Social Networking - Powerful in Politics
Came across this MIT Tech Review article on how the Obama Campaign is using Social Networking to get the message out. V cool!

Big News @ Amazon Web Services
Amazon announced the release of Elastic Block Storage, persistent storage service for EC2. So, now, you can rent a complete server with attached storage at AWS. The storage will live even if you destroy the server. Here is a post from Jeff Barr describing the service. Another post by Amazon CTO, Werner Volgels.

Here is the GigaOM post where I first read about the service.

I wish these services were available when I was CTO at Brassring, a SaaS provider in the recruitment automation space.

No post for 6 weeks - I was away on vacation and then just catching up on stuff

Web3D
Interesting article on Demo.com on how 3D is getting inserted into websites and social networks. 3D Worlds might do not generate the same level of buzz. Google Lively seems to have received a "me too" reception. However, 3D is a much better experience for stuff and I am sure that we will see it embedded in all sorts of websites over the next couple of years. The article covers technologies that are helping do just that.

What a cool Idea: PlantSense
Just saw an article about this product that can be used to determine if a plant will survive in a location or not. Read more about it on their website!

The product is a small, oblong object that a gardener plunges about halfway into the soil. While the lower half gauges the quality of the soil, the upper portion gathers information on light, heat, weather patterns and other factors that spell life or death to a plant.

Samsung F480 Tocco - another iPhone challenger?
I think that, if the mobile device makers have their way, we will all soon be carrying touch devices a la iPhone. I am not sure if I am ready to give up the real keyboard on my blackberry for e-mail. I am convinced that I will again be moving to a 2-device scenario - which is where I was before I moved to the phone / e-mail blackberry 3 years ago!

Here is a review of the Samsung G480 Tocco! It does look great but can it compare with the ease of use of the iPhone?

Ad Networks
Interesting article on The State of Ad Networks. It provides a good list of key Ad Networks and their reach.

iPhone 3G competitors
For all the buzz iPhone has generated, it does have some very slick competitors in: Nokia N96, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, HTC Touch Diamond and Samsung Omnia i900. Three of them run Windows Mobile while the Nokia runs Symbian. Here is an Infoworld Article that lists the key tech specs. I am planning to try the Sony and the Nokia.

@ D6 Conference: Yahoo!
Jerry Yang and Sue Decker were obviously questioned for a long time about the Microsoft deal. The topic has been well covered in the media and we did not learn anything new. A few products thst sounded interesting:

• search monkey (allows additional structured information to be presented with search results) More details on Search Engine Land
• search assist (to help you with query formation). More here ...
  

Yahoo! wants to be where you start the day - the most strategically important Yahoo! products in that regard are: home page, mail, search and mobile.

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Have worked my way though this very engaging book over the past couple of weeks. Here is how Clay describes his book on his blog:

Here Comes Everybody is about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures.

In a very well thought out and nicely presented work, Clay describes the evolution of personal (one to few and few to few) and broadcast (one to many) communications to the same platform - the web. He explains why, I, a blogger with an audience of hundreds and with an ability to respond to every interaction from my readers, am different from GigaOM and TechCrunch, modern day tech news publishers. The technology infrastructure for us to publish is, essentially, close to free and the audience geographically dispersed and infinitely scalable.

Interesting Quote: Core business of a media company
Recently read this quote from Cory Doctorow in Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirkey

Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Every media company tries to create content that people will talk about. Great media companies create content that millions talk about. Brilliant!