Author: Mike Melanson

Last September, WordPress made millions of its blogs real-time with RSSCloud, but today it has taken real-time a step further

by enabling PubSubHubbub for its 10.5 million blogs.

What this means, essentially, is that you no longer need to wait for your news reader to ping your blog every so often to find out if there are any updates – you’ll find out in real time.

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PubSubHubbub, also referred to as PuSH, is a decentralized real-time Web protocol that delivers data to subscribers the moment it becomes available. Traditionally, an RSS reader would poll a blog every so many minutes, like an annoying child on a car trip asking if you’re there yet. With a PuSH enabled blog, the blog and the reader both communicate through a hub. When new content is published, the blog immediately notifies the hub, which then notifies all of the subscribers. There is little to no delay. As WordPress notes in its blog, “In most cases these updates are sent out with in a second or two of when you hit the publish button.”

Just like the adoption of RSSCloud last fall, there is no need to opt-in or install a plugin for a blog hosted on WordPress.com to become PuSH enabled – it’s already active. For WordPress blogs hosted separately, a PuSH plugin, PuSHPress is now available for download.

This is yet another big step in our progression to a real-time Web. Last month, Google Reader went real time by consuming PuSH feeds, meaning they show up on the news site almost immediately after being published to the originating site. In conjunction, this means that any WordPress.com hosted blogs, as well as any PuSH enabled blogs running WordPress, will be immediately available on Google Reader and any other reader set to work with PuSH.

This also means that, if you want to be on the razors edge of what’s happening on the Web, you can also receive chat notifications of PuSH enabled blogs. RSS readers can be so last year when you can get a chat notification the instant a piece of content is published.

For a further explanation of PubSubHubbub, read Marshall Kirkpatrick’s article from last year’s Real Time Web Summit.

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While geolocation based services have been in the forefront of our minds lately, with websites like PleaseRobMe making us second guess announcing our whereabouts, another industry has been quietly ramping up its data collection practices.

The Center for Democracy & Technology issued a report yesterday addressing the growing “digital signage” industry, suggesting a number of privacy practices it might adopt.

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For the uninitiated, digital signage is just that – digital advertisements displayed in the real world on a screen. The name, however, does not give away the full capabilities of these devices, as they can also contain RFID scanners, video cameras and processing abilities to do a number of interesting tasks, such as facial recognition. They can be fully Internet-connected, meaning they can not only store data but compare it to online databases to customize ad displays according to any number of criteria, from the iPhone in your pocket to the type of car you are driving.

One somewhat eerie scene in Minority Report that the digital signage industry is surely tired of shows the potential of digital signage. Two years ago, this type of technology, which identifies passers-by individually and tailors ads with data it has collected about them, was predicted to be five to 10 years away.

We spoke with Harley Geiger, the author of the CDT’s report, and he said that, “for now digital signage does not quite identify people on an individual basis” but that the “CDT argues that the industry will one day routinely identify individuals for the simple reason that it will be profitable to do so.”

Some companies, Geiger says, are already storing information such as phone numbers and usernames, as it would get from an smartphone. Even if they do not store this information, other data, such as a MAC address, which is a unique number assigned to a piece of hardware, is only a step away from being connected to an individual’s unique identity.

“While it is encouraging that companies say they are committed to maintaining the anonymity of individuals right now,” Geiger wrote in an email, “the technology and infrastructure is not yet poised for widespread individual identification… so the pressure to identify individuals will come.”

According to a blog post on the CDT website, this report includes “a set of recommendations for safeguarding privacy as the DOOH industry increasingly adopts identification and tracking technologies, such as facial recognition, mobile marketing, social networking, RFID tracking and license plate scanners.”

“Right now, however, the more worrying trend is with transparency,” wrote Geiger.

He says that, while some “Digital Out Of Home” companies offer privacy policies on the Internet, many others do not have anything online nor at the location of the digital signage itself.

“Technology vendors are the most likely to have privacy policies up on the Web – but how are consumers in a department store supposed to know who the technology vendor for a particular sign is?” Geiger asks.

The report does not call for an end to digital signage. Instead, Geiger says that the CDT feels that “the industry must weave transparency, consumer privacy and security controls into its business model.”

“Unless the industry adopts strong self-regulatory guidelines, it is likely to face consumer backlash and reactive government regulation that may stifle innovation,” Geiger writes in his blog post. “It will only take a few bad apples that flout consumer privacy expectations to spoil the image of the whole industry.”

The digital signage industry may be tired of the scene in Minority Report, where holograms and digital signs address Tom Cruise’s character by name, but that’s because it’s a future we hope to never live in. If we wanted everyone to know exactly who we were everywhere we went, then we’d all be wearing name tags and t-shirts with our CV screen printed on them. But we don’t, because despite the rather public age of the Internet we’ve entered, we still like to entertain even the smallest semblance of privacy. We hope that the CDT’s recommendations do something to keep these technologies useful, but in check.

For more information on what the Center for Democracy & Technology is doing to ensure our privacy in this realm, read Harley Geiger’s blog post on his experience at last week’s Digital Signage Expo 2010.

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Chrome, Google’s entry into the browser market, has a new beta version today that shows off two new features – instant language translation and privacy settings.

The browser was the only browser to make gains in February and we’re thinking additions like these will only help to propel it’s popularity.

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According to the blog post, “when the language of the webpage you’re viewing is different from your preferred language setting, Chrome will display a prompt asking if you’d like the page to be translated for you using Google Translate.”

Google has, of course, been hard at work in the translation business. In early February, we wrote about how the company has been developing software to conduct real-time translation over mobile phones.

Chrome will use Google Translate, which currently translates between 52 languages, to automatically translate websites.

In addition to translation, the browser known for being lite on pretty much everything will get a little more cumbersome as it gets some privacy settings, though we don’t think this will be the sort of thing to bog it down at all. Rather, we’re glad to see Google looking after the user’s privacy concerns. The new settings will allow you to “control how browser cookies, images, JavaScript, plug-ins, and pop-ups are handled on a site-by-site basis.”

The features will be part of the automatic update in the near future, but for those who don’t like to wait, you can download the beta version here.

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While the blogosphere has been buzzing over how and when Twitter will finally roll out the full details of its anticipated ad platform, 140 Proof has put together an advertising platform for the microblog service of its own.

Today, it announced that it will integrate targeted advertising for HootSuite on both Android and iPhone.

HootSuite is launching an Android version of its Twitter client today, along with a new version for the iPhone, both of which will have ads by 140 Proof.

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While this certainly may not be the most exciting news around to Twitter users (has anyone ever said “Boy, this would be great, if only it had some advertising!”), companies looking to reach Twitter’s userbase have a way for targeting their ads.

From what we heard last week about Twitter’s expected ad platform, 140 Proof takes a similar approach. According to the company’s press release, “the ads behave just like tweets: each ad must have a real tweet associated with it so users can reply, and if desired, retweet the ad.”

A big difference here, however, is that the expected Twitter ad platform would only appear in searches. The 140 Proof ad platform, on the other hand, is highly targeted, focusing on a number of features, such as “keywords in tweets, followers, as well as device, location and platform”, according to TechCrunch. The ads will show up directly in the user’s tweet stream, but will be easily identifiable.

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It looks like while half the Web will be holding its breath over how Facebook will wield its newly-found patent power, with its patent of the news feed, the other half just found a reason to take a big gulp of air and look around.

Google was awarded last Tuesday a patent for location-based advertising, the potential bread and butter of a number of emerging mobile applications.

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Kim-Mai Cutler at VentureBeat first discovered the patent, which it says “covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad.” Google filed for the patent in April 2004, several years before location based check-in services ever came into popular use.

Now, companies like Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and BrightKite have to be wondering what this means for them, as do some of the established big-time players, like Facebook and Apple.

Cutler points out this could be a cause for concern or it could just be a bargaining chip, like in a cold war, writing “it’s uncertain whether other start-ups should be alarmed by this. It’s standard for companies to file patents on technology they have developed as a defensive practice, rather than as a tool for pressuring other companies to desist or pay license fees.”

The patent, titled “Determining and/or using location information in an ad system“, gives a fully detailed description of what we would expect of any advertising network, from the basic idea of serving an advertisement according to a user’s location to analyzing resultant traffic and advertising success according to a number of factors.

Google further expanded its business in the direction of mobile advertising last November, when it bought the mobile advertising service AdMob for $750 million. We weren’t all that puzzled by the move then, but now it makes even more sense.

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Twitter has just announced a number of partnerships with a companies engaged in “real-time search and discovery”. According to the blog post, the company is “happily turning the Firehose on for some new partners focused mainly on exploring the incredibly rich field of real-time search and discovery.”

This partnership is sure to dramatically increase the number of people reached by Twitter’s current user-base and could mean some big things for the microblog, not only in terms of exposure but in terms of its much rumored ad platform.

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According to the blog post, the full spectrum of data available in the “Firehose” was previously only available to Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. With this announcement, Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn Search will all join on as partners with Twitter and have access to the entirety of Twitter’s data stream in real time.

The Firehose, as compared to standard API access, does not have the same limits on how much a program accesses the data, which means much more real-time interaction is possible.

Gerry Campbell, CEO of Collecta, said that these partnerships show that “real-time is real,” calling this “the natural progression of the validation of real-time as a mode of information gathering.”

Twitter’s blog post, titled “Enabling A Rush of Innovation”, reads at times like a proclamation from above, but we have to admit we’re excited to see what can come of this. “Full investment,” reads the post “in this ecosystem of innovation, means all our partners should have access to the same volume of data, regardless of company size. […] With access to the full Firehose of data, it is possible to move far beyond the Twitter experiences we know today. In fact, we’re pretty sure that some amazing innovation is possible. “

Twitter seems to be making a point that even the little guy can get access to the full wealth of the Firehose and if this is true, then real-time interaction is just moments away from the smallest of startups.

But for now, the fact that this wealth of data is suddenly available to a number of real-time search engines can mean something big for the ad platform. As we wrote last Friday, Peter Kafka uncovered some details on the proposed advertising platform, one being that “the ads will only show up in search results.”

These partnerships could mean that these advertisements just gained a new real-time audience, outside of the big three. We asked Twitter about this but have yet to receive comment.

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We’ve spent some time recently looking at how Facebook has become a bigger driver of traffic to online news than news portals like MyYahoo or Google News, and our initial suspicions were confirmed with some data by the folks at HitWise.

In continuing to look at this trend, Heather Hopkins, an analyst with the traffic analysis company, dug a little bit deeper into the stats and found that there is a distinct difference between where the social network drives its traffic in comparison to Google News.

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According to Hopkins, Facebook sends nearly three times as much of its downstream traffic to broadcast media websites as compared to Google News.

Hopkins breaks down the top 10 news and media websites visited from both Google News and Facebook. The Google News list reads pretty much like a roster of the old guard, leading off with The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Reuters before finally hitting the first broadcast media outlet, CNN.com. Facebook, on the other hand, starts right off with The Weather Channel and CNN.com before getting to Yahoo! News. As a matter of fact, not one of the top 10 media and news outlets on Facebook’s list are a traditional print media outlet.

If we get rid of the two weather sites and People magazine, all we’re really left with are three big broadcast media outlets – CNN, MSNBC and Fox News – and news aggregators like Yahoo! News, the Drudge Report, topix and (surprise!) Google News. Does the traffic from here trickle down into the old guard, we wonder?

A key difference here might be that people are sharing news on Facebook that has an aspect of immediacy. When something big is happening in the world, some news is breaking, we might tend to look toward media outlets where we expect to find breaking news – broadcast media. Broadcast media have been handling news on a continuing 24 hour cycle for a while and, while print media have certainly changed to adopt this never ending cycle, we may still look to broadcast media first for these stories.

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Peter Kafka of All Things Digital has come out with some more details, which he says come from “people who have been briefed by the company”, about Twitter’s expected advertising platform. According to Kafka, the platform will be primarily search based, distributed via third-party applications and will appear in the familiar 140 character tweet format.

He makes sure to include a caveat, because there’s been a bit of confusion since reports of an “imminent” launch the other day, but the details mesh with what we’ve heard so far.

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“Everyone I’ve talked to cautions that the plans are evolving and that there are plenty of details to work out,” Kafka writes. “Including a launch date, though it seems as if the first half of this year is a very safe bet.”

When we first wrote about the ad platform this week, it was based on an article in MediaPost, which reported that a Twitter ad platform was “imminent”. Since then, Seth Goldstein, who led the talk on which the reports were based, has back pedaled, saying he was only referring to a November statement by Twitter regarding its advertising future. Goldstein since called MediaPost’s article “speculation“, but this seems to only apply in relation to the time frame. Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, is still on record with MediaPost as saying that the company is working on an ad platform, which is currently in the test phase.

According to Kafka, this is what we currently know about the developing ad platform:

• Ads will be tied to Twitter searches, in the same way that Google’s (GOOG) original ads did. So a search for, say, “laptop”, may generate an ad for Dell. The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don’t search for something won’t see them in their regular Twitterstream.
• The ads will use the Twitter format — 140 characters or less — and will be distributed via the third party software and services that use Twitter’s API. The services will have the option to display the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do.
• Twitter will work with ad agencies and buyers to seed the program, but plans on moving to a self-serve model, like Google offers, down the road.

The details jive with what Banerji told the MediaPost at the meeting in question.

“We don’t think of ourselves as a Web site — essentially it’s a platform,” Banerji said. “We don’t really control the ads or the way the tweets are viewed and then consumed. We are completely open around other people innovating around us. Ultimately, publishers should have choice. But the one area of concern for us — and that’s if bad ads get identified in Twitter — it’s a problem for us in the long term. So, we should do whatever we can to encourage positive behavior.”

An ad platform that leaves the appearance of advertising up to the program just calls out for a freemium model within third-party Twitter apps, where paying users could avoid seeing Twitter advertising. Or perhaps we’ll see the emergence of more open source Twitter applications as advertising begins to appear in our previously ad-free apps.

So while reports of Twitter unveiling the ad platform at SXSW may be a bit premature, it seems that there is no question that it is in the works and will take on many attributes of Google’s AdWords program.

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Google is having a hard time in Europe these days. Whether its employees are being convicted of violating privacy laws in Italy or it’s being accused of copyright infringement in Germany, the company is facing opposition wherever it goes.

Now, the company that has set out to digitize everything from ocean bottoms to outer space has received a warning from the European Union that it needs to do more to warn people before sending out cameras to record images for its popular Street View feature.

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According to the Associated Press, the European Union not only asked the search engine to provide more notice, but also to shorten the time it keeps these photos on file. Currently, Google keeps the images for one year and EU regulators requested this be shortened to six months. Google said in a statement that the year-long period is “legitimate and justified”.

Special software blurs faces and license plates to help prevent identifying information from showing up on the site, which has been known to catch some embarrassing moments.

Already, the company has backed out of Greece and agreed to remove raw images of Germany. The EU cited “high standards for data protection” in its warning, saying that “all companies play according to the rules of the game.”

According to The Telegraph, Google said it “would appeal the case, claiming the ruling was an attack on freedom of speech on the internet.”

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YouTube is continuing with what it’s calling “one of the biggest redesigns in YouTube history” and today it wants to point out some of its new, shiny features. The streaming video site first offered its users a sneak peek last month and it says it’s been listening to feedback and it now has three new features it wants to show off.

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First, YouTube has introduced a new playlist design, which shows all of your queued videos above the video your watching, with decently sized thumbnails to preview the content. It also has an AutoPlay feature that it says it will set to on when it has “a robust set of videos for you to watch next”.

Next, our favorite new feature is the queuing from search capability, which allows you to add videos to your queue when you search from the video page. We know that when we go on a bender of Kids In The Hall clips, we don’t want to wait too long between our head crushing and our “girl drink drunk“. You can even search without stopping the video your watching and if you don’t know what to watch next, YouTube may just queue up some classics for you automatically.

Last comes an addition to a section of YouTube not exactly known for its intelligence – the comments. The comments section will now list both text and video, so that video updates become a bigger and more integrated part of the discussion. This seems like a natural and necessary progression, but if the videos are anything like the text, we can only imagine where this will end up.

For now, the new features are opt-in only and if you don’t like what you find, you can just as easily opt out, although we’d suggest giving it a shot.

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If you fully realize the value of social media, then you’re constantly trying to parse, scrub, clean and otherwise organize your Twitter account. It’s a never-ending battle and often a steep, uphill one at that, but Tweepi can shift your effort into high gear – the geeky way.

Tweepi lets you know right off the bat that it may not be pretty and, as its tag line says, it’s still “very much a beta”, but boy does it do everything we have spent way too much time trying to do with other desktop clients and the Twitter website itself.

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The “geekier, faster way to manage Twitter”, as it calls itself, offers four separate utilities, all of them “geeky”: Follow, Flush, Reciprocate and Cleanup.

We tried out the Seesmic Web contact manager recently, and while we were impressed by it, Tweepi might win just by the sheer number of times the word “geeky” appears on the site. Tweepi is like taking all of your Twitter friends, importing them and a whole slew of stats about how they use Twitter into Excel, and then incorporating interactivity.

We may not agree with all of the functions of Tweepi, but to each their own. Flush, for example, gets rid of users you follow who don’t follow you back. Depending on what you’re using Twitter for, this may be useless. If you’re looking for information, not conversation, then don’t bother. Reciprocate, on the other hand, “helps you find all the users that follow you, but you do not follow back” and can help you make sure you don’t fall on the other end of that Flush utility.

The two functions that really caught our attention, however, are Cleanup and Follow. Cleanup will show you all of the people you follow and let you sort through them by any number of criteria, from their link-to-tweet ratio to the last time they tweeted. In all, it offers 16 separate columns that you can toggle on your view.

Tweepi also gives you a set of preset targets to organize user lists. You can find “Twitterers who discuss much”, which compares the number of messages they receive with replies they send, or “Avoid linkless ramblings”, which sorts people you follow according to their link-to-Tweet ratio. If you’re nearing the follow limit, you can clear out inactive users or if you’re looking to get the word out there, you can look for people with “Higher reach or influence”.

The Follow feature lets you enter a username and look at all the people following that user, again with all of the sorting capabilities we just mentioned. So, if I’m looking for other people who are interested in cycling in Austin, for example, I might put in @mellowjohnnys, the Twitter account for Lance Armstrong’s local bike shop, and see who else is following them. It’s a different take on the usual process, which more often lets you look at who a particular user is following rather than who is following them.

Since it’s still in beta, we’re actually hoping that the Follow feature gets flipped around the other way too, at some point. @RWW, for example, has over a million followers. It is only following 1,486, however. We’d much rather look at who an account like that one is following than who is following it. If you’ll excuse us, we have some cleaning up to do.

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As of today, Facebook Fan Page status updates will begin appearing in Google search results, according to a tweet by Google. The announcement means that we will begin seeing results from the nearly 3 million fan pages, but not from the more than 400 million users.

Google currently controls around 90% of the search engine market, according to StatCounter, with Yahoo and Bing it’s closest competitors. Will Bing’s exclusive access to Facebook user updates change this at all?

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Google first announced the expansion of its real-time Web search last December, noting that it would include data from Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Indenti.ca and Twitter. And, of course, Buzz is now included in that list. Since then, Bing and Yahoo have made deals to step up their real-time Web search as well.

Yahoo recently brokered a deal with Twitter and Bing expanded its partnership with Facebook to become the default on-site search engine for the social network. Also included in the Bing deal was the ability to fully index public user updates, but this functionality is not yet available.

While it may be true that having access to only Facebook Fan Page updates puts Google at a disadvantage in terms of the sheer volume of content indexed, do we really want to have every piece of content shared by those 400 million users in our search results? A recent post here on ReadWriteWeb garnered a large stream of traffic from Facebook’s more technologically inept portion of its user base and the resulting comments were less then intellectual.

As Brandee Barker, a spokeswoman for Facebook, told us the other day, “Facebook Pages are designed to provide authentic voices for public figures, celebrities, and organizations.” While some are arguing these new results will just be a stream of advertisements and self-promotion, they will focus on official voices from organizations and the content they want to share.

We’re not sure about you, but maybe we don’t want to hear every little thing every person on the planet has to say about everything. Although the Internet is a great and democratizing force, perhaps having some filters remain in place isn’t the end of the world. It can be hard enough just keeping up with the stream of updates as it is. Adding the daily chatter of 400 million may just go one step too far – although we’d still like the option.

Maybe, in the end, this will give Bing a bigger share of the search engine market, and that isn’t a bad thing. Just like a multi-party political system offers more choices, maybe a more balanced search engine market would be better for us too. When we want the official word from official organizations, we can go to Google. When we want to put our finger on the pulse of the 400 million users, we can go to Bing.

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Have you ever heard someone proclaim that if you don’t vote, then you shouldn’t complain? Well, whether or not you vote, we have the perfect iPhone app to make your complaints heard by whatever government official, agency or otherwise – DIY Democracy.

This handy little government 2.0 app will let you make that wheel squeak even louder, all while informing you of your rights. And for the true civic participant on the go, you can even petition to run for office without interrupting your day.

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DIY Democracy is a location enabled app that, although currently only fully-functional for California residents, connects its users with all the various levels of government. The app is a project of the Prometheus Institute, a public policy non-profit organization.

The app is divided into four primary categories: Rights & Laws, Representatives, Take Action and Public Forum. Each of the first three are separated into the various levels of government, whether local, state or federal.

The “Rights & Laws” section is a pocket reference to laws concerning all sorts of handy things, like due process or search and seizure. The app not only quotes the law directly, but offers a layman’s interpretation. Of course, this is accompanied by a standard caveat that the information is for education only, but they seem to do a decent job of explaining “how it’s generally applied in real life.” In many ways, it’s like having a pocket constitution, but broken down for easy access.

“Representatives” offers a full listing of government officials, from Barack Obama to your local alderman, and each with contact information such as phone number, email address and website.

The “Public Forums” are just that and, while we imagine the types of people that use this app to be the vocal sorts, we’re not so sure a message forum is quite tailored to the iPhone. That said, the forums are also available on the web, but we question their true utility in this instance.

Moving on, the final section, “Take Action”, is the one that really caught our attention. We reviewed an app yesterday called GoRequest, that offered similar capabilities, but this one seems to take it a step further. DIY Democracy brings the various levels and offices of government to you with pre-formatted, well-written letters for the on-the-go complaint. Whether you want to run for office, contest the validity of a law, or simply report a pothole or road hazard, DIY Democracy is set to connect you with the proper authorities.

It does all of this, of course, with your exact location in mind, so when you report that pothole, or dangerously dangling tree limb, the local department of public works will get exact GPS coordinates in addition to whatever other description you offer.

In addition to GPS coordinates and pre-formatted letter templates, you can of course directly attach both photos and video, making options like “Contact Mayor” seem a little less silly. If an issue is urgent enough, get the evidence and send it off to the officials.

We can only hope to see this app come out for more locations than California. While it’s nifty that it goes all the way to the top, we find that being able to directly interact with your local government and report issues as seen on the ground is probably the more likely use for this app.

DIY Democracy is available for download in the App Store.

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Italy today attacked the very basis of the read/write Web we focus on here at ReadWriteWeb when it convicted three of four Google employees on trial for failing to comply with the Italian privacy code. In essence, Italy just said that website owners are legally responsible for all content posted to their site, whether or not they have any part of it and comply with local laws once notified.

This sort of ruling attacks the foundation of the Internet as we use it today. If corporations and website owners are to be held responsible in this way for user-created content, the Web as we know it will die a fast and painful death.

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Google explained the details of the situation early this morning in a blog:

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police … a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees –David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video’s existence until after it was removed.

Reuters reports that the three executives were sentenced to six months in jail. The ruling sets a very dangerous precedence. As we wrote earlier this month, “Nicola D’Angelo, a commissioner in Italy’s Communications Authority, say these new rules would make Italy ‘the only Western country in which it is necessary to have prior government permission to operate this kind of service.’”

The simple fact is that users should be solely responsible for the content they create, as long as the publishing entity takes reasonable steps to ensure that laws are followed within a timely manner. Had Google allowed to sit on the website in defiance of the laws, then we would be having a different discussion.

As Google argues in its blog post, “If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.”

Google says it will “vigorously appeal this decision”, a move we strongly back. But we have to wonder why it won’t take this same sort of stance in China, where it has threatened, but still has yet to remove censorship on its search results.

Just as the argument here is that people need to be allowed to create, and websites allowed to host, content, people need to be able to access that content. Freedom consists not only of the ability to express opinions, however disparate, but to access those opinions.

So, in reference to standing up to Italy, we say an enthusiastic “here, here!” and only hope to see the same, instead of idle threats, in the company’s dealings with China.

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These days, the web of connections between various social media sites, search engine giants, old software stand bys and hot Internet startups is starting to look like the diagram of an incestuous group of teenagers. And today, that web got one more strand, as Yahoo and Twitter announced a partnership that will bring the two companies closer together.

The deal comes on the heels of this morning’s revelation that Twitter will be soon unveiling an advertising platform, which means more tweets seen in more places, and therefore more revenue.

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The Los Angeles Times quotes Twitter co-founder Bizz Stone on the significance of the deal.

“The information in one single tweet can travel light years farther with this Yahoo integration,” Stone said in a statement. “Tweets in more places brings relevance where and when you need it most.”

According to a press release by Yahoo, the deal will bring Twitter’s content to Yahoo’s network of nearly 600 million people worldwide. For Yahoo, this brings Twitter to the table where it had already seated next to social network giant Facebook, but we think this might be an even better deal for Twitter.

The press release breaks down the partnership into three key areas. First, Twitter feeds will be available across Yahoo, from the home page to mail and beyond. Yahoo’s users will also be able to update Twitter and share content directly from Yahoo. Search results will also contain tweets as well as a number of Yahoo media properties, such as news, finance, entertainment and sports.

Of course, while we see this as a big deal for Twitter, our recent conversation with Gigya CEO David Yovanno tells us that for Yahoo to stay in the game, deals like this are necessary. Social networks are quickly becomming bigger traffic-driving forces than search engines, so integration is key.

Kara Swisher, of the All Things Digital blog, explains that Twitter’s content will be woven in throughout Yahoo’s content as part of Yahoo’s “Project Rushmore“, which looks to integrate social media into the Internet portal.

There have been a number of deals like this in recent weeks. Microsoft last week struck a similar deal with both Facebook and Myspace, as well as LinkedIn, to bring social media streams to Outlook. Just last fall, Twitter made deals with both Microsoft and Google to bring tweets to search results on those services.

Soon enough, it seems there won’t be a dark or dusty corner of the Web that remains untouched by the latest 140-character slice of life your social network chooses to share. And with Twitter’s recent rash of hirings, this announcement, in conjunction with their announcement of an ad platform, means the microblog can afford to pay its employees and hopefully unveil some interesting new features in the future.

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All across the country, newspapers are shuttering and those that remain are closing down bureaus and pulling correspondents left and right. More and more, media outlets are relying on fewer sources for their information because of a lack of funding, but a number of websites have appeared to solve this problem.

One such crowd-funded website, Spot.Us, has released a series of new features today in its efforts to save us all from the closed-minded future we’re currently facing.

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First, here is how it works. Spot.Us gives freelance journalists a space to pitch their story idea, which the website’s users can then invest in. Then, if the story is purchased by a news organization, the donations are reimbursed. It’s like a micro loan service for journalism.

The changes to the site include a widget, which allows individuals to show their support for a specific story on third-party websites, social networking connections for Twitter and Facebook, new organization of stories, and a progress blog for each story on the site, to make it easier to keep track. Spot.Us has also said it is open to suggestions for other cities to be a part of, as it only operates in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area, currently. Most importantly, we think, Spot.Us has released a new feature concerning how “community funded” journalism operates on a base level.

In an interesting twist, Spot.Us has recognized that there may be more to funding journalism than money itself, and now its users can pledge talent instead of cash. According to the press release on today’s new features, “Citizens who may not have financial resources or want to participate more actively, can now collaborate on a story through an assignment agreed upon by the primary journalist and the citizen.”

In addition to the widget, Spot.Us is looking to make an open API in the near future “that would further enable journalists and communities to realize journalism through technology.” We think this could be a great addition, as the project could expand geographically according to where users would support it, in much the same organic fashion as stories are funded.

So far, the project has raised over $70,000 and funded 50 stories from more than 700 contributors. We hope these new features will only help to further the cause of community-sourced and -funded journalism. If we aren’t willing to pay after the fact, maybe we will be more willing to pay beforehand, since we’ll know what we’re buying.

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We have to say that you know the end is near when entire countries advise their citizens to move on, but the final kicker comes when Google says that it will no longer support the browser that’s been with us for nearly a decade.

Google-owned YouTube will end support for Internet Explorer 6 on March 13, just two weeks after ending support on Google Docs.

We suspect that YouTube will affect a larger portion of IE6 users and may be a final tipping point.

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Internet Explorer 6 was first released in Aug. 2001, and has since come pre-installed with Windows XP, which still accounted for over 60% of browsers worldwide in December of last year.

Ars Technica explains that Microsoft refuses to force its users to upgrade, even though it “has stated time and time again that it wants to see IE6 disappear as much as anyone else.” Currently, IE6 accounts for about 20% of surfers worldwide, with IE8 currently the most popular version.

According to Google, users running IE6 and other old browsers will still be able to watch videos, but will be shown an interstitial every two weeks, as seen above, to remind them to upgrade. Some features will not be available to these users until they upgrade. Google considers “old” browsers to be anything older than IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0 and Safari 3.0.

In other news, we can only hope that this is a signal that we will be seeing some cool new features rolling out in the near future for YouTube. And perhaps more companies will come out against the now-ancient browser and help to put it out of its, and Web designers’ everywhere, misery.

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The question all along has been – “how will Twitter monetize?” and it looks like we have at least one answer today. According to an article in MediaPost, the release of a Twitter ad platform is “imminent” and we’ll likely signs of it on our Twitter feeds within a month.

According to the article, Anamitra Banerji told MediaPost

after a meeting Monday, “We are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.”

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Banerji assured MediaPost that Twitter would make it “explicity clear” that a post was from an advertiser and not a regular users. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association recently released a guide for companies to use, suggesting they use #spon, #paid, and #samp hashtags to indicate their relationship to a product being tweeted about. Banerji said this was simply a good work around, but that Twitter would take a different approach.

As opposed to someone tweeting about a product, these ads will be owned and operated by Twitter, much in the same way Google offers its AdSense advertising. Banerji did, however, offer a statement that separated the Twitter ad platform from others:

“We don’t think of ourselves as a Web site — essentially it’s a platform,” Banerji said. “We don’t really control the ads or the way the tweets are viewed and then consumed. We are completely open around other people innovating around us. Ultimately, publishers should have choice. But the one area of concern for us — and that’s if bad ads get identified in Twitter — it’s a problem for us in the long term. So, we should do whatever we can to encourage positive behavior.”

While the article says we should see signs in about a month, we can only wonder how long it will be. If you remember, Twitter announced their “hovercards” feature at the beginning of this month, but most of us are still waiting to see the feature pop up on our own pages.

This one, however, looks like it might be around by the beginning of next month, according to GigaOm. They report that “one source in the media industry” says that Twitter may launch the ad network during South By Southwest Interactive, which begins in Austin on March 12.

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Buying and selling stuff on the Internet surely has come a long way. Just a decade ago, most of us would never be caught dead shopping for real, live goods on the Internet. Who knows what you’ll get, right? Order a pair of size nine shoes and get a pair of size 12 clod-hoppers.

But now, we shop online for everything from books to sporting goods to clothing to organic food and a recent study

says there’s one brand we trust the most for our online shopping addiction – Amazon.com.

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According to a study released today by Millward Brown, Amazon.com is the top performing brand in the U.S. based on “trust” and “recommendation”. The study uses a “TrustR” standard to judge different companies, which it arrives at by asking consumers two questions – “how trustworthy is this brand?” and “would you recommend this brand?”. The average score is 100, with over 105 considered “good”. Amazon.com’s score was 123. FedEx was a close second with 122.

Amazon.com was the only online-only brand of the top-10 trusted brands.

The results released today in the report come from an ongoing study, which has been running for 12 years and includes respondents from more than 30 countries.

According to a summary (.pdf) of the full report, only 1% of brands achieve scores of over 120, with 27% getting scores of 105 or higher.

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