For the Blind, a Welcoming Web

"Web accessibility can be tricky, and guidelines have to constantly be updated. For the visually impaired, it's really all about making sure that the programming code used to build the site is friendly to screen readers. That's why many banks now have login information on the top right-hand corner. Before, a blind user would have to listen to everything on the page before they could log in to check account balances. Advocates say they want Web site usability, not mere compliance."

Come to Daddy

This is the future of TV for people who will never be satisfied with Basic Cable. A couple years from now, it will be a huge driver of broadband sales to ethnic communities, allowing Grandma to watch her favorite soap operas from the old country. This and Tivo-like recording devices are going to change TV (right down to the business model) as we know it. Some people get this, some people don't. Rupert Murdoch gets it and his DirecTV investment is all about preloading pay-per-view movies on satellite player hard disks. Most American broadcasters don't get it, and this is going to hurt them."

Wikinews

"Wikinews would be to journalism what Wikipedia is to encyclopedias. Reports and articles would be written by a community wiki-style and would follow the Wikipedia rule of Neutral Point of View (NPOV). There would be controls in place to decide when an article was 'finished' and a lot of thought has gone into the workflow of how this would work. The idea of accreditation of contributors has also been proposed."

Microsoft's Worst Nightmare

"It's a roundabout way to challenge Microsoft's Windows monopoly -- attempting to refashion the Web itself as an operating system where every bit of software is controlled through the browser. If that sounds hauntingly familiar, it's because you've heard it before: Ross's wunderkind forebear, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, boldly predicted in 1995 that his browser would make Windows obsolete. Of course, it didn't quite work out that way, and Microsoft used its lock on the operating system to crush the upstart."

Alexa web services beta

"Jeff Barr of Amazon/Alexa recently announced that Alexa has launched a web services platform much like what Amazon has. This will allow skilled users the ability to use Alexa's data to provide new and different ways to view and parse Alexa information. This is a smart move by Amazon and Alexa, because getting sophisticated APIs out to users seems to be one area of significant innovation on the net recently."

Men talk to Google not girlfriends

"A poll conducted by MSN Search found that search engines are the first port of call for nearly half of men seeking advice. Family are consulted by a third, while partners are the sounding board of choice for only one in four men. In comparison, the study into gender search patterns reveals that women still opt for more traditional advice options, with one in three rating family as their number one choice for help and information."

The Web's Father Expects a Grandchild

"Say you're looking for a photograph in a certain state. And you have another photograph somewhere with a ZIP code. The machine understands that we're talking about location, and a Semantic Web search engine could actually go out and learn, find the logic on the Web, and then know that when something is in a given ZIP code, it's also in a given state. So, a search by state would also be able to find things categorized by ZIP code. "