Neither the blogosphere nor Web 2.0 social networking services provide the kind of intellectual community that drives innovation, according to Google.org’s executive director, Larry Brilliant. As a result, there’s room for growth for companies that can find ways to foster productive intellectual exchange — and facilitate it for themselves.

Brilliant made his comments at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In his view, The Well, an online community he founded back the public Internet dark ages of the 1980s, remains unparalleled as a forum for the sharing of new ideas because it doesn’t promote a linear, chronological conversation the way a blog does, but lets people drop in and add to the discussion already underway.

In fact, there are no forums online where the big issues of the day — whether climate change or homelessness — are being hashed out, Brilliant said. That’s despite a broad hunger for communities where people can have coherent conversations about issues that impact our lives. Companies need to tap into this desire for public conversation about big ideas by connecting to people’s emotional intelligence, he said.

From the news reports of long lines, it looks like voter turnout will soar above the anemic 35-50 percent of presidential elections past, and anyone eager to track early indications of how the outcome will swing can turn to the web for clues. Judging by Google’s hot trends ranking chart election-related web searches are already well underway. We’ve put together a short list of some of the best places online to track results live.

1. Google’s election results map mashup is part of its broader elections coverage
2. AOL has a nifty browser toolbar to track elections-related news, including add-on buttons for Senate and House race updates.
3. A pollster on the polls: Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal will live-blog results at Pollster.com beginning around 5 p.m. EDT.
4. The left-leaning blog Talking Points Memo has an election results map that will begin streaming results live at 6 p.m. EDT.
5. Cascade Software makes an iPhone app, Election, that will update results as they come in.
6. Electoral-Vote.com will start liveblogging results and update its electoral college map.

Related stories:

• Ultimate Guide To Live Election Coverage
• Top 10 Web Tools for Election 2008
• GigaOM Readers’ Top Web Resources for the Election
• Vote, Uninterrupted

Image courtesy of Google

Despite the pressures of the economic downturn and caution among most of its customers, Dell continues to see opportunity in its enterprise infrastructure and service business, Senior VP Paul Bell said at the Dreamforce conference today. He noted that Web 2.0, social-networking companies and other firms that are adding users need to scale up and are continuing to spend on infrastructure services, while financial services companies are trying to find ways to tighten analytics while paring down extraneous costs.

Bell said reports the company would shrink its manufacturing operations were speculation. But he said Dell’s ongoing move into providing infrastructure as a service is part of a business direction that will cut back on the more labor-intensive service model of the past, in favor of, for example, the remote support services the company now offers.

While the consumer market still accounts for just 15 percent of the company’s revenue, Bell said its existing laptop personalization features are going to expand to allow “true individualization” of the outside of laptops, but he wouldn’t give specifics. He hinted at other areas the company was looking at in PC personalization but didn’t give details, and he also declined to comment on the likelihood of a Dell phone.

But Bell did say the company doesn’t buy into the idea that consumers want complete convergence of Internet devices. Handheld and laptop devices won’t end up as one device everyone uses, he said, and the company is testing out whether netbooks in developed markets will end up complementing rather than replacing fullsize PCs. For now, that means the company is focused on larger screens and keybords rather than smaller devices.

Our post about the top 10 web tools for the election got some great suggestions from readers, so we’ve packaged them up for you here. Thanks to everyone who sent in their picks — and don’t forget to vote!

1. Track voter rights news and resources at the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition’s 866ourvote.org.
2. Check out a map-based overview of voting machines used in each state from VerifiedVoting.org and the Verified Voter Foundation, both run by technologists advocating for reliable and publicly verifiable elections.

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