Originally posted at The Digital Home

Originally posted at News – Microsoft

Originally posted at News – Digital Media

So how do you say “fail whale” en español? Twitter has launched a Spanish translation, according to a blog post Tuesday (in Spanish) by co-founder Biz Stone.

It’s the first of multiple volunteer-assisted translations for the microblogging site, the post explained. A look at Twitter’s public timeline will show that it’s used in many languages across the world, but until this point, the Twitter.com site has been English only. Now, users can go into their settings to translate it into Spanish.

This could be key as Twitter attempts to grow bigger overseas amid allegations that its traffic has plateaued. Facebook, for example, saw significant growth overseas when it started launching user-translated versions of its site.

To better inform the Twittering masses, we have gone to the trouble of plugging the term “fail whale” into Google Translate to see how you say it in Spanish. That didn’t go too well with the algorithm, so we tried “whale of failure” and came out with “la ballena de fracaso.” Unfortunately, that just doesn’t have the same ring.

But this is not actually the first time that Twitter has toyed with launching a non-English edition. Last year, Twitter board member Joi Ito hyped up the launch of a standalone Twitter Japan site, powered by an investment from Ito’s Digital Garage, that was notable because it was ad-supported (Twitter still hasn’t rolled out ads or even said that it will for sure).

Biz Stone filled in CNET News on the status of Twitter Japan via e-mail on Tuesday night: “(It’s) doing very well. A few of us were there a few weeks ago to launch a brand new mobile service. We had a really fun tweetup in Tokyo.”

Twitter hasn’t said what the next translations of its site will be, though presumably they’d pick a language that’s already spoken by many users or one spoken in a region where it hopes to make big inroads. Or they could just be cutesy and launch in Klingon or Pirate.

This post was updated at 10:40 p.m. with comment from Biz Stone.

Originally posted at The Social

Yahoo could be ready to add OneRiot’s real-time search results into its own search pages.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Updated 2:40 p.m. PDT with responses from OneRiot and Yahoo.

Not to be outdone by the rest of the search market, Yahoo apparently has a plan for getting in on the real-time search game itself, according to a report.

Techcrunch said Tuesday that Yahoo is planning to partner with OneRiot, which operates a real-time search engine and develops browser add-ons that do pretty much the same thing. The possible deal comes on the heels of separate plans announced by Microsoft and Google last week to integrate Twitter pages into their search results.

Yahoo is shifting its search research and development efforts to focus on finding new ways to present search results, rather than the back-end process of crawling and indexing the Web, so a partnership makes sense. Techcrunch wasn’t sure exactly how the final product would look, but speculated it would resemble the interface produced by the OneRiot add-ons.

A OneRiot representative declined to comment. Yahoo didn’t deny the report, but issued the following statement.

“We can’t comment on rumor or speculation. Real-time search is important and we’re currently conducting several tests designed to discover if showing such content is useful to people using Yahoo Search. Yahoo is focused on creating the most innovative, easy-to-use and valuable search experience for people, and after these tests we will carefully evaluate
whether we should integrate such results for everyone using Yahoo Search.”

Originally posted at Relevant Results

This week we are covering the dangers of cloud computing. Get it? With the major loss of consumer data for the Sidekick smartphone users–the Sidekick is made by Danger, a Microsoft company–the whole idea of “cloud” safety has been brought front and center for consumers.

Businesses, likewise, are wondering if they are exposed to similar risks when they put their apps and data in the cloud.

Can we trust the cloud?

Our guests to discuss this topic are CNET senior writer Stephen Shankland and Christofer Hoff, author of the Rational Survivability blog, which is about this very topic. Hoff is director of cloud and emerging solutions at Cisco System and thus has a vested interest in keeping the cloud safe and profitable.

Listen now:

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Reporters’ Roundtable #7: The dangers of the cloud

Show notes and talking points…

Shankland, you just came from the Gartner conference, what’s the take from there?

Hoff, what happened with the Sidekick outage? Was it a failure of “the cloud”?

There have been real cloud failures. Amazon AWS has had outages, and CTO Werner Vogel had to hit the road to beg forgiveness. What happened there?

Discuss other failures? Gmail, Magnolia, Swissdisk.

A question for small business: is your data safe when it’s intermingled with other companies’ stuff?

Discuss new and fun ways clouds could fail.

Two kinds of failure: Failure to access and real data loss.

The consumer dilemma: safety vs. lack of privacy, control. Discussion.

The business dilemma: cost vs. control, security and compliance. Discussion.

How do you know you can trust a cloud provider?

What skills are needed by customers?

Hoff recommends: Cloud Security Alliance

Next time on the Roundtable:

Tim O’Reilly and David Carnoy on “The future of the book.” Don’t miss it!

Comments to: roundtable@cnet.com

Originally posted at Reporters’ Roundtable

SAN FRANCISCO–Google Vice President Marissa Mayer made a surprise announcement at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday: “Social Search,” a new Google Labs experiment that will bring in search results from a member’s social-network contact circle.

It’ll be launching as an opt-in project in the next few weeks. Then, you’ll need to have a Google account and set up a Google Profile to fill in information about the social networks that you use. Google first launched Profiles about a year ago.

“What we’ve done here is inserted, on the bottom of the page, content written by people in your social network,” Mayer said, adding that Google hopes this will “really improve the overall relevance, comprehensiveness, and quality” of search results. A search for a local restaurant, for example, could bring up your friends’ Yelp reviews for the same establishment. A search for travel destinations could bring up a post from a friend’s blog.

This comes on the same day that Google announced that it had entered into an agreement with Twitter to bring real-time “tweets” to search results. That’s another product that has yet to actually launch.

“The idea is for…these fast-rising queries, where there’s a period of time (when there are) actually tweets about that topic, and the definitive news source hasn’t been written yet,” Mayer said of the Twitter partnership, declining to disclose its financial terms.

This post was updated at 4:25 p.m. PT.

Originally posted at The Social

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

The third major edition of Facebook for iPhone has just crept into the iTunes App Store. It’s a huge update, with numerous advanced features that make Facebook more interactive than before and which bring the app as close to the desktop experience as it’s ever been.

Facebook for iPhone opens on your news feed as usual, but the upper left corner now sports a tiny grid icon that serves as the main organizing feature for this new build. Click it to see a screen equipped with a search bar on top, a notification alert area on the bottom, and a grid of nine activities you can perform in the middle. These include the news feed, your profile details, your message in-box, Facebook chat, friend requests, events, photo albums, and notes.

Those who use Facebook on the iPhone frequently will notice that quite a few of these actions are brand new, like viewing events and submitting an RSVP from your phone. You’ll also be able to view friends’ birthdays and upload photos to any album. Anyone sporting an iPhone 3GS gets the added bonus of uploading video.

Photos received a lot of attention in this update. You’ll now be able to zoom into photos, create albums and delete them, as well as upload and delete photos and photo tags, all from the Facebook interface. In addition, you can upload a new profile picture.

Facebook has also poured energy into how it deals with friends. You’re now able to call or text friends from the interface, which brings Facebook’s social connectivity into the real world. You can see friends of friends and mutual friends from the app, too, as well as the Pages you subscribe to. If you’re trying to locate a friend from within a page, Facebook has thought of that too, by equipping the page with search. To top it off, you can subscribe to Pages from the phone, not merely view them passively.

The new built-in Web browser is one feature addition that some may miss at first, but which is ultimately one of the most practical and useful for keeping the Facebook experience on iPhone firmly within the Facebook app. Before this integration, clicking a link would kick you out of the app and open a Safari browser. You would have to restart Facebook to resume your place.

There are more additions besides, but we thought we would start you off with a little taste and some first impressions. To see the full list, visit the Facebook page on iTunes.

So far, this app impresses, but we’ll keep you up to date on any quibbles we develop as we spend more time with this it and really get to know both its strong points and its flaws. iPhone and iPod Touch users, what do you think?

How to see version 3.0 in iTunes.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Tip: If iTunes is still showing version 2.5 on your desktop, click the “Facebook” breadcrumb on the page’s top navigation. Refreshing the Web page won’t necessarily do the trick. On the iPhone, delete the Facebook application and download it anew from the App Store on your phone. Even if the app page does not say it’s version 3.0, the new version should install.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dave Rosenberg/CNET)

Wolfram Alpha, the “computational knowledge engine” developed by Mathematica, will soon allow its dynamic search results to be queried and mashed up in a variety of new ways.

According to the Guardian, Wolfram will be opening its curated data to be queried via an application programming interface, or API. Currently, you can view results in a browser, export them as a PDF, or “play” them using a Mathematica plug-in. The ability to use the data on other sites and for other means, such as computations in spreadsheets, is appealing, if not earth-shattering.

Wolfram’s launch fanfare was followed by much confusion about what Wolfram actually is. One thing that’s clear is that the service has an impressive amount of data. What’s not clear is if and when it will ever make money.

APIs are at least a good start in relation to monetization–holding the Alpha data captive within its site meant that it would never go beyond its own traffic, a recipe for disappointment and counter to the link economy that has been built around sites like Twitter.

In today’s socialized Internet, APIs to your data are the barrier (or door) to getting users hooked on your data. Regardless of whether through an API that controls a cloud service like Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), or the ability to get communications in and out of Facebook, users want to consume data in the way they feel most comfortable. Any company that creates or aggregates data needs to make it available, if it expects to ever hit critical mass.

CNET News’ Tom Krazit recently wrote about a licensing deal between Microsoft’s Bing “decision engine” and Wolfram Alpha (two non-search engines join up to create a super search engine?) that “allows Bing to present some of the specialized scientific and computational content that Wolfram Alpha generates.”

If Microsoft is serious about taking on Google’s geek factor, and asserting its dominant position in spreadsheets and higher education as Bing grows, then the data from Wolfram adds a new dimension. From the consumer perspective, the more informed the data is, the better, but both Bing and Alpha have a long way to go to catch up to Google.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

Originally posted at Software, Interrupted

Regardless, I thought that with the EveryBlock acquisition, it was time to take a look at those services providing a hyperlocal experience.

Go hyper

EveryBlock EveryBlock, which was just acquired by MSNBC, features some outstanding hyperlocal features. The site provides local news, crime reports, and other information at the block level.

Currently, EveryBlock works with a handful of cities, including New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Miami. It would have been nice to find information on more areas around the U.S., but it wasn’t so bad. The site does a great job of finding local information, including lost and found lists, building permits, and other information that might be useful to someone living in a particular location. EveryBlock is a great site. I just wish it supported more cities. (Click here for our full review of EveryBlock.)

EveryBlock helps you find out what’s going on in many streets in the area.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Outside.in Outside.in is one of the nicest resources in this roundup. It finds out what’s happening in (at last count) 35,312 neighborhoods around the U.S. and delivers it to people in those areas.

When you first get to the site, Outside.in asks you to input a ZIP code. From there, it finds local news, discussions (it has a message board for each neighborhood), and establishments for you to check out. I was happy to see that both small suburbs and major metro areas were included in the list of neighborhoods on Outside.in. And since all of the information is constantly updated, it was a great way to find out what’s going in my area.

Outside.in provides with all the news in your area.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Patch Unlike many of the services in this roundup, which just find local information from existing sources, Patch does it a little differently. The site employs local editors and contributors to run a local news site.

Patch is a really neat idea. Instead of just taking blogs for around the Web, Patch hires an editorial staff to handle the news affecting you in your area. It covers topics ranging from local news to local sports and events. Even better, it gives the readers an opportunity to help populate the site by inputting events and announcements. They need only to sign up, write an announcement, and they’re all set. There’s just one problem with Patch: it’s only available in very few cities in just two states–New Jersey and Connecticut. Since its acquisition by AOL, it has been finding new editors for different cities around the U.S., though.

Patch isn’t in too many cities, unfortunately.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Placeblogger Instead of searching through the Web to find stories written on topics about your area, Placeblogger uses citizen journalists to populate its site.

Placeblogger constantly searches the Web to find “placeblogs,” blogs that are written by people or businesses about a particular area. They can be local blogs that you set up or corporate blogs set up by local companies. In either case, Placeblogger puts those feeds on its site to provide you with one central location to find all the content you really care about in your community. Even better, Placeblogger lets you add images, communicate with others from your area, and “like” a particular place. It’s a neat service if you’re trying to find more information about your community.

Placeblog features several blogs on cities both big and small.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Topix Topix is one of the best ways to learn about what’s going on in your community.

When you get to Topix, you can input your location. From there, it populates that page with information it gathers from a variety of sources across the Web. You can still see world and national news, but if you want local news, Topix will provide more information than you would find elsewhere. Plus, it’s supported in most areas across the U.S. And thanks to such a large community, you’ll find that each location’s message board is populated with some great discussions. I really liked Topix.

Topix has local news for even small areas.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Wikicity Wikicity is a huge site. The service lists content on any city you can think of in a wiki.

Wikicity’s listings pages feature the basic information like local establishments, upcoming community events, and more. But where it shines is in its content. It lists blogs that are written for and about the community, it features a listing of Twitter feeds for all the people that might live in the particular city, and it even provides local news. Those features combine to make Wikicity an extremely useful site for those looking to connect with the community.

Wikicity helps you find people in your area.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

My top 3

1. Outside.in: With so much coverage and great content, Outside.in is worth checking out.

2. Topix: It’s big, but it deserves some accolades with so much coverage.

3. Wikicity: It’s not the best-looking app in this roundup, but there’s something to be said for making Twitter streams and blog posts available to the community.