Pikter is a photo and image sharing service that currently targeted at Twitter or Jaiku users. Currently still in Alpha phase, and if you’d like to receive a beta invite, you can leave your email address for them on its landing page.

There are not that many Web applications that let users easily upload and share their photos/images on their Twitter accounts, the most notable is TwitPic, but Pikter expanded its support to Jaiku. It seem that they’ve faced some technical difficulties in working the Jaiku aspect of Pikter’s service, in viewed of its Jaiku’s entry at 28 June 2008, i.e. anyone know a simple way to verify Jaiku credentials via the API using JSON? as well as in its own blog posted in June 30, i.e. Jaiku’s api development site has been down the last couple of days, hindering any opportunity to advance the Jaiku aspect of Pikter’s service.

Nevertheless, I hope that they’ll solve the scripting problems and launch the Pikter beta version as promised in August this month, simply of its motto: Because sharing is nice.

I recently got a private beta access to a new Twitter clone called YouAre. YouAre is a newly launched Web application that launched in the beginning of this year, with the target market of Hispanic community, and then expanded to the English speaking users. As stated in one of their blog posts: YouAre is about to share what you are doing, your interests and your professional profile with your friends and colleagues — and anyone you want to connect with. Despite this definition, I found YouAre somewhat of a Twitter clone, albeit that YouAre is circumvent this users’ impression, by gradually adding a lot features and this has given rise to a new form of micro blogging tool with an idea that sound like this: Twitter + Tumblr + Linkedin + Del.icio.us + our secret ingredient = YouAre.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter + Tumblr + Linkedin, etc. It’s that simple, you only need to remember YouAre is a Web application that help you to summarize what is your profile, your favorites, as well as your Web life at large. Upon you sign-up to this site, you’re allowed to build your own profile, so that your friends you make on YouAre know you better through your online identity. Besides, you also can contribute to the body of knowledge on the Web through your favorites. It means you can import the content you made on your YouTube, Flickr or Del.icio.us accounts, thus the videos (YouTube), photos (Flickr), or bookmarks (Del.icio.us) can be shared in this way to your community.

Why I still insist YouAre is a Twitter clone. From the YouAre dashboard, I believed the core focus of this application is about micro blogging. It’s become a norm that there is a downside to the application if you can’t find a feature that let you update your latest status. YouAre has developed it, not only users are allowed to post text, they also can post video or image links. In comparison to Twitter, Twitter has became a role model to many new applications that emerged on the Web today. Many copycats copied Twitter’s features, and many of them lost their luster eventually, but I hope YouAre will not.

There is a new search engine called Cuil which planned to take on Google. Cuil, dubbed itself as “the world’s biggest search engine,” which claimed that it searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft, according to its “About” page.

On Cuil’s landing page, it preserved the simple user interface as preserved by Google, but it’s a search engine in black, recognizing that black color could provide a lower level of energy power. According to The AP, it was co-founded by ex-Googlers, and being backed by a whopping $33 million in venture capital.

Since Cuil launched on the Web, its spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest, with an index of 120 billion Web pages. If most of the Internet users identify Google as a company with a superlative Internet search tool, how we should identify Cuil? With the initial capacity of Cuil’s data center, it may cut into the Google revenue dominance in an easy manner.

Slantly is a Web platform that allowed users to start a debate or share their opinions. Upon you sign-up to the site, you can go to your own dashbaord and state your own opinion, support it with your own word in order to spark an interesting debate.

On Slantly, you’ll find every single opinion is an unique opinion submitted by the users. Users are allowed to vote “Agree” or “Disagree” and the simple user interface minimize barriers for users to make a compelling argument. However, there is a rule on Slantly which require its users to vote first before they type in any argument to submit their votes. It’s true, if you can’t agree on a statement, vote “Disagree” first before you explain why you vote so. Besides, rather than call it an opinion, the look and feel of the opinion is indeed a poll and Slantly enables its users to embed these opinions into web pages or blogs. Also, Slantly offer a statistical data in which users are aware of the votes by location, this is one area which I find it is a vital factor to build an active community. Users want their opinions to be shared on Slantly, whenever feedback received, they do expect they know which region their feedback is coming from. In other word, all votes and arguments will be sorted out by Slantly and thus users are able to view sentiment by geographical location.

Like any other Web platform, Slantly organize all the opinions based on categories. Users can find, vote, or engage with the debates through opinions that they like in different category such as News, Politics, Celebrity, and etc. Furthermore, users can also find what topics currently are popular in Slantly, what are the recent opinions, which opinions are the controversial, or find opinions based on time/date of posting. For opinion publishers, there will be given a publisher dashboard for them to moderate and manage discussions, opinions customization, and etc editorial tools.

Nevertheless, all the opinions created by users at this moment are about the current news and issues, not the passing whim of the users.

As a Web developer, I like to visit some sites that talked about programming, build application, or pointed out some cool software tools. For me, it’s indeed a strange experience to go back to some sites that existed on the Web for a while, but I did not profile it on my blog, and Intel’s cool software platform is one of them.

I first thought it’s no longer maintained by Intel anymore, but the top result at the time of writing, i.e. with the vote of 29 is illustrative of trend that this Digg clone will likely be accepted by the Internet users, and proudly served as a Web product that will sustain for a long period of time. Frankly, in a noisy world out there, if a site carried a brand name like Intel, it will always has the advantage to lure in users. When I first started TagEdge, I did profiled a lot of Digg clone (check out this Digg link at TagEdge), but Intel’s cool software is one of the Digg clone sites that makes people want to go there, visit and revisit again, simply because of it’s an Intel product.

Intel’s cool software platform, like any other Digg clones, the article submitted by registered user with the most votes will always be appeared on the main page. In evaluate how its offering can bring value to the software lovers, it does its founding mission. However, when I pay close attention to the community participation on the site, it still did not generate the same kind of buzz as generated by Digg, not to mention how this site will help Intel to find out “the next Google,” as written by VentureBeat in October last year. Perhaps all those so-called “the next Google” are still the small and lean ventures, and definitely not that easy be found by the ordinary Internet users, only private investors and venture capitalists will know how to access them in the first place.

This site is said was powered by Pligg, a famous open source content management system. When it is developed using an open source tool, I still curious how it cost around $40,000 to develop.

For the readers that followed closely on TagEdge, you all know that I often profile on Israeli startups, and used to think that Israeli startups as not merely the creative technology firms, but also firms that will change the world eventually. A new social search engine called Delver is the one that I like indeed, my first impression was…eh, which was a too cold cool social search engine that not to sign-up and try.

Delver is currently in Alpha phase. If it is barely a search engine, or meta search, that’s not much I can talk about. However, it applied a new technology called social search which offer a way for users to bookmark, or Web, people, media search based on their social graph. If you don’t have any profiles in any social network, you won’t notice this wonderful feature. But if you register and link all your profiles, range from MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, to Facebook, you’ll realize the powerful search engine rendered by Delver.

From the profile linking, you can add your own search buddies, that enables you to give priority to results created or referenced by these people. Furthermore, you also can add social circles, which offer a way connect you with people that have something in common with you. Delver will take into consideration on who your friends are and it will return your search queries based the contents that your friends made on Delver as well as what bookmarks they’ve done in the past on Delver. Put simply, Delver can deliver a totally different search results based on your trusted friends you followed on Delver and indexed what they’ve done and their ultimate goal is to recommend your friends’ search results to you completely.

I’d like to share what I thought Delver is good in the practice that it allowed one to easily bookmark certain results with a single click namely “keep it,” the search result you like will instantly save to the right-hand sidebar for your future references. Also, I want to note here after played around it for a while, I knew that its ranking methodology is based on your own social connections, your friends’ quality contents will always be ranked higher than the other search results that based on the keywords you input into the Delver search bar.

In overall, I still feel Delver is very cool, but I’ll give it a second look, when it ready for the beta launch in the near future.

TradeVibes, co-founded by four (4) ex-PayPaler, is a leading contender in the user-generated startup directory. On the landing page, one can find all the interesting new startups that were submitted by users. If you’re looking for the basic information about a startup, particularly from the emerging technologies field, TradeVibes is the right place for you.

TradeVibes’ Web-based startup information primarily were submitted, edited by its own users. Upon an user is sign-up to the service, she can straight away updating startup information or posting news and discussions. Likewise, an user can add a new startup information to the TradeVibes database, such as add the description of the new startup that has not yet be appeared on TradeVibes (1,000 characters maximum), etc.

TradeVines is up against a less fierceful competition, CrunchBase is the one that currently offer the free technology startup database, and the other one, is the KillerStartups, a blog-like startup review directory. However, I like the way TradeVibes offered to the public, which I can easily find the key people behind the startup, the funding history a particular startup received, and the related companies in the same categories.

Even though there is no de facto standard for the tech startup database, TradeVibes is continually develop features that help to retain its existing users. Now TradeVibes has the Startup Battle, a prize, i.e. Wii to be given to the users every week (check out the contests listed in the sidebar), Top Bullish Movers and Top Bearish Movers, widget that can be embedded on one’s own blog or Website, and etc. just to name a few. In addition, to encourage users in participate to the TradeVibes, whenever one submitted a new startup, a one (1) TrV Points will be awarded to the user, and she can use it to exchange for the items from TradeVibes.

I’ve been very busy for the past few days for a client project. My work philosophy: Give people just what matter. Perhaps that also holds in Web application. There is a Web application that I should be profiled long time ago, but I didn’t (in fact the number of Web app that I must include in TagEdge is huge), it’s called Tweetmeme.

Tweetmeme is doing what matter to the Twitter users. It is making sure that its offering is in the process of giving users exactly what they need, a real-time most commented tweets and present it in a simple format, with categorization as well. You can filter the tweets based on your preference, such as All-in-one, blog, image, video, or audio. A kinda service like Twitter Public Timeline combined with Digg’s voting feature. However, the most impressed interface design of Tweetmeme I feel at this moment is the Tweetmeme River. Tweetmeme River allowed me to keep track of what is going on in Twitter for a range of past three (3) days, as three (3) days can make a big difference to the Twitter community.

For some of you all who never heard of Tweetmeme, it’s a Web application that went live in January this year, down for a period of time due to the Twitter Jabber problems, and it’s back in service most recently. However, I think its visitors will come back, especially its unique Twitter’s tracking system, i.e. Tweetmeme landing page will automatically refresh itself in every three (3) minutes, so you know what is really going on in Twitter.