Black Web 2.0

Layoffs at AOL’s Platform A

Technorati b5 media merger, goes kaput

AOL buys Sphere

Yahoo to offer free Analytics Suite

Last but not least:
Why is everyone (Mashable, RWW) doing “ways-not-to-pitch-to-us” posts this week?  We’ll take ‘em!

Hulu will go international.

Yahoo runs 2 week trial of Google AdSense in Yahoo search results.

AOL launches Technology network.

Yahoo Maps in living color.

Google crawls HTML forms.

Dell layoff woes.

Kanye launches Travel website?

Universal Music Group + MySpace + Sony BMG Music Entertainment + Warner Music Group = MySpace Music
(more…)

CNET and DoubleClick layoff.

10 Millionth Article Written on Wikipedia.

Google and Yahoo release video ads in search results.

Judge rules in favor of Diller.

(more…)

Tezaa
A self proclaimed “opinion engine” and an online search community driven by polls. Straight from their About page on how Tezaa can benefit its users: “Tezaa can help you make better choices by knowing what your peers think.” Check it out and judge for yourself.
Socialgrapes
Can help you search user profiles from most of the major social networks. Pretty cool I guess if you are looking to connect with a specific person and don’t want to bother to go to each individual social network. On first glance I thought it was a search engine for wine, go figure.
Explode!
Similar to Sociagrapes but better presentation and easier to use.

oSkope visual search
My favorite of the bunch. Nice presentation and handy if you ever find yourself looking for images for hours and want to shake it up a bit. Because it it pulling images from other sites such as Flickr and Amazon it can be painfully slow to load at times.

Hungry for more Search? Check out Mashables list of 40+ Social Search Engines.

Outlook + Twitter = OutTwit
This might help some of you Twitter users.

The Black Digital Elite: African American Leaders of the Information Revolution
Good Read.

AIGA Diversity Initiative
If you are a designer or a member of AIGA they have a Diversity Initiative. You may have to verify they have one in your local chapter, they are supposed to have someone on each local board to run the local aspects of this. I know it is in full effect in ATL, not so much in Charlotte.

Mashup Challenge
Every 90 days a new Mashup Challenge starts so don’t worry if you haven’t quit thought of that perfect Mashup yet. FYI they also have a Mashup Awards.

10 Tools to Help you Select a Web 2.0 Color Palette
BookmarkBliss.com has found the perfect solution for your Web 2.0 color problems, and they are web based!

Virtual Video Map
Lets you see YouTube videos from specific areas in the world, kinda sorta like TwitterVision.

Dack.com Web Economy Bullshit Generator
Very funny, comes up with crazy Web 2.0 phrases that don’t really exist like “facilitate ubiquitous web services” or “scale frictionless technologies”

visualcomplexity.com
A visual exploration of mapping complex networks such as a favorite of mine “Who Owns the Internet?” Verizon, Sprint, At&t, or Qwest?

Stripemania
Stripe background generator

Walk2Web
Visualizes connections between websites.

This is our first installment of “Week In Links,” basically every Friday you can expect some pretty cool links to check out that the staff came across during the week. Feel free to reply with any links that you think are worth sharing. And now, the links…

Afrigator
African Aggregator

muti
An African Reddit

Here are some more African web start-ups

Emotionr
Tracking the world’s happiness

Protolize
Essential web tools in one place

BuiltWith.com
Web Technology Profiler, find out what a site is built with