--- title: "Weekly Wrapup, 26-30 March 2007" date: 2007-03-30 author: "Richard MacManus" categories: - name: "ReadWriteWeb" url: "/category/readwriteweb.md" tags: - name: "2007" url: "/tag/2007.md" --- # Weekly Wrapup, 26-30 March 2007 Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. ## Analysis Posts This week Charles Knight released the March edition of his [Top 100 Alternative Search Engines](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines_mar07.php). As usual the list provoked a flurry of comments, with the Search Engine of the Month KoolTorch coming under a bit of scrutiny (mostly for being IE-only). But I think everyone agrees that Charles is doing an outstanding job with the list, which is now a benchmark for small search engines to [aspire to](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.blogdigger.com/blog/2007/03/blogdigger-makes-list-of-top-100.html). In a Point/Counterpoint post this week, John Milan and I argued opposite sides of the coin for: [Which is better, an offline Web App or an online Desktop App?](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/offline_webapps_online_desktop_counterpoint.php). Again, check out the comments for a great discussion. I’m not sure either of us won the argument. Perhaps, as [Ash Maurya](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.wiredjournal.com/) suggested, it was a draw: > “Great arguments on both sides but I agree with John that the web and desktop communities are on a path of convergence towards a model that offers the best of both worlds: – Browser access for remote use and sharing with others as it is the lowest common denominator and – Desktop experience when local for offline access, richer experience, privacy/confidentiality, integration, user control etc.” In another post new R/WW author [Phill Midwinter](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://phillmidwinter.wordpress.com/) posed this intriguing question: [Is Google a Semantic Search Engine?](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_google_a_semantic_search_engine.php) If you’ve been following our recent coverage of semantic technologies, such as [Hakia](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.hakia.com/) and [Segala](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.segala.com/), you will enjoy the robust discussion in the comments to Phill’s post. Other analysis posts this week: - [Top Irish Web Apps](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_irish_web_apps.php) (excellent post by David Lenehan – again, check out the comments) - [P2P: Introduction and Real World Applications](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/p2p_introduction_real_world_applications.php) (I learned a lot in this guest post by [Can Erten](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.canerten.com/); part 2 coming next week) - [A Glitch in the Web Office Matrix](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/a_glitch_in_the_web_office.php) (which wasn’t so much analysis, as me griping about losing my Gmail for half a day) ## Events – ETech This week we had the ETech conference in San Diego, one of O’Reilly Media’s flagship conferences. Alex Iskold was at ETech and reporting for Read/WriteWeb. Here are his posts: - [Adobe Apollo – On A Collision Course With Web Browsers](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_apollo_collision_course_browsers.php) - [ETech: Big Company Hacks at Yahoo](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/etech_yahoo_hacks.php) - [ETech: Mozilla Manifesto And Its Impact On Major Web Players](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/etech_mozilla_manifesto.php) - [ETech: Cool Stuff From Microsoft Live Labs](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/etech_cool_stuff_microsoft_live_labs.php) - [ETech: Amazon CTO Werner Vogels on Building Web-Scale Computing](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/etech_amazon_cto_aws.php) The Apollo post got some great comments. One of Alex’s points (which I chose to highlight in the headline – so blame me for that!) was that, intentionally or not, Adobe is on a collision course with IE, Firefox and the rest of the Web Browsers. The comments had a number of pro and con Apollo thoughts. Here is one that caught my eye… [aaron](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://charisma18.com/) noted: > “I understand your perspective, but back up a second and look at the opportunity this presents to a company building applications for corporate clients (banks, hospital systems, medical device producers, etc.) Right now, a huge anti web app stigma exists within these industries. > > Apollo is the trojan horse that can get Web 2.0 inside the enterprise.” ## Startup Action The highlight for me this week was Alex’s post on [Numenta, an Artificial Intelligence startup](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/numenta_artificial_intelligence.php) led by [Jeff Hawkins](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hawkins) – who made a name for himself in the tech industry as the founder of Palm Computing and inventor of the Palm Pilot. He later founded Handspring, where he invented the Treo. Numenta is a very ambitious company dedicated to developing AI algorithms and software. Read Alex’s post carefully, because I get the feeling that Numenta is on the cusp of some big breakthroughs in web technology. Other startups profiled: - [Desktop On Demand – New WebOS Launches](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/desktop_on_demand.php) - [BlogRovr Fetches Content From Your Favorite Blogs](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blogrovr_fetches_blog_content.php) - [Trampoline: Harnessing Social Behavior in the Enterprise](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/trampoline_harnessing_social_behavior_in_enterprise.php) - [Snap Preview Anywhere Launches Localized Versions](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/snap_preview_anywhere_localization.php) - [MusicPlusTV.com – Broadcast TV for Web Era](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/musicplustv_broadcast_tv_web.php) - [Zimbra Desktop Launched – Growing Trend of Offline Access to Web Apps](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zimbra_desktop_offline_web_apps.php) ## Bigco News This week the [Yahoo Mail API launched](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_mail_api.php), on top of the news that Yahoo Mail is now offering unlimited storage. Also [Microsoft launched ZenZui](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_zenzui.php), an interesting new mobile UI technology with a business model focused on its “ZoomSpace”. ## Poll Our poll this week asked [What web apps would you like to see with offline access?](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/poll_offline_web_apps.php). You could vote for more than one. Here are the results, in order of popularity: Gmail 26% (316 votes) Google Docs & Spreadsheets 20% (250 votes) del.icio.us 10% (117 votes) Basecamp 9% (108 votes) Flickr 9% (106 votes) YouTube 7% (90 votes) Netvibes 7% (81 votes) Last.fm 5% (64 votes) Other (please note in comments) 3% (41 votes) 30Boxes 2% (29 votes) MySpace 2% (23 votes) Several people also mentioned RSS Readers and Google Calendar. But no surprise that web email and online word processing/spreadsheets were the apps that most people want to use offline as well as online. Interesting that del.icio.us was third, reflecting perhaps its value as a research tool. I presume that also means those people would like access to web pages offline, at least those popular in del.icio.us. In a mini-poll last weekend, we also asked for your opinions on [\*Really\* Alt Search Engines](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/poll_really_alt_search_engines.php). We asked which of 10 “really alt search engines” do you think is the silliest/funniest/oddest? The ‘winner’ was [Pupna](https://web.archive.org/web/20090815025334/http://www.pupna.com/), described as “The search engine puppy that retrieves exactly what you are searching for (and absolutely nothing else!)”. I have to agree that, as a search engine, it is very silly indeed – to quote Monty Python. That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone. *Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/weekly_wrapup_26-30mar07.php))*