Web 2.0

What do you do with your books when you finish reading them? Or your videogames, DVDs, or CDs that you're tired of? Me, I stick them on a shelf until my wife harangues me to get rid of them. Then I make a run to the used book or music store, sell what I can for pennies, and take the rest to the Goodwill. I'd be happier if I could extract more personal value from these items. But only as long as I don't have to hassle with actually selling the items on eBay or at a … Read more

At D4, Sony CEO Howard Stringer showed off the new Reader, an electronic book that looks like something a real person would actually want. The Reader is very thin, lighter than a real book, and employs a backlight-free high-contrast display technology that makes text easier to read than on any other lightweight device I've seen. I'd line up to buy one if it ships for less than the $300 cost that Stringer mentioned in his interview.

The issue with e-books, of course, is content. Sony is still working out the details of selling books. (Hopefully the electronic versions … Read more

At D4, the first on-stage demo is from SharpCast, a company we've seen previously (at Demo). The current version of this service allows you to synchronize your digital photos among multiple computers, your online Sharpcast account, and your mobile devices

It looks like a fantastic utility for people who are sick of trying to remember where their photos are. With this utility, all your photos end up in one place. Actually, they end up in all places, which means you don't have to worry about photo file management anymore. Cameraphone users will find it especially useful: photos you … Read more

Here at D4, Steve Burke, president of Comcast sparred with moderator Kara Swisher, and the audience, over net neutrality. On the one hand Burke agrees that offering different access to different sites, "is one of the dumbest things we could do."

On the other hand, look this summer for new ways to pay for extra bandwidth from Comcast. Personally, I'm in the process of signing up for Comcast's higher "tier" of access -- 8 megabits/second instead of the standard 6 mbps. And coming this summer is a new feature called "Speed Boost,&… Read more

There's a new company getting a lot of press and attention at the D4 conference: Presto. This startup is developing a system that will let you email your pictures directly to printers you install in the homes of people you love who aren't computer savvy, like your parents or grandparents. The pitch, from CEO Joe Beninato, is that sending pictures in emails to people who are barely computer literate often results in an unsatisfactory experience -- the pictures aren't opened.

The Presto answer is technology that above all promises to be easy to use: HP will market … Read more

I often tell people that one of the big advantages of VOIP is that it lets you check your voicemail on your PC. It's easier and faster to process messages on a computer screen than it is to wade through linear voice prompts. But cellular users and those who don't want to replace their home phone service are still stuck navigating voicemail the old-fashioned way.

A new service, GotVoice, can fix this for you. This clever and free product will dial up your voicemail service periodically, record your messages, and both save them on its Web site and … Read more

I got a somewhat murky pitch from Jeteye CEO David Hayden last week. He was telling me about his new collaborative publishing tool, how important it is to integrate search and collaboration, and how critical it is to store not just links, but images and pages. He said Jeteye is "better than bookmarks, and it's for sharing." I didn't get it.

But this weekend I had a chore to do: I needed to send a bunch of pictures and links to a contractor doing work on our house. There was no easy and fast way to … Read more

Thanks to YouTube and its dozens of competitors, it is easier than ever to distribute video content. It's still hard to make good content, though. It's also tough to make money from online videos, although Google is going to make that a little easier with its video advertising program.

It's become a new business environment for video content companies, which means there are openings for new kinds of video studios, like TurnHere. This company, launching a revised version of its Web site this week, is in the business of producing short, professional videos about travel destinations. My … Read more

Next week, Shopify officially launches. It's a hosted commerce site -- not a unique concept. But it's got a super-clean design that makes setting up a store incredibly easy. If you have a small business that sells goods, this site is definitely worth checking out.

I'm trying to get rid of some stuff that's been cluttering my basement, so I used a preview version of the site to set up my own store, rafestore.myshopify.com. It took all of ten minutes to get started, get my PayPal and credit card information into the site, and … Read more