Over the weekend we had a chance to highlight

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Always Be Testing: 8 Services For Usability Feedback

"2009 was the year of Social Media" according to Buzz Study , the blog that keeps tabs on Infegy's Social Radar . They're not speaking from experience, they're speaking from what they've seen in the billions of "blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts" the service has collected over the past two years. While the service normally provides more complex information around a certain brand, as in its tracking of the Domino's Pizza PR disaster this past September , the top 50 list takes an easier approach: how many unique sources mentioned a brand over the past year. So what brand was the talk of the town in 2009? Sponsor Why, Twitter , of course. Google , which had previously held the number one spot, took second prize and Facebook jumped up six spots to round out the top three. While you can take a look at the full list of 50 top brands yourself, Buzz Study had this to say about the results: The list certainly shows that 2009 was the year of Social Media. Twitter moved ahead of Google to take the number 1 spot, while Facebook and MySpace made significant leaps over big brands as well. Most video game related brands were down this year as well, including Sony, Wii, Xbox, and Nintendo. It also appears TV brands all jumped this year including Disney, MTV, Fox, BBC, CNN, ESPN, and ABC. Blackberry, MTV and Starbucks were among the top movers in this years list, with each rising 17, 13 and 12 spots respectively. Canon, Samsung and Intel were the hardest hid on the list, dropping 17, 16 and 13 spots from last year. Discuss

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Top 50 Social Brands of 2009. Spoiler: You Know All of Them

Earlier this year at the SemTech conference in San Jose, I sat down with Wolfram|Alpha 's Russell Foltz-Smith. Wolfram|Alpha bills itself as a "computational knowledge engine," a nerdy and unfortunately not very intuitive description. Because it's hard to grok, most people have categorized Wolfram|Alpha as a new type of search engine. The site got a lot of press when it launched in May , as many pundits saw it as a challenger to Google. However in our own extensive tests of the product before launch, we concluded that it isn't a "Google Killer" and that it has more in common with Wikipedia. Even now there is still confusion about what Wolfram|Alpha is and what its main use cases will be. In this interview with Russell Foltz-Smith, we discuss what people are using Wolfram|Alpha for now; and more importantly what its uses will be in the near future. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! Wolfram|Alpha: What is it Good For? Wolfram|Alpha is a product that was built on top of founder Stephen Wolfram's Mathematica product, a software tool for mathematicians that was initially released in 1988. The aim is to allow users to type human-like statements and have computations done on those. Wolfram|Alpha was first conceived and started development about 4 years ago, and just 6-8 months ago the team gave serious consideration to taking the product to a wider consumer audience. I started out by asking Foltz-Smith what the Wolfram|Alpha team thought of all the media hype around their product, particularly about the "Google Killer" theme which many media outlets reveled in. Foltz-Smith replied that they were expecting to be compared to Google, but not to that extent. Their team was a little surprised there wasn't more discussion around Wolfram|Alpha's similarities to Wikipedia and Freebase (although he noted that ReadWriteWeb certainly covered that!). Regarding the Google comparisons, Foltz-Smith said that they didn't give into the hype - they stuck to what their goals were. I remarked that many people still seem confused about what Wolfram|Alpha does and what it can be used for. Foltz-Smith said that people will use it for different things. The crux of the product though is that it allows people to compute and calculate things. But will mainstream people use Wolfram|Alpha? Right now, it seems to be focused on mathematicians. Foltz-Smith replied that yes, eventually Wolfram|Alpha will find a mainstream audience. It has started specific, but it will go broader. First, he said, it has to "pass a test" with "serious users" - by which he means academics and computational users. If it's useful for them, claimed Foltz-Smith, it will then go mainstream. Use Case: Education One real-world use case we talked about was using Wolfram|Alpha in education. Russell Foltz-Smith said that Wolfram|Alpha could be used to automatically generate problem sets for students, and then research those sets. A recent article in education website Chronicle.com argued that Wolfram|Alpha may have a less desired effect: encouraging cheating and laziness in students. This is because Wolfram|Alpha not only solves complex math problems, it "also can spell out the steps leading to those solutions." Stephen Wolfram told Chronicle.com that computer-algebra systems like Wolfram|Alpha actually improve education - because they allow students to explore complex problems on their own and intuitively determine how functions work, rather than just learn rote processes. Wolfram claimed that "it's better to let them [students] stand on that platform and go further." Either way, it's clear that Wolfram|Alpha and similar computational software will force the education system to adapt and change. Students now have a new (and certainly easier to use, as it's on the Web) platform on which to compute things. There's no point in the education system pretending it doesn't exist. If you're interested in tracking the progress of Wolfram|Alpha in educational settings, there is a wiki devoted to 'Teaching Undergraduate Math with Wolfram|Alpha.' Use Case: Computational Journalism This one was described to me as "anomaly spotting." For example with the current interest in swine flu news, Wolfram|Alpha could be used to fact-find and compute interesting trends. As Foltz-Smith described it, Wolfram|Alpha could "automatically enhance news." Foltz-Smith noted that CNN and other major networks do this already (analyze data), but that it's expensive to do. The end results on CNN are added value things like interactive maps and fancy diagrams. Wolfram|Alpha could make this type of data gathering and analysis presentation inexpensive and common place amongst all kinds of news operations - including good old blogs. Use Case: Sports Watching Imagine sitting in your sofa in the lounge, remote control in one hand and your favorite beverage in the other. You're watching the Friday night game on TV, it's a close game and you're curious about which team has the better chance of winning. Why, check Wolfram|Alpha of course! In real time, Wolfram|Alpha could compute statistics about not just the history of the two teams - but the history of the location of the game, the weather, the season so far, etc. As Foltz-Smith explained it, Wolfram|Alpha would be able to do "chained queries" - queries made up of multiple parts. For example: which quarterback had the best winning record in games played in the rain during the 1970s. Other Use Cases We also discussed medical and scientific use cases. Although there are early examples of Wolfram|Alpha in health, such as a nutrition label generator , Foltz-Smith was generally cautious about medical uses - because a lot of health data "can't be wrong." He noted that in use cases like medical research, the issue of data fidelity is key. For example with the human genome, you have to take great care of that data and associated algorithms. Also he explained that as something like the human genome scales, how do you do QA? Foltz-Smith admitted that the Wolfram|Alpha team is still working on these and similar issues. But they have a lot of people devoted to solving this problem. Some types of data could be crowdsourced, e.g. in linguistics, but other data needs different approaches. Conclusion It was interesting to hear about some of the potential uses of Wolfram|Alpha. We at ReadWriteWeb think this product has a promising future. If Web 2.0 was about creating data (user generated content, to use the most familiar term for this), then the next generation of the Web is all about using that data. Wolfram|Alpha is premised on using and computing data. Let us know in the comments what use cases you see for Wolfram|Alpha, and whether you're aware of similar computational web apps. See also: Wolfram|Alpha: Our First Impressions Wolfram|Alpha in Action: Our Screenshots Mixed Emotions: Our First Hands-On Test Of Wolfram|Alpha Wolfram|Alpha Launch: Here's What You Need to Know Wolfram Alpha Gets Its First Update Discuss

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Wolfram|Alpha: The Use Cases

A storm of news points to a future of frictionless publishing and subscription, across platforms. Google just announced that its FeedBurner RSS publishing service now supports automatic publishing to a Twitter account. If you're among the many people who use the service Twitterfeed (like CNN, the WhiteHouse, ReadWriteWeb, etc.) then you may very well find that startup expendable starting now. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this and a series of related announcements over the past few days. Sponsor The new feature looks relatively sophisticated and will use a new URL shortener, goo.gl . FeedBurner has not proven the most reliable service in recent years and is now part of the ad network AdSense, but the little startup Twitterfeed isn't always reliable either. It does, though, have more incentive to innovate and work in user's interests. Ultimately, the service you use to publish content updates to Twitter is just a small part of a much bigger story. The Twitter/FeedBurner integration uses secure OAuth authorization, so you don't have to give Google your Twitter password. It will check the links coming through that shortened URL for malware and bad sites. Right now other apps won't be able to use Goo.gl, just Feedburner and Google Toolbar, but that might change in time. Consider this announcement side by side with the WordPress announcement this weekend that WordPress blogs can now be posted to and read from Twitter clients , the rumor today that Facebook is experimenting with its own URL shortener , this afternoon's announcement that the ability to expose your geographic location is now live in Google Toolbar and now longer a Labs product and last week's go-live of real-time search on Google. All of this combined says one thing to us: the web is getting a whole lot faster and much more free of friction, quickly. WordPress, Google, Twitter and Facebook will force each other to agree to common standards for reading and writing content updates, those updates will be delivered in real time and the standards will allow an ecosystem of 3rd party client software to proliferate and play along with the big guys. Authentication is being done by OAuth, real-time feeds by RSS, Atom, PubSubHubbub. WordPress is the wild card because it is huge, more supportive than anyone else of Open Source and it could force everyone else to open up to interoperability. The next step? This morning Google's Marissa Mayer said in an interview that Google is working hard on intuitive search , the ability to show users what they want before they even have time to search for it. Publish once and your content is everywhere, immediately. Open your browser and it will show you just the kind of content you need, from all around the web, targeting your particular circumstances like clickstream, social graph and geographic location. If that's the kind of platform that's coming - how will people innovate on top of it? The foundation is being laid right now for a whole new web in the near-term future. Discuss

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Google, Twitter, WordPress & Facebook: Publish/Subscribe Matrix Could Explode Into Glass-Smooth Platform

This morning in her address to LeWeb conference attendees, her majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan asked the question, "Did Michael Jackson change the fate of the green revolution?" While CNN was slow to report on this year's Iranian election protests, Twitter became a powerful news vehicle . Nevertheless, after a week of "Tehran" as Twitter's top trending topics, Michael Jackson's sudden death quickly replaced it. Sponsor Interested in the power of activism and social change, Queen Rania tweeted the question, "Can the real-time web change the world?" Inundated with answers, the Queen was surprised to find that 60% of those who replied answered no. As one way to rally netizens to participate in life changing social action, Rania called upon today's attendees to join in her mission of universal education for children. In participation with the 1Goal project, the Queen appealed to bloggers for their help. In a campaign to collect more than 300 million signatures in support of universal childhood education, she is asking bloggers to devote one day of tweeting and blogging to the 1Goal project. Said Rania, "The classroom can be a chrysalis for change...We can be lifestreaming and life changing." For more information on how you can participate visit join1goal.org . Photo Credit: Chris Heuer Discuss

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Queen of Jordan Calls on Blogger Friends

Outside.in is a hyper-local news aggregator and when they say hyper-local they mean it - the site captures news, blog posts and other resources right down to the neighborhood level. The company announced tonight that it's raised a nice round of funding, $7 million from CNN, the super-hip VC at Union Square Ventures , real-time savvy VC shop Betaworks and several other organizations. Both of the aforementioned are existing investors re-investing. Tonight the Outside.in site told me about a new real-estate valuation report for the neighborhood I just bought a house in, a city permit request by a local college planing to subdivide a big residential lot on the beautiful old street I walk my dogs on and some cool jobs in the neighborhood. What more could I ask for? Long term viability and an expanded staff for a service like this? That sounds great. Sponsor Outside.in says that its headlines will soon be run on CNN's website, much like MSNBC has said it will run hyper-local news from the related site it acquired this year, EveryBlock . EveryBlock tends to discover a lot more information than Outside.in does. Its public records discovery is especially good. It's a lot of fun to read health department inspection reports from neighborhood restaurants (in a perverse sort of way) and that's not something Outside.in unearths. EveryBlock has to date been limited to a handful of big cities around the US, though. Outside.in has no such limitation. Things not to love about Outside.in include a garish new advertising-filled page layout (just subscribe by RSS feed) and a heart-breaking iPhone app. That app discovers your location and brings up area news - lots of fun to use when house-hunting in different neighborhoods. Not so much fun when it fails to work, which is more often than not in my experience. If you want a good local news iPhone app, check out Fwix . I'm eagerly awaiting the launch of Nozzl Media , a related service we profiled in our report The Real-Time Web and Its Future . These kinds of data parsing services, tied to real-life experiences like geographic location, are becoming an important value add now that more and more data is coming online. Everyone wants to discover the future of news - these kinds of services could well be an important part of it. Note: Outside In is also the name of a 40 year old youth social services agency that also deserves respect, speaking of local. Discuss

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I Love Outside.in & It Just Got CNN Backing

Earlier this morning, Wikileaks began to post pager messages that were sent on September 11, 2001. According to Wikileaks, these messages were intercepted by an "organization which has been intercepting and archiving US national telecommunications since prior to 9/11." Some of these messages are from officials in police and fire departments, though a large number of messages are also from businesses. Others are automated messages to engineers that were sent by computers about network and hardware issues. Sponsor Wikileaks is posting these messages semi-live - in sync with the events of 9/11. It's not clear how Wikileaks got this data or who intercepted these messages. This archive is likely to become an invaluable source for anybody who wants to study the events and the public's reaction on this day. Chances are that conspiracy theorists are already wading through this data looking for an official page that authorized the destruction of Building 7. As is to be expected, the archive includes many Twitter-like messages like "Bush calls World Trade Center crashes apparent terrorist attack." Others are internal messages from unknown businesses or government departments ("please due to the incidents taking place and with trying to close centers Please do not tie up aol today unless it is business. Thanks") or personal message ("Things are getting worse....fear is rampid...please call me. HISD are advising to come get children etc.-sm"). This thread on Reddit highlights some of the most interesting (and often shocking) messages. We don't know the nature of Wikileaks this source yet, so it's only prudent to treat this data with some skepticism. Wikileaks, however, has a track record of releasing authentic information and it seems unlikely (but not impossible) that somebody would go through the trouble of writing 500,000 pager messages just to be featured on Wikileaks. Examples Here are a few examples from Wikileak's archive: 2001-09-11 11:20:01 Things are getting worse....fear is rampid...please call me. HISD are advising to come get children etc.-sm 2001-09-11 11:20:01 have you seen the news this morning? penagon and world trade center attacked Mark Hodges - SunIT Ops 2001-09-11 11:20:01 Alaric! Call me on my cell!! Will! 2001-09-11 09:15:01 I just got a page from Jurko in New York. He said they are okay. Thanks 2001-09-11 08:55:35 BreakingNews@CNN.COM| CNN Breaking News|BREAKING NEWS from CNN.com -- World trade center damaged; unconfirmed reports say a plane has crashed into tower. Details to come. For complete coverage of this story visit: http://www.CNN.com 08:50:50 BOMB DETINATED IN WORLD TRADE CTR. PLS GET BACK TO MIKE BRADY W/A QUICK ASSESSMENT OF YOUR AREAS AND CONTACT US IF ANYTHING IS NEEDED AT 212-647-xxx. 2001-09-11 08:45:39 I love you and miss you very much!!!!!!xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo I waited to wave at you at the doorway and you didnt I paged you.... you didnt call Did I make you angry with me? I love you 2001-09-11 08:45:46 Update X4236083. PROB: Funlove Virus at KCMART IMP: Affecting 33 workstations. STATUS: Desktop technicians are on site and addressing individual workstations. No servers infected at this time. Peoplesoft has been checked and cleared. Bridge Discuss

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Wikileaks Releases Over Half a Million Pager Messages from 9/11