MySpace News

MySpace is trying to stay alive as the popular social networking website. It launched a new section called "news". It's a news portal that works in the same way as a news aggregation site Google News and a news rating site Digg. With its new feature of allowing its users to rate the news and decide what should make front page news, MySpace is trying to boost its advertising sales. It's also trying to get its users to read news, rate news and send news to their friends. It's no longer going to be a shallow site about songs and photos. It's trying to get its users reading.

It makes me wonder if MySpace is reacting to threats of Facebook's popularity and reacting by trying to expand its users Internet usage.

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't need to come up with something better. It's already much better and if MySpace wants to compete and raise its advertising revenue, try changing the interface.

Web 2.0 Goes to School

Web 2.0 has transformed the way we communicate and interact on the web. It's not surprising that colleges in the U.S. are offering courses and programs solely devoted to this new technology.

Along with your standard computer science, information technology, engineering and communication degrees, more Web 2.0 classes are emerging. Class such as Online Communities and Web 2.0 and Global Engineering are showing up.

Such skills are going to come in handy when the global economy is changing. Big firms like IBM are recognizing that technical skills of computer science degrees are lacking the global understanding of the web and Web 2.0.

So what do you do in these situations? Send your employers back to school to upgrade. Carnegie Mellon West has launched a program for a Master of Science degree in software management. Hewlett-Packard and Cisco with other big firms have encouraged their employees to take night classes at the satellite school to study software development along with business management.

It's the small Web 2.0 companies that are going to, if they aren't doing so already, create a competitive market for software development and new networking capabilities.

And while at school, maybe these new students can come up with Web 2.0 lingo to add to Addictionary.org, which is looking for new words as part of a challenge (unfortunately the contest is closed for this year, but there is always next year.) Or just check to see what other web lingo contests are being run. Maybe you can have your name beside a word? Wouldn't that be fun!

Mobile Internet

Have you always wanted the world wide web in the palm of your hand?

Have you always wished it would actually work on your mobile phone?

If you tried to access the Internet through your mobile phone or mobile-ready device, chances are you encountered slow, pixely or unpredictable service. Chances are you gave up before a page loaded. Chances are you never tried again.

.mobi - a new top level domain name is dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices. Massive Magazine examines how .mobi is proving popular with businesses and preparing web companies for the future.

Although mobile browsing has a way to go, manufacturers are estimating more than three billion mobile phone users by 2009, meaning mobile Internet will be the dominant platform. It's already proven that four mobile phones are sold for every personal computer so it makes sense to make mobile Internet work.

There are a couple of bugs that need to be worked out. Security for one. Companies and organizations are protecting their intellectual property by registering trademarks and names in the .mobi extension. There is still a growing number of abusive registration of trademarks and unless a company registers under the .mobi extension, it is running the risk of having its intellectual property abused.

There's a strong backing for this domain with service providers as being the earliest adopters. But now media organizations are following suit and of course, computing giants like Google are invested in bringing the Internet to the masses.