Feed: O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies - AggScore: 86.9

The robots.txt file should be used sparingly by government organizations and only in a non-discriminatory fashion.

With Facebook topping 330 million active users over the past week, the company's strongest growth region continues to be Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook added close to 17M active users in Asia alone. Since my previous post, the share of active users from Asia grew by 2% (to 13.5% of all users), and roughly 1 in 7 users now come from the region. With a market penetration under 2%, Facebook is poised to add many more users in Asia (and Africa).

Introducing the Open Web Foundation Agreement -- Applying the open source approach to better standards. The Open Web Foundation Agreement itself establishes the copyright and patent rights for a specification, ensuring that downstream consumers may freely implement and reuse the licensed specification without seeking further permission. In addition to the agreement itself, we also created an easy-to-read "Deed" that provides a high level overview of the agreement. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Healthcare in the near future will be quite different than it is today. Web enabled technology is already changing the way medicine is practiced. As the digital nation comes of age we will see new opportunities, and new challenges, bringing healthcare in America into the 21st century. Health consumers will come to expect they will have control over their own health data. Having secure, interoperable access to clinical data will allow patients to partner with their care providers in new ways incorporating Web 2.0 principles.

Less Than Free -- Begins by talking about Google giving away turn-by-turn directions on Android, and then analyses Google's "less than free" business model: Additionally, because Google has created an open source version of Android, carriers believe they have an “out” if they part ways with Google in the future. I then asked my friend, “so why would they ever use the Google (non open source) license version.” Here was the big punch line - because Google will give you ad splits on search if you use that version! That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally “less than free” price point, Symbian or windows mobile would need to subsidize. Double ouch!! This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Mapsicle -- Is an open source Javascript library to create mashups and application on Google Streetview, from NZ developers Project X. It has been released by Google as part of the Maps Utility library. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

The iPhone, in addition to revolutionizing how people thought about mobile phone user interfaces, also was one of the first devices to offer a suite of sensors measuring everything from the visual environment to position to acceleration, all in a package that could fit in your shirt pocket. On December 3rd, O'Reilly will be offering a one-day online edition of the Where 2.0 conference, focusing on the iPhone sensors, and what you can do with them.

I've been thinking about the topic of Government 2.0 a lot lately. Part of this topic deals with the multi-directional engagement between government and citizens. It seems to me that everyone can celebrate the fact that government entities merely have a YouTube channel here, a Twitter account there, or a Blogger profile some other place (the so-called "TGIF revolution"), or we can think a little harder about what the goals of citizen engagement really might be, and how to go about achieving them.

ICU64 -- an open source Commodore 64 emulator (Frodo) hacked to visually and textually display memory. Watch the video embedded below, it's hypnotic and seductive. It immediately made me want one for my programs (without having to port my code back to 6502 assembler). (via waxy whose return from pneumonia is greatly welcomed)

The view from the eye of a recession isn't great. When companies are going bust, unemployment growing, and everyone's scouring their budgets for costs to cut, it can be hard to see opportunities. However, when Tim pointed to Stephen O'Grady's fine set of 2010 predictions I found myself popping with "oh, so naturally this will happen next ..." thoughts. Think...

It is becoming clear to me that we are heading into a bloody period of competition that could be extremely unfriendly to the interoperable web as we know it today. If you've followed my thinking about Web 2.0 from the beginning, you know that I believe we are engaged in a long term project to build an internet operating system. I've outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the "small pieces loosely joined" model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects. We're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill. And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.

Meat Band Aids and Mass Production of Living Tissue -- Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions), that, when applied to chronic wounds (particularly nasty problems like diabetic sores), can seed healing and regeneration. You'll find this Gizmodo Q&A is informative. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

The Web 2.0 Expo starts tomorrow, 11/16, in NYC. We're kicking off the conference with an Ignite featuring 14 great speakers. The event is at the New World Stages. I'll be co-hosting with Ignite NYC organizer Tikva Morowati. As always each speaker gets just five minutes on stage. Their presentation will each be just 20 slides that each auto-advance...

In the past 25 years, the 'personal' computing revolution has evolved from tethered (desktop) to luggable (portable) to joined-at-the-hip (mobile). The author argues that the next wave of computing will extend this level of personal attachment to the bag-carrying consumer (think: purses, backpacks and briefcases) when Apple releases it’s much rumored Tablet Computing Device. Read more…

Open Source Enters The World of Atoms -- An academic statistical analysis of open design. We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source. This and more in today's Four Short Links.