I can’t
believe that it’s almost the end of July already. I feel like I’m still
catching up with all the news that’s happened over the last few weeks or so and
there’s no sign of it slowing down. So, in a bid to try and keep up, here’s a summary
of some interesting emerging technologies and trends (ET&T) that I’ve come
across lately:

Wufoo is
a simple AJAX-ish tool “…that helps anyone build
and host amazing online forms…[such as] a mailing list, a contact form, a
marketing survey or even a complete customer management system.”
It does for forms (in general) what services like Survey Monkey and Zoomerang have done for customer feedback
surveys. I hope to give it a try in the upcoming weeks, but after having a
quick look around, I must say that I’m highly impressed by the excellent
form-building and report-management/analysis tools. It looks like a fantastic
tool for business users who don’t want the hassle of involving IT in building
forms and I suspect it may even spell trouble for the likes of Survey Monkey
and other traditional web-survey services. Check out Wufoo reviews on the Read/Write Web
and TechCrunch. To quote Marshall Kirkpatrick from TechCrunch: “Wufoo makes great use
of AJAX to create a very nice user experience on the admin side of things…Form
creation is an important function and the team behind Wufoo has leveraged some
of the best in contemporary technology. I think this one’s a winner.”

ClickTale is another interesting new web application for gathering site
statistics. Unlike traditional services which simply provide lots of numbers
for analysis and/or some graphical overlays (like Google Analytics—formerly Urchin), ClickTale
goes one step further. In support of their mantra (“because every user has a
story”), ClickTale records movies of how users interact with your website. Here’s
what they state in their FAQ
section: ClickTale is a brand new approach
to website analysis and optimization. While web analytics provide aggregated
user data, we focus on the atomic user behavior. We show website owners exactly
how individual users interact with their website. By watching movies of
browsing sessions, website owners gain a deeper understanding of visitor
behavior; which leads to improved website usability, enhanced navigation, and
increased overall website effectiveness. For more info, check
out the detailed TechCrunch
(p)review, the huge
buzz on Digg, and the ClickTale blog.

It turns
out that the MS iPod challenger (see my blog here)
is “Argo” no more—it’s now called Zune and it
appears to not only be an iPod competitor, but also iTunes as well. Microsoft recently admitted/announced
it on Billboard, but the link doesn’t seem to
be working now. And supporting “Microsoft’s new,
holistic approach to music and entertainment” is ZuneInsider—the “official” Zune blog. You
can also visit ComingZune, which appears
to be some kind of holding page with an “interesting” animation of a man, a
rabbit, and a boy the size of the rabbit (I don’t quite get it). One key differentiator:
it looks like WiFi will be built in to this device. More info at…

 - An excellent report
by Michael Gartenberg
 - An insightful piece on
GigaOm and some earlier thoughts
by Michael Wolf
 - Also see: Engadget,
CNET,
ZuneNation

Lots of wiki
news on CNET’s News.com, particularly in the enterprise wiki realm. Some
recent highlights include: JotSpot’s release
of version
2.0, which includes an impressive facelift and some nice new features (quote:
“Rather than
simply make a Web page, a person can create a spreadsheet, a shared calendar,
file-sharing site, or a photo-sharing page…The advantage is that these document
types have more specialized features and structure than a plain Web page”).

Socialtext also announced
a new open source version of their app, called Socialtext Open, which is now available
for download as a beta version on SourceForge. More info on Ross Mayfield’s
blog.

On a similar note, a new challenger has emerged in the open source enterprise
wiki arena: “MindTouch,
founded by former Microsoft employees…announced the creation of an open-source
project around MindTouch Dream software for building distributed Web
applications using Microsoft .Net development tools…The appliance
includes a modified version of MediaWiki, the software
behind Wikipedia, and a server that can be updated remotely…MindTouch changed
MediaWiki to make it easier to use for workers sharing Microsoft Office
documents.” Full story here.

Also worth reading, is a short blog by Mike Yamamoto on “Wikis vs. Microsoft Office”
as well as “Wiki 2.0 -
JotSpot launches Web Office Wiki” on Richard MacManus’ blog (quote:
“JotSpot is
doing the right thing morphing their wiki application products into office
tools, because this is tapping into a growing market for web-based office tools
and will also push the boundaries of what office tools can be in the Web Office
era.”)

Digg recently released
version 3.0 of their “user driven social content website” to the
public and, shortly thereafter, also launched
two cool new tools as part of the new Digg
Labs: Digg Stack and Digg Swarm. You can read about the
new Digg tools on TechCrunch, and also listen to TalkCrunch for a podcast
on Digg v3 with Digg founders, Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson.

Essentially, “Digg Stack is a Flash based visualization application that
shows diggs occuring on stories in real time…[and] Digg Swarm…shows stories…that
are larger based on the number of Diggs…The combination of Swarm and Stack,
along with the existing Digg Spy, will give
users more information on what news is developing in real time, over and above
what can be viewed on the Digg home page or individual topic pages.”

On the topic of Digg, CyberNet recently
published an excellent, in-depth article on the “Digg effect,” called “CyberNotes:
The Analysis of a Digg Effect 4X in 10 Days.” To quote the
article, The
“Digg Effect” as it’s called, really does affect a website in more ways than
one. Each time an article makes the front page of Digg we end up with more RSS
subscribers and dedicated readers—something that any blog such as CyberNet
strives for. It also makes for some good entertainment after all is said and
done and you’re left with roller coaster appearing stats and graphs.
If you’re trying to understand how Digg works or how you can benefit from
Diggi-ing, I highly recommend reading it. And as a follow up to that, you might
also want to read “Digg
stats analysis” on the Read/Write Web
blog. Of course, to learn more about Digg, you can always read their blog or simply digg Digg.