Web site helps candidates manage social networking

With the increasing use of social network sites, one might ask how/what is the best way to organize all the sites into one managable application? As government continues to increase the use of Web 2.0, presidential campaigns are confronting the challenge of how to organize their online presence in a way that maximizes impact and reach while not forgetting grassroots efforts. Presidential hopefuls have been using online community sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook to announce their candidacies and host forums. But now that they have burgeoning online presences on handfuls of different networks, the campaigns are looking for ways to connect their cyber supporters. Many candidates MyLifeBrand http://www.mylifebrand.com/ (currently in alpha form), a social network aggregator, for the answer. It lets members of different social networks and associated friends link to one another on one network.

The aggregator doesn’t affect the status of the original networks, letting the existing communities continue as they are. Daniel Scalisi, MyLifeBrand’s executive vice president, said that by building a branded community, candidates can benefit from an expanded network and increased control over their message.

But Joshua Levy, associate editor of TechPresident.com, a nonpartisan Web site that explores how politics and technology influence each other, warns that campaigns need to be careful not to alienate grassroots supporters. “The whole thing [with online social networking] is that it’s the supporters that control the message," he said. “If the message is handled in a top down way and you are not allowed to deviate people get very upset about that very quickly and they don’t want to participate.”

McDonald's launches a Web 2.0 "viral" marketing campaign

American fast-food giant McDonald's has launched a Web 2.0 "viral" marketing campaign. McDonald's new web 2.0 site http://www.mcdonaldsmom.com/ is where "US moms" can tout the sheer wholesomeness and health benefits of McDonald's food.

McMoms, dubbed "Quality Correspondents", will meet with company nutritionists, "chefs", suppliers and others responsible for food quality and safety. McMoms will be encouraged to "publicly share their experiences through journals and downloadable videos on the website.

Abobe AIR boost for Web Apps

Jesse James Garrett, the man who coined the term "Ajax" says the divide between browser based and desktop applications is quickly disappearing, especially with the help of Adobe's new Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR, nee Apollo), which was released by the company June 11th. AIR features support for HTML/JavaScript web applications in addition to the company's proprietary Flash technology.

Garret says AIR will likely eliminate all the extra work by allowing developers to roll their browser specific code into a desktop app. Adobe hopes to see a huge community of developers to begin experimenting with AIR.

More information on Adobe's AIR can be found at Adobe: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/

Unisys Debuts SOA for ClearPath

Unisys announced recently Unisys Service Oriented Architecture for ClearPath (Enterprise Servers), a new methodology, portfolio of services and suite of tools for enabling mainframe applications to participate in a service oriented architecture (SOA). This solution enables ClearPath clients to rapidly transform their strategic applications.

Unisys works with clients to evaluate their application portfolio and help them make decisions about evolving their mainframe applications into SOA. This process is supported by reference models based on best practices.

More information on Clearpath can be found at Unisys:http://www.unisys.com/products/mainframes/index.htm

Google Provides Offline Functionality to Web Apps

Googe recently released "Google Gears" which is a javascript application programming interface that adds offline supports for web applications. This new toolkit was released in conjuction with an update Google Reader that allows for offline support for reading the RSS feeds. Google Gears is a free open source platform. The plugin is a 700K download for Firefox 1.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+ that installs three developer APIs. One API will handle the creation of data objects to store application information locally, another will be a SQLite relational database for searching the data, and the final part will enable asynchronous JavaScript so applications can sync data in the background without overburdening the browser.