Web 2.0 Watch

Subscribing to a magazine was once a 1-year commitment, but Time Inc.’s Maghound is changing that, reports Folio. The Netflix-like service launching this fall offers “flexibility, choice, control and personalization,” says Maghound's president. The service allows customers to swap subscriptions at any time, liberating readers from year-long relationships that aren’t working out. More »

A glut of political amateurs who produce popular videos on the cheap for YouTube and similar sites is redefining campaign politics. The New York Times takes a look at the phenomenon, in which partisans with nothing but passion and a computer produce often scathing videos about McCain and Obama. The campaigns, meanwhile, are struggling to ajdust to "politics at the speed of the Internet," as one Obama adviser puts it. More »

What’s next in the wide world of Web?  MIT’s Technology Review lists 10 up-and-coming apps and gadgets to make communicating even easier: Pinger . Like texting, but with your voice: leave voice messages for your friends on the company’s server. Pownce . A microblogging service like Twitter—but users can send large files back and forth, too. Qik . Broadcast live to the Internet using just your mobile phone. Dash Navigation . Road-ready Internet access that lets drivers grab traffic info on the fly. Ushahidi . To help get the word out during disasters, text messages appear on a web-based map showing the texter’s location. More »

Reports of the demise of Subway pitchman Jared are greatly exaggerated, a company rep said yesterday in response to an Internet hoax spread via Twitter posts. "Jared sounded very much alive when I talked to him today," a spokesman told Radar . The fast-spreading rumor claimed Fogle, 30, died after gastric bypass surgery and directed the worried masses to a fake mourners' site. More »

The Internet's key oversight agency relaxed rules today to permit the introduction of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new Internet domain names to join ".com," making the first sweeping changes in the network's 25-year-old addressing system. The panel, meeting in Paris, unanimously approved new guidelines to streamline review of proposed new suffixes; under the old rules, only 13 were approved in the last 8 years. More »

At its height, al-Qaeda had mastered how to amplify the effect of real-world attacks with virtual representations—videos, audio recordings, and articles reproducing its mayhem online. But as the Web has transformed into a more social entity, the terrorist organization is " stuck in 1.0," writes analyst Daniel Kimmage in the New York Times . If America and its allies want to win the war on terror, they should look to YouTube. More »

Won’t these Internet startups ever learn about business plans? That's backward thinking, says prolific venture capitalist Joi Ito, who has a stake in the new website PMOG. “People make fun of the idea," he told Portfolio . “There are few sites, however, that have a critical mass where they usually don't figure out a business model.” More »

Before it was the last word in gastronomy, the Michelin Guide was a free book designed to spur travel, and hence sell tires. Now, it’ll be free once more, thanks to a revamped Web strategy, BusinessWeek reports. Michelin’s redesigned site will not only give away more content, it’ll also include web 2.0 features to let amateur gourmets get a word in. More »

How many online friends is too many? Facebook insists users can only have 5,000—and that's not enough for some, discovers Stephen Levy in Newsweek. "Who am I to say no to friendship?" asks one user who spends 12 hours a day on Facebook and has a waiting list of 500 would-be pals. Levy even discovers a mere potato on MySpace with 2,695 friends. More »

Today's youth are dangerously dumb, Mark Bauerlein writes in his new book, The Dumbest Generation. Here's why : Check out Jay Leno's "Jaywalking," where "the ignorance is hard to believe." They boast "a new attitude," taking pride in their illiteracy. More »

With election season in full swing, the political junkies have come for Digg.com, making Hillary, Barack, et. al. fixtures on the social news site. That’s been great for traffic, but it’s also angered the tech nerd early adopters who made Digg a success, CNET reports. At a recent “town hall” webcast, questions flooded in complaining about the political news. More »

A new pastime rocking the Twitter-verse is to envision the many ways life will become perfect when Barack Obama wins the presidency, the Wall Street Journal reports. A few examples: When Obama wins... we will all shower in beer, and soap will be replaced by bacon . When Obama wins... Charlie Brown will finally kick that football. When Obama wins... people will stop making bad remixes of Billy Jean . More »

Spanish health officials are opening a virtual clinic in the popular online world Second Life, where they plan to advise teens who are too shy to consult flesh-and-blood doctors, the Guardian reports. It will appear as a consultation room for now, but officials hope to expand the service and eventually “deal with problems of dermatology and psychology through a webcam," one doctor said. More »

Spending on Web 2.0 technologies is ready to explode, according to a new report from Forrester Research. The market will reach $4.6 billion by 2013, the report predicts, as the technology starts to saturate the business world. To get there, it’ll have to jump an average of 43% a year, since this year’s sales amount to a mere $764 million. More »

Is it another triumph of Web 2.0, or a concession to the rampantly collaborative tone of the Internet these days? Either way, "Dilbert" has gone interactive, the New York Times reports. On the popular comic’s website, fans can now substitute their own pithy retorts for text bubbles in the final panel, and they'll soon be able to run wild with the whole strip. More »

Early tests have found Mozilla's latest version of Firefox is much speedier than earlier versions and it runs rings around its rivals, PC World reports. One blogger found Firefox 3 Beta 4 was nearly twice as fast as Safari and Opera, and the Beta 4 version, and three times faster than Explorer. Mozilla's head of development said the company is tweaking Firefox  to make "really heavy-duty applications" run faster. More »

Growing Web 2.0 companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Slide are biding their time before going public, making sure to run up their value as much as possible to fetch top dollar with an IPO, reports Business Week . It’s a far different approach than companies took before the dot-com bubble burst, when the fast track to an IPO was the goal. More »

What’s next for online social networking? A heavy dose of geography, writes David Kirkpatrick in Fortune ’s Fast Forward . At a real-life meeting for 100 new-media notables in New York, one hot topic was adding location information to user-driven sites so that “not only will you know what someone is doing online, you’ll know where they are doing it.” More »

Social news sites like Digg don’t work, says Slashdot founder Rob Malda, and Ron Paul is Exhibit A. “A lot of these community news sites are all about Ron Paul,” Malda told the New York Times . “What that is really demonstrating is that you are seeing 1 or 2 percent of a community shaping where the whole community is going.” More »

Today's launch of Web 2.0 Expo Berlin notwithstanding, there are hints that "second-generation" Web companies are losing appeal in the venture capital community -- or at least with prestigious Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  Digital Daily cites a KPCB partner who recently told a Silicon Valley journalist that he has "no interest in funding" such companies. More »