As you’ve probably noticed I’ve been away for some time (do I see a puzzled face there? :). That wasn’t a vacation, quite on the contrary: my colleague and I have been working on a project we had in mind long ago, which was initially named CIO Happy Hour.

Planning started about 6 months ago, and the vision of the project has changed greatly several times (that is quite an interesting story also) morphing into experience exchange platform for successful people and companies all over the web. I’m proud to present you CIO Happy Hour – my first mature creation, which reflects current state of the web and combines all the best features that social internet can offer for both businesses and customers.

As we all live in “conversation age”, our networking possibilities have grown to the unthinkable level. We are all a tweet away from each other, right here ready to engage into a discussion. With this new open-layer being so tangible and accessible, an idea popped into my mind: let’s create a platform for successful people so they can share their achievements and accomplishments with everybody, inspire and answer tricky questions. CIO Happy Hour is a place for a rich dialogue between companies and users, rivals and competitors, a place, where real people communicate, exchange ideas, and learn from each other.

For the initial launch we have prepared two interviews, so you can taste the idea. The next rounds of interviews will be quite different and more profound. We will be grouping companies in a specific niche, e.g. this month you’ll see players in wireframing and prototyping market. By doing so, we will be able to grasp a particular business domain trends and possible future evolution. All information is from the creators and innovators themselves, so be sure to expect great insights. We have also prepared some goodies for you, but that’s all in a due course :).

As for right now we are waiting for your feedback and any ideas and comments you have. As it’s said on CIOHH:

“You, as a reader, are an immerse complement of our platform and your comments, questions and feedback are essential.”

You can (and should!) subscribe to ciohappyhour’s RSS feed and follow them on twitter.

There is a lot of buzz right now about real-time web, search, etc. However, most of the people forget that in addition to real-time layer, we need efficient semantic infrastructure on the internet. Apture solves the problem and enables publishers to create multi-layered content and provides contextual content in an appealing visual way.

We are used to hypertext, but unfortunately its capabilities are not used at maximum. Each word in the text and given content has the definite meaning. Each and every word can be a hyperlink. Hyperlinks can lead to various media formats, not just text. However, any text abundant with links will lead to a reader’s distraction, as they open up in new windows and get the user far-far away from the original resource. If you have read Milorad Pavic’s Dictionary of the Khazars(a book that can be read starting from any page at any direction), you understand that Internet is the largest post-modernist book ever written. It’s all interconnected.

What we lack, are efficient means to control the flow of information and give readers the necessary content, whenever they need it and let them stay at the original source of information. Let’s take a simple scenario:

You come to a web-page, see a term that is new to you, you google it and never get back to the page where the term was used.

Apture lets you keep readers on your blog (supports most of the wide-used platforms) by adding the so needed contextual layer in a clean and attractive way.

I was actually surprised how easy it is to install the plug-in. You don’t have to configure a thing, Apture will do everything for you. The great feature is that you can insert mark-up Apture links right inside your browser, with no need to enter admin part of CMS (if you are using Firefox).

There are similar tools, like Snap Shots or blippr (that you can see on Mashable in the forms of smilies next to popular web-apps and brands). Blippr might be fitting Mashable well, however, it’s not very efficient in showing the right information to your readers, as it only provides one type of content – users reviews.

Snap Shots started as a Snap Preview Anywhere, which allowed you to preview any given link – a pretty useless application: I don’t want to see the way the web-page looks, I want to get the content! It seems that Snap Shots has evolved into 12 (!) various trademarked services and is capable of inserting various type of previews. Apture makes it easier and gives you more flexibility on the relevant content you select for readers. It even makes all the twitter usernames a contextual link as well, letting you to follow a user and see his last tweets!

Right now Apture is free of any ads, but it’s a perfect platform for contextual advertising. The monetization strategy is pretty simple and I wonder if Apture is going to insert any ads soon and provide free-ads paid plans.

I would love to see more publishers install Apture on their resources, so I don’t have to hit “Search with _insert your fav search engine_” button all the time.

I’ve just received a letter from www.paymetweets.com introducing their new service that is “the first  “Micro-Promotional” tool made for Twitterers.”

It works very simple: you are either buying or selling your influence on twitter. In case you would like to make money, you retweet only the tweets you like. The service doesn’t take control of your twitter stream (as the authors claim), however, the application works via an OAuth protocol and can do whatever it likes on behalf of your name. Furthermore, you know exactly how much you will earn and will be paid as soon as the RT happens.

PayMeTweets also works as a twitter exchange – you can earn money by retweeting and later sell your own content.

Now, if you would like to buy some influence, all you have to do is add the funds (lowest plan starts with $23) and your balance decreases only when you are RTd. PayMeTweets offers some analytics on the links you submit and promises to submit your content to high-profile tweeples for better visibility.

Right now there are only two updates in @PayMeTweets, so it seems like no one has used the offered services yet. Note, that the service builds its business model on top of another application. It’s hard to predict Twitter’s evolution, but it seems that the blue-bird company might provide similar paid services to companies and individuals in future. PayMeTweets has selected a shaky ground to built a business on, but the timing is perfect.

For the time being it’s a clever move – on the one hand, a lot of people have worked hard to build a great network, and would sure like to see these assets bringing cash. On the other hand, your twitter followers might not be that happy about your paid RTs. You can even easily block all the links from @PayMeTweets by adding a filter into your TweetDeck or a similar application.

It’s up to twitter users to decided if they would like to receive money for RTs. This step will make Twitter even hotter for marketers, SEO, and business around the globe. You are actually buying real people, who will select the content they like and share it with their network, with similar tastes. You don’t have to build your own relevant network, the infrastructure is ready. This pretty much reminds the social ads on Facebook.

The questions is: are you ready to get paid for RTs, and advertise on your Twitter stream?

Seriously, aren’t you tired to see the same fields you have to enter information into every time you are visiting a new service? Aren’t you fed up with thinking of new passwords? Let’s be fair, most of the time you are just sticking to the same password as you are too lazy to think of new ones. What is more important, you won’t be able to remember which password should be used exactly at which website.

Don’t shout the “OpenID” word. Does your mom know what the hell this means and how can she use it? Now you are telling me there is Clickpass? Right, go figure how to sign in with that tool… if you can, of course.

I see advocates of OpenID standing up and telling how much progress has been done, and that’s almost every major internet player has transformed their logins into OpenIDs. However, not a single of them accepts another OpenID as a natural login method into their system. If I have a Google account, why should I create a Yahoo! one to use their services? Please mind, that both your Google account and Yahoo! one are OpenIDs now.

Oh, and there is this big one screw-up I can see on many sites nowadays: they offer an old-school login and an OpenID. How should I remember if I have used an OpenID during registration (if it existed back then) or not? So I have to try login with my OpenID, and if it fails, use ordinary credentials.

That’s simply a mess and we need (and will!) proceed to a united single Sign-on:

Twitter is doing a great job and lets you sign in through OAuth into various apps. However, it doesn’t provide that level of flexibility, that an OpenID provider does. E.g. myopenid lets you have several IDs (business, personal, friends), and sing on behalf of created online personalities. All the information you’ve entered into your myopenid will be shared with an application you sign in to, so you don’t have to repeatedly enter your date of birth for example. Facebook connect also allows you to share all the info with the external applications, however, here you have no privacy at all, if it’s not a fake Facebook profile.

The bright example of a new login system can be seen at a Russian start-up filmfeed:

You have to login using your Google, Facebook or OpenID. It’s great! You are welcomed at the site and can start using it right away, with no need to enter info, get puzzled with sophisticated captchas, share your email address, think of new strong password, store it somewhere, receive confirmation emails and click links to approve your identity.

Web services have the tools ready to be used, however, not many are participating or even trying to implement simple sign-up system for their users. Big corporations are locking the data out, not willing to share it with rivals, which adds up to the general online schizophrenia we all have now. But it’s a high time for a change. Are you ready?

This is a first post of a promised “Goodies Series”.

I go through tons of webpages everyday and most of them are so cluttered with banners, blinking adds and other “useful” features that make reading and concentration impossible. We all tend to skim text instead of reading (oh, do I hear a sound of a tweetdeck alert? ;). Furthermore, add chaotic multitasking and you get the picture – till you get to the end of that thought-provoking article, which is almost a never-ending battle, you have no idea what the post was about.

However, there are simple tools that will enable you to gain control over naughty webpages (in case you are not multitasking anymore).

1. Readablity

First and the best bookmarklet to enjoy your online reading. After 3 easy settings you can grab your customized bookmarklet and you are set to go.

Here is a screenshot of RWW before and after:

2. Alltextpaper

This project combines functions of a reading improving service with saving-for-later capabilities. That’s why you will have to enter your email or username. No actual registration is required, but it makes you think for a while if you really need this service. There is no tuning or any other options available. You get a bookmarklet and that’s it. Very similar to Readability, but with less customization:

3. TidyRead

TidyRead is a more advanced bookmarklet, and whenever you use it, a built-in menu appears, which allows you to select the font size, color, type and specify how the background should look like. What’s even more important, TidyRead doesn’t eat YouTube videos, so you have all the media intact + smooth text for easy reading:

4. Finch

Finch, has a little different approach and would be suitable for you, if you are on a slow network or mobile device. This services removes all CSS, media, flash, etc from a web-page, but leaves navigation and comments. Finch doesn’t cut a story for you like all 3 mentioned services do, but processes the whole page:

5. Readable

This is the most sophisticated bookmarklet in terms of customization – here you can set up the perfect text style for yourself, choosing from many options. Readable, just as TinyRead, displays YouTube videos. But what is more, it doesn’t format the comments, so you can read the article and leave your comment without reloading the original page.

You have a pretty wide variety of choice here. My favorite one is Readabilty, which offers customization and is not overloaded with features, does not require registration and works perfectly with each and every web-page.

What’s your favorite reading bookmarklet and why? Please share in comments!