TrendCentral: Just about a year ago, we wrote about the Internet trend of tagging. Since then, the practice has really taken off with everyone from bloggers to dating sites such as www.consumating.com using tags to make searching and identification easier for users. The latest web trend that tech insiders are buzzing about is digging. The name comes from www.digg.com, a […]

Wired: Jennifer Grinnell, Michigan furniture delivery dispatcher turned fashion designer in cyber space, never imagined that she could make a living in a video game. Grinnell’s shop, Mischief, is in Second Life, a virtual world whose users are responsible for creating all content. Grinnell’s digital clothing and “skins” allow users to change the appearance of their avatars — their online […]

CNN Money: “If you make the product cool and people love it, it will spread like crazy and you can monetize it later.” Talk like that is often ridiculed, especially by those shaken when the dotcom bubble burst. But if a company really understands its customers, it’s hard to beat such a formula. Google (Research) comes to mind, or Hotmail, […]

BarPeople.net: With an innovative approach to social networking and based on the premise that “people with similar interests share similar spaces”, BarPeople.net is set to take the London social scene by storm. BarPeople.net is currently giving visitors exclusive and free prelaunch invitations. Visitors to the site can signup for these at http://www.barpeople.net BarPeople.net revolves around the simple premise that “people […]

BizReport.com: Monster.com may grow up to be a dinosaur. That was my first thought upon seeing a new breed of online job sites shaking up the recruitment industry. Simply Hired and Indeed, upstarts less than a year old, are getting attention for their Google-like approach to helping people find jobs. They do for job listings what Google does for general […]

Entrepreneur.com: Gift certificates have always been ideal for gift giving, but now they’re becoming even better for self-indulgence–at half the price. Eric Diamond, 33, spent a decade working tech-related jobs before figuring out a way to combine his tech skills with his family connections in the fashion industry. His brainstorm was SalesOffline.com, a website he originally built to advertise local […]

TechnologyReview.com: Google’s personalized search uses an individual’s search history to help tweak search results. For instance, if a person has looked for cars extensively in the past, a search for “Jaguar” will return car sites rather than ones featuring large wild cats. While Google’s new tack is admirable, Yahoo’s soft-launch is more startling, since it moves away from the company’s […]

Trendwatching: Yub.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Buy.com, calls itself the world’s first shopping social network, with a mission to “provide word-of-mouth on the web, filtered by trusted relationships.” Partnering with the likes of Sony, Apple iTunes, Target, Gap, Linens ‘n Things and Footlocker, its virtual mall offers 3.3 million products. Yub customers share their opinions on purchases and everything […]

BusinessWeek’s The Tech Beat: I remember when the Google boys came to visit BW the first time, hopped up on ideas, pitching a new way to search the Web. Boy were they right. The folks from a new kind of search company, Splunk Technology, can only hope they do one-tenth as well. The tiny San Francisco startup is out to […]

Wired News: Film and television executives no doubt wish the increasingly popular BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing system never saw the light of day. Thousands of consumers are using the software to download hundreds of movies and hours upon hours of television programming. But one industry’s threat is another’s opportunity. There’s an upside to allowing viewers to transfer copyright material content over […]