ShoZu Goes to Critical Path - Cross Network Publishing Doesn't Seem to Be a Stand-Alone Business Hours after high-profile Silicon Valley social aggregation service Seesmic announced that it acquired angel-backed cross-network publishing service Ping.fm , a similar deal was announced in Europe. Identity management service Critical Path , maker of software called Memova, announced that it has acquired mobile uploading service ShoZu , a company that had received an enormous amount of venture capital. Sponsor Rumors of the deal were first reported in mid-December by Robin Wauters of TechCrunch . Now the deal is done, reports leading European mobile blogger Ewan Spence . We're hearing that the announcement will be officially released later today. Update: We just received the official press release as well. ShoZu raised more than $30 million to build a mobile app that allows users to publish photos, videos and text to more than 50 different destination social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Blip.tv and more. The service has long been popular on Nokia phones and sells an iPhone app for $5. Shozu was voted one of our readers' favorite mobile apps in 2007. For more about ShoZu see this Techcraver interview with the company's CEO. Critical Path is a little like a combination of Plaxo and Verisign. It offers messaging and social apps, APIs, Identity Management and Access Control. Was this the big exit that ShoZu's investors sought? Almost definitely not. Critical Path is an innovative service that's got some big customers like BT, France Telecom and Orange, but it's unlikely that ShoZu came at a high price. Spence alludes to the same when he writes that Critical Path "saw the potential of combining their Memova platform suite with ShoZu's engineering." Update: In the official release, ShoZu Board Director Nigel Pilkington from lead investor SEB Venture Capital UK, called the deal "a successful outcome for us." Maybe that's being polite, maybe it's true or maybe it was a small success financially. It's most likely a talent deal and evidence that cross-platform publishing tools like ShoZu, Ping.fm and competitor Pixel Pipe are probably not stand-alone businesses. Just like FriendFeed's aggregation across scores of APIs wasn't enough to make it a success outside of being scooped up by the much, much larger Facebook - these other companies that create the pipes for the tubes just aren't compelling enough to a large number of consumers. They do make nice acquisition targets, though, and show that the future of the social web may not be found in reading and writing to one single network like Twitter or Facebook. The savvy companies that are building value on top of those networks are also dedicating resources to bring on engineers skilled at working with far more networks to publish to or read from. Discuss

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2 Cross-Publishing Services Get Acquired in 1 Day: Critical Path Buys ShoZu

During my visit to MIT earlier this year I met up with Henry Holtzman , Chief Knowledge Officer of the MIT Media Lab. We discussed the Internet of Things, which Holtzman has been actively involved in since the 90s. Holtzman said that consumer apps for Web-connected objects are becoming more common; he refers to this as an emerging "ecology of devices." There are many real world objects being connected to the Internet nowadays, he said, and they are beginning to act in concert. Read on to find out which Internet of Things products have most impressed Henry Holtzman lately, plus we explore some of his own projects. 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! I started off by remarking that the Internet of Things is ramping up in 2009. Holtzman replied that it's been many years in the making - for example he did a project back in 1997 involving putting RFID tags onto Pokemon figures. Indeed Holtzman created a commercial company in 1998 to output Internet of Things products. Consumer Electronics 2.0 A Wired article from February 2000 outlines how Holtzman founded Presto Technologies in 1998, with fellow MIT Lab professors Andrew Lippman (see our recent post featuring Lippman ) and Michael Hawley. The Presto network embedded RFID tags in objects. It was an early version of Internet of Things. The vision for Presto was to make it an e-commerce tool - "products become roving portals for the companies that make them," according to the 2000 Wired article. While it was too early for that vision to transpire fully, Presto is still operating. One of its current products, PrestoPass, allows consumers to make purchases "by simply waving a card, key tag, or even a wristwatch." Nowadays Holtzman refers to this trend as "consumer electronics 2.0." He cites an MIT spin-off company, Ambient Devices , as one to watch in this area. One of their products is the Ambient Clock , which can hook up to your Google Calendar. Henry Holtzman's Favorite 2009 Products As we've been reporting here on ReadWriteWeb this year, there are plenty of Internet of Things products making their presence felt in 2009. I asked Holtzman which products from the current era have particularly impressed him? He replied that he really likes Violet , the company behind the Nabaztag (a cute robot rabbit that can deliver anything from ambient information, through lights and sounds, to verbal information). We reviewed Violet back in May. Touchatag (formally known as Tikitag) is another company to have impressed Holtzman. As we wrote in February , Touchatag allows you to program your own RFID tags so that they can do anything you want. Holtzman said that he's been very impressed by the decisions the company has made, for example using adhesives. He also likes their 'web 2.0 savvy' - they host everything, but let the users create the content. Internet of Things Concepts & Issues I asked Henry Holtzman what other concepts are interesting him currently, as well as what issues are still to be overcome in the emerging Internet of Things. He talked about using sensors as an "additional sense," by putting a tag reader on people. Not dissimilar to another Media Lab project we wrote about recently, a wearable internet system which aims to become a "sixth sense." Holtzman said that possible uses for sensors on people include: finding objects (for example your keys), raising an alert (e.g. a safety warning), a memory assist device, being a bridge between what you do in the real world and what gets recorded on your social network (e.g. Facebook updating when you're in certain locations; which we mentioned here ). As for issues: while currently light and temperature sensors are popular, Holtzman thinks that we need to do better job with location. But this is where RFID comes in. One big issue that Holtzman is concerned about is identity. He told me that mobile phones that interact with objects using NFC ( Near Field Communication ) will need to work out how to federate around the same ID for a user. This is perhaps similar to the identity issues that the browser-based Web has. Privacy and security are two other important issues that Holtzman has been focusing on of late. It was great to speak with Henry Holtzman - someone with extensive experience, both theoretical and practical, in the Internet of Things. Let us know your own thoughts in the comments. Discuss

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Consumer Electronics 2.0: MIT's Henry Holtzman on The Internet of Things

These days, everyone is talking about social media and discussing what services and tools to use, how to use them, why you should use them, etc. In fact, if you listened to all the advice out there, you would probably think that no matter who you are, whether an individual wanting to build a personal brand, or a large multinational corporation intent on communicating with customers, you should be using social media. But is social media for everyone? Are there times when you shouldn't be using it at all? 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! According to B&B, a magazine for marketing strategists, there are definitely some scenarios when social media should be avoided. In a recent article , they listed what these were: You're in a high-ticket business:

In what has become a Christmas tradition, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales posted a personal appeal for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation earlier this month. On the first day alone, the nonprofit raised $430,000 from 13,000 people. Today, Wales announced that Wikimedia reached its fundraising goals. In total, the foundation managed to raise $7.5 million. Last year, when Wales posted a similar appeal, the Wikimedia Foundation received $6.2 million from 125,000 donors. Sponsor Still No Ads Wikipedia and other Wikimedia properties like Wikiquote or Wikibooks could easily find enough advertisers to finance these sites. In order to remain as independent and impartial as possible, however, the Wikimedia Foundation prefers to rely on donations from users. It is worth noting, though, that the Wikipedia does have deals with some other companies like France Telecom's Orange . These businesses license the site's content and share advertising revenue with the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation has fewer than 35 employees and needs roughly $10 million per year to operate. About 340 million users access Wikipedia per month. According to Wales, this represents "almost a third of the Internet-connected world." Discuss

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$7.5 Million: Wikipedia Reaches Fundraising Goal

As part of the European Union's antitrust agreement with Microsoft , the company will be required next year to show a list of alternatives to Internet Explorer to any Windows user with IE installed as their default browser. Love or hate the government intervention, it's notable to see which browsers are about to get a big boost in user numbers. The EU says increased viability in the browser market will lead to more competition and more innovation. Here are the companies that will get a first crack at new levels of market viability in Europe. Sponsor On the Front Page - The Best Known 5 The first page of the Choice Screen, which users will be presented with when they first turn on their computers or when they click a link for it later, will feature whichever five browsers have the largest market share over the previous 6 months. Microsoft will begin showing the page to users in March, 2010. Right now the top 5 will include, in the order listed on an EU page about the program: Apple Safari - that's right, even for Windows! Google Chrome - so soon. If Chrome can grow so fast, it makes you wonder if government intervention is really needed. Of course, Chrome has been promoted prominently on Google pages. That could become part of the next antitrust issue. Microsoft Internet Explorer - gets better all the time, even with dominant market share. Couldn't the EU just require people to stop using IE 6? Mozilla Firefox - the classic that's most effectively challenged IE. In fact, it's done so pretty effectively. Too bad Chrome now runs circles around its performance. Opera - loved by mobile users, loved by Europeans. Below the Fold - The Smaller Challengers Users will be able to scroll the Choice Screen horizontally and see the next 7 most popular browsers at the time. Here's who the EU lists as those browsers today. AOL - chuckle if you will, but AOL is doing a lot of innovative work with social networks and lifestreaming these days. Maxthon - is a popular browser in China and has its sights set on topping Opera in Europe. K-Meleon - says its a super-fast Windows browser built on Gecko, the same layout engine Firefox uses. Flock - is a Mozilla-powered browser that integrates a whole lot of social features. It's got such a great feature set that we recently asked Why don't you love Flock? Avant Browser - says that it, in fact, is the browser that's the fastest. It includes an inline RSS reader and a number of other interesting features. Sleipnir - is a highly-customizable browser that says it's big in Japan. Slim Browser - a Windows browser focused on automating processes. That's the field, so far! Do you think this move will foster increased innovation? Do you think it's needed? Discuss

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Meet the 12 Lucky Browsers European IE Users Will Be Shown Next Year

Not long ago it was considered revolutionary to do all of your holiday shopping from your computer. Amazon and other companies on

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Will 2010 be the Year of Net TV Shopping Integration?

Don't worry, it's not Twitter! For our Best LittleCo of 2009, we've chosen a small company whose product launched in 2009 and quickly became a leading example of one of the year's big trends: the real-time web. Our pick for Most Promising is something that could change the way people search on the Web. Last week we announced that Google was our choice for Best BigCo of 2009 , due to its product innovation in 2009. Today we're announcing Best LittleCo and Most Promising Company , as selected by the ReadWriteWeb writers. Sponsor This is the 6th year we've done this and many of the small companies we choose each year go onto much bigger things. Here's a quick look back at previous winners: In 2008 we chose web office vendor Zoho as Best LittleCo and Brightkite as our Most Promising. Zoho is still competing well above its weight bracket against office software giants like Microsoft and Google. However it's fair to say that Brightkite hasn't delivered as much on its promise as we thought it might, due in part to the emergence of Foursquare as 'the next big thing' in mobile social networking. In 2007 Twitter was Best LittleCo and in a break from tradition we named "the open source movement" as most promising. Twitter, of course, has since gone on to make a huge impact on the Web and media. In 2006 YouTube was Best LittleCo and Sharpcast Most Promising. YouTube was acquired by Google in October of that year. In 2005 37Signals was Best LittleCo and Memeorandum (now Techmeme) and Digg were joint Most Promising. In 2004 Ludicorp , creators of Flickr, was Best LittleCo and Feedburner Most Promising. Both went on to be acquired, by Yahoo! and Google respectively. Now let's find out who is ReadWriteWeb's Best LittleCo of 2009. Then on page 2 we name our Most Promising company for 2010. Best LittleCo of 2009: Aardvark Aardvark (our initial review and then a comparison review ) is a social search engine that combines artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and presence data to create what the company calls "the real-time Web of people." The company was founded in 2007, but the product only launched in March 2009 at SXSW. It quickly became one of the companies we point to most when we discuss the Real-Time Web , one of the most significant trends of this year. In our report on the Real-Time Web released in November, we described how it works: "You can ask Aardvark any question, and it will try to find a person in your extended social circles who knows about that topic and is available to answer at that moment. Aardvark facilitates these conversations through a very polite IM bot, an iPhone app with push notifications, the company's website, Twitter or email. Instead of broadcasting your question to every one's stream of information, Aardvark delivers the question only to people who are relevant and available." Unlike Yahoo Answers or similar services, Aardvark doesn't keep a repository of frequently asked questions. The service's mission is to get you current answers from experts in your own social networks. On most days, over 85% of all questions get answered. As we noted in our report, Aardvark's got an all-star team of engineers from Google and Yahoo and high-profile investors. It's already cutting deals with major tech brands and is rumored to be on Google's acquisition list. Whatever happens to the company, the use cases for Aardvark are just beginning to be explored. In short, Aardvark impressed us a lot this year and it made no fewer than 3 of our 2009 best-of lists : Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2009 Top 10 Real-Time Technologies of 2009 Top 10 Startup Products of 2009 Aardvark's iPhone app was also popular with our writers, two of them putting it in their top 5 mobile web applications of the year . Next page: ReadWriteWeb's Most Promising Company for 2010... Most Promising: Wolfram|Alpha Wolfram|Alpha launched in May and ended up making our list of the Top 10 Consumer Products of the year . It was also the most hyped, with the possible exception of Google Wave. Inevitably, Wolfram Research's "computational knowledge engine" disappointed many who were looking for a Google killer . But Alpha introduced a new paradigm for search engines: Instead of giving you a long list of links, Alpha tries to give users an answer based on information from reputable sources. It also enables users to compute and calculate things off that information. While it isn't useful for everybody yet, the Wolfram Alpha team has worked hard to expand Alpha's knowledge. If you are an engineer or scientist, Wolfram Alpha might just be the most useful web app for you. For the rest of us, Alpha's ability to solve anagrams, aggregate weather data and tell you the distance between two cities proves to be useful, too - although not as useful as the service's ability to solve complex math problems. Wolfram|Alpha also launched a $50 iPhone application in October. Even though Wolfram Alpha's web interface is available for free, the company insisted that its mobile application offered enough new features to justify this price. We listed some initial use cases for Wolfram|Alpha in July, but it's a safe bet to say that the best of this product will be seen in 2010 and beyond. 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, so we think it's a product to watch in 2010. Now let us know your thoughts on our picks for Best LittleCo (Aardvark) and Most Promising (Wolfram|Alpha). Discuss

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Best LittleCo of 2009 & Most Promising for 2010