Digg, Google Wave Seize Spotlight at Web 2.0 Expo

by Clint Boulton

Web 2.0 Expo co-hosts Brady Forrest and Jen Pahlka prepare to introduce Tim O’Reilly.

O’Reilly exhorts programmers in the audience to do the right thing and create open-source software without boundaries. He also lauds Microsoft as an emerging open Web practitioner.

From left to right, Digg CEO Jay Adelson, Digg founder Kevin Rose and Web 2.0 Expo co-host Brady Forrest discuss where Digg came from and where it’s going. The new Digg will boast “instant Digging” that doesn’t require registration or a log-in, better filtering of topics to fit any number of niche interests and a “smarter” way to gauge story popularity.

Hunch Chief Product Officer Caterina Fake, who also co-founded Flickr, discusses how her startup helps users find answers they’re looking for online, drawing on the wisdom of crowds.

Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft Research, speed-reads a paper on social networking constructs, prompting many in the audience to tweet potshots at her presentation skills on Twitter. Read her presentation on the stream of content flowing through social media here.

Trapani, founder of Lifehacker, wrote an extensive user manual for Google Wave, the real-time collaboration platform. Wave enables e-mail, instant messaging, document sharing and social networking in one palette.

Trapani tries to explain Wave, which has confounded (or annoyed) even tech-savvy geeks. She calls it more of a new document collaboration platform than a new way to do e-mail.

Keep it small and simple. Too many people equals too many bouncing cursors.

Trapani explains how Wave can be used to manage projects.

Who needs Flickr when you can use Wave, which enables users to upload and share photos and other files?

Wave extensions and gadgets help users extend Wave’s usability. Here Trapani shows how users can make phone calls within Wave using BT Ribbit’s Wave gadget.