Everywhere you turn your head now on the web, you see content labeled as Web 2.0. What exactly Web 2.0 is, cannot be defined as simple, but free and easy sharing are part of it for sure. Attempts to create easy, free information sharing environments were more or less of a success over the years but the way I see it, this is the direction user-sharing is going to.

I’m talking about Tubes, a software that allows you to easily share files in a secured manner. All you have to do is to download the installation pack, and the software (that runs on a .NET framework) will allow you to share content freely with who you want. In order to choose with whom you share content you use the so called ‘tubes’. Create a tube, upload content and invite friends, it’s really simple!

You can upload as much as 2GB of data per tube, and then easily synchronize the online content with your offline folder. I know it all sounds as a big commercial but the functions it provides are great and simple, just the way I like them. Sure there are some drawbacks such my concern for privacy and security given the fact that all the files shared by the ‘tube’ users are replicated on each computer.

All in all Tubes is an interesting software you might want to check out, even if you won’t be using it all day long, it just might do the trick in some situation when you quickly need to share data.

It was announced on March the 27th, so it’s a good five days away from April Fools. However, it does sound like a prank: “Yahoo! announces that it’s offering free unlimited e-mail storage starting May this year”. When I first found out, it seemed rather far-fetched, and it still does.

Basically, this means that Yahoo! is giving up one method of income, from users who payed 20$ per year for 2GB of space (and it’s losing those money from users starting May, as they will be refunded, if they want to), and it engages in the race to buy a LOT of storage space.

Irrealistic as it seems, this comes at a turning point in Yahoo!’s mail service. 10 years ago, Yahoo! Mail was being launched, a service which was capable of holding up to 4MB of mail, more than an average attachment today.

On the other hand, this might seem like a method of distracting people from GMail’s gimmick of the ever-expanding mailbox. Whether or not it will work, only time will tell. My guess is it won’t, mainly because people don’t look for storage space when they analyze possible e-mail accounts. Not unless they plan on using that space specifically to store stuff, rather than storing them on their on computer. While this might seem like a godsend for those kinds of people, it’s not. Yahoo!’s service states that abusive accounts will be suspended, however leaving their owners with the possibility of accessing their accounts and their stored data.

Instead of a conclusion, let’s look at what John Kremer, the Vice-President of Yahoo! Mail, said in his announcement:

We hope we’re setting a precedent for the future. Someday, can you imagine a hard drive that you can never fill? Never having to empty your photo card on your camera to get space back? Enough storage to fit the world’s music, and then some, on your iPod? Sounds like a future without limits.

Very optimistic words, but is it really possible? My guess is it’s not. Because Yahoo!’s Mail is not unlimited, it just means they will have to acquire an enormous ammount of extra storage space to fit the e-mails of approximately 250 million people worldwide. This is something that you can not do, with today’s technology, with your iPod.

ZenZui is the latest Web browser from Microsoft. The Redmond Company has announced yesterday the launch of ZenZui as an independent company focused on innovating Web content consumption and interaction via mobile devices.

I know, it sounds a bit weird, but its user interface uses a technology 100% developed and patented by Microsoft.

Conceived in the research lab by experts in human-computer interaction and data visualization, and refined over three years of development, ZenZui represents an entirely new way to discover and consume the mobile web. With ZenZui, your phone screen is a portal into your own customized Zoomspace, an information landscape of personalized, cached content in the form of Tiles that directly reflect your lifestyle. Using a single thumb, you fly in and out of your Zoomspace – two simple taps get you directly to any Tile. Through some clever engineering, we constantly refresh your Tiles in the background, so they’re always fresh, available, and ready to be Zoomed.

New phones launch every week, with a wild diversity of screen resolutions, input hardware, and orientation. They took this into consideration when they built the ZenZui adaptive rendering platform, which enables your tiles to work on a wide array of mobile devices and platforms, all with a consistent, intuitive, and gorgeous user interface.
Mobile browsing no longer needs to be a slow and painful experience. ZenZui: Choose your Tiles. Stop Surfing. Start Zooming.

Here’s an interesting video that proves ZenZui’s functionality. Also, Here’s a small introductory podcast where you can hear from ZenZui’s founders about the project’s inspiration and genesis. Born out of years of mobile user interface research, ZenZui is a new kind of mobile media company and development studio. This Podcast will walk you through the adventure of bringing ZenZui to life.

For the moment Google is the biggest player when thinking of search engines. But although Google has a good head-start there are lots of search engines out there trying to make it. And I think that these new search engines, that are forced to innovate in order to stand any chance, are the future.

So what can be added to a search engine that Google hasn’t added already? Well some tried more relevant ads, or advanced search features, category searching and even tabbed searching but let’s be honest, how many of them are really successful? There is even a top 100 alternative search engine chart.

But when it comes to it, all that matters is how effective is your engine and how useful are the functions you provide to your users. Practically Twerq.com is not even a search engine by itself, it’s more of an easy way to search the web using existing services like Google and Yahoo! search. And this is where TWERQ shows its best, it has some functions I’ve found quite interesting and useful at the same time, as you can see in this video:

The simple syntax it uses enables you to create relevant searches in no time at all. But the true power of TWERQ comes out when you register and create custom search lists. In this way you can search images, blogs, news, etc in the same time with only one search. It’s really helpful to configure this kind of search domains for information you need daily, it saves lots of time.

So is this the search engine of the future ? Certainly not, but I’m sure that functions like the search syntax and tabbed searching will be part of future search engines.

As the time passes, the iPhone gets closer and closer to the release date. Meanwhile, Apple is looking for a powerful European partner that will be able to distribute the wonder-device in many countries all over the continent. At the time I’m writing this, Vodafone has the most chances to win the competition, but Apple refused to comment on anything related to this subject.

The main reason is that the iPhone might be equipped with 3G features, and Vodafone has experience in the field, as it’s already distributing similar services. However, no further information is available since Apple keeps the release date for iPhone, uncertain. They’re afraid that with a specified date, the sales for other Apple products will drop subsequently.

At this time, there are numerous rumors sustaining the Apple iPhone will be challenged by a similar product designed by Google able to provide almost the same functions. Although numerous photos and articles with a potential Googlephone were published, the company recently denied the speculations, sustaining Google is a firm that works on developing software solutions and not on the hardware side.

The term of “social news” isn’t a new one, but it was popularized in the past few years. Wikipedia defines it as the process of allowing users to submit, vote on, and make the news. Users choose what is shown to them. Therefore, social news websites are also called news aggregators.
When the web was still 1.0, communities of any kind were rare and mostly, the Internet consisted in static content, published by the so-called webmasters for the readers. With the evolution towards web 2.0, everything is running towards community-based activities. Forums are transforming intro blogs and classic news sites are tending to become social news sites.

As with all Web 2.0 applications, social news sites are heavily based on user interaction and user will. The ideology is that really interesting news that are worth it will be more voted by users, thus creating a relevant ranking. This is a good system as long as no ones tries to manipulate the vote results. But social news sites are also great traffic drivers and there are a great deal of webmasters that try to generate large amounts of traffic to their websites. Manny social news sites try to stop this by creating complex ranking algorithms and by banning both users and entire websites. Of course there will always be mean to trick the system, means such as group voting and other ways in which users genera false votes.

Given the development of Web 2.0 we can expect that social news sites will develop, along with other forms of mass communication, into more user-oriented content that will become the core of Web 2.0 and the Internet.

A recent statistic shows that social news website are now generation over 1/4 of the overall WWW traffic, and this figure is continuously increasing every day. This means more and more users are using these websites to find out about the latest news, and regular news feeds and papers are losing ground fast.

However, social news websites changed the way I’m now searching for news online. Did they have any effect on you?

This short movie shows my exact point of view regarding Second Life, the MMORPG that lets you play… another life. I can understand why you want to be a hero and kill beasts and such, but why would you want to have a second life? One life is one too much for some people.