The UK Government's Power of Information Task Force have created a public competition to produce mashups of government and public data. The site Show us a better way offers a £20,000 prize fund to further develop the winning entry.
Flickr is a popular photography site. Its webservice interface has lead to a number of mashups using its content:
I've just read an interesting article in the Guardian in which the travel journalist Emily Baker puts some social networking sites for tourists through their paces: Going local. She gives a run-down of the social networking sites at the end of the article, here is some of it:
For meeting someone on a flight
I read in the news today that Microsoft has made a beta release of Internet Explorer 8. They also announced that the new browser works better with web applications like Facebook as well as fully conforming to web standards by passing the ACID tests. This quick release has people thinking that Firefox is posing a threat to Internet Explorer's market share. But it may be that the two browsers are beginning to notice
An amazing demonstration of a technology under development that promises to, not only identify similar images, but piece them together like a jigsaw. Each photograph (or image) is stitched together to form a seamless image, which can be navigated in a very natural way.
The new kid on the block, which must have a number of banks wondering, is money lending sites--- otherwise known as peer-to-peer lending. These sites put people who want to borrow money in touch with people who have money to lend. These sites score the borrowers using the traditional credit scoring techniques and this is used to indicate the risk to the lenders who might lend money.
In the end the borrower gets the money they want a loan at a good rate and the borrower gets a good rate of return: often much better than a bank.
Things have changed a not over the last few years. Once the net, was the preserve of the few. Talking about servers, hosts and site, let alone html or mail, was unusual. It looks like we are entering a new generation of technology, that isn't lost on the technologists. Some like Thomas W Malone or MIT believe that the current communications revolution is going to change the world as much as mass literacy. His research predicts the future of work is one where more business is done Peer-to-Peer.
What is interesting about his view is he likens it to what has happened in government, as communication has improved less social stratification is needed.
