| Why Did Google Want PushLife, a Music Sync Service? Google has acquired PushLife, a mobile music application which allowed users synchronize tracks on their desktop computers with their mobile phones. Supported devices included those from Nokia, BlackBerry and any running Google's Android mobile operating system. The deal comes ahead of Google's expected launch of Google Music, a service Google demonstrated at its developer conference last year, and is now reportedly undergoing in-house testing. But if Google Music is so close to launch, after having been in development for over a year, why is Google just now buying the technology of a small-time competitor in this space? What hole does PushLife fill?
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Art, Meet Touch: Photoshop Reveals New iPad Apps Today, Adobe revealed three new Photoshop Touch applications designed for the iPad: Adobe Color Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav. The apps work with Adobe's Photoshop CS5 desktop software, which will be updated to version 5.5 in order to support the new functionality. The update is due out in a matter of weeks. What's interesting about these applications - not Photoshop replacements themselves - is how they integrate the tablet with the PC, offloading specific tasks to the touchscreen interface. In Color Lava, for example, artists use their fingers to mix colors on the iPad, creating custom swatches and themes which can then be ported back to Photoshop. Adobe Nav, meanwhile, offers a different way to navigate desktop Photoshop's interface. Only in Eazel are actual paintings created - but paintings which take advantage of the touch technology to offer new techniques in blending paint. In addition, third-party developers will soon be able to integrate similar functionality into their apps, thanks to Adobe's new toolkit, the Photoshop Touch SDK.
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Google's New Trivia Game Tests Your Knowledge & Your Search Skills Google has just launched a new trivia game - A Google a Day - to the delight and perhaps even to the dismay of trivia lovers. Normally, when you quiz someone about their knowledge of historical facts, literary figures, capitals, sports champions, and other minutiae, the rules are "no cheating." No looking up the answer in books. And certainly no Googling. But the Google a Day puzzle encourages you to do just that, use the search engine to find the answer.
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What Technology Wants: Kevin Kelly's Theory of Evolution for Technology Over the past week I read Kevin Kelly's latest book, What Technology Wants. It's a highly ambitious and expansive book, which looks at technology from an evolutionary perspective. Over 350 pages, Kelly outlines and explores technology as a living system, akin to humanity's biological evolution. The title alludes to this - 'What Technology Wants,' as if technology is a living, breathing thing. Kelly's book is a must read for technologists and anybody interested in the future of the Web. In this post I'll explore a few of the main themes of the book, in particular as they relate to the evolving Web. (there won't be any spoilers, for those of you in the middle of reading it or if you haven't yet read it!) Two of the main themes are how technology will evolve and how we - humanity - can guide it and make the best use of it.
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Streaming or Buying Books: Will Readers Choose a Subscription Model for E-Books? When Amazon launched its new Cloud Drive a few weeks ago, it prompted a debate in the ReadWriteWeb editorial room about whether or not the future of music involved downloads and ownership - as supported by Amazon's cloud stage - or streaming and subscription - as provided by any number of music startups, like Rdio and Spotify. The ReadWriteWeb writers kept our discussion focused on music, but the debate could easily extend to any number of digital media now in Amazon's catalogue: movies, magazines, books. We're familiar with these streaming and subscription services when it comes to music and movies (Netflix, Hulu for example). But books? Will we (can we) rent books?
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Cartoon: Get Thee Behind Me, Twitalyzer! I'm a numbers junkie. Oh, I talk a good line about how it's the quality of the conversation that matters, and the connections you make... but you won't see a day go by when I'm not checking on stats. Twitter followers, Klout score, blog traffic: if I can measure it, I'm counting. And it's not like those numbers aren't important... so long as they're measuring something that ultimately represents some kind of impact I can have on the world, or vice versa. But that doesn't explain why it's such a compulsion for me - and, let's face it, for an awful lot of people. I've subscribed to a number of theories over the years, most of them variants on "It's all about making up for not being cool in high school."
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Check Out the Companies That Make ReadWriteWeb Possible Our readers know ReadWriteWeb as the blog that's ahead of the technology curve. Our sponsors know us as that, too. Once a week we introduce our sponsors to our readers and let them know a little more about who they are and what they do. You can say thanks to the companies that make ReadWriteWeb happen by tweeting them (see the link below each sponsor) or following them using our Twitter list. Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? Our readers are smart, tech-savvy decision makers; 40% have a graduate degree or PhD, and over 45% play a key role in information technology purchasing decisions. More than 1 million people on Twitter follow us to stay abreast of the latest Web technology trends from around the globe. To find out more about our sponsor packages, visit our advertising page or email our COO.
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Hacking Europe's Cultural Heritage with Europeana's New API Europe's rich cultural heritage can be found in museums, libraries, galleries, cultural institutes, and archives throughout the continent. And thanks to digitization efforts and Europeana, much of this heritage can also be found online. Europeana is an Internet portal that provides public access to Europe's digital libraries - more than 15 million cultural objects including paintings, drawings, archival papers, books, letters, radio broadcasts, newsreels, films including some of the world's most famous cultural artifacts such as the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton's notes and book about the Laws of Motion. About 1500 institutions have contributed to Europeana, including the British Library in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdamn, and the Louvre in Paris. Anyone can visit the Europeana website to search through the materials. And now, thanks to its newly released API, other applications and services may soon be on the way.
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