When Google announced this morning that it would be delivering search results to users in real time as they type a query, it rightfully generated quite a bit of chatter and intrigue in the tech world and beyond.

The changes are certain to fundamentally change the way people interact with the world's biggest search engine. But what is less clear is how this game-changing update will affect search engine optimization and search traffic referrals to Websites.

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The Impact on Search Speed, Refining Searches and the "Long Tail" of Search

Google Instant does two things: it returns results more quickly and it predicts search queries as the user types.

While it's too early to predict the implications of this with any certainty, a few speculations come to mind. For one, searching on Google is going to become a much speedier process for the end user, who may now be less likely than ever to click through to the second page of results. Searchers will also be able to more quickly refine their search terms on the fly, which could either prove to be good or bad for site owners.

"It seems to me that the top three rankings will get even more value," says Ian Lurie, President of Portent Interactive and blogger at Conversation Marketing. "Also, long-tail search is going to be more important, since folks can just keep typing until they see what they want."

On the other hand, John Ellis at Search Engine Land wondered earlier if Google Instant would "kill the long tail" of paid search advertising by making it less worthwhile to bid on more specific, long tail keywords.

How the User Experience Will Change

According to Avichal Garg, former Product Manager of Search Quality at Google, the impact of Google Instant on SEO and search performance will come as a result of changes in the user experience, not the ranking algorithm, per se.

He cites query construction patterns, click patterns, page scanning behavior and the ease of making search query refinements (re-searching) as examples of user behaviors that are likely to be different from here on out.

"It will have a tremendous impact," says Garg. "User behavior will change. And good SEO is all about understanding end user behavior."

Will It Impact Traffic to My Site?

For insight into whether the volume of search traffic to one's site will change, look no further than the Google's own Webmaster Central Blog, which advises site owners that they "may notice some changes in your search queries data due to the launch of Google Instant." The post goes on to explain that the number of impressions for many search queries is likely to increase. In other words, the number of times a given site is displayed in results (whether they're clicked or not) is bound to go up, since users no longer need even finish typing a search query before the results show up.

Google's Matt Cutts Chimes In

Perhaps the most insightful commentary on Google Instant's potential impact on SEO came in a blog post from Goolger Matt Cutts a few hours after the company's announcement:

"The search results will remain the same for a query, but it's possible that people will learn to search differently over time. For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson's blog that had been on page 2 of the search results."

Are you concerned about how Google Instant might impact your site's visibility on Google? What do you think about the new feature in general? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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Craigslist took down Adult Services in the U.S. four days ago, replacing it with the word "censored" without explanation. Advocates seized on the ambiguous move today, calling on Craigslist to remove the infamous section in cities across the world.

It's hard to say what the effect of shuttering Adult Services will be on the profitability of the sex trade. But it will certainly curtail Craigslist's ability to profit from sex traders.

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The New York Times estimates Adult Services ads could have brought in $44 million for Craigslist this year, based on the $10 it costs to post and $5 to repost. Post-censorship, ads for sex are migrating to other classifieds sites and other sections of Craigslist. The first stop after getting kicked out of Adult Services is the personals section "Casual Encounters," where it is free to post an ad.

By focusing on Adult Services, Craigslist's opponents are targeting a symptom instead of a problem.

"If Craigslist is seriously committed to ending the site's use as a platform for sex trafficking and the sexual enslavement of children and young women, it will immediately close the remaining sections around the world," the groups said in statement.

Ending the site's use as a platform. Not ending abusive sex trafficking, because shutting down Adult Services won't do that. Really, advocates want Craigslist to stop being a "digital pimp," to borrow Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd's phrase. From an advocate's perspective, the fact that Craigslist makes money off of prostitution and sex trafficking - some of it voluntary, some of it coerced and some involving minors - colors anything the company says.

Profit is a powerful motivator and the fact that Craigslist makes so much money off these ads undermines its moral authority [UPDATE: A reader points out that Craigslist started charging for these ads after negotiations with attorneys general and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, so that credit card information could be kept on file. But the ads now constitute a significant portion of the site's revenue]. But is ending that revenue stream a worthy pursuit, given the strong arguments that Craigslist does more good than harm by making it easy for law enforcement to find and track sex traffickers, and empowering prostitutes to escape often-abusive middlemen?

On Monday, there were 23,453 ads posted in the "Adult Services" section across Craigslist sites for cities outside the U.S., according to the anti-human trafficking advocacy group The Polaris Project. By comparison, there were 12,834 ads posted in Adult Services" in the U.S. on Tuesday, July 21, 2009. (Singapore, where the Internet is censored for porn, is the only Craigslist site without an Adult Services section. Ironically, Singapore has an aboveground sex industry regulated by the government.) Getting the section taken down in the rest of the world is now top priority for the groups behind this push.

Craigslist fumbled its public response to accusations that it encourages abusive prostitution (see Feeling Burned By the Press, Craigslist Hunkers Down), even though it has two strong arguments from both the free speech and human rights angles as well as the protection of the law. Perhaps we'll see a better defense based on data collected during the Adult Services blackout when Craigslist testifies before Congress during a hearing on sex trafficking of minors on Sept. 15.

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Google unveiled a new way to display its search results this morning, called Instant Search. Instant brings search results to your browser, as you type. Letter by letter - it's amazing. The feature will be rolled out to all users over the coming hours and days but is available to be tested here.

It's fast. It's satisfying. But if respected critics like Nicholas Carr have raised the alarm that Google's legacy search product might make us stupid - what might Google Instant do to our brains and thinking? There are at least two ways to look at the question.

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Google Instant as a Mental Limit

"The normative influence of Google just got a lot stronger," Kevin Marks, a British Telecom technologist, former Googler and internet intelectual, said today on Twitter.

In other words, Google's influence over what we consider the norm, or what we take for granted as an assumption, regarding any particular topic, will become stronger now that we're instantly given suggested search queries and answers to questions we haven't even finished asking yet.

When the Great Google in the Sky interrupts you asking it a question and says (effectively) "don't even bother finishing, we know what you're going to ask and here's the answer" - how many of us might just concede to ask what Google expects we were going to?

Google Instant as a proscriptive and limiting influence over the boundaries of our consideration; that's something to think about.

Google Instant as Brain Stimulation Google Instant Search may be a recipe for brain health; with its pleasing combination of rapid results, sneak peeks into potentially related topics as we begin to explore and a responsive interface that encourages more sophistication in our interaction with search engines than the classic 2-word grunt-queries typically deliver.I'm not sure yet, but I don't think I experience Google Instant as a limitation to my brain's power to consider infinite possibilities. I really like it, so far. Perhaps that's just the comfort of clear, controlled and limited choices, though.

Think of this, however. Google executives said in a press Q&A session about Instant today that users participating in tests of the service quite often saw links they were interested in at the bottom of the page and then extended their search queries with text that would bring those results up to the top of the page.

Google Instant Search feels to me like a call-and-response exchange with the Google robots. "If I type this in, what are you going to say?" I ask. "Ok, I see that now, but what if I type this in" is the logical next step.

My theory: by making search a more interactive, call & response activity, Instant Search could stimulate mental activity, as opposed to Google making us stupid.

"That's very true," says Dr. Ellen Weber, President of the MITA (Multiple Intelligences Teaching Approach) International Brain Based Center in New York, "in that the brain holds multiple intelligences - and to engage more and diverse types of thinking is better than to engage less and with the same. Every time you do a thing the same way - you grow new neuron pathways for that same way of doing things. Do things differently, and engage your curiosity, and you physically rewire your brain."

Weber has written about how to use social media effectively to support healthy brain development.

The essential core of the idea is a timeless one, before Instant Search, before computers even: interact with new and different people and perspectives in order to expand your horizons and keep your brain functioning sharply.

Is that what Google Instant offers? I think it may; with its pleasing combination of rapid results, sneak peeks into potentially related topics as we begin to explore, and a responsive interface that encourages more sophistication in our interaction with search engines than the classic 2-word grunt-queries typically deliver. I'm not sure yet, but that's my theory.

What do you think? Is Instant Search a potential boon or bane for the health of our brains?

Discuss

One of the big debates in the venture capital industry lately has been the growing argument between so-called "super angels" and traditional VCs - the former being prone to mention how they feel the latter "sucks." As one would expect, many voices in the industry have made themselves heard in the form of VC blog posts and passionate, profanity-laced shouting matches. But when the fog of war clears, what should startups take away from the debate? Should they seek investment from VCs or super angels? Or both? Thankfully, some level-headed perspectives have emerged that are aimed at helping young startups interpret the lessons to be learned.

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"The financing sources that are appropriate if you need a total of $1 million are different than if you need $10 million or $100 million."
- Chip Hazard, Flybridge CapitalIs there a benefit to one over the other? As Founder Collectvie's Eric Paley said in a blog post on the topic earlier this week, "the world isn't so black and white." When it comes down to it, every startup is unique, just as every VC is unique and every angel is unique - so there is probably no blanket assumption that can be made about the industry. For startups setting their sights on the beast of the early-stage funding market, Chip Hazard, a partner at Flybridge Capital, suggests to simply figure out what works best for your company.

"Put together an overall multiyear plan for your business, assume it takes longer and more money than what the plan suggests, and then determine what that means," writes Hazard. "The simple point here is that the financing sources that are appropriate if you need a total of $1 million are different than if you need $10 million or $100 million."

He also notes that while many would prefer to raise all of this capital at once, the smart decision is to raise it piece-be-piece.

"Funding through milestones such as these will allow you to raise subsequent rounds of capital at higher prices," he says. "Reducing risk and demonstrating potential upside will always translate into higher valuations."

Because every VC and angel is unique and has their own idea about where your company is headed and how involved they should be, picking one or another is not a decision to be made lightly, says Hazard. "One of the greatest sources of conflicts between entrepreneurs and investors happens when this alignment is not in place from day one," says Hazard.

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Like a phoenix rising from Arizona, Google once again disrupted the search ecosystem today with the announcement and launch of Google Instant. "Google Instant isn't search as you type, it's search before you type," said Google VP of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer. Creepy!

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While Google would probably deny any elements of black magic with the latest evolution of their search engine, what couldn't be denied were the wide variety of interesting reactions to Google's latest opus from the ReadWriteWeb community on Twitter and Facebook.

Shortly after today's Google's event wrapped, I tossed up the following grapefruit:

Reactions ranged from disappointed...

To incredibly optimistic....

To downright paranoid...

For curating responses, we test drove Curated.by, which our own Marshall Kirkpatrick covered recently. It turned out to be a pretty quick and efficient way to capture what our followers were thinking. Even cooler, we're able to embed the rest of the reactions in this here blog post. Behold:

_bundleWidget({ bundle_id:474, title:'Google Instant will _____', subtitle:'curated.by/RWW', scrolling:true, update:true, shell:true, auto_width:false, per_page:20, font_size:'11px', border_color:'5d1719', heading_text_color:'ffffff', heading_bg_color:'5d1719', link_color:'666666', text_color:'333333', content_bg_color:'ffffff', content_divider_color:'cccccc', width:300, height:450 });

In addition to the Twitter, we also asked our Facebook community to give us their thoughts on Google Instant. Head over to our Facebook thread to see the responses and leave your own.

Do you have any fascinating insights on Google Instant? Please take the opportunity to leave them in the comments!

Until next time, Community Manager out.

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At the Government 2.0 Summit today, Code for America, DC's OCTO and OpenPlans introduced a new code-sharing project, Civic Commons.

Civic Commons will help 21,000 local jurisdictions share code and work out best practices for developing them, all on an open source basis.

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In an era of extraordinary economic challenges, Civic Commons believes governmental software development is, among other things, a fertile area for saving money.

"For the most part, each city, county, state, agency and office builds or buys their technology solutions independently, creating huge redundancies in civic software and wasting millions of tax-payer dollars. They should be able to work together."

Alex Howard of O'Reilly, the company that put on the summit, explained some of the problems cities had encountered that inspired the project.

"The inspiration is drawn from the issue of cities developing code for the same problems but not sharing it. Of getting proprietary solutions that weren't transferable. Of open source projects that were redundant, unknown or left to lie fallow. Of having valuable open source code like the IT Dashboard but no place to store and share it."

District of Columbia CTO Bryan Sivak told Howard the solutions his city alone had created, and not shared, were legion. They included a data warehouse application, a new agency performance management application and a host of GIS apps. The hope is by sharing each municipality's code, the best will become standard and the wheel will not need to be so relentlessly re-invented.

The code will be shard on an open source basis, creating an app catalog that Civic Commons is calling an "Open Civic Stack."

"Civic Commons' role is to be an information exchange, to provide discoverability, and to provide advice where needed; not to set up barriers or process requirements."

The latter is an issue in a world where bureaucracies expedite or block innovation and too often choose, or fall into, the latter.

Civic Commons' first step is an attempt to survey all the software municipalities have already created, then "identifying their licensing, installation processes, and code repositories."

Want to get involved? Civic Commons encourages you to join as "a partner organization or advisor; share your code" or just take part in the discussion.

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Facebook is used for a lot of things. Family contact, business advertising, non-profit planning and municipal information among others. Drag queens, belt buckle artists and the Catholic Church all use it.

Now, employees of the Detroit Media Partnership, which includes the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, and are using Facebook to Say No to -12%.

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In an area rocked by persistent declines in central industries, like automobile manufacture, a group of Detroit journalists are being asked to accept a 12% wage cut. Unwilling to do so, they're publishing their distress to 100 Facebook friends and interested visitors.

In his Sunday introductory post, page administrator Matt Helms, a journalist with the Detroit Free Press, explained the situation.

"We're in negotiations now with the Detroit Media Partnership, which wants 12% pay cuts, a wage freeze (which we've had for two years) and higher worker payments for a crappier health care plan than we've already got. We've already kissed raises goodbye, switched to a less-than-good health care system ...and took furloughs while the higher ups in corporate get raises and bonuses. Enough is enough."

The newspaper industry has itself been in decline for quite some time. But a commenter, Steve Nealing, noted a discrepancy.

"While Gannett CEO Craig Dubow slashed thousands of jobs last year without regard to newsroom quality, he took home $4.4 million, up from $3.1 million in 2008. And he wants to cut the salaries of hard-working journalists by 12% and gut health care coverage while he pockets a 41% raise? Dubow, that's how you spell the demise of newspapers."

Is this page just a place to air grievances and blow off steam, or can it be used to sway public opinion? Will it prove to be a powerful way to funnel unwelcome attention on the Gannett chain's demands or a less-than-passing annoyance? As much as Facebook has grown, does the management of an old-guard chain even understand how much attention it can focus on a labor dispute most won't have been aware of?

Rich Harshbarger, Vice President for Consumer Marketing and Communications for Detroit Media Partnership, the company that manages business functions for The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, responded. Sort of. (The first sentence is strange, but the second is pretty standard.)

"Social media is a communications tool for companies and organizations to share information almost immediately. It would be inappropriate for Detroit Media Partnership to comment further while negotiations are ongoing."

What do you think of the use of social media in labor issues? Valuable tool or time-out room?

Discuss

Video support on Apple's mobile devices is far from universal and that's an issue that Applidium hopes to solve with its submission of VLC, the open-source video player, to the App Store.

According to the company's release, "if everything goes well, VLC for the iPad should be available next week".

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The free video player supports "nearly every video format" and when we asked Romain Goyet, co-founder of Applidium, if it supported Flash (the most obvious and controversial of missing video formats), he told us "This unfortunately I cannot answer right now (you guess why :-) )."

While he expects the player to be available in the App Store for download by September 14, it will initially only be available for the iPad, with a version for the iPhone and iPod Touch in the works. Goyet had a few other details to offer about the potential release:

As compared to the "desktop" version, the user interface will be quite a lot different, to fit the iPad. Behind the scene, the engine is the one from the "ususal" version of VLC, so it should play pretty much anything you throw at it. One small difference though : even though the iPad is a really neat device, it's nowhere as powerful as your desktop machine / laptop. So it might have a hard time decoding HD movies, but that's a hardware limitation.

According to a recent tweet, a pre-release version will be given out to a small number of users this weekend, before it hits the app store.

Of course, inclusion in the app store is not guaranteed. Mobile browser Skyfire was submitted to the App Store just over a week ago and there is still no word on its acceptance or rejection. The browser aims to bring Flash video, not applications, to Apple's mobile devices using transcoding. Although Goyet doesn't directly speak to whether or not Flash video would be supported, it could be a point of contention for accepting the app. And if the app isn't trying to vie for Flash support, there are a number of other media types that would be great to see on the iPad, outside of those currently supported.

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We're doing a wrap up of VMworld and we want to know what you thought were the hot trends of the conference.

We have a few thoughts of our own, but what do you think were some of the most significant developments that emerged?

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What was Hot at VMworld?online surveys Our Pick: Hybrid Clouds

The hybrid cloud has arrived. Is it a more sane alternative to the private cloud? We think so. It looks like a smart move for VMware. It extends its partnerships with cloud services providers like Verizon, BlueLock and Savvis. Plus, it gives customers the benefits of extending to a public cloud infrastructure.The hybrid cloud movement shows how Vmware is evolving. Last year, it was all about managing the data center and establishing a virtualized infrastructure. This year, it was about managing the connections between the data center and public cloud infrastructures.

This theme of a hybrid cloud brings to the surface a lot of question. Is the enterprise going through a deep level of abstraction? It seems to be. You get that sense after hearing many of the vendors discussing the greater need for automation. In our conversations with SpringSource executives, we asked what they thought of the DevOps movement and the emergence of companies such as Puppet Labs and Opscode. These companies are definitely in their scope. These young companies are automating the processes for deploying virtual machines. That's important as more companies are getting used to the idea of deploying thousands of virtual machines at any one time. These virtual machines may need to be deployed in the data center or a public cloud environment.

Managing the connections is the next big step. It's why VMware acquired Integrien and TriCipher. Integrien tracks performance in a virtualized infrastructure. TriCipher manages identity issues, critical for the deployment of SaaS services across a hybrid cloud.

Security companies showed up in a big way at VMworld, exemplifying the demand for services required in a virual environment. Computerworld's Eric Ogren highlighted his top security picks.

He cited TrendMicro for its enhancements to anti-malware and data protection for hybrid clouds. He also pointed to Intel, RSA and Terremark's use of Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) in a real-world environment:

"Shown was the Terremark service provider reaching out through AMT to wake up the endpoint, authenticate the endpoint as a customer device (RSA key management) and validate the compliance of its software configuration. Potentially, the SP could enhance bandwidth utilization by scheduling PC maintenance tasks in off-hours, identify the device as a customer and check SLA terms, download patches or a refreshed VM, and upload regulated data for backup and retention."

VMworld showed that the public cloud is core to an enterprise strategy. But it's only part of the equation. Companies will continue to build out their data centers. They will migrate to a hybrid environment as the connection points can be better automated, monitored and secured.

Disclosure: VMware is a sponsor of ReadWriteWeb.

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Though Mountain View-based startup Appcelerator has been working together for roughly 3 years, it wasn't until this past March when the venture-backed company launched Titanium to the general public. Appcelerator's flagship product, Titanium offers a platform on which Web developers can build native mobile applications that are easily portable from one platform to another. Today Appcelerator announced the passing of several milestones as thousands of apps have been built by over 65,000 developers - including many well-known name-brand clients.

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Appcelerator's platform is responsible for aiding the development of over 4,000 applications across the App Store and Android Market. The company also expects to break 10,000 applications by the end of the year.

"Since the release of Appcelerator's all native platform in March, we have seen an exponential increase in the pace of application development," says CEO Jeff Haynie. "Some developers are on their sixth app in just a few months, and several have seen their applications hit the top of the charts."

Companies like eBay, NBC and Budweiser have made both inward-facing enterprise apps, and outward-facing consumer apps using Titanium. Smaller startups, like GetGlue, have also used the platform to expand their offerings to mobile devices across several platforms.

The Next Steps

Appcelerator's Scott Schwarzhoff told ReadWriteWeb that the company plans to begin bundling additional packaged features into its SDK that aren't natively provided on various mobile platforms. Many app developers want features like barcode scanners or augmented reality functionality, but these features aren't natively available across all platforms.

Boulder-based image-recognition company Occipital is working on tools like these in the augmented reality space, and recently sold it's popular barcode scanning iPhone app RedLaser to eBay. Appcelerator says it will be looking to package features like barcodes and AR into its SDK for platform agnostic development.

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Google isn't the only search engine introducing innovative features today. In an effort to be more accessible to international users, especially those new to computing, Yahoo has made it possible for Chinese users to enter searches with their own handwriting. Visitors to Yahoo! Taiwan and Yahoo! Hong Kong can now use a special handwriting panel to draw out characters in order to conduct a search, making it easier for those unfamiliar with Chinese typing to more easily browse the Web.

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With the writing panel, users can draw with their mouse (or a writing tablet if they have one) and Yahoo will provide six suggestions of the intended character. Like any search engine, Yahoo then provides search suggestions based on the first character, which could save additional typing time.

Typing in Chinese is a complicated practice for some. Most users type characters in Chinese by typing the sound of the character using the standard QWERTY Roman characters, but a lot of Chinese sounds are very similar. Another entry method involves typing a sequence of keys based on the shape of a character and can be fast to use but tough to learn, especially those new to computers.

As Yahoo product manager James Ying says, handwritten search "lowers the hurdle" for users in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The handwriting panel supports Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese as well as English and numerals, so you can give it a try right now even if you don't know Chinese.

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Understanding your market is a crucial part of planning your startup. But traditional market research can be both expensive and time-consuming, taking weeks or even months to develop, execute and analyze and eating up dollars that many new companies just don't have.

Ask Your Target Market is an online self-service market research platform that tackles those obstacles, helping startups and small businesses assess their markets while avoiding both the high price and lack of agility associated with traditional market research.

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And today, AYTM announces that it has been selected as the official market research tool for startups participating in the Founder Institute. The data collected from AYTM will be utilized to supplement the curriculum of the Founder Institute's entrepreneur training program.

AskYourTargetMarket surveys start at $30 and the company promises says most surveys are completed within 72 hours, with real-time results available. The company uses a "psychographic prescreening question" to help assemble the panel of respondents that will best represent your target market. Only looking for vegetarians or iPhone 4 users or people with active MySpace profiles (hey, you never know)? You can direct the survey right at that demographic. Or alternately, you can establish the criteria for those receiving the survey based on several factors including gender, age range, income, education, and location. And you can drill down into the results based on these demographics as well.

The surveys are short - containing only up to 25 questions. But as so many demographic questions can be avoided by the way in which you assemble the panel of respondents, shorter surveys probably mean more completions.

Becoming the "market research tool of choice" for the Founder Institute participants is a strong endorsement for AYTM. Have you used the service? If so, what are your thoughts?

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Apple has released the latest version of its operating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch, iOS 4.1 today. The update was announced last week at Apple's fall event and brings a number of new features and bug fixes.

While the latest version of iOS offers some nifty features like HDR photos and Apple's brand new Game Center, those behind the latest jailbreaks warn that updating will cause you to lose your jailbreak.

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For those of you with a standard, non-jailbroken phone, update away. The new iOS fixes the proximity sensor bug, which allowed touchscreen input when you were talking on your phone, as well as Bluetooth connectivity issues. It also takes care of iPhone 3G users that updated to iOS 4.0 and found their phones suddenly unusably slow.

As for new features, iOS 4.1 introduces HDR, or "high dynamic range" photos, a new Game Center, the ability to upload HD video of WiFi, and TV show downloads directly from the phone.

That said, those features may not be enough for some of you to give up your jailbroken iPhones. The iPhone Dev-Team has previously noted that it will not be offering a jailbreak for versions after iOS 4.0.1 and today, it calls the latest update a trap. According to the Dev-Team blog, beyond losing your jailbreak, the latest update also includes a baseband update. "There's currently no way to revert your baseband", they write, warning that "if you update your baseband you'll lose the ultrasn0w unlock, possibly forever."

For those of you on the right side of Apple's warranty considerations, the update is available within iTunes and should be immediately available the next time you sync your phone.

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Chances are, if you use the Internet, you are going to get hacked - it's that simple. The New York Times told us yesterday that even a strong password may not protect us and now, today, a study by security software maker Norton tells us that cybercrime is prevalent, with a majority of Internet users both worldwide and in the U.S. falling victim.

Of course, Norton says that the obvious solution to this epidemic of crime is to use up-to-date security software (such as its own anti-virus and security suite), but the study also goes beyond self-promotion to look at our emotional reactions to hacking, getting hacked and who's at fault in the end.

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According to the report, nearly two-thirds of Internet users globally and almost three-quarters in the U.S. have fallen victim to cybercrime, with even worse numbers in China, where 83% of Internet users have been hacked. The report found that 58% of respondents felt angry, 51% annoyed, and 80% expected that those responsible would not be found or "brought to justice." Only 3% of those surveyed said they didn't think it would happen to them - so getting hacked is not only something we've come to expect, but, as Norton's Internet safety advocate Marian Merritt told Network World, something we blame ourselves for.

"People do feel angry, but we also found that people feel pretty guilty," said Merritt, noting that 54% of respondents said they "should have been more careful" when they responded to online scams. Twelve percent said that getting hacked was entirely their fault.

According to The Times, some of the fault lays at the feet of the security community and those sites that are most often targets, such as online commerce sites like Paypal and Amazon. One report (PDF) cited in the article found that many "busy commercial destinations" such as these "allowed relatively weak passwords," while other sites required a maze of password requirements that also compromised security.

Beyond all of this, as ReadWriteWeb's Adrianne Jeffries suggested the other day, a solution beyond antivirus and long, overcomplicated passwords might be the use of systems like OpenID.

For a quick look at Norton's finding, the fact sheet (PDF) offers a glimpse of stats both in the U.S. and worldwide. The report is released concurrent with today's release of Norton Internet Security 2011.

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Logging statistics is a two-stage process. First, you need to collect the information and store it. Next, you need to expose this information to end users.

It's quite simple to display a table of stats for users to look at, and this is a good option if you need to provide a detailed breakdown. But for analysing large datasets or simply providing an overview of recent activity on a site, a graph may be a better approach.

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Flot: a JavaScript Plotting Library for jQuery

For this example we'll be using Flot, a jQuery library. To get started you'll need to download jQuery and Flot. Once you've included them in the page header, here's how you can get a simple line graph to show up.

Preparing the Data

Before displaying the graph, you'll need to load up the following data:

1. The values you wish to display in the graph - in this case, we'll be looking at pageviews recorded in the last 31 days for a specific blog.
2. The maximum value in the group.

As Flot is a plotting library, you need to think of the coordinates to add each point to the graph. For instance, on the first day the blog recorded 157 pageviews, so you need to plot a coordinate: 0, 157. On the second day, the blog recorded 187 pageviews, so the coordinate for that day would be: 1, 187.

Basically, the end result is a list of values provided in the following format:

[0, 157], [1, 187]

And so on. We can then use the value list in the next section.

Displaying the Graph

First, you need to use the following HTML:

Change the height and width if you wish. Next, you need the following JavaScript:

Ensure you replace INSERT_VALUE_LIST_HERE and INSERT_MAX_VALUE_HERE with the appropriate variables.

A Working Example

You can see a real example of the Flot graph on the profile page of the blog in question.

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The read/write enterprise isn't just about using social media in the enterprise - increasingly, it's about employees actively choosing the technologies they use to get their jobs done instead of relying on decrees from on high about what sorts of technology to use. The term "Shadow IT" refers to "IT systems and IT solutions built and used inside organizations without organizational approval." In the past few years, it's gone from being cosidered a problem to being consider something to be embraced and learned from. Thanks to SaaS, entire companies have been built on Shadow IT decisions.

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Salesforce.com got its start selling to sales departments who needed a solution that IT wasn't having success providing. Now its a major player in enterprise. Here are five companies that are thriving in the shadows at enterprises large and small.

Yammer

Yammer announced last week that it's expanding from its narrow focus on microblogging into general enterprise social networking. That will bring the company into even deeper competition with established players like Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce.com and Jive.

David Sacks, CEO of Yammer, talked up the technology behind Yammer in a phone interview, but we think the company's real differentiator is its freemium business model. Employees are signing up to use Yammer independent of IT and management, and that lets end users try the product before a purchasing decision is made.

"The freemium model is absolutely key to what we're doing," says Sacks. "When employees are given a choice of what to use, they are going to choose the product that is easiest to use, not necessarily the company that has the biggest sales team. We're not afraid to let customers use the software first."

Sacks is quick to point out that the company does work closely with IT once a company develops an interest in Yammer. "IT is usually the buyer, we do spend a lot of time with IT making sure they're comfortable with the security and so on, but it's employees that are driving it."

Huddle

Huddle, a SaaS project management and document collaboration solution (see our previous coverage), has landed large enterprise customers like Proctor and Gamble through shadow IT. "We generally don't sell directly to IT," says Huddle co-founder Andy McLoughlin. Instead, Huddle will sell directly to business users unsatisfied with what their IT department are offering them. "IT generally gives these companies or organizations some big system like Sharepoint that is too complex or not flexible enough for their needs."

Another driving factor, McLoughlin notes is the need for external collaboration. Increasingly, employees are finding a need to work with people outside of their own companies and internally facing tools aren't adequate for their needs.

McLoughlin says that although Huddle has occasionally been blocked because it's been mistaken for a file sharing service or social network, the company hasn't had much trouble with IT. "Push back has been decreasing over the past two or three years," he says. He notes Proctor and Gamble has a policy of allowing its employees to use whatever tools they need to get their jobs done.

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey has proven that simple, single use tools can be extremely successful in the enterprise. SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg told us the company has 100% of the Fortune 100 and over 95 percent of the Fortune 500 as customers, but all of them signed up individually. "We don't do group sales or work with purchasing or IT departments- we don't have any sales people. So for us, this isn't a trend, it is our whole business."

UserVoice

We mentioned in our article on trends in idea management that UserVoice CEO Richard Whitemore has been seeing more enterprises using UserVoice as an internal tool instead of an externally facing one. Whitemore says this has been driven by largely by Shadow IT - business units are frequently unhappy with the larger idea management packages installed by IT or included as part of another system, and just want to quickly gather ideas from staff.

Google

Forrester has described information workers as Google's "trojan horse" into the enterprise, noting 39% have used tools such as Google Docs in the workplace. Google Apps adoption will likely be driven not by IT management, but by the rank and file who will want to use familiar technologies like Gmail and Google Docs.

Photo by
Hamed Parham

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Google is holding a big search event at the San Francisco MOMA this morning. The company has not released any specific information about the content of today's announcements, but the recent doodles on Google's homepage and various Twitter messages from the official Google accounts point towards a faster search experience, possibly with streaming, as-you-type search results. We assume that this will be the core of today's announcements, but there will surely be a few surprises as well.

The event is scheduled to start at 9:30am PT/12:30pm ET. You can find our live blog below.

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Google's VP for search products and user experience Marissa Mayer will speak at today's event. Other speakers include Johanna Wright (director of product management), Ben Gomes (distinguished engineer) and Othar Hansson (senior software engineer).

Live Blog

9:15 AM: The live video stream on YouTube is now available here.

9:21 AM: We are seeing some reports that you can already try Google's instant search by going to this URL: http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy

9:32 AM: Still waiting for the event to start. Until then, you can read the FAQ for Instant Search here. According to Google, Instant search can "save 2-5 seconds per search."

9:35 AM: Here we go. Google PR spokesperson Gabriel Stricker on stage, taking care of housekeeping items (WiFi, etc.).

9:37 AM: Why are we here? "State of the Union." Give everybody a sense of "where we are and where we are going."

9:38 AM: "Today, we are going to talk a lot about speed."

9:38 AM: "What we do is part art and part science."

9:39 AM: Marissa Mayer takes over.

Google now has over 1 billion users on its sites every week. Rolled out hundreds of search enhancements in 2010. "This stands to be the best year ever for Google Search."

9:40 AM: Recap of new search features released so far this year: real-time, Caffeine, timeline views, better spelling correction, integration of Google Squared results.

9:42 AM: Also: stars in search. "Users really want to bookmark results."

9:43 AM: "We also had some fun." Recaps Google TV commercials. Plays video of Super Bowl commercial.

9:45 AM: Yesterday's doodles: "We also had some fun with our logos." "We want search to be fun, fast and interactive."

9:45 AM: Today's announcement: a fundamental shift in search.

"How did we get here?" "Many years ago, if you wanted to get all the trivia about a painting in the MOMA, you would've had to spent a day in the library." By 1950, the telephone allowed you to call the librarian. 1995: CD-ROM-based encyclopedia. "But that was static information."

9:47 AM: Today: real-time information. See if a painting is on tour, for example.

Where is time spent on search today? "We have made our algorithms very efficient." Helping people to understand network time and rendering time in the browser."

A search takes 24 seconds. Entering a query nine seconds. Selecting result 15 second.

9:50 AM: To speed things up, we have to bring the time spent entering a query down.

Google Instant

9:51 AM: Google Instant streams results as you type (pretty much what we expected).

Demo of Google Instant (you can try it here).

9:52 AM: Mayer shows that it only takes her six keystrokes to find information about a specific painting at the MOMA.

Switching between search predictions can be done with up and down arrows.

9:54 AM: "It's not search 'as you type,' but 'search before you type.'" "We can predict what you are likely to type and give you those results in real time."

9:55 AM: Google used this idea of "search before you type" as an April Fool's joke 10 years ago.

Will be available later today. Available on Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE8. Will be part of the core Google search experience on Google.com in the U.S. starting this week. International sites - Germany, Italy, etc. - later this month.

9:57 AM: With this, Google will save its users 11 hours each second.

9:58 AM: Johanna Wright (director of product management on search) and Othar Hansson on stage.

The gears that make Instant Search work: instant results, predictions, scroll to search.

10:00 AM: Very staged, stiff presentation. Team shows how weather for San Francisco comes up in Instant Search with just one keystroke.

Second example: auto-completes "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - black text in search box shows what the user typed - grey text is the predicted search.

"It's not quite psychic, but it's very clever."

10:03 AM: Third example: "Yosemite" - use arrow keys to switch between predictions ("scroll to search").

10:04 AM: The real power in this is when all of these gears work together ("feedback").

More examples ("Addams family").

10:06 AM: "What the heck is the search button still there for?"

Same results as you are used to. "If you know how to use Google Search today, you know how to use Google Instant."

10:08 AM: Yet another example.

10:10 AM: A sneak peek of what's coming soon: instant search for mobile. Coming later this Fall (we can see how this would be even more useful on mobile.

Video of user testimonials from usability lab. Girl: "It was pretty fabulous." Old guy: "I appreciate that you made it easier for us old guys to use the computer."

The Engineering Behind Instant Search

10:14 AM: How can we make this vision a reality? How can we create a user interface that's easy to use? How can we make it useful on your computer? How can we make it work without melting our data centers?

Google tried this a long time ago. Unless the prediction works well, it's not effective to even try instant search - too costly to implement and not useful for users.

10:16 AM: Now: With predictions, this can be done. Google tested this internally and then did live experiments with millions of users. "People learn how to use this very quickly."

Video of eyetracking study. Shows the power of the predictive text and how fast users learn to use the new system.

10:20 AM: Results pages are now in AJAX. Explain the HTTP flow behind Instant Search. "We had to optimized a lot of JavaScript and work around browser performance issues."

10:22 AM: "How do we do this without melting down our data centers."

If Google Instant did a new search for every letter you typed, this couldn't work. Google can't handle 20 times amount the search traffic.

How does Google scale this? Optimizations: prioritizes searches that are the most likely. Checks if users is doing searches on another server. Results cached.

10:26 AM: "We work on search because we are engineers. The scale of the problem makes it interesting. But most importantly, we work on search because we believe it matters to people. Helps them make better decisions."

Last year alone, Google quietly release over 500 changes to search. "But occasionally, we launch changes that fundamentally change how you use search."

"It doesn't just make search faster, but also more fun, fluid and interactive."

10:28 AM: Google Instant was a massive change that touched almost every part of how Google serves up results.

10:28 AM: Mayer back on stage: Search at the speed of thought.

What makes search better: fun, comprehensiveness and understanding (understanding users' intent and the Web at large).

Mayer: "Google Instant Search is a quantum leap for search."

10:30 AM: Over the year, Google Instant will save 350 million hours of Google's users time.

In closing: a Bob Dylan-inspired ad for Google Instant.

Q&A

10:32 AM: Q: Robert Scoble: When will this be in browsers? A: "This is something we are working on. We expect within the next few months."

10:34 AM: Q: Effect on AdWords. A: No effect on this. Clicks are what matters anyway.

10:35 AM: Q: About 20% of queries are currently unique. How will this affect this metric? A: We don't know yet.

10:36 AM: Q: How will this fit in with user's search history. How will these results be tied in there? A: In Web history, queries where you did a click will show, as well as results where you paused for more than three seconds.

10:36 AM: Q (from Irena Slutsky): There seems to be a block list (including for Irena's last name). A: We filter for violence, hate and pornography. As a result, if you are typing something that's not appropriate, we won't show those results until you hit enter.

10:38 AM: Q: How much personal information is needed to make this work and fast? How much more pressure does this put on Google's data centers? A: Personal information: unchanged. For data centers: cost of search has been growing anyway and this is in line with Google's predictions.

10:40 AM: Q for Sergey Brin: Rate of innovation in user interface. Where will this take us? A: This is a new dawn for computing. Things were rather static on the desktop. Over the past several years on the Web (based on the capabilities of browsers, etc.) there is a lot of exciting work going on. This is just a piece of a really changing landscape of computing. The things that will come out from Google and others over the next 10 years will really change how you interact with computing devices.

10:42 AM: Q (Ben Parr of Mashable): Impact on SEO. A: Ranking stays the same. Behavior and the kind of searches we see may change, however. That's a longer term effect and we will understand it better over time.

10:43 AM: Q: Will this be made available around the world, including China? A: Google plans to roll this out everywhere, including the Hong Kong site.

10:44 AM: Q: Do users want faster search? A: yes.

10:45 AM: Q for Sergey: Are you concerned about the fact that we are giving up some privacy to get these better search results: A: Users place a lot of trust with us. We have to be great stewards of your information. Google Instant isn't any different in that respect.

10:46 AM: Q: How will behavior and search change over time? A: As you use it more, you may do more searches in neighboring topics. Easier to explore a topic.

10:47 AM: Q: How many users didn't want this during testing? How does this relate to Caffeine? A: Some users turned it off (there is a switch that allows you to turn it off). Very small percentage. They mostly turned it off because they were on slow connections. About Caffeine: not directly related, but the faster and real-time index made this a bit harder.

10:49 AM: Q: Is this the death of SEO? A: We're sure the SEOs are smart and can catch up with us.

10:50 AM: Q (for Sergey Brin): Did you ever think this would be possible? A: Yes - but it's really thanks to the advance of computing power that this is now possible.

10:51 AM: Q: Lots of people consume the content that a very small percentage of users create. How can you change that? How can you get more people to contribute? A (Brin): To do a great job at search, we need lots of content. We use AdSense to help people make money from their content. Authoring tools like Blogger, Docs etc. We don't expect people to create all their content on Google.

10:53 AM: Q: Plans to make this even faster or are the technical limits at present? A: "Today we will enjoy the speed of this and tomorrow we will work on making this even faster."

10:54 AM: Q (Irena Slutsky from AdAge): How does this affect smaller brands. Does the lower half of the page and page two still matter? A: The user intent doesn't change. If you use page two less, that means you are getting to what you want faster. This is a user-focused launch. We are focused on our users and believe that this is also good for our advertisers.

10:56 AM: Q: If people conduct more searches now, how will users' interaction with ads change? How often do they stop and click now? A: We focus on the user experience. The other effects will follow.

10:57 AM: Q: What about mobile? When will Google release this in Japan and China? A: For both questions:coming in the next few months.

10:59 AM: Q: Can you change the number of suggestions made in the auto-complete? A: No - but we always test different UIs.

11:00 AM: Q (Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land): Changes seem to put even more focus on the top result. How do you improve those results? A: Ranking is a problem we obviously work on all the time. This stuff is tough and search quality is not always perfect.

And that wraps it up for today. Thanks for reading everybody!

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Earlier today, ReadWriteWeb editor Richard MacManus examined the future of social objects - that is, the future of the Internet of Things. This slow-growing trend encompasses how real-world objects are connected to the Internet using various technologies, including RFID chips, barcodes, sensors, bots and, to some extent, even mobile applications like Glue, which attaches a social history of sorts to an object like a book or a bottle of wine, albeit somewhat virtually.

While on the one hand, the idea of these self-aware "social objects" is intriguing, especially when you examine use cases like the "social tennis racquet," as MacManus did, there is a flip side. Social objects can tattle on you, reporting data you don't wish to share.

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Case in point: a reader on technology news site TechDirt alerted them to a city initiative in Cleveland, Ohio, where RFID chips are being placed on recycling bins to monitor whether or not the bin has been taken to the curb. In theory, at least, this is helpful, useful data to the city's trash-collecting department. If a chip reports that you haven't been taking your bin to the curb for a number of weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through your garbage for recyclable items, saving them from the dump.

RFID data helps save Mother Earth, right?

Well, yes...but...

The catch here is that trash carts containing more than 10% recyclable material can lead to a $100 fine, according to Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens, as reported by local website Cleveland.com. The pilot program for these RFID-enabled bins began in 2007 with 15,000 households participating. The city has now approved spending $2.5 million on high-tech bins for 25,000 households and will continue at 25,000 households per year until all of the city's 150,000 residents are covered.

On a personal level, you may support this "recycle or be fined" program, especially given the troubling state of the world's environment. Maybe it's time for recycling to move from being a personal choice to a legal requirement?

Tattletaling Objects

The implications of these data-collecting, tattletaling objects and their use by government cannot be overlooked. It begins with spying on your trash, but what's next? Parking meters that know you snagged a few extra minutes because no one was around to write a ticket? Oh wait, that already exists. Vibration sensors that report when illegals cross the border? Hmm, that was done too. Biometric passports? We're already there.Digital billboards that can be used for surveillance? Yikes. Trees that report back when poached? Done. A plan to coat the planet in billions of sensors that can monitor traffic, analyze climate change, oh, and recognize people, too? In progress.

By themselves, none of these current use-cases alone are a major affront to personal freedom (in this author's opinion, that is). But there are many privacy advocates out there who find measures like these egregious violations of of our civil liberties.

Even if you fall more on the side of "eh, who cares?", try this: imagine a future where all objects are "social" data-collectors who can report their use, their history, their location, etc. Now imagine the government or corporations accessing that data and taking action based on what the objects' data tells them. Did your opinion change? If so, why?

This article is not meant to be alarmist - here at ReadWriteWeb, we're big supporters of the Internet of Things and its potential. However, the trend has other implications for our world which may be less than positive - those need to be examined, too.

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Despite the continued growth and popularity of Facebook, a number of alternate social networking sites are cropping up in order to the needs of groups in ways that Facebook can't. One such group is scientists and scholars, who want to have a platform for communication and collaboration, but one that focuses on research interest and reading lists, not just friends and family.

And more and more - 2000 a day - are joining ResearchGATE, a startup that hopes to connect scientists, researchers, and scholars worldwide.

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ResearchGATE was founded in 2008 by Dr. Ijad Madisch, an award-winning scientist who earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Medical School of Hannover, Germany and currently performing research at Harvard Medical School, S�ren Hofmayer, who earned his M.D., from the Medical School of Hannover, and Horst Fickenscher, a computer scientist who earned his graduate degree at the University of Passau, Germany. The background of the founders helped them recognize the specialized needs of scientists and scholars, and according to Madisch the site has been built to address those needs.

Meeting the Communication and Collaboration Needs of the Scientific Community

Initially, says Madisch, ResearchGATE offered merely profiles. But as more scientists joined - the site now has 500,000 registered users from 200 countries - features were added so that scholars could present their research and participate in Q&A groups. On ResearchGATE you can list what projects you're working on and what literature you're reading, making it easier for scholars to see what others in the field are thinking and, in the words of Madisch, making "discovering papers social."

Unlike a site like Facebook, scholars have followers, rather than just "friends," which makes sense as, say, a grad student might want to follow a prestigious scholar in her or his field, but might not be able to claim the person as a direct contact. In addition to fostering communication and collaboration among researchers working on similar projects, ResearchGATE also fosters cross-discipline collaboration, as a scholars in a variety of fields can share research results and methodologies. And it's not just "hard science," either. According to Madisch, philosophers make up one of the largest disciplines represented on the site.

ResearchGATE announces today that it has secured a Series A round of financing led by Benchmark Capital with participation from Accel Partners' Silicon Valley office and prominent investors from the UK and Germany. With the funding, ResearchGATE plans to expand its team and add new features to meet the needs of users, including calendaring and virtual conferencing.

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There's an interesting chart making its way around the Net this morning comparing the number of iTunes app downloads to the total downloads of songs. The surprising reveal is that it shows apps are being downloaded much more rapidly than songs. In only 2.2 years, the iTunes App Store has reached the same total downloads as the iTunes Music Store did after five years. And before the year is out, the two curves on the chart will be around the same height - 13 billion downloads each.

Why is this happening? Why are apps becoming more popular than music?

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More Apps Downloaded Than Songs by Year-End

The original chart was posted on Asymco's website, home to a hybrid industry analysis advisory and app development firm. Assuming the data the firm has collected is accurate (they say it comes from statements made by Apple representatives), Apple customers will have downloaded more iPhone/iPod/iPad apps than songs sometime in the near future, either by year end or just a few weeks later.

That's a staggering thought, when you really think about it. After all, the original iPhone didn't even support the development of third-party mobile applications when it launched in summer 2007. It wasn't until March of the following year that Apple released development tools (the iPhone SDK, or software development kit), allowing aspiring developers to begin work on mobile creations that would run on an upcoming version of the iPhone operating system, due out later that summer.

When launched, however, these natively-built iPhone applications quickly became more popular the previously supported "Web applications" in terms of usage. App downloads surged and have been surging ever since.

But why are these apps, popular as they may be, on the path to besting music in terms of sheer download numbers?

Ouriel Ohayon, the creator of mobile application sharing and discovery platform AppsFire, has ventured a few guesses and we think he's right on the money. Here are the reasons he puts forth on the AppsFire blog:

1. Apps Let You Personalize Your Phone

Apps let you personalize your phone in the same way as only ringtones and wallpapers once did. They are the new music playlists, in a sense, he says. In many ways I think that's true - I know the first thing I do when I get hold of someone else's mobile phone is look at what apps they're using. I could care less what their musical interests are. However, I don't think this is the main reason for the trend.

2.Many Apps are Free

Ohayon says that apps are surpassing music in part because so many of them are free. That's hard to argue with. Apps are probably sampled more often because they're free. However, some of those free apps probably aren't used as often as the 99-cent song you knew you liked enough to purchase is listened to. Nor do free apps make up the majority of iPhone apps available for sale - roughly 70% are paid. Free apps cater to our desire to buy things on impulse, but without the guilt of throwing our money away. So what if you only play that game once? It was worth the price - nothing - to kill five minutes of time while in the waiting room of the doctor's office.

3. Apps Provide Downloaded Music Substitutes

Mobile applications like Pandora, Last.fm, Deezer, Spotify, MOG and Rdio provide free and/or paid subscriptions to streaming music. You don't need to download and pay for a song in iTunes if you use one of these applications - you can just listen to it over the Internet instead. Apple itself may have caught onto this trend, too. The company recently purchased streaming service Lala.com, which many suspect will be turned into a subscription-based, Internet music streaming service for iTunes.

In addition, some apps are music themselves. Ohayon points to apps like this Lady Gaga one or this Katy Perry one, for example, that package popular music within mobile applications. Some games also feature music like Katy Perry Revenge or Lyric Legend, which, when you think about it, is actually a new format for listening to music. But there are many, many others beyond the few mentioned here.

In fact, we spotted this trend nearly a year ago, noting the rise of "music-themed" apps that offer tunes and other content from artists. We then cited examples from NIN, Moby and Usher as artists who were using apps to promote their songs. (See: "Forget the iTunes LP, Apps are the New Album"). Still, the most devoted fans will probably buy both the app and the album, since only the latter usually works in playlists and when you go offline.

While no single reason can explain this trend in its entirety, the reasons put forth by Ohayon are reasoned and sound, we think. Asymco's Horace Dediu agrees, responding to Ohayon via the comments of the post, saying "apps are indeed content," referring to how apps can replace other forms of content. "Apps-as-media has implications in the way they are produced, marketed, priced and consumed," writes Dediu. "All the data since has been nothing but confirmation of this."

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