScreenBurn Arcade, SXSW Interactive provides an array of exciting evening events including the SXSW Web Awards Ceremony. More to the point, coming to SXSW Interactive is a great way to recharge your creativity.

The variety of programming offered at SXSW Interactive means that the event focuses as much on creativity as it does on technology. This focus is augmented by SXSW Film, which runs concurrently with SXSW Interactive and SXSW Music. Moreover, a full slate of parties and receptions during the evening hours help to accelerate the social aspect of the event.

For more information, visit sxsw.com, or for a handy survival guide click here.

15 March, 2010: New York City

A Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus

On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.
The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.

15 – 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

• Social Networking World Forum
• Enterprise social media
• Social TV World Forum
• Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

• Full workshop program within exhibition area
• Evening networking reception
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Free pass for exhibition only

22 – 26 March 2010: New York City

Search Engine Strategies New York Conference & Expo

Go beyond search at Search Engine Strategies New York. Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more.Book your pass today. Enter RWW15 to save 15% off the registration. Sessions include:

• Digital Asset Optimization
• Deep Dive Into Analytics
• Augmented Reality: It's a Brave New World
• Bringing SEO In-House: The Pros and Cons
• Advanced B2B Search Marketing
• Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

23 March 2010: San Francisco, California

S.F. Beta 4.0

After a long winter's hiatus, S.F. Beta is back, for its forth year straight! Join hundreds of founders, investors, developers, and technologists for a lively evening of demos, drinks, conversation, and new connections. Early bird tickets are available, and they're going fast. Register now for discounted admission. As always, we feature startup demos all night. This time around, the theme is Search & Discovery. If you're building the next Google (or the next Google acquisition), we want you here! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info.

26 March 2010: San Francisco, California

Freemium Summit

The first Freemium Summit is a one day event focused on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation impacting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners.

Confirmed Speakers: Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress); Matt Brezina, Xobni; Aaron Levie, Box.net; Phil Libin, Evernote; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Drew Houston, Dropbox; Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt; Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp; Lance Walley, Chargify; Isaac Hall, Recurly; and Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures.

March 29, 2010: Portland, Oregon

Social Fresh Portland

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

4 April 2010: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

ConnectNow

TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh).

The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010.

For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia

ConnectNow

ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au.

13 – 15 April 2010: Dallas, Texas

PubCon South

PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here.

16 April 2010: Mountain View, California

Under the Radar: Cloud

Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com.

16 – 17 April 2010: Royal Oak, Michigan

FutureMidwest

FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow.

Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here.

April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri

Social Fresh St. Louis

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California

DrupalCon

DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts.

Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management.

26 April 2010: San Francisco, California

Future of Money and Technology Summit

The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more.

Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration.

7 May 2010: Mountain View, California

ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010

The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference.

An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences.

We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. 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.

Click here to register now, or to become a sponsor, or to help shape the conference.

11 May 2010: San Francisco, California

FinovateSpring

FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day.

Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available.

May 17 2010: San Francisco, California

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off.

25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado

Glue

Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world.

ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12".

15 – 16 June 2010: New York City

Corporate Social Media Summit

The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring:

• Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully
• 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),
• Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business
• A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media

29 – 30 June 2010: London

Cloud Computing World Forum

The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include:

• Co-located with CloudCamp London
• Co-located with Green IT conference
• Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre
• Free-to-attend evening awards presentation
• Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices
• Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services
• Evening networking party for all attendees

5 October 2010: New York City

FinovateFall

FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies.

FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available.

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

Our top stories this week were about cutting the strings that tie us to our desks. And also about stalking celebrities at SXSW. Read on for our coverage and analysis. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Internet of Things.

Note: We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format.

Sponsor

Story of the Week: Leaving your desk for the cloud, a bike or someplace you'd rather not say.

• Put.io Turns Torrents Into Streams [Invites]
• Bicycling Directions, Trails Come to Google Maps
• Chatroulette Creator Coming to America?
• 6 Thoughts About Location Madness
• SXSW 2010 for Web Celeb Stalkers

More coverage and analysis of location-based technology

Announcing the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit

Join us for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7 in Mountain View, California as we explore the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. Be a part of the discussion on geo-location services, augmented reality, native app vs. browser-based, commerce and marketing, mobile social networking and the Internet of Things. Sponsorship enquiries: sales@readwriteweb.com,

Register now for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit and get early bird rates - only $295.

Mobile Web

• Twitter Location? Thanks, But No Thanks
• Is the iPhone Still More Personal than Professional?
• Japan's Largest Telco Goes OpenID

More Mobile Web coverage

Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus

On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and yours truly, Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.

Internet of Things

• Stickybits: Portal to Another Dimension or Graffiti for Nerds?

More Internet of Things coverage

Real-Time Web

• Google Wave Extensions Gallery Launches
• Chasing Real-Time Raindrops in an Ocean of Content
• Google's Mobile Product Search Now Shows Real-Time Local Inventory

More Real-Time Web coverage. Don't miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb's report, The Real-Time Web and its Future.

Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App

We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app. As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

• 10 Principles For Not Killing Your Startup
• All the Small Things: Facebook Demonstrates How to Get Big Results From Little Changes
• First Look at TechStars Historical Results Data

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.

• International Blackberry Outage Goes Into Day 2
• Will StatusNet Be Another Open-Source Star in the Enterprise?

ReadWriteCloud

Our channel ReadWriteCloud, sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

• SXSW 2010 for Cloud Lovers
• Cloud Religion: Do's, Do Not's, and a Glimpse of Nirvana
• Cisco in the Core: Preparing for the Next Generation Internet

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Aviary, the online creative platform is a visionary tool. When it launched a few years back, the irony of a Flash based Photoshop competitor was, well, ironic.

With the launch of Aviary in Google's App Marketplace, we can say that the company is close to making lightening strike twice, this time around creating a home for the creative professional and their most important assets.

We want this to work - so we ran it through the paces. Here we got a front-line view on where cloud app meets cloud. We looked forward to counting the pixels that get wasted in the process.

Sponsor

Aviary and Google will disrupt Microsoft (the default filesystem for the world), and along side it Apple and Abobe, with this simple joining of services that allows users to create, share, publish and present with a simple Web based client and "always available" files.

It feels like the tide has changed and soon it will be hard to imagine an app not defaulting to file storage in the cloud. In a world of cloud-hosted apps, writing to a PC filesystem just seems wrong and goes against the grain of a mobile workforce. The creative professional's cloud is going to be in vivid color and available from the local coffee shop.

As a clear sign of preparation for these applications, Google Docs recently started accepting files of any type.

If you're a user, you'll likely see this headline at the top of your account, like we do.

Google Supports a Virtual File System for Business Documents

For images, this is useful for people who use Google's presentation software. Today, all of your other files are online. Now you can have your images close at hand, so it's easy to use all files whene you need them, as shown here in this piece by Aviary and Google.

In this Google Docs upload feature demonstration, we see that Google interprets certain filetypes and offers a way to convert into a native Google file format upon uploading. When this happens with an Office-based document, for example an .docx file, Google will process it as needed to be usable in the Google Docs document editor.

Aviary is part of Google Apps Marketplace and part of the Google Docs application.

Coming from the Aviary side of the world, we see this as a natural extension to the work the company has done in joining accounts with Flickr, Facebook, and others. Images need editing. And to be shared many times over. Aviary makes it easy to get started with Google using a third-party login capability to join accounts with Google.

When this sharing hits productivity apps like presentations., that's where we start to see an interesting landscape emerging. Google is playing the role as a peer (e.g. share images with multiple editors) and also is moving towards the "cloud of choice" for consumer document management.

Below is a Google Apps-powered Google Docs listing after Aviary has been installed. Aviary is now available as an editor, a library has been created for Aviary documents, and when saving a document in a properly configured Aviary-Google account, a list of Aviary docs will show up in the main listing.

A page opens with a view of the image and the option open the image in Aviary.

Our ninja file is edited and saved...

Mime Type 2.0

In practice, all of this marketplace integration is harder than it might first look.

This is a a few of the features and or landscape issues that make this experience "not quite" the same as saving a file from Photoshop to Windows.

• Multiple entry points can be confusing to newcomers. We found that by going to Aviary.com and launching versus launching from Google docs that there were subtle features and connections that worked differently (in our account, it offered different views of the total image library). Also, which repository was setup as the default. In a way, both models need to be supported, but even subtle differences can make the overall solution more error-prone.
• What are the the default for saving new file. We notice this especially when moving files from Google and expecting to see them in Aviary. Like setting up a specific application to open for certain files, in the case that there are dual masters (or apps), this becomes much more difficult to edit on. We would like (at least) Google to recognize more about the file post-Aviary and launch it when I bring in new images (or at least offer to). This begs the interesting question of whether a person's files should have a default home.
• On the reverse side, "Save As" to your Google Docs from Aviary may need fine tuning. This is a software and workflow challenge that didn't exist when there was an implied "master" of all the files. We see this challenge existing also with the desktop experiences and how the apps react to changes from these repositories. In a way, if Google Apps was master for all the docs, it would move the experience forward. But, Windows, Photoshop, and even Aviary, may feel different.
• Does the likelihood of failure increase due to interdependencies as well as other factors that make the services less predictable? After a brief error or two in getting Aviary to Save to Google rather than Save to Aviary, a few things of note. 1: Helping the user know what is happening is going to be important, especially if two (or more) ways are supported. 2: This needs to be as easy as finding "My Documents" on the PC, or adoption will suffer.

This is Aviary in "Google mode" and trying to save the document to Google Docs account, but not completing the job. ( We're not saying it doesn't work, just that it doesn't work sometimes.)

Creative professionals may not use Aviary as their default tool... yet. And Google Docs may not be as fast or be as reliable as a PC. But for those of us who do light image edits and are Google Doc users, this is a major leap forward.

We see this as an unlocking of the desktop (both machine and software) and love the promise of creating anywhere, storing anywhere, getting paid.

As this starts to work, it's clear that Google, Aviary, and cloud applications will continue to encroach in the workflow of things to come.

Where's your limit to what you do with Aviary and Google Apps in a Google Cloud?

Kaiser Kuo presented today at SXSW about Google in China. He spoke about how the Google situation will impact Chinese Internet users, other companies and the Chinese government.

In the presentation, Kuo (who also spoke to ReadWriteWeb a week ago) clarified how censorship in China works. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the Great Firewall that has the most impact in China - but something China calls "self-discipline." Kuo also discussed what the next moves will be from Google, since he believes that the ball is in Google's court and Beijing won't push the situation.

Sponsor

History of Google in China

Before getting down to the nitty gritty of the current Google-China standoff, Kaiser Kuo gave some valuable context to Google in China.

In 2005 Google started to hire aggressively in China, he said. Google's decision to enter China with a censored product immediately brought grief to Google, with some pundits describing it as a "black day for Internet freedom." Google defended its actions at that point by saying that not providing search to a fifth of the world's population would be a greater loss than having censored results.

At first Google had a notice on their search results stating that they were censored. Kuo also pointed out that Google only omitted results that users wouldn't have been able to view anyway had they clicked through (because the pages or sites were blocked). At that point, Google didn't host Gmail, personal search history, Blogger or other services that had personal information. Google in China also protected their employees, Kuo noted.

Google never had an easy time of it in China. For example, many Chinese users couldn't spell the word "Google." Regulators made it difficult for them, as did their Chinese competitors. Google did manage to make good revenues and market share, but never "moved the needle" against its Chinese search competitor Baidu. Kuo remarked that Google was not singled out for any special treatment by the Chinese government.

In 2009 Google got into trouble due to pornography in its search results, and it went dark for a short time as a result.

There has been a massive growth in Internet users in China in the four years since Google entered that market. There were 2-3 million Internet users in China when Google began operations there; now there are 384 million Internet users in China. Google has around 35% market share in China, which has not been matched by any other Western company. Its annual revenues in China is around $300-400 million in revenue, which is nothing to sneeze at.

In mid-December 2009 there was a hacker attack on Google, which in January Google claimed on its blog came from China. At that time Google also announced it would stop censoring search results on google.cn. Kuo doesn't believe this announcement was a cynical retreat from China due to its being defeated by Chinese competitors, which many pundits suggested at the time.

Kuo said that the challenge to Google's business model is around trust, for personal data in the cloud. So Google's blog post in China was appropriate, Kuo believes.

Some people have suggested that the Chinese government used the strategy known in China as "Using Quiescience to control action." The government has however unblocked Google Docs and Groups, and has not blocked any further Google services since January.

Currently Google is still hiring in China and is in the midst of negotiations with the Chinese government. Kuo believes there is deliberate confusion right now."It's impossible to grasp what Google is up against without having a better grasp of how censorship in China works."

The Great Firewall

There are two main types of Internet censorship in China, said Kuo.

The first is The Great Firewall of China, which has been nick-named "Iron Curtain 2.0." It's a system of filters at domain name or page level. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and other western sites have been blocked at this level. Kuo said that it's fairly simple for Chinese Internet users to "hop the firewall " using proxy services, free VPNs.

So The Great Firewall is more of an inconvenience. Kuo pays for a VPN that allows him to access Western websites.

Self-Discipline

The second form of censorship is "more pernicious and effective," according to Kuo. It is carried out by Internet companies, on instructions from Chinese government. All Internet sites in China have to practice what is termed "self-discipline."

Failing to adhere to this form of censorship means having your website or service shut down. There are some 30,000 "Internet police." Two cartoon avatars are wont to show up if a Chinese user visits pages with content offensive to the Chinese government.

Most Internet users in China don't come across the Great Firewall, because most Chinese Internet users don't use Western services like Twitter and Facebook. But, Kuo said, "Google is different." It has become "a real part of the Internet culture in China."

Kuo then talked about how Chinese censorship nowadays is almost all social media sites, such as social networks and microblogging sites.

How Chinese Netizens Use The Internet

Kuo mentioned that the Chinese Internet is more "entertainment superhighway" than "information superhighway." Online gaming is big in China. Most Chinese Internet users, Kuo said, enjoy the Internet that they have - rather than worry about the one that Western pundits think they should have.

The Internet has also emerged as a de-facto public sphere in China. As long as you don't overstep certain boundaries (political activism and so forth), then the "will of the masses" is often expressed on the Internet through the likes of bulletin boards or social networks.

Regularly, Chinese netizens are exposing public officials. However Kuo warns that there are "very very serious limits" to what is emerging in the public sphere. For example, anonymity leads to a lot of trolling. It's ad-hoc, reactive and informal - however it is a "squeaky wheel that is regularly getting grease." Also, a minority are pro-democracy - most of the netizens in the public sphere are pro-Chinese government.

Next Moves from Beijing and Google

Kuo said that the Chinese government will wait for Google to make the next move. It realises it has nothing to gain by pushing Google or being openly hostile. The ball is in Google's court and it will probably keep to its word that it will stop censorship in China. It may still shut down operations in China, which in practice means closing google.cn. But this has a lot of problematic scenarios - including the difficulty of having translations done for Google.com and staffing issues of closing down.

The pros of pulling out of China include saving face and appeasing western users. But the cons are significant. They include a backlash from tech-savvy, urban Google users, a setback to scientific research, a global black eye for their image, and ceding the virtual monopoly in search in China to Baidu.

The moderate scenario is that Google.cn is shut down, but continues to work with its mobile partners in China, R&D and sales continue to operate in China, and Google services will be unblocked.

The best case scenario, Kuo believes, would be if Google stopped censoring google.cn - but the service stays online.

We're seeing a lot more discussion on the topic of single-sign on for SaaS environments. The issue is becoming more important as security emerges as a top concern for companies considering making the move to cloud-based environments.

OneLogin is a new company that offers single sign-on, cloud-based service that allows for small and mid-sized companies to enjoy the same level of security as large enterprise companies.

Sponsor

Most small companies do not deploy security methods that employ SAML, (Security Assertion Markup Language) an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. It's expensive to deploy. Open-source tools do exist but require someone to understand how it works and deployed in a work environment.

OneLogin configures a browser to give the experience of a single sign in. It bypasses the traditional user name/password system, which often has gaping security holes.

To us, this is a big reason why the new breed of SaaS services are not taken seriously by security conscious enterprise customers. The security can not be trusted.

With OneLogin, a person would be directed to a login page that would automatically fill-in the information for the person. The person is provided their own OpenID account. OneLogin knows the person's session so no second authentication is required.

OneLogin's infrastructure sits in the cloud, which means that a customer does not have to maintain dedicated servers and people to keep the system working.

There is no install. Rackspace hosts the web server and the database.

Two-factor authentication is available. People may use a Yubi key, which used a USB port to plug in and activate a random number authorization. People may also soon be able to use Verisign's VIP service that gives a mobile device the capability to generate a new password every 30 sec. You then input the number within 30 seconds to receive permission.

The OneLogin service works on most SaaS services, including Google Apps. There is a free service. For SAML capabilities, the cost is $8 per user per month.

Once upon a time, smartphones were mostly about connecting busy professionals with their email accounts while on the go. Now that smartphones have reached the mainstream consumer market, however, people are looking for more than just email access - and a surprisingly large number of smartphones hardly ever leave their owners' homes.

According to a new study from Web analytics firm Compete, 74% of smartphone owners now primarily use their devices for personal reasons, and they often spent the most amount of time with the device at home.

Sponsor

As we noted last October, when they leave their homes, a lot of consumers with iPhones and phones that use Google's Android operating system are now also using their devices to compare prices and look up reviews while they are out shopping. Compete looked a bit further into this market and found that more than 35% of consumers with smartphones would be interested in receiving coupons on their devices. Another 29% would like to be able to scan barcodes with their phones and get more information about the product as well as access to coupons and other promotions.

Location-Aware Coupons

While it doesn't come as a surprise that a lot of consumers would like to receive coupons, one surprising result from Competes report is that 21% of respondents would like to get SMS alerts with promotions when they walk by a store. Another 15% also would like to receive ads via SMS. Chances are that a lot of marketers would like to offer these kinds of location-aware ads and coupons that catch a consumer while they are already out shopping and close to a retailer. At the same time, though, most modern smartphones don't allow developers to create these kind of applications. The iPhone, for example, doesn't (yet) allow developers to run application in the background, which would be necessary if a developer wanted to create a service that could send out ads via SMS based on your location.

Everyone has been talking about how this year's SXSW will be the "year of location" as Foursquare and Austin-based Gowalla go head-to-head in a location-based battle royale. Location, however, is not the only emerging technology that will be on display in Austin; American auto maker Chevrolet announced it will be debuting new augmented reality promotions at SXSW this year.

Sponsor

Festival attendees can download the Chevy iReveal application on the iPhone which will allow them to participate in a scavenger hunt-like game that blends augmented reality with location-based functions. A map in the application shows the location of Chevy vehicle promotions around Austin where users can "unlock" the ability to view 360-degree 3D models of the cars in an AR view using the phone's camera.

Using AR to promote vehicles with 3D models is nothing new, but this is one of the first versions to reach consumers on their phones. The automotive industry has been one of the leading areas pushing desktop webcam-based AR experiences that have allowed users to interact with 3D models of cars from their homes. This new promotion from Chevy is unique in that it allows customers to have the same experience on their iPhones.

According to the App Store, AR iPhone application developer acrossair has produced the application for Chevrolet. The interesting thing about this experience is the way it blends the dichotomous features of mobile and webcam-based AR. The 3D model manipulation we are used to seeing on the desktop is wisely mixed with the location-based map info seen in most mobile AR applications. By taking the best of both worlds, acrossair and Chevrolet have opened the door to a new breed of mobile AR advertisements.

Augmented reality isn't the only emerging technology Chevrolet is experimenting with at SXSW; quick response (QR) codes, which are like a technological cousin of AR, are a large part of the company's promotions as well. When investigating Chevrolet's latest cars, users can photograph QR codes placed strategically on the cars to learn more about specific parts of the car. A QR code placed on the hood, for example, will launch information about the car's engine. Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications and Technology for General Motors, is excited about the future of QR codes and AR for the automotive industry.

"Imagine using Quick Response Codes to download the price and options for a vehicle on a dealer lot right to your cell phone. Or, imagine using augmented reality to virtually preview different colors of the Camaro in your own driveway," Barger says. "We are just scratching the surface of what's possible with mobile technologies and social media applications."

Chevrolet is also teaming up with Gowalla to provide location-based advertisements to people checking in at SXSW. One promotion they are offering is a shuttle ride from the airport in one of their new cars to select users that check in at the airport, so don't forget to fire up Gowalla when you land in Austin. For more information about mobile and desktop AR advertising, be sure to check out our report on the subject coming soon!

Real-tme feed publishing startup Superfeedr has quietly turned on automatic location data in the feeds it republishes from around the web, we confirmed with the company today. Founder Julien Genestoux explained the feature using Twitter as his example, but the same content extraction and analysis is being done on all kinds of feeds run through the service.

"If you turn geolocation on in Twitter, then your feed will include geolocation in your Tweets and we'll just push that through," he said. "If you don't do that but you Tweet about Austin, we will deliver the latitude and longitude for Austin in the XML." In other words, developers building apps on top of Superfeedr's real-time feeds will now know programmatically what geographic locations are discussed in the content coming through the feeds. Future feature? Subscribing to content by location instead of by feed URL.

Sponsor

Genestoux says he is using a number of 3rd party services to extract this data, including the Yahoo Placemaker API. Along with this location data, the service also offers automatic language identification and is working on entity extraction and sentiment analysis.

The prospect of subscribing to content by location instead of by feed URL is an exciting one, though Genestoux says he's just beginning to develop it. Could that facilitate a location data stream that crosses and goes beyond the siloed location based social networks so widely discussed these days? We suspect that it could.

Superfeedr could be described as "FeedBurner 2.0" - for a more real-time and meta-data savvy web. The company was funded this Fall by real-time incubator Betaworks and media mogul Mark Cuban. Betaworks announced today that it has raised $20 million more to build out its portfolio of companies like Superfeedr, Bit.ly, Tweetdeck, Tumblr and more.

As we profiled in our Never Mind the Valley series last month, New York is increasing its stronghold on the east coast startup scene. The city's rich media and international business ecosystems make it the perfect launch pad for startups looking to leverage these markets. One other reason the city has seen successful growth of entrepreneurship is the holding company Betaworks, which shows no signs of slowing after raising $20 million from Intel, AOL, RRE Ventures and several others.

Sponsor

It is a little harder to place a label on Betaworks compared to other similar entities that some would call incubators. The important thing to know is that Betaworks considers itself a holding company and will not only invest in companies but will hold and operate some of them as well. Having previously raised $8 million in 2008, the company has put their money to good use; Betaworks' history includes helping start companies like Bit.ly and Chartbeat, while investing in other real-time Web apps like Tweetdeck, and helping in the sale of others like Summize, which was acquired by Twitter in 2008.

Needless to say, the company seems to know which horses to bet on, which is likely the reason why several corporations and investors teamed up to refresh their capital. Along with Intel, AOL and RRE, investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Softbank and The New York Times Company all contributed to help Betaworks keep moving forward.

The real-time Web is a trend we've been following very closely at ReadWriteWeb as evidenced by last fall's Real-Time Web Summit. For startups in this space, especially those on the east coast, Betaworks is a great resource and potential investor. The new funds will not only go toward helping bolster their already impressive list of companies, but also to bringing fresh new companies on board. As with the recent $750 million raised by Battery Ventures, the large collaborative investment in Betaworks is another solid indicator of returning venture capital dollars after a lackluster 2009.

If you visit the DreamHost blog today, chances are you'll give a quick guffaw, shake your head in dismay at the state of the Internet and quickly close the browser tab.

But if you take a moment to read all the way to the end of the post, you'll find that the company has just announced the implementation of a one-click install for its open-source, white label microblogging service Status.net.

Sponsor

The blog, which features a tattooed beer belly and a cat sitting at a keyboard, is really showing off the proof-of-concept (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek site, PetStatus, a micro-blog for pets.

Buried down at the very bottom of the post is the following nugget of exciting information:

Status.net, our new one-click software package, powers the entire operation. DreamHost customers can now install Status.net to their own domains with a single mouse click - making specialized Twitter clones at whim in a matter of seconds!

Triss Hussey first noticed the real announcement, saying if it hadn't been for an email subscription to the blog it would have just passed on by.

We first wrote about Status.net a year ago, saying that the service could be an "incredible opportunity to analyze a rich and dynamic set of data about interpersonal conversation." The company just announced the launch of its public beta last Tuesday. And our Own Alex Williams just took a closer look at the service's future in the enterprise last week and argued that it "has the features that the enterprise customer wants and it has a strong developer community." A one-click installation means we may start seeing specialized Twitter-clones reproducing like rabbits across the Internet.

We can only hope that PetStatus isn't an omen of what's to come.

MySpace has taken a bold step and allowed a large quantity of bulk user data to be put up for sale on startup data marketplace InfoChimps. Data offered includes user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes. Friend lists are not included. Remember, Facebook and Twitter may be the name of the game these days in tech circles, but MySpace still sees 1 billion user status updates posted every month. Those updates will now be available for bulk analysis.

This user data is intended for crunching by everyone from academic researchers to music industry information scientists. Will people buy the data and make interesting use of it? Will MySpace users be ok with that? Is this something Facebook and Twitter ought to do? The MySpace announcement raises a number of interesting questions.

Sponsor

The 22 sets of data being made available are cheap. Prices range from $10 for raw dumps from the MySpace API to $300 for everything broken out by latitude and longitude. Subsequently derived data sets can be put on sale by InfoChimps users as well, with a revenue split.

Analysis coming from the data could include things like music trends per zipcode, popular URLs being shared, etc.

MySpace is generally thought of as a social network on the decline, but if it is able to position itself as the place to do music still then its hundreds of millions of users could remain engaged. Will data scientists want this data, though? Time will tell, but MySpace has long done cooler things with data than competitors Facebook and Twitter and people haven't gotten terribly excited about it yet.

Related: See today's coverage of the cancelation of the Netflix Challenge due to privacy concerns.

Bulk user data has tremendous analytical potential and both Facebook and Twitter have thrown the breaks on 3rd parties offering up their user data more than once. We covered InfoChimps' offering of bulk Twitter data in depth this Fall, but the marketplace quietly removed that data after Twitter asked them to "wait" for a second time.

In February we profiled Pete Warden (The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul), a developer who planned on putting a huge pile of Facebook user data online for academic analysis. As we wrote in that article:

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public.

Days later Facebook contacted Warden days later and asked him to hold off on release of that data as well. Last week Warden posted open source code for harvesting the same type of bulk user data from Google Profiles, so the game's not up yet, not by a long shot.

Why is this kind of big data interesting? This rational may be less applicable in the case of MySpace given its focus on music, or it may be more applicable given the allegedly poorer user demographics on the site compared to Facebook, but here's how I explained my interest in big social network data analysis in general, as part of a discussion about an excellent special report on big data in the Economist this month.

I think in big data there lies a lot of hidden patterns that represent both opportunities for action and for reflection. At RWW we're working on trying to find ways to mine data to find news first (we've got some interesting methods employed already) and personally, I think the world is an awfully unfair mess and I'm hoping that data analysis will help illuminate some of the hows and the whys. Like the way that real-estate redlining was exposed back in the day by cross referencing census data around racial demographics and housing loan data. That illuminated systematic discrimination against black families in applying for home loans in certain parts of town. So too I think we'll find a lot of undeniable proof of injustices and clues for how we might deal with them in big data today.

What will we see come out of MySpace's bulk data? What could we see come from Facebook and Twitter data if only they would let people get their hands on it? Time will tell.