In the coming weeks, the Events Guide will be turning into a jet-setting tour of the international tech scene. Next week is London with the Cloud Computing World Forum . Then comes Marseilles, France ( Lift France ), Melbourne, Australia ( Digital Sport Summit ) and Singapore ( Social Media World Forum Asia ). You can import individual events in the Events Guide into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal file (which is importable into Google Calendar, Outlook, Windows Live Calendar, etc.) or even view it as a world map . Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 29 – 30 June 2010: London Cloud Computing World Forum The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include: Co-located with CloudCamp London Co-located with Green IT conference Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre Free-to-attend evening awards presentation Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services Evening networking party for all attendees 5 – 7 July 2010: Marseilles, France Lift France ‘10 Lift France gathers pioneers from all over the world to explore how the technologies and concepts of the Web are changing the real world. Through a combination of workshops, inspiring talks, and innovative demos, Lift offers a chance to anticipate the major shifts ahead, and meet the people who drive them. Together we will explore 4 major topics: “Web Squared”, Making Sense of the World through Shared Data “Fab Labs”, Reinventing Manufacturing People Hacks”, Distributing Control and Knowledge “Privacy Revisited”, Protect and Project Speakers include Sam Pitroda, advisor to India’s PM on innovation; Alma Whitten, Google’s privacy lead; Haakon Karlsen, Fab Labs Foundation; Michael Cross, FreeOurData.org ; Amit Zoran, MIT Smart Cities Lab; Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, French minister for the Digital Economy; Geoff Mulgan, the Young Foundation. 6 July 2010: Online The Influencer Project ThoughtLead presents The Influencer Project : 60 speakers. 60 minutes. 60 different ways to increase your influence online. We’re pretty sure it’s the shortest marketing conference ever. You’ll learn from new media luminaries like Robert Scoble, Anne Holland, Tony Hsieh, David Meeman Scott, Gary Vaynerchuk, John Jantsch, Ann Handley, Brian Solis, Read Write Web’s own Marshall Kirkpatrick, and many more. Sponsored by HubSpot and available via webcast and phone, the conference takes places July 6, at 6 p.m. Eastern (GMT – 4:00). Registration is free, and comes with the MP3 recording and PDF transcript of the event. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to become the 60th speaker with ThoughtLead’s “Influence in 140 Characters.” To learn more and register, click here . 7 July 2010: Melbourne, Australia Digital Sport Summit Digital Sport Summit is Australia’s premier sport and digital media event. Hear from social media pioneers who are changing the face of Australian sport. Learn how social media and mobile technology is taking fan engagement to a whole new level. Speakers on the day will cover a variety of topics including: iPhone application development for sport Convincing management of the case for social media How to monetize social media Fantasy sports Social media from an athlete’s perspective With speakers representing Essendon Football Club, Cricket Victoria, Herald Sun, Football Federation Australia and more. Digital Sport Summit will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. 22 – 23 September 2010: Singapore Social Media World Forum Asia Social Media World Forum Asia is back for 2010. The event will be taking place at the larger venue – The Suntec Conference Centre – before the F1 Singapore night race. Two days of interactive and engaging conference featuring leading key figure keynotes, brand case studies, topical Q&A and debates, exhibition hall, workshops and networking. Speakers include: Blake Chandlee, VP & Commercial Director, EMEA, Facebook Nicki Kenyon, Vice President, Digital Marketing APMEA, MasterCard Reynold D’Silva, Global Brand Marketing Manager, Unilever Pooja Arora, Brand Manager, P&G Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific Director, 360 Digital Influence, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide Lito S. German, Marketing Director, BMW Group Asia Ranjeet-Shandu Singh, Digital Project Manager, Ogilvy One Singapore Derek Yeo, Head of Marketing, Tiger Airways 5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today’s market. Early bird registration rates are available. 29 – 30 March 2011: London Social Media World Forum Europe Social Media World Forum Europe : Two days of interactive & engaging conference featuring leading key figure keynotes, brand case studies, topical Q&A and debates, exhibition hall, workshops and networking. Social Media World Forum Europe is continuing to evolve and deliver an event which is second to none, ensuring our audience receive the maximum potential from attending our shows. New for 2011 we have introduced interactive panel discussions, live streamed debate sessions, collaborative learning, break-out group discussions, open Q&A portions in every session, open workshops, with group discussions and interactive zones within the exhibition hall. We have introduced the Online Marketing Toolbox Workshops, educating in all elements of the online marketing mix, such as SEO, Paid Search, Affiliate, Mobile & Apps. The perfect toolbox to complete your online marketing strategy. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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Traditional media’s first major adoption of Web 2.0 came with Facebook , as outlets syndicated their content on the popular social network by way of fan pages and official accounts. Then, Twitter went mainstream as writers, editors and the media organizations themselves signed up, sent out links, and chatted about related topics in 140 character bursts. Now it seems traditional media outlets are flocking to another service – one that is almost a hybrid of the others, allowing for short-form posts, but with richer format. What’s the new trend among legacy media? Why it’s none other than Tumblr . Sponsor For those unfamiliar with the service, Tumblr is a blogging platform that lets users curate images, videos, quotes, and other forms of media onto minimalistic personalized “tumblelogs.” Much like Twitter, there is a one-way follow function that lets users view a stream of entries from others of their choice. The quick ability to comment, favorite and “reblog” others posts makes the service incredibly social. As noted in a Business Insider article Friday, several outlets of traditional print media (newspapers and magazines) are suddenly popping up all over Tumblr with their own pages. Newsweek seems to making great use of the platform by posting mainly photos, and quotes – two of the most shared forms of media on Tumblr. The New Yorker also recently joined the service, sharing mainly videos and photos, including high-resolution images of their popular artistic covers. The venerable New York Times has even jumped in the mix, though its account is so far empty, save for a single post announcing more content is “coming soon.” The Business Insider article lists several other traditional media outlets providing sharable content with fans on Tumblr, including Life Magazine , The Travel Channel , The Today Show , Elle , Rolling Stone , The Village Voice , and several others. If anything, these new additions to the Tumblr ecosystem provide a human face through which the various outlets can communicate more freely with their readers. Newsweek has been discussing rumors about its impending purchase on the Tumblr, and many of the sites seem perfectly content with posting material would think would be found objectionable on the main homepage or in print. So is Tumblr the next big thing for traditional media outlets? From the looks of it, the large media outlets seem pleased with the service and the kinds of interactions it allows for. It would not be surprising to see Tumblr become the third common place aside Facebook and Twitter for media organizations and corporate brands to further reach their audiences. Discuss

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At the Semantic Technology conference in San Francisco today, Google gave an update of its rich snippets initiative – which adds extra information to Google search results. For example, showing restaurant review ratings. It’s an experimental Semantic Web feature, but today’s update shows that usage is increasing and Google wants to ramp it up significantly. Rich snippets was announced in May last year and began to be seen in results around October. At the SemTech panel today, Google’s Pravir Gupta noted that rich snippets impressions have grown four-fold globally since October 2009, with a two-fold increase on the US/English Web. Rich snippets is available in more than 40 languages. Sponsor Gupta told the SemTech audience that there are now more than 50 reviews sites using rich snippets, for example sites that offer restaurant reviews. Also there has been uptake on social networking sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn. The most common use cases are events (which was added in January ) and recipe formats. Google is adding support for more formats, such as video, local businesses and shopping. Google is using structured data open standards such as microformats and RDFa to power the rich snippets feature. As the below chart shows, microformats is more common than RDFa for this feature. Google spent a good deal of today’s panel continuing its drive to get webmasters to adopt rich snippets. It has a tool called the Rich Snippets Testing Tool , which helps publishers utilize rich snippets. Finally, Kavi Goel from Google talked about how Google can accelerate growth of the ecosystem, noting that less than 5% of webpages currently have semantic markup. Google wants to see this rise to 50% or more. It is looking for critical mass, which includes adding more formats and encouraging more “beneficial peer pressure” for companies to support rich snippets. Goel cited restaurant review sites as an example – it’s not just Yelp which supports it, but other restaurant review services too. Rich snippets is an example of how the Semantic Web is being adopted by large and powerful Internet companies, so it’s encouraging to see that Google is pushing for rapid adoption. Discuss

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May 2010 was a great month for YouTube. Not only did users of Google’s online video service stream more videos per month in the U.S. than ever before (14.6 billion), but according to online analytics firm comScore , every single YouTube user now watches more than 100 videos per month. In total, Google’s video properties now command slightly more than 43% of the online video market. No other online video service currently owns more than 3.5% of the streaming video market. In total, about 183 million Internet users in the U.S. watched online video last month. Sponsor Hulu, with 1.1 billion videos streamed in May, ranks second after Google’s sites, followed by Microsoft’s sites (642 million streams) and Vevo (430 million). Google’s users stream an average of 101.2 videos per viewer, while Hulu comes in second with 27 streams per viewer, followed by Microsoft (16.3 videos per user) and Viacom (10 videos per user). Facebook Enters the Top 10 Overall, the numbers for the top online video properties didn’t change much since last month . One interesting change, however, is that with 245 million video streams, Facebook is now the tenth most popular video service in the United States. AOL, on the other hand, fell out of the top 10 this month. It is worth noting that Facebook itself argues that its users watch over 2 billion videos per month. Discuss

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As mobile phone penetration continues to surge, the years-old hype about the mobile Web being the next big thing is no doubt coming true. But despite all of the industry gurus, conference keynotes and trade magazine articles imploring you to get your business ready for the mobile space, it’s not always easy to know where to begin. Sure, you could hire a team of top-notch mobile developers, but not every business owner has that luxury, especially with the economy still in limbo. Here are a few tools to get started: Sponsor Make Your Website Mobile Friendly Your company’s website may be getting you noticed on the desktop, but what happens when people try to access it from their phones? Probably a lot of pinching, scrolling and squinting. There are a few ways to get your existing site ready for mobile display with minimal coding and development required. One such tool is a hosted solution called Mofuse , which offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface from which to manage mobile content, design and ads. Plug in an RSS feed URL to pull content in from your company blog (or any source), or simply publish static pages with the most pertinent info. When it’s ready, Mofuse provides several flavors of code snippets for redirecting mobile users from your full-size desktop site to the more mobile-friendly version. Another option is Mobify , a freemium service that takes your existing website and strips it down to only the essentials you want your mobile users to see. The result is a clean, highly usable design that displays for the users who visit your site from their phones. Although they have different pricing plans and feature sets, both Mofuse and Mobify come with custom domains, analytics, ad server integration and e-commerce options. Get Started With QR Codes Although not yet as common in the U.S. as they are in Japan, QR (quick response) codes are popping up more and more in commercial and marketing contexts. These square barcode-esque patterns can be printed on any page or real-world surface to enable users with a QR-equipped mobile phone to scan it and then be be redirected to any URL. These could be used in print advertisements to send users to your mobile site for more information or for special promotional offers. While the jury is still out on if and when QR codes will see widespread adoption in the West, it’s easy to get started using one of the many QR code generators that are out there, including Kaywa QR Code , Delivr and QR Stuff to name a few. Keep it Social This may seem like a no-brainer and the last thing the world needs is somebody else espousing the magic of the social Web, but we would be remiss to discuss going mobile without touching on the most obvious and simple way of getting your brand onto people’s phones. Let’s face it: people access sites like Facebook and Twitter from their phones all day long. If your company has a social media strategy, then it already has the beginnings of a mobile strategy. Phone photo by Thiago Felipe Festa . QR photo by cocreatr . Discuss

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