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Google Reader has gotten a new look, new features, and some new functionality.
The most useful features include folder-based navigation, exanded view, and my favorite - an easier way to share items of interest with friends and family. Any of you intrepid Lifehacker readers give Google Reader a try with the new upgrade, let us know your thoughts in the comments. And hey! Why not view the official Google Reader video while you're at it?
Previously-mentioned Google Transit (which used to only work in Portland, Oregon) has expanded coverage to Seattle, Pittsburgh, Honolulu, Eugene and Tampa.
Compare time and cost of driving to taking public transit from point A to point B in any one of these cities using Google Transit. For example, here's how get from the airport to Waikiki beach in Honolulu via public transit (a trip that will cost you less than driving!). While it's nice to see Google include cities that are not the usual suspects, I'm still dying for San Francisco and New York City support.
Since Facebook opened up to the public, the Facebook-specific apps are coming out of the woodwork, and one of the better ones is Tixology, a good way to hook yourself up with some tickets to your favorite event.
Think of Tixology as a Craigslist for Facebook users; you can post tickets you want and/or have, and then fellow Tixology folks can respond. Unfortunately, only college-based accounts can use Tixology right now, but I expect that to change fairly soon. Any other Facebook apps you'd like to clue us in on? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Google Tutor, a blog full of Googley-goodness, has come up with a quick way to identify a site's owner - just snoop on their Adsense ID.
It's pretty easy. All you do is a quick view-source and look for the keyword "client". Sometimes you'll be able to ID the owner by the text attached to this word; if not, you can CTRL-C the numeric code and Google it to see what other sites that particular code belongs to. Of course, this will only work on sites that are using Adsense on their pages, but it's still a pretty useful little hack.
Google just announced that their chat application, Google Talk, is now open for public consumption, having previously been limited to Gmail users.
The new, open Google Talk comes with the same bundle of new features announced on Google Talk's first birthday, like voicemail (see screenshot - delivered via email), file transfer, and music status/trends. I know that the world over loves Google for their search, but I feel like most people are pretty dedicated to their favorite IM app, and if they don't have loyalties, they're already using Adium or Trillian. With that in mind, I'm interested to see what an open Google Talk can do. Your thoughts in the comments.
Facebook is open — Facebook is open. I've already received friend requests from companies selling their wares by creating a Profile. I am also faced with more contexts that i can deal with. (Note: i'm not accepting friendships from folks that i know in the blogosphere until i figure …
Source: apophenia
Author: Zephoria
Link: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2006/09/28…
Why The New .Mac Webmail Is Important — Earlier this week Apple announced that a new version of webmail for Mac users is "coming soon." There was a bit of chatter about this around the blogosphere, with most people concluding that this fresh coat of paint on the inferior .mac product is a bit of a yawn.
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Michael Arrington
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/29/why-the-new-mac…
Skype Blocking/San Jose U. Story Addendum — I haven't been commenting directly on this story, where San Jose State University had been pushing to block on Skype on campus, and by extension, other broadband-based applications stood to be at risk. On that note, I mentioned …
Source: Jon Arnold's Blog
Author: Jon Arnold
Link: http://blogs.pulver.com/jarnold/archives/2006/09…
SHIFT: The Web 2.0 Drinking Game — Each week Adam Frucci takes a closer look at the latest gadget buzz in his column, Shift. — Image by Matt Krueger — I'll apologize right now for using "Web 2.0" in the title of this column. It's a terrible buzzword, but it defines the very sites …
Source: SCI FI Tech
Author: Adam Frucci
Link: http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2006/09/28…
Worried about unsavory individuals lurking around your office or home and jacking your computer gear? Have no fear! With the help of your Windows PC, webcam, some free software, and this handy tutorial from Simplehelp, you can set up a reasonably sophisticated DIY security system. The core of the tutorial is Dorgem, an open source utility that captures images from your webcam and can save images based on "storage events," e.g. every 30 seconds or every time it detects motion. Since having photos of your intruder on your computer isn't very useful after the computer is gone, Dorgem has the ability to send the files to an external server via FTP or HTTP, or hand the files off to another program. The tutorial also covers more advanced techniques, like setting up multiple webcams and hiding your webcam from sight.
The MySpace competition is huge, and social networking is a giant place in today's online world. It's taken some time, but Microsoft is almost ready to launch their social network. Wallop has been around the Microsoft campus for awhile now, hiding down deep inside the MSN labs. Earlier this year Microsoft has decided to spin Wallop off as its own company, headed by Karl Jacob, the founder, and funded by a couple of VC companies. The difference between Wallop and all of the other social networks out there is that Microsoft's version introduces forms of personal expression into the mix. Developers and Designers can sign up for a special program to design and sell interactive flash widget like modules, like backgrounds, animations, toys, games and mini applications, that Wallop users can buy and add to their sites.
Unfortunately at the moment, Wallop is by invitation only, and I don't have one yet to test it out. So if anyone has a spare....or if anyone has had some experience using Wallop, we would all love to hear about it.
It's been a long time coming, but Google has finally handed over Orkut data to Brazilian authorities. Google is complying by surrendering data on users with the requests that were requested by Brazilian courts.
Brazilian prosecutors are investing illegal activity that might be going on inside of Orkut, Google's social network, and sued Google for the requested information. Google has been fighting the requests because Brazilian prosecutors had requ ested information from Google's Brazilian subsidiary, but Google US owns and runs Orkut from the US. Thus extending the process because all requests had to be sent to the California offices.
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Today's release of FeedDemon 2.1 beta seemed like a nice little treat. After the release of NewsGator Go! last week, it felt like a really solid one-two punch from NewsGator. Right on!
But then as I'm using the new version of FeedDemon, I find updates notifying me of minor (but pretty wonderful from a usability perspective) updates to Bloglines, and the Google Reader update that David already walked us through. Holy cow! Since we already know what's up with Google Reader, let's go back and have a look at the updates to Bloglines and FeedDemon.
Bloglines have given a very nice overhaul to the feed list on the left hand side, adding some carefully done Ajaxy goodness, like yellow fades for unread count updates. There is also a subtle notification of the number of new unread items as you obsessively press the R hotkey to refresh your sidebar. Feed list updates occur more often. All in all Bloglines feels snappier than before, although that could just be the excitement of new features talking.
FeedDemon
FeedDemon's update is also on the subtle but usable side, including a big security update to prevent malicious code inserted into an RSS feed from being executed. An additional feature has also been announced, which is called Popular Topics. FeedDemon can scour all of your subscriptions to see if there are any common threads linking them together. If so, it presents them in a custom view showing you items that are of enough interest that multiple people are talking about them. Be forewarned, though, you need to be subscribed to a fairly substantial number of feeds for this feature to be of much use. FeedDemon also feels a bit snappier, although no reference to specific performance updates were given in the release notes. If you're a FeedDemon user, I'd suggest getting involved in helping test the latest release. Nick's software is always so polished that even a beta version is very usable.
So what's the deal - everyone picked the same day to release new features? Although with the release of NewsGator Go! and the ability to take my feeds offline in my Pocket PC, I thought I'd finally settled on a platform, I now have more playing around to do with Bloglines (it's just more fun to use now), and Google Reader, the dark horse. The Google Reader update really came out of left field, but I can't wait to explore it since their first take at a feed reader was, well, weird. Looks like they've cleaned up their act.
Google Reader, Google's web-based RSS Aggregator, has had a re-design and I am impressed. It now has a look n' feel very much like Gmail, which I believe is a pointer to this product being prepped for mainstream promotion - and/or merged with Gmail. Probably a bit of both, as a standalone RSS Reader is always going to be needed. You'll recall that the new Yahoo Mail Beta has RSS integrated into its email experience - and the reason for that is quite simply to reach the 250 Million odd people that have a Yahoo Mail account. What better way to make RSS a mainstream experience than to integrate it into the web email platform. So I expect Google to follow suit.
Google Reader List view
You probably know that I am a huge fan of Gmail, so this new Google Reader interface was immediately a pleasure to use. I love that it automatically marks items as 'read' as you scroll. I also like the List view (very much like email), for quick scrolling, and the 'Expanded' view feels much more natural to use now. The 'sharing' functionality is excellent too - a shared clippings blog similar to Bloglines; and ability to share via email.
The new features:
I remember trying out Google Reader back in the Web 2.0 Conference last year, when it was launched. I was underwhelmed at that time, but this new design - with its Gmail-like interface, features, and speed to match - is much more impressive. Like Niall Kennedy, I hope they also integrate blog search into the Reader at some point - as well as tie into other Google services. But otherwise, Google has upped the ante in the online RSS Reader space. And also gone a long way towards matching Yahoo's email/RSS integration.
Expanded View
Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick at Techcrunch points out that Google is emphasizing the email tie-in: "Think of Google Reader as your inbox for the web."
Hot on the heels of the well-received Google Reader re-design, I received a tip tonight (thanks Mike Rundle) that Bloglines has also done a slight re-design. On their blog they note:
"You might have noticed a few fancy little changes we've made to your feed tree on the left pane today. You'll like them even more when you learn what's behind the scenes!
- We no longer update the entire left pane when the unread or "kept as new" counts change. Now the counts update in place with a fading yellow indicator. The result is a faster, more pleasant way to cruise through your feeds, especially for those quick on the hotkeys.
- We've decreased the time between automatic updates to your unread counts so you don't have to press the "r" hotkey quite so often."
It also appears to be a different typeface and a slightly 'fancier' look. Some nice ajax touches. This is just on the left navigation pane though - the actual reading pane stays the same. It'd be great if the ajax changes could be applied to the whole screen... maybe they're making the right pane next year's upgrade ;-) (kidding)
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
This week at DEMOfall I saw two vertical search applications that made me think that this area is getting mature and ready for prime time. Pluggd and Retrevo launched technologies that are not only good at finding podcasts and consumer electronics (respectively) - these sites categorize and present information in fundamentally new, different and intelligent ways. They do it so well that generic search just can not compete.
In this article we look at the rise of vertical search and how it may end up threatening Google. We profile some of the more innovative and interesting vertical search engines - selected primarily based on how they organize the search results and allow the user to navigate through information. Try them out if you have not done so yet and let us know what you think... is vertical search ready for prime time?
There are always tradeoffs between generic and specialized applications, particularly in the area of information processing. The generic applications cover a wider spectrum, but specialized applications excel in their niche - because they have an intimate understanding of the semantics of information in their topics.
In the end, there will always be place for generic search - because it may not be economical to have a vertical search engine for every vertical. However, in major verticals, specialized search engines might take a big bite out of the generic search engines' market share - including Google's advertising pie.
Mashable data, tweaked APIs and Krispy Kreme donuts are on the schedule at Hack Day 2006. The conference for web software programmers got underway this morning with a round of developer workshops on the Yahoo campus. Live updates from Sunnyvale, California in Monkey Bites.
Podcasting stats and ads company RadioTail is announcing prior to this weekend’s Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California that they are now offering their podcast stat tracking service Ripple for free to any podcaster. The company hopes that podcasters using the free service will sign up to let RadioTail sell or serve ads [...]
MediaWeek is reporting (but see updates below) that Facebook will soon add “sponsored stories” or banner ads to the news feed on users’ front pages. The addition of those feeds in the first place caused a big uproar around privacy concerns. The mere addition of advertisements doesn’t seem like a big deal to [...]
The Google Reader team unveiled a revamped version of their online feed reader today and no one can say it’s not a real RSS reader anymore. They even took Robert Scoble’s advice and made a demonstration video! Changes include a whole new look and feel, folder navigation, unread item counts and the ability to mark [...]
Earlier this week Apple announced that a new version of webmail for Mac users is “coming soon.” There was a bit of chatter about this around the blogosphere, with most people concluding that this fresh coat of paint on the inferior .mac product is a bit of a yawn. Even Om Malik, who’s been complaining [...]
Yahoo has released a new product called BBAuth just in time for its open HackDay today and tomorrow. It’s a mechanism for non-Yahoo applications to access Yahoo’s authentication mechanism and user data in a secure manner. Most mashups today do not access personal data because of the security issues (not to mention the fact that [...]
Windows only: Microsoft's blog posting tool Windows Live Writer is new and improved with tag support, Windows Live Gallery, and better support for Blogger Beta, among a host of other enhancements.
I've been using Windows Live Writer on and off with a couple of other blog editors, and this updated version is slick. Tag support is my favorite feature - you can send tags not only to Technorati, but to del.icio.us, Flickr, and there's even an option to input your own custom favorite tag-happy site. Live Writer is a free download, Windows only.
Web site Simplehelp has a tutorial for setting up your own motion-detecting security camera - all you need is a PC, a webcam, and a free, open source program called Dorgem.
Simplehelp's instructions are very detailed, and in the end you should have a security camera that can, for example, take pictures of intruders and upload them to a remote location via FTP (just in case the computer gets stolen). Or maybe you'll just end up with a lot of pictures of your son doing things in front of your computer that you never wanted to know about. Either way (well - not so much the second way), this is pretty cool. Works on Windows 98 and up.
10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website — These are the top 10 things I learned from attending the Future of Web Apps Conference 2006 in San Francisco earlier this month. The summit was hosted by Carson Systems and included speakers like Kevin Rose, Mike Arrington, Mike Davidson, and more.
Source: AUBlog
Link: http://blog.auinteractive.com/10-things-that-will…
Microsoft to Put Zune Experience in Consumers' Hands on Nov. 14 — Zune device to retail for $249.99. — Microsoft Corp. is putting the social into digital music, starting this holiday. Today the company announced that the Zune™ digital media player and online service will be available …
Source: Microsoft
Link: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/sep06…
Microsoft has released a new beta version of its unexpected free blogging app, Windows Live Writer. Writer 1.0 beta puts some more polish on the program, as well as a few new features, in particular support for tagging via several services including Technorati and del.icio.us (still no Ultimate Tag Warrior), support for the new Blogger Beta, and improved category handling. It also features faster start-ups and improved style detection for blogs, and about a dozen other little improvements. On top of that, MIcrosoft has added a Writer section to Windows Live Gallery where you can download plugins for the app or submit your own. The selection is sparse just now, but it does have Firefox and IE "Blog This" plugins, an Event plugin (with hCalendar microformat support) and a Flickr plugin. Cool.
Yesterday was Google's 8th birthday. Hard to believe it's already been 8 years! I remember first using Google, "this weird new search engine," as a freshman in college. It was brand new, and yet somehow it was, from the get-go, way better than Yahoo or anything else that was around at the time. It quickly became - among my group of friends, anyway - the default college student research portal.
The BackRub* web site has some archives of the original Google; fortunately I don't remember it looking like that. (I was going to say, "I don't remember it looking so 1996" - an d then I realized that wouldn't be much of an insult, since the year was, in fact, 1998.) By the time I started using Google in late '98, it had the familiar, simplistic design it still sports today. (Or, at least, something very similar.) There's something to be said for simplicity and consistency.
And now, in 2006? Google is practically poised to take over the world. It's crazy how much can change in less than a decade.
* Trivia: did you know BackRub was the original name of Google?
UC Berkeley has just announced that they are partnering with Google Video to give you free college courses:
The University of California at Berkeley said on Tuesday that it is using Google Video to deliver college courses, including lectures and symposia, free of charge, the first university to have its own featured page on Google Video.
We've blogged about free college courses before here at the Lifehacker HQ, and this is certainly a welcome addition. Courses offered include Information Systems, Chemistry, and a whole lot more.
MySpace has started a brand new way to get folks involved in the voting process - the launch of a voter registration drive:
To register, members simply go to http://www.myspace.com/declareyourself and enter a state or ZIP code. After entering the requested information, the site generates a PDF file that can be printed and mailed to state election officials. A Spanish version also is available.
Since there's about eleventy jillion people on MySpace, and at least a few of them are of voting age, this could really be a boost to get the youngun's (and older folks) more of a say in what's going on, politically.
Our approach to content — The Internet has broken down many of the barriers that exist between people and information — effectively democratizing access to human knowledge. By typing just a few keywords into a computer you can learn about almost any subject.
Source: Official Google Blog
Link: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/our-approach…
Berkeley Releases Content to Google Video — The University of California, Berkeley has announced that it is making more than 250 hours of educational content free via Google Video. The collected materials have their own URL at http://video.google.com/ucberkeley.html .
Source: ResearchBuzz
Link: http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/2006/09/26/berkeley…
Jumpcut Joins the Yahoo! Family — Jumpcut is excited to announce today that we are being acquired by Yahoo! — We have worked hard to pioneer great online video editing technology that can truly enhance the online video world by enabling anyone to become a creator.
Source: Jumpcut Blog
Author: Mike
Link: http://blog.jumpcut.com/2006/09/27/jumpcut-joins-the…
Google Notebook, the Ajaxy bookmarking app I praised when it launched back in May, has taken a cue from Writely and Google Spreadsheets and added collaboration features. Whereas previously sharing was limited to letting others view your Notebook, it is now possible to invite other people to add to and modify your Notebook. This could be ideal for group research projects, trip planning--basically any situation in which several people are all collecting information online for a single purpose.
In addition to collaboration, Google Notebook has a couple other minor new features, including improved drag and drop support, Trash and undo (so when you accidentally delete something, it's not actually gone), and a Notebook gadget for Google Personalized Home. As always, I'm relieved to see Google is still developing this project instead of leaving it to gather dust.
[Via Lifehacker]
Blogged Live from DEMOfall by Alex Iskold
Ed Anuff, founder and CEO of Widgetbox gave a sharp presentation this morning introducing Widgetbox - the online widget marketplace. Widgetbox is the end-to-end solution for both widget developers and widget consumers. The Widgetbox site provides nicely organized directory of widgets with categories for Games, Media,. Blogs and Money Making. You can either browse, search for a widget by name or provider as well as just getting one of the featured or most popular widgets.
But Widgetbox is far from being just a directory, it really helps to make widgets and add meaning to widgets. The developers have access to tools to abstract and parametrize the widgets so that users can customize it. For bloggers, Widgetbox offers a Widget panel. Once this panel is placed into a sidebar of a blog any widget can be added simply via drag and drop. The final feature that I thought was notable is the context-sensitivity built into widget. Widgetbox calls this Tag Awareness, it is basically the ability for widgets to be reconfigured depending on the context of the page. As Ed mentioned in his presentation, we are in the very early days of customizable, Read/Write Web (pun intended) and widgets are going to play a big role in this new web. I tend to agree.
The Yahoo! family expanded again today with the acquisition of online video editing service Jumpcut. Here’s the Jumpcut post on the announcement and here’s the Yahoo! Search post. Based in San Francisco and launched just six months ago, Jumput specializes in letting users remix videos already online or edit their own video with [...]
Social networking site Facebook has just announced that they are opening their doors to the world at large, having previously limited registration to students and corporations.
Since Facebook is all about joining networks (like a college or work network), new users who don't have a school or company email address can join regional networks. This promises to be a controversial move for Facebook, which came under fire from its users recently for new features that many users felt invaded their privacy.
While this move puts Facebook on a much more direct level of competition with MySpace, the people at Facebook have made a point to reassure its current users that this won't pollute the pristine pool of Facebook:
If you're uncomfortable with regional users being able to see you on Facebook, you can always change your privacy settings to prevent people from finding you in searches and communicating with you.
Though the wording makes regional users sound a little like third-rate citizens, it should play well with Facebook's devoted base, which is built on a certain assumption of privacy and exclusivity.
Facebook came to my university the year after I left school (and my university email address expired), so I've only used Facebook with my girlfriend's account to peruse old acquaintances at the University of Iowa. However, I'm no more sure that I want to join Facebook to network in my region than I am that I want to participate much with MySpace. The network is just too large.
On that note, I'd love to hear what our readers think. MySpace users: Thinking you might switch to Facebook? Facebook users: Upset that your exclusive club will be tainted? Social network haters: Don't care? Considering joining? Let's hear your thoughts in the comments.
Google Calendars has added a few new features, namely weather forecasts and new "fun" public calendars.
In order to add weather information, go to the General tab of the settings, enter your location, and select whether you want your weather measured in Fahrenheit or Celsius. You should now see a little weather icon in the corner of your days that will give you a brief forecast of the day when you hover over it with your mouse. Not bad, but for more forecast details you might want to use Weather Underground's iCal feed instead.
Fun calendars include moon phases and Google holiday logos. To add them, click the plus (+) sign next to Other Calendars, Browse calendars, and add the fun cal of your choosing.
Google rolled out a couple of new Google Notebook features today, including group notebook editing by invited users.
Set up a notebook on a research subject your group is working on (whether it's "places we want to visit on our Hawaii vacation" or "Notes on constructing a turbo flux capacitor") and invite your friends, family or co-workers to add and edit it. You can also add a notebook to your Google homepage as well. Google Notebook's worked its way into my heart the past few months with the Firefox extension's ease of use; multi-user editing just sweetens the deal.
Facebook Just Launched Open Registrations — We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that this was coming...moments ago Facebook removed the restrictions on registration and anyone can now become a member by joining a geographic network. — They've also anticipated backlash from existing users …
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Michael Arrington
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/26/facebook-just…
About the Google News case in Belgium — Posted by Rachel Whetstone, European Director of Communications and Public Affairs — You may have read recently about Google being taken to court in Belgium. Whilst we aren't allowed to comment on the judgment itself, we thought …
Source: Official Google Blog
Link: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/about-google…
Chris Kohler and friends podcast from Japan, discussing the highs and lows of the Tokyo Game Show. Plus: More TGS pics and game impressions. In Game|Life.
Google Blogoscoped has merged the magic of Google Sets with Google Images and come up with a image search engine that searches for related images.
For instance, if you search for Playstation, you'll also get results for PC games, XBox, and Super NES. You can also use two terms separated by a comma, i.e., "cats", "dogs".
by Adam Pash
Recently Apple announced that you can buy video games for your 5G video iPod for 5 bucks a pop. Cool, right?
But what if you don't own a video iPod? What if you're stuck in the world of pre-video obsolescence? Worse yet, what if you don't have 5 bucks? The new games for sale at the iTunes Store aren't for you, and that's not quite so cool. Luckily, you can still play video games like Texas Hold 'Em, Tetris, and Bejeweled (all of which are for sale at the iTunes Store) on pretty much any iPod with a little bit of virtual elbow grease for free. Here's how.
Two non-Apple tools allow you to play games on your iPod: iPodLinux and Rockbox, both of which are completely free and open source. I've used and been impressed with both, but today we'll stick to iPodLinux since it's easier to install. I'll describe the process from the perspective of a Windows user, but iPodLinux installers are available for Mac OS X and Linux as well.
Getting games up and running on iPodLinux is a pretty simple 3 step process:
It's not exactly news that you can play games on an iPod with iPodLinux, but you may not know just how easy the process can be.
NOTE: Though I haven't had any problems using iPodLinux, you could potentially run into a snag that would require you to restore your iPod's firmware, which could mean you lose all of the music currently on your iPod. So do back up your iPod's music and files before proceeding.
First, download the iPodLinux Installer and extract the contents to a folder on your computer. Don't use a temporary folder, since you'll use the installer more than once, and this is where it will backup your current firmware and settings for easy uninstallation if you choose to get rid of iPodLinux.
The iPodLinux wiki currently claims that the installer doesn't work properly if you've upgraded your iPod firmware with the new iTunes 7, but I am running the latest firmware on my 4G iPod and didn't have a problem. Your mileage may vary, but if you do have a problem with your iTunes 7-upgraded iPod, you can always downgrade your firmware with the iPod Updater 2006-06-28 in order to install iPodLinux (since iTunes 7 has been somewhat of a mess, scads of people are downgrading anyway).
If you're ready to give it a try, run the installer. Again, the iPodLinux people make a point of telling you that lots of iPods aren't officially supported, but you'll find that for most purposes (at least for the games we'll be installing), pretty much any iPod should work fine.
Installation is straightforward. Plug in your iPod with disk mode enabled and run the installer, keeping the defaults. You may be told at some point (at least I was) that there's some dependency errors, but just click OK and barrel ahead.
When you get to the boot loader options, you have a choice: You can have your iPod automatically boot to Apple's default firmware (holding the Rewind/Back button during the boot process will load iPodLinux), boot iPodLinux by default (holding Rewind boots Apple firmware), or select the iPodLoader2, which gives you a boot manager interface where you can choose what to load each time you start up your iPod. In most cases, I'd suggest loading the iPod firmware by default, though I'm currently using iPodLoader2 (pictured above) without problems.
When your installation is complete, go to iTunes and eject your iPod. You may have to plug your iPod into the wall outlet to complete the installation, but the next time your iPod starts up you should be able to boot into iPodLinux.
Now that your iPod is dual-booting Linux and the default Apple firmware, it's time to get those games running. Plug your iPod into your computer, boot your iPod into the Apple firmware, and run the iPodLinux installer again. This time the installer will recognize that you've already got iPodLinux installed. Select "Update my existing installation" and hit Next. The installer should take you to a page of packages you can choose to install on your iPod. This is where you can choose your games.
The installer gets a little buggy for me at this point, but you can get around it easily. When the package list finishes downloading, I don't always get the option to go to the next page and view the packages. However, if I hit Back and then Next, I'm taken to the package list. (I'm but one man, so this may or may not happen to you.)
Once you make it to the package installation tree, you can select from a long list of cool games and other modules for your iPod. [1] Select the games and modules you'd like to install, hit next, and wait for the installation to finish.
Once the installer finishes, you can eject your iPod and boot back into iPodLinux. Once the interface is loaded, go to Extras -> Games (just like you would on Apple's firmware) and you should see all of the games you installed. Here's a quick taste of all the games I've been playing on my 4G iPod:
Keep in mind that some of these games work and look a little better than others, but all of the games I've mentioned work very well on my 4G iPod. And they're all free.
As I said earlier, iPodLinux isn't the only way to play games on your iPod; in fact, I've had plenty of fun in the past playing Doom with Rockbox (in my experience, it's much easier to set up Doom in Rockbox than iPodLinux). If you're feeling particularly ambitious, you can set up a triple-boot of Rockbox, iPodLinux, and the default Apple firmware using iPodLoader2.
Whatever you choose, it's pretty easy to get a bunch of fun games on your iPod for absolutely free. If anyone out there has tried iPodLinux or Rockbox and you want to weigh in, or you've got any questions about this process, direct your iPod-game-lovin' energy to the convenient comment box below.
Finally, if you're looking for more ways to have fun with your iPod, check out my other iPod-focused features.
Adam Pash is an associate editor for Lifehacker who doesn't have a 5G video iPod and wouldn't buy games for it even if he did. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The package list is also the place to go to remove troublesome modules. For example, the MPD module has caused iPodLinux to freeze during boot-up for me, but removing it through the installer takes care of this problem. Also, if you try a game you don't like and what to remove it, just come back to the package installation tree and uncheck it. [back up]
Google complies with court, posts ruling on Belgian sites — LONDON (MarketWatch) — Google Inc. (GOOG) Saturday posted a court ruling on its Belgian Web site home page, complying with an order to publish a judgment stopping it displaying content from newspapers without asking for permission.
Source: MarketWatch
Link: http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist…
News Publishers Want Full Control of the Search Results — After a Belgian press organization sued Google for copyright infringement and won, World Association of Newspapers decided to create "an automated system for granting permission on how to use their content", reports Reuters.
Source: Google Operating System
Author: Ionut Alex. Chitu
Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/09/news…
For One Publisher, the Life of Every Comic Book Starts on the Web — Scott Rosenberg, left, and Dylan Squires intend to make the Web the first outlet for Platinum Studios' comic books. Print versions may come later. — For generations of Americans, comic books were the first real page-turners.
Source: New York Times
Author: Michel Marriott
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/technology/25comics…
Toward a new relation ship — Techmeme has a new advertising system that's simple and straightforward and bringing in customers. That is, advertisers. Because advertisers are the customers of Gabe's new system. Readers are the consumers. Unless they pay Gabe for something, and I don't think they do yet.
Source: Doc Searls Weblog
Link: http://doc.weblogs.com/2006/09/25…
This is a cool little tool for you bloggers out there: Bleezer. It's a free, no frills blog editor that is cross platform and handles all the major APIs. For people who work on multiple platforms, the Java app is a godsend; it means one layout, one set of keyboard shortcuts, and that means higher productivity, in my book, anyway. That said, there are downsides. Java GUI means slow on many systems, especially Windows, and there are still utf8 bugs to be worked out, at least on Windows. That said, a unfied interface to all my projects is probably worth a couple of growing pains, especially since the price is right: free. Download it for Mac, Windows or Linux (and I don't se e it shouldn't run on BSDs with lcompat) and decide for yourself.
Sun's CIO dropped the news today that Google is using open source implementations of Solaris. Google is currently running Solaris in its data centers, but is looking forward to installing more Sun servers because of the open source Solaris. Given that they have hired on a list of previous Sun employees, it only looks promising for Google to test its own modified versions of Open Solaris.
eBay, Yahoo, Vonage, Disney, and Reuters are also on the list of companies that have adopted the Sun Solaris platform.
Google is making some bold moves to bring structured data into the mainstream search box. And in the process, it appears to be running over the top of microformats, the Web community's open standards for structured data. Not to mention the challenge this will ultimately represent to eBay.
According to a PC Advisor report, Google plans to extend the product search capabilities on its main Google.com search engine in the fourth quarter. The main change is in product search, where Google Base will be brought to the fore. When a product search is done on Google.com, users will be presented with another search box to refine their query (like an 'advanced search'). After the user refines their query, Google takes them to a second page populated with product results from the Google Base listings service - i.e. from structured product data. This is already happening with real estate queries, but will be expanded into other product types.
"Ranking will be determined by the attributes that the sellers listed for the product as well as by relevancy," according to analysts at the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) Summit in San Francisco this week (where the news broke).
Google has no plans to monetise this product-search capability with display ads or listing fees - but that could change.
The plan also involves de-emphasizing Froogle as a destination website and moving its comparison-shopping capabilities to Google.com, because most product searches happen on Google.com. Although Danny Sullivan thinks Google will still need a standalone shopping search brand.
PC Advisor summarized:
"From the beginning, Google said that Base isn't meant as a destination website, but more like a database to feed information to Google search sites, like Google.com. To stress this point, Google recently removed the search box from the Google Base site."
Google Base as a database of structured data has had the potential to be disruptive to Google search ever since it was released. If what was reported from the eBay conference is on the mark, then this will be a significant upgrade to Google Search (or perhaps enhancement is the better term).
Like Steve Rubel, I wonder if this is putting Google on a collision course with eBay. But then I never underestimate the power of a centralized and focused community like eBay (as edgeio is finding out).
Fergus Burns of Nooked and John Battelle have both discussed Google Base recently. From the Nooked blog:
"To push the envelope out a bit, people should pay attention to what Google are up to.
The Google Base project is the key to marketers. This quote from a recent analyst conference call with Google management on Google Base
“Through that integration, the overall Google experience will become much more structured, much more refined, and much more precise. It’s a real improvement in end-user quality.”
John Battelle has 2 great examples - Real Estate and Travel of what this looks like in Google Search."
As Fergus summarized, marketers will need to offer feeds on a per product/brand/category basis and support additional attributes from google base and microformats.
The big question in all this is how microformats (the industry standard for structured data) will play alongside Google Base structured data. Right now it seems like Google is going its own route, so where does that leave microformats?
The complete text of Apple's cease-and-desist letter to Podcast Ready reveals that Apple thinks iPod users call their players "pods," and points to trouble for businesses with the word "pod" in their names and domains. In Listening Post.
Scrapblog is presenting at DEMO this week and their new software is a great example of just how much can be done by web based applications. It’s a Flash application that lets users drag and drop photos, video, text and audio onto a background image to build scrapbooks that can be printed as a [...]
September 23-30th is Banned Books Week, and to celebrate, Google Book Search has partnered with the American Library Association to highlight 42 classics, including To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, and The Grapes of Wrath.
Each featured title has a direct link to Google Book search results, with linked libraries and/or retail stores where you can find the banned book; since some of these books might be out of print, this is a very useful resource.
If you're a computer major, you'll want to check out Google Ambassador, a volunteer program that gives you and your friends free pizza in exchange for some Google campus love.
It's a one-year committment, and basically consists of you being a "representative" for Google at your college or university. And free pizza's not the only benefit - you also get free Google schwag and in Google's words, the "admiration of your peers."
Notes on Techmeme's new sponsorship model — There's a new area on the right side of Techmeme labelled "Techmeme Sponsor Posts". It shows the latest blog posts from three companies who have chosen to sponsor Techmeme for the next 30 days. — This is the first sponsored material of any kind on Techmeme.
Source: blog.memeorandum.com
Link: http://blog.memeorandum.com/060925/sponsorship_model
Pluggd to make podcasts chunkier, searchable — Seattle based podcast discovery and management service Pluggd is unveiling a major new feature at DEMO this weekend that combines speech recognition and semantic analysis to let users search for and skip to parts of an audio file that are related to topics of interest to them.
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Marshall Kirkpatrick
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/24/pluggd-to-make…
Google is missing an important marketing angle: video demos — I was just over reading Steve Rubel's blog where he links to a BusinessWeek article about Google and its struggles to improve its business. I guess Google has noticed that most people only use one thing, the search engine …
Source: Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
Author: Robert Scoble
Link: http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/09/24/google-is…
Welcome Techmeme Readers — Hi Techmeme readers! We're excited to have you join us. Wink is a social search engine that delivers relevant search results based on contributions and feedback from people. We just recently released beta 2. we invite you to try Wink.
Source: Wink Blog
Author: Michael Tanne
Link: http://blog.wink.com/2006/welcome-techmeme-readers/
There is nothing I love more than my favorite morning breakfast food (procured from the back-end of a chicken) sizzling in the pan mumbling incoherently and frothing at the yoke. This is exactly how Crazy Egg isn't. This visualization tool for your website will show you several important things about how, how often, where, and on what your guests are clicking on. There are three modes (screenshots of each after the jump) overlay, list, and my personal favorite, the heat map. Crazy Egg has a well put together idea that looks great. All you have to do is insert a single line of code at the bottom of each page you want to track. They offer a free account and three other paid account options to choose from ($19 /$49/$99), all with varying degrees or features and number of saved snapshots. There, now my eggs are climbing up walls and trying to harm themselves, go check out Crazy Egg, cause I gotta go, my crazy eggs are out of control!The Crazy Egg overlay
The Crazy Egg list
The rockin Crazy Egg heat map.
Seattle based podcast discovery and management service Pluggd is unveiling a major new feature at DEMO this weekend that combines speech recognition and semantic analysis to let users search for and skip to parts of an audio file that are related to topics of interest to them. It’s more than just speech recognition. This is [...]
Just noticed this announcement in my Bloglines feeds today:
Bloglines has now integrated Skweezer technology to optimize web pages for your personal handheld mobile device's viewing pleasure. When you click on a link while reading a blog post in Bloglines Mobile, Skweezer will compress and reformat the content so you get it faster and better looking on your small screen.
It's got some nice features (language translator, for example) but my phone is about as un-mobile as you can get. Any of you intrepid Lifehacker readers that give the new Skweezified Bloglines a try, let us know about your experience in the comments.
Podcast with Om Malik and Robert Scoble — We just posted the next podcast episode at TalkCrunch. This was a joint effort, with Om Malik, Robert Scoble and me talking for an hour on a range of topics, from the startups we're most excited about to the state of VOIP to the upcoming Yahoo Hack Day.
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Michael Arrington
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/24/3028/
A true x86 emulator for Palm - first facts and pics — A few days ago I got a mail from the developer who ported an emulator that lets you use real PC apps on a Palm. It's the Palm OS port of the well-known DOS emulator DOSBox. It doesn't only emulate an x86 CPU but also a DOS environment …
Source: TamsPalm-the Palm OS Blog
Author: Alexander Gratz
Link: http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2006/09/23/a-true-x86…
The Spring Box is a widget engine for the web and for the desktop that is just plain sprung (sorry, I grew up near Chicago, so I still know a little street slang). The product is in beta, so you know it is cool like all the other roller-shoe wearing kids, but this also means there are not a lot of widgets available for consumption just yet. There is an API for developers that you can use (developer skills preferable) to make your own widgets, available by contacting the company. Currently the list of widgets you can use are: RSS reader, NFL GameTrax, Scoreboard, Clock. You can embed the widgets anywhere that accepts code such as MySpace, Faces.com, Friendster, Xanga, and many more or downl oad the engine to use on your desktop. One idea Spring Box may want to explore is some way to display Yahoo or other widgets on their engine, to allow integration across other widget-works (if at all possible). So check it out and start gettin' sproingy with it!
For some great weekend reading, check out this Fortune magazine article that gets inside the great Google brain. Some extracts that I enjoyed...
"What emerges from months of interviews with employees ranging from fresh-out-of-college hires to the CEO is that Google firmly believes it has a framework for figuring out the future. It should come as no surprise that the plan is as irreverent, self-confident, and presumptuous as the company itself. Google's executives don't articulate it this way, but the framework can be found in the title of Shona Brown's book: structured chaos. Indeed, along with Googleyness, chaos is among the most important aspects of Google's self-image. Understanding how Google thinks about chaos -- like Page's teachable moment after Sandberg's million-dollar mistake -- is critical to divining where the company goes next. "Are lots of questions hanging out there in the market?" asks Sandberg. "Sure. Because we don't always have an answer. We're willing to tolerate that ambiguity and chaos because that's where the room is for innovation." Good strategy -- if it actually works."
(emphasis mine)
Later in the article it states that Google has released "at least 83 full-fledged and test-stage products", but as yet none have come close to the success of their search and online advertising linchpins.
Google of course has a heck of a lot of smart employees - and they are given the freedom to experiment and innovate. The Fortune article takes a more systemic view of this than previous articles. The Google system is made up of Googleyness and 'structured chaos'.
Another part I liked was the description of Google CEO Eric Schmidt explaining the history and future of computing:
"He draws a series of connected clouds representing the history of the computing industry, from mainframes to minicomputers to PCs to today's mobile devices. The gist of the illustration is that there's practically no money left to be made in computers, not in hardware or software. The money, instead, is all in Web applications, a trend Schmidt had been predicting since his days as chief technology officer at Sun a decade ago. Users won't always be traveling to the Web on the PC, which is why he scribbles lines for cellphones, cable set-top boxes, Treos, BlackBerrys, and so on."
(emphasis mine)
Again, everybody sees and talks about these trends - but it's Google's ability and willingness to act on them which makes them such a compelling Internet company. Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon are that too - but none of them have that ineffable Googleyness :-)
Providing one-stop shops for students looking at colleges, 35 states ease the labyrinth of class planning, financial aid, transcripts and online applications. Some private-sector sites offer unbiased student rankings.
We just posted the next podcast episode at TalkCrunch. This was a joint effort, with Om Malik, Robert Scoble and me talking for an hour on a range of topics, from the startups we’re most excited about to the state of VOIP to the upcoming Yahoo Hack Day. We also wish Om a happy birthday [...]
Track all your lists online with the dynamic webapp iPrioritize.
Much like previously-mentioned Ta-Da Lists (but not nearly as good looking), create multiple lists of items with headlines and notes in iPrioritize, like todo lists or grocery lists. Syndicate your lists via RSS, get them on your mobile phone, and share your lists on a public web page. While Ta-Da Lists is still the better web-based list manager, iPrioritize does have interesting Microsoft Outlook integration worth checking out. Thanks, Wayne!
Facebook, a social site, has a suitor — Mark Zuckerberg is a member of the Google generation, one too young to remember all the ambitions dashed and fortunes lost when the last dot-com boom ended. — That may be one reason Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old founder of Facebook …
Source: New York Times
Author: Saul Hansell
Link: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-6118336.html
AMAZON AND TIVO GET IN MOVIE BIZ — Apple has made clear its ambition of taking over the living room. Now Amazon is looking for a seat on the couch. — Amazon, the giant online retailer that recently launched a digital video downloading service that competes with Apple's iTunes …
Source: New York Post
Author: Tim Arango
Link: http://www.nypost.com/business…
Do you have contacts on MSN Messenger, but prefer to use Google Talk? Why not open one IM instead of two? GTalk2VoIP is an application that supposedly allows you to call regular phone numbers from Google Talk, as well as chat with MSN Messenger contacts. There is no software to install, just simple add the contact, service@gtalk2Voip.com, and you're ready to go. GTalk2VoIP is a free service, but there is a fee for outgoing calls to regular phone lines, which is determined by the provider your call is routed through.
[Via Google Operating System]
While we're on the subject of mobile RSS readers... Bloglines announced yesterday that its Bloglines Mobile service now features integrated Skweezer technology.
What's Skweezer, you ask? Well, on its own, it's a free, platform-independent web service that optimizes page content for mobile devices. The benefit of Skweezer technology being added to Bloglines is that you won't have to specifically go to the Skweezer portal when you want to force a particular site to be friendly to your mobile device. When you visit a page vi a Bloglines Mobile, Skweezer compresses and reformats the content on the fly. Bonus: Skweezer can also translate content into more than a dozen languages.
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Yahoo! and Facebook are back talking, and it looks like the deal is approaching the $1 billion mark. Facebook recently held discussions with Microsoft and Viacom about possible takeovers, and they both bombed out.
The 22 year old founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has shied away from selling because he is focused on building the company for the long term. Viacom had offered $750 million earlier this year, which was shut down with a $2 billion counter offer. Mark is now apparently undecided about the Yahoo $900 million offer. He keeps tight control of the company backed by Greylock Partners, and models the simplicity and mana gement style he has after Google, and Apples founders.
If this deal goes through, it could major pump up for Yahoo's declining younger market.
We've seen a lot of action in the 'personalized start page' space on the consumer side, but relatively little development in business web 'start pages'. Salesforce.com has an interesting feature in its upcoming Winter '07 release that may change that. Called the Business Web Desktop, it's basically an Ajax-powered web homepage for Salesforce apps.
The applications accessible on Business Web Desktop will include: activities, opportunities, leads, campaigns, other objects (including custom objects). The idea of this "customized desktop" is to provide all the information business people need on a single screen. The user interface relies heavily on a dynamic Ajax interface. Other features include multiple panes, data refresh in each pane occurring when data changes, and dynamic lists that expand as the user mouses over them.
Because this is for enterprise, there is a certain amount of control maintained by the IT dept. Admins will configure the page layouts and mini page layouts and assign users to profiles and record types. Users can however set up their own list views.
There has been some discussion on whether this Business Web Desktop will replace the salesforce.com "home tab" in the service. That won't happen in the Winter '07 release, but possibly in future:
"In the Winter release, we will be adding the Console as a separate Tab, it will not replace the Home tab, but that has been discussed."
We've written before about 'personalized start pages' being a great option for company dashboards or even intranet homepages. So good to see this is turning into reality, care of Salesforce.com. Winter '07 is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter. Here are some initial screenshots - a bit blurry, but they are the only ones currently available...
See also: Salesforce.com previews Analytics and Dashboard Mash-Ups
In the clearest sign yet that the big guns are preparing to step up the battle for Web Office, Microsoft has said it is considering releasing a version of Microsoft Works (the poor cousin of Microsoft Office) as a web suite. The desktop version of Works retails for $50 and includes a calendar, word processor, spreadsheets, Web Browser and e-mail. While its currently positioned as a home productivity toolset (to do your accounts, write letters, etc), it could pretty easily be re-positioned as a (small) business web office suite.
In any case - because Works includes basic word processing and spreadsheet software, to web-enable that and bundle it as a suite would be a step above what both Microsoft and Google currently offer. Right now Microsoft has Office Live (web hosting, email, project collaboration) and Google offers Apps For Your Domain (email, IM, calendar and website creator).
Microsoft's planned web-based Works would be a free package, supported by advertising. As Reuters put it:
"[Microsoft] faces a growing pack of Web-based competitors -- led by Google -- that is offering similar [office] technology for free with a business model that makes money off advertising.
The world's largest software maker is now mulling how it can move Microsoft Works, a basic suite of business software that often comes preloaded on inexpensive consumer PCs, onto the Web as part of its growing stable of free online services."
I think this is a wise move by Microsoft to pre-empt Google's upcoming Web Office suite. It clearly won't affect sales of their flagship MS Office, as the functionality is much richer in the desktop version - even more so when Vista and Office 2007 are released. Works is very basic by comparision - but it does have word processing and spreadsheets.
On the other hand Google will probably easily trump a web-based Works, once they package up Writely and Google Spreadsheets into a proper suite. So far there have only been hints that Google will take that next step - perhaps they're still busy working on the business models for such a move.
All in all, things are starting to get interesting in the Web Office space. I wouldn't mind betting that Google pushes forward whatever secret plan they have for a full office suite, now that Microsoft has made noises about webifying word processing and spreadsheets.
See also: Google Office: a close-up look and image gallery of Google office apps.
Today is the first OneWebDay, a global awareness event to "create, maintain, advance and promote a global day to celebrate online life." It was founded by Susan Crawford, associate professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Some big Web names have been lined up in support - including Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Craig Newmark of craigslist. Virtual celebrations will be held in Second Life and there will be real-world celebrations around the globe.
I can certainly get behind a message like this:
"The idea behind OneWebDay is to tell the story of how the web changes lives around the world. We're making the web visible so that we don't take it for granted."
Fred Wilson does the Al Gore thing and riffs on the ecology metaphor:
"The web is like planet earth. It's an amazing resource that we need to value, respect, protect, and celebrate."
Even skeptical tech news website The Register gets into the spirit:
"The idea behind OneWebDay is to remember that the web is not just a jumble of machines, but also a social environment."
The About Page of OneWebDay lays out the message in detail:
"The Web is worth celebrating.
OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.
As with Earth Day - an inspiration and model for OneWebDay - it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.
By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly."
Pic: jonasgoldstein
Suggested activities include: Collective art projects (see yourself as a pixel); Music mashups; Contributing to a slide show of flickr images of people doing the onewebday hand signal (see above); Teach your grandmother to blog; Make a website for your club, church, school; Employees: teach your boss to IM; Doctors: Set up web-based self-scheduling for patients.
I'm all for this (well, except maybe the hand signal...). The thought behind it is a great one, so Read/WriteWeb encourages you to get out there and celebrate the Web!
Podcast Ready is the latest company to be hit with a "cease and desist" letter from Apple Computer, demanding that the company stop using the word "pod" in its company and product names. In Listening Post.
Human-assisted search site ChaCha.com offers its work-at-home guides a way to receive their paychecks instantly via debit cards. Plus: Angry iTunes 7 users look to the past. In Monkey Bites.
Amazon is reportedly in talks with Tivo to enable movies downloaded from the Amazon Unbox service to be sent to TV sets via the Tivo. Strangely, stock prices for both companies took a quick leap this morning before quickly losing gains again within an hour. Perhaps after the initial enthusiasm the reality set [...]
I just got back from a lunchtime briefing at Yahoo about their open Hack Day next Friday, September 29. The basics: Yahoo Hack Day is a roughly 24 hour event beginning on Friday, September 29. This is open to any developer who wants to participate, although there is only room for 500 total hackers and 100 [...]
Our resident law geek Stewart Rutledge writes in with a handy Gmail tip.
When sending a message, type the name of the recipient you want to appear in your Contacts and then place the email address inside <>. That will auto-add the name to your address book formatted.
For instance, rather than:stewart@example.comin the To: box, useMaster Stewart Rutledge, the Wonderful <stewart@example.com>
As a matter of fact, this method seems to work in most email clients (Thunderbird, at least) that auto-add recipients to your address book. Thanks, Stewart!
Lessons From the Facebook Riots — Earlier this month, the popular social networking site Facebook learned a hard lesson in privacy. It introduced a new feature called "News Feeds" that shows an aggregation of everything members do on the site, such as added and deleted friends …
Source: Wired News
Author: Bruce Schneier
Link: http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71815-0.html
Effort to Combat Child Pornography Would Close Web Sites — As part of the battle against the spread of child pornography on the Internet, an initiative has begun allowing for the shutdown or blocking of sites offering illicit images of minors, even in cases where no criminal investigation is being conducted.
Source: New York Times
Author: Kurt Eichenwald
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/us/21porn.html
Side Effects of Anonymous Attack Blogging — So it turns out the guy who anonymously writes dead2.0, an occasionally insightful attack blog, has been identified. He's a VP at a startup that we'd cover at TechCrunch and CrunchGear, and that I lean towards liking.
Source: CrunchNotes
Author: Mike
Link: http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=281
Who is getting bought next? YouTube, Facebook? — Another day in Silly-con valley. WSJ reports Yahoo is looking at Facebook, for somewhere around $1 billion. Yahoo-Facebook reports and rumors have been circling for a while now. The other Web 2.0 darling, YouTube is also for sale, for $1.5 billion.
Source: GigaOM
Author: Om Malik
Link: http://polls.gigaom.com/2006/09/21/who-is-getting…
Say you've written a program that a lot of people will use. Say you really, really don't want them to mess with certain of the program's files. You could give them a readme file that contains a warning, but any developer knows that getting the user to actually read a readme file is about as easy as getting a 14-year-old to give up MySpace. Google, however, has come up with a very novel solution with Google Desktop: Not one readme file--twelve! Blogger Can Erten has posted a couple screenshots of Google's novel approach to getting a warning across to users. Since it really has to be seen to be believed, I'll just refer you to the i mage at right. Clever!
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
With all this buzz around the potential Yahoo! acqusition of Facebook for $1Billion, we think it's time to do the social networking faceoff.
Arguably of all services in the new social era, the social network sites hold most promise. The reason for this is that these community-driven sites have the ability to leverage their user base across other social web verticals. For example Facebook is also a photosharing service, MySpace is also a music sharing service and LinkedIn is a vertical search engine for Jobs. So the stakes in the social networking game are much higher. Naturally then, the social networking space has received major attention from premier venture capitalists. Please refer to our Web VC Chart post, where we we worked out the portfolios and sizes of the investments in this space.
Another natural trend that we are seeing in the space is demographic segmentation. Most social networks target a segment of the population - either explicitly as part of their business plan, or as a byproduct of the rules of network formation. LinkedIn is focused on Business Professionals, Facebook is focused on college students (although it has ambitions to go into the business space), while MySpace targets teenagers, college students, music and hip culture.
In addition to those three, Bebo is making some major waves and has surpassed MySpace in UK and New Zealand. Bebo's focus is quite similar to MySpace, although the pages are not as chaotic. And now there is also an interesting twist in the whole social networking space - the trailing and tired Friendster recently was awarded a patent on some key ideas used in all social networking sites. Knowing that Kleiner Perkins is behind the company, we can expect some moving and shaking soon.
Bebo |  Friendster | MySpace | TagWorld | Orkut | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated Active Users | 25M+ 1.9M (*) | 7M (*) | 5.8M (*) | 1.5 (*) | 70M+ | 1M 0.9M (*) | 49M (*) |
| Alexa rank | 268 | 71 | 40 | 219 | 6 | 2,373 | 16 |
| Alexa daily views (Per million) | 475 | 1,800 | 1,500 | 380 | 18,000 | 22 | 12,500 |
| Google blogsearch links | 3,700 | 7,000 | 18,600 | 5,900 | 401,000 | 3,500 | 32,000 |
| Focus | Teenagers/ college students | College students | Anyone | Business | Teenagers/ college students | Teenagers/ college students | Anyone |
| Classifieds | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Events | X | X | |||||
| Groups | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Messages | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Music | X | X | X | X | |||
| Photos | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Services | X | ||||||
| Video | X | X | X | X | |||
| Clean Design | X | X | X | ||||
| API | X | ||||||
| Widgets | X | X |
(*) The active user estimate is based on the assumption that MySpace has 70M users. We then used Alexa daily pageviews number to estimate the number of active users for other social networking sites. Note that the number for TagWorld agrees with the number given by TechCrunch in March of 2006. This is not surprising since it appears that the traffic for TagWorld had been on decline. On the other hand there is a big descrepancy in Bebo's value. This can be attributed to either inaccuracy of Alexa data outside of US or inactivity of Bebo users. Note that TechCrunch gave the number of registered users, while we estimate the active users. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
We can gain additional insights by looking at the traffic dynamics over the past year. Alexaholic only allows 5 sites to be compared at once, so we had to make 2 charts. Note that LinkedIn appears in both to help correlate them.
From the charts we clearly see that Orkut is gaining, but why? The feature set and the user interface are not impressive. The answer has to be its affiliation with Google, but we found another interesting chart, within Orkut itself:
But perhaps it is not just that Brazilian users dominate, but also the attitude and confidence of Orkut. Here is a paragraph from Orkut's about page:
MySpace is an undisputed leader on all counts, but Orkut is on the rise and it's moving very rapidly. Facebook is in excellent shape - hence the interest from Yahoo!. It'll be interesting to watch if LinkedIn expands its user base and offering. At this point, TagWorld looks shaky, while Bebo does not look as strong as it has been portrayed recently. And the old timer Friendster is not out of the game yet - it's doing just fine. All and all it looks like the battle for the gold (MySpace, Orkut) and for the bronze (the others) is going to heat up.
Teamslide is a service that lets presenters show online slides to audiences while talking on the phone. It’s like WebEx, but for slides instead of full, live screen sharing. There’s a one click conversion tool to make PowerPoint slides usable in TeamSlide. Mike Arrington reviewed the service when it launched in April [...]
Lifehacker reader and Law Geek Stewart Rutledge writes:
I've adhered to Google's suggestion and "never deleted anything," but I'm about to hit the quota.
a) What happens? Do I get a prize?
b) What's a good way to cut back drastically? I mean, I've got to cut out about a gig of email without deleting the good stuff.
What do you do when you fill up your Gmail quota?
Stewart's got a good point. Almost 3GB of email storage may be fine and dandy if you receive mostly text emails (well, even that's questionable), but if you get many attachments, it really doesn't take long at all to fill up 3GB. So what can Stewart do?
For starters, you're definitely going to make the most progress removing some of your attachments, so Gmail's has:attachment search operator is the first thing you want to try out. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn't allow you to filter attachments by size, but I would suggest filtering by date to get rid of some of your older attachments first. Searching Gmail with has:attachment before:2005/12/31, for example, will bring up all of your attachments pre-2006.
Of course, it may be a pain deleting attachments one-by-one, so if you're sure you don't mind getting rid of all the attachments within a range, you can set up a filter to delete all items matching your search, which should help clear up space a little more quickly.
So those are my tips - but I'd love to hear any creative suggestions for how our readers free up space in Gmail, so let's hear them in the comments.
Freeware program iPodulator downloads user-defined web sites or RSS feeds and syncs them to your iPod's notes.
When we first mentioned iPodulator about a year ago, it was a web-based app that created notes you had to manually move to your iPod. Now you can download iPodulator as a program that you run off your iPod (or at least that's what I did). You tell it what web sites/RSS feeds to track, and iPodulator checks the site and updates your iPod on regular intervals. Reading web sites on your iPod's notes may not be the nicest way to browse the internet offline, but it's better than nothing. iPodulator also offers quick creation of notes as well as some text-based games for your iPod that I haven't tried out yet. Requires Java.
Wired's running an interesting article right now on the Web 2.0 best and worst in show. Not surprisingly, LIfehacker favorites such as Flickr, Writely, and del.icio.us made the winners list, while continual underdog (but oh, so popular!) MySpace made the list of losers. What are your Web 2.0 winners and losers? What's missing from this list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Our inimitable sister site Gawker takes the Google map mashup to an olfactory extreme with the New York City Subway Smell map.
See what stations smell like perfume, food, poo or a whole host of other lovely big city scents. Having just spent a week back in NYC after a year of California fresh air, I can personally attest to the pungentness New Yorkers unknowingly get used to every day. Ok, so this won't make you more productive, but it might help you plan a less stinky commute through the five boroughs.
YouTube's Magic Number - $1.5 Billion — I spoke with NYPost writer Sam Gustin for a few minutes last night as he was preparing an article on YouTube. His article is now up - you can see it here. The most interesting part of the conversation was when Sam told me that a source …
Source: TechCrunch
Author: Michael Arrington
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/21/youtubes-magic…
YOUTUBE'S GOT A FAT IDEA OF ITSELF — INTERNET upstart YouTube, the bane-du-jour of copyright holders everywhere, won't sell itself for anything less than $1.5 billion, The Post has learned. — But that number far exceeds the price top media execs appear willing to pay for a company many believe lacks a sustainable business model.
Source: New York Post
Author: Sam Gustin
Link: http://www.nypost.com/business…
Got a Flickr Pro account? Then you'll want to take advantage of the new Flickr MiniCards being offered by MOO. The MiniCards are customized calling cards, each one featuring a different photo. If you work in a creative field, this could be a great way to give your business cards a unique flavor.
MOO is giving away 10,000 free packs of 10 MiniCards to Flickr Pro users, so get yours now. Or, if you want to go all out, you can order a pack of 100 MiniCards for $19.95. MOO is also offering free international shipping on all other orders through the end of September.
The Windows Client team, the division of Microsoft responsible for the user interface in Windows Vista (and previous versions), has finally jumped on the bandwagon and started a blog: Shell: Revealed. The new blog is a place for Microsoft's UI developers to talk about the changes in Vista and communicate with developers and enthusiasts. So far the blog hasn't revealed anything especially stunning, but it does relate the quasi-interesting story of What Happened to List View. They're still getting the hang of this whole blogging thing, but for the Vi sta-obsessed it's a great addition to the ol' feed reader. (Also, I really dig the little egg logo.)
[Via Slashdot]
Call it caving in, call it giving up, but I like to call it getting smart. Recording company executives are finally realizing that people will never stop file sharing. Yahoo is hoping that by offering the first DRM-less album (by Jesse McCartney), people will go buy the album. I dare say they will. If people know they can do with their music what they want, they are more likely to buy it than an album with ultra-restrictive DRM and a smattering of grape jelly. Let's say hypothetically, in a perfect DRM-less world, what would happen? Would people share songs between each other, yes. Will they get a majority of their music from other people, maybe. My thought is th at people will still go get music from online stores (at least new music) because it is more convenient than hitting up a friend for a particular song. So, if the recording companies are willing to give us DRM-free music, the only real problem is file-sharing applications. I like the p2p interfaces I have seen, but no one has figured out a way to use that clean interface that loads fast and is customizable with "legal" content. Not Apple, not Microsoft, not anyone. I am still waiting for this type of interface in a music store, no graphics and all kinds of cruft, I want a simple interface that I can use to download all my music (like the old Napster) but at least for now I can be happy with DRM-less content. Not that I like Jesse McCartney, but you know what I mean.
Yesterday blogger Paul Bausch noticed that Amazon has added comments to reviews, meaning one Amazon customer can now leave a comment on a review that another customer wrote. This isn't especially interesting, except that it's almost a complete about-face from the policy Amazon has maintained as long as it's had reviews. Amazon has always actively discouraged reviewers from "replying" to othe r reviews or making reference to them in their own reviews. As Bausch astutely points out, "If people know that their reviews are "thread starters" rather than isolated posts, you could get more chatty reviews with open-ended questions designed to provoke discussion. You should also get more flame wars, more trolling, all of the standard online discussion problems." It's hard to tell how Amazon is going to deal with the imminent influx of comments, but if they can keep things relatively civil, I think it adds a lot of value for shoppers.
[Via Waxy.org]
Writely has finally done the deed and fulfilled their acquisition destiny by opening their doors for users to sign in using their Google Accounts. They even published a succinct, though somewhat goofy, Help Center Q&A on this new ability, clarifying that not all Google Accounts are Gmail accounts, but all Gmail accounts are, in fact, Google Accounts; they must've been getting pounded with questions from Gmail users who aren't quite hip to the Google Account universe, or something.
At any rate, there don't seem to be any other revolutionary changes; Writely's design and UI hasn't been Googleized (and some might thank them for that), but who knows - this could easily be one more step in the direction of a Google Office suite.
The WSJ is reporting that US Social Networking site Facebook is in serious talks to sell itself to Yahoo, for an amount that may be as high as $1 billion. According to the WSJ, this is a return to the acquisition talks which Facebook has held over the past year with Yahoo - as well as Microsoft and Viacom.
If this deal goes through (and strange it should follow this week's news of Yahoo's online advertising woes and subsequent stock price drop), then most likely it will top News Corp's acquisition of MySpace last year for $580M. And it'll be more proof that social networking sites are seen as prime online advertising fodder for new media and technology companies. Note that last month Viacom was rumored to be after UK SNS sensation Bebo.
The WSJ article is behind a paywall, but here is the link. Thanks Honor Gunday for the tip.
Belkin's TuneTalk -- a snap-on stereo microphone for the 5G video iPod -- now works with the 'remastered' iPod Nano, giving podcast creators a new way to record interviews and shows on the go (and indicating that the new Nano has a faster processor). In Listening Post.
When the social discovery site turns members' most trivial actions into unfolding "News Feeds," users rebel, and the company races to quiet their anger. Both sides learn a hard lesson about the illusory nature of online privacy. Commentary by Bruce Schneier.
YouTube announced this morning that the site would host an online “battle of the bands” with user voted winners appearing on Good Morning America and as Cingular ring tones. Good grief, how schmarmy can you get? On the heels of the far more interesting Warner deal, today’s announcement seems to further validate the belief that [...]
I spoke with NYPost writer Sam Gustin for a few minutes last night as he was preparing an article on YouTube. His article is now up - you can see it here. The most interesting part of the conversation was when Sam told me that a source, which he described as “a senior exec at [...]
The Wall Street Journal is reporting (behind their damn paywall) that “people familiar with the matter” are saying that the company has had separate acquisition discussions with Yahoo, Microsoft and Viacom over the last year, and that they are again in serious discussions with Yahoo for around $1 billion. We’ve been through all of this [...]
Windows only: Freeware program Webaroo lets you download online content to your local computer, allowing you to access the content offline.
At first blush, Webaroo may remind you of previously-mentioned tools Slogger or Scrapbook, but it's actually a lot different. With Webaroo, you can choose to download a local copy of any web site, however many link levels deep you choose; but what's more unique about Webaroo are the web packs, which offer, for example, the ability to download and search the entirety of Wikipedia offline. After you've downloaded a web pack or web page, you can set Webaroo to update them automatically when you are online so things are always up-to-date.
If you rarely find yourself without internet access, the 10GB of space required by the Wikipedia pack may not be worth it, but if you spend a lot of time traveling or otherwise away from the internet, access to Wikipedia or any of the other pre-defined web packs or user-defined web sites could be invaluable. If Gina's introduction to wget felt a little too heady for you, Webaroo could be a good substitute.
Flickr user flickrflick151 shows how he put together a poor man's iPod dock with only a cardboard box, some tape, and the tools that God - I mean, Jobs - gave him.
There aren't a lot of instructions included, but the pictures do most of the talking. Basically, using the plastic insert that came with your iPod, you cut a hole in the top of the cardboard box and get busy with some tape. Granted, if you want to you can certainly pretty this method up a bit (e.g., this very cool embedded iPod dock), but the point is that you can make your own iPod dock for pretty cheap if you're dying to have a dock but aren't pleased with the hefty price tag.
Cardboard not your thing? Try building an iPod dock with Legos.
Feeling out of it because you don't have a blog? Overcome with guilt because your last post is six months old? WikiHow's got a list of reasons why you shouldn't blog. My favorite:
If attention and validation are what you're looking for, know that you will get neither from blogging. As above, very few people will ever know that your blog (or you, by proxy) exists. The remainder of comments posted to your blog will be sappy treacle, which you won't trust as being sincere anyway.
While I don't agree with all the points of view in this article, it does get bonus points for use of the word treacle. Any lifehackers at peace with their bloglessness? Tell us all about it in the comments.
The Googlified weblog details how you can add unlimited tabs to your Google Homepage by copying and pasting a small bit of javascript into your browser while you're on your homepage.
When we posted that Google had added tabs to their personalized homepage, a lot of readers were really happy with the new feature, but some weren't so happy with the 6 tab limit. Using the javascript from Googlified, I've put together a simple bookmarklet that you can use to add your unlimited tabs without having to work with all that unfriendly javascript (it's really not that hard either way, but whatever). To use the bookmarklet, drag and drop it to your toolbar from the link below, then click it when you're on your Google Homepage and want to add a new tab.
MSN has come out with Soapbox, the newest entry in the already crowded video upload and sharing field.
I wasn't able to get a beta invite before it was closed (dang it!), so I don't have firsthand knowledge of Soapbox. Here's a good summary of the service from tech blog Ars Technica:
Users are able to upload video content of any length to the site, but total file size must remain under 100MB. They can also tag videos, search for videos by tag, and leave comments for other users to read. Uploading takes place in the background of the web browser without requiring a standalone application and users can browse the available video selection while continuing to play another video on the side.
Hmm..I liked this the first time, when it was called YouTube. What do you think - has MSN jumped the shark with Soapbox, or should we reserve our snark and give 'em a go (that is, when the beta is opened up)? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Do you got back? An aching back, that is?
The Online Journalism News has a few tips for those of us who sit in one position all day, including simple exercises, a break routine, and stretching manuevers. We've blogged about healthy backs before at Lifehacker, and this article is a great compilation of a lot of tips I haven't seen before, such as:
Go round the block/ to the park/ for a paper if it's a nice day. As you walk let your shoulders drop away from your ears and your arms swing naturally by your side - this will relax the shoulders, helping prevent possible nerve irritation, and naturally stimulate lymph drainage - a process that can become sluggish if inactive for long periods.
Mmmm...lymph drainage. Well, what are your best tips for avoiding back strain? Give us your thoughts in the comments.
If you're a Flickr Pro user, then you'll get to take free advantage of the just-debuted Moo Flickr minicards:
To help spread the word, MOO are giving away 10,000 FREE packs of 10 cards to Flickr Pro Users, as well as offering free international shipping (a saving of $4.99) on all other orders until the end of September.
These minicards look pretty slick; basically, they're calling card representations of Flickr photos that you can use for all kinds of things: business cards being the most obvious. Of course, even if you're NOT a Flickr Pro user, you can still get the minicards...you'll just have to, you know, pay.
Feel like some free coffee? According to tech mag Productivity Apps, Yahoo's giving the java juice away:
Yahoo will offer coupons for a free cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts to anyone who sets Yahoo.com as their home page this Friday.
Well, coffee is all well and good, but what about donuts? It's physically impossible to walk out of Dunkin' Donuts without at least a dozen crullers...I mean, come ON. How about you - are you going to get some free coffee? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Greasemonkey script MySpace custom style remover does just what it says - remove the custom styles from MySpace pages, leaving every page with MySpace's default style.
Whether you love or hate MySpace, there's a good chance you've had to use it every now and then (maybe it's how all your friends plan their social outings or you just want to keep an eye on your kid's online activities). And if you've ever used MySpace, you've definitely been exposed to the CSS atrocities that some users employ on the site. I'm not one to discourage a little creative styling, but when you start worrying that a MySpace page might trigger a seizure, you know something has to be done.
The MySpace custom style remover script doesn't get rid of all styling on MySpace - it just returns everything to MySpace's less irritating (though still clunky) default style.
TGS06: Live Blogging Xbox 360 Media Briefing — And our 2006 Tokyo Game Show coverage officially kicks off this afternoon with Microsoft Japan's Media Briefing at Shibuya's super swish Cerulean Tower hotel. Press continue to filter in, and we've got our seats front and center (well, not center center, but centerish).
Source: Kotaku
Link: http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/top/tgs06-live-blogging…
Redesign of the Google Base homepage — by Ellen Beldner, User Experience Designer — As part of our ongoing effort to make Google Base easier to use, we launched a redesign of the Base homepage today. This doesn't change any functionality, but will make Base easier to understand.
Source: Official Google Base Blog
Author: Google Base Blog
Link: http://googlebase.blogspot.com/2006/09/redesign-of…
YouTube has made some surprising progress in its quest to host every music video ever created in a deal with Warner Music that will put the record giant's entire music video library online. This is in stark contrast to the recent legal threats by Universal against YouTube regarding copyright. The Warner deal gives YouTube users access to the music videos plus the green light to remix those videos with their own content. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but Warner and YouTube will be sharing advertising revenue.
Google's VP of Search Marissa Mayer recently told Newsweek that Apple and Google are "engaged in talks." The discussions are based around Apple's recent announcement of iTV, their new device that hooks up a users PC to their home TV. Google is talking about supplying Apple with videos for use through iTV.
The iTV device is essentially a media extender, allowing users to switch between a TV and computer screen. It is more or less a DVD player that happens to play internet videos. Teaming these two tech giants together for this project seems like a dominating stance in the "media extender" sector. It is a powerful tool that two companies could possi bly be side by side making it the ultimate must have for total media enjoyment.
A copyright complaint was launched by an organization that manages copyright for the Belgian press, and it appears as though they have concerns over Google reproducing articles from French speaking newspapers on Belgian websites. Supposedly Google sells advertising and makes money based on their content.
In the ruling the court has ordered that Google pay 1 million euros a day if it does not comply with their order.
The technology in question is Google's news aggregation feature. Simply choose the types of news feeds you wish to compliment your site with, and all relevant news found on the internet, will be aggreg ated on your webpage. In this instance, Google is only acting as the technology used to port information through, and is not copying and pasting news, calling it there own. A Google spokeswoman has said that Google is disappointed by the decision, believes it is flawed, and there will be an appeal. The spokesperson went on to reference Google's policy to remove any newspapers content from its index if asked.
Engadget reveals that Wal-Mart has seemingly leaked Microsoft Zune pricing at $284. That isn't a bad price for Microsoft's highly hyped mp3 player. You never know until the whole thing is released. We'll see if the price is around the supposed $284 when it comes out, but I hope it is, because that is very reasonable, especially from Microsoft. I gotta say now I am torn. I like the idea of Zune, its larger screen and nice simple design, but I don't know how the whole "sharing" idea and possible legal trouble sits with me. I also like the Sansa e280 as well and I can play all my music on it without so much trouble since the Sansa is a proven device. It is really a toss up right now. Sansa it seems is going after Real's wide-eyed delusions of grandeur. The Sansa of course doesn't have a 30GB drive behind it, but an 8GB. What do you think, is Zune worth it at the price?
That Microsoft is launching a new video sharing site called Soapbox isn't really news, but somehow it escaped my attention until now. CNet's Rafe Needleman is more on the ball, however, and got to take a look the currently-in-private-beta service. Microsoft has been turning a lot of heads lately with its Live.com offerings, but Needleman is unimpressed by Soapbox. "I found nothing in the Soapbox product itself to propel it past other video sharing sites," he concludes. "It will live or die based on its content and its community." Interestingly, Soapbox is sailing under the MSN Video banne r, rather than the Live banner, which seems odd given that MSN Messenger and MSN Search are both being tucked under the Windows Live's waiting wings. You can give Microsoft your email address if you want a shot at the beta, but if you're happy with YouTube or another offering it may not be worth the bother.
[Via Slashdot]
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Interesting NY Times profile of Baidu, China's main search engine and currently the 4th biggest website in the world. It has a market value of $3 billion, but "some analysts" question whether Baidu can keep out competition from Google and Yahoo:
"While Baidu continues to gain market share in China — and does so with a Web site that the Chinese government heavily censors and that gives priority to advertising rather than relevant search results — some analysts question whether Baidu can withstand competition from Google and Yahoo, which possess superior technology and global work forces."
I actually think the question is the wrong way round - it should be: can Google and Yahoo withstand competition from Baidu, in China?
While I'm not able to judge whether Baidu's technology is inferior to Google and Yahoo's - although I'd love some comments on this from techies who are familiar with Baidu - I think Western companies (even Google) will be hard-pressed to compete against Baidu in China. In our Top Web Apps in China post, we noted that government regulations, language and cultural barriers are all difficult for western companies to overcome. While there continues to be a lot of hype about China being the next big market for Silicon Valley companies to conquer, the reality may be completely different.
And who's to say Google's technology is better? Netanel Jacobsson is one person who should know - he runs the up and coming browser Maxthon from China. In a recent post Netanel commented on whether America still has a lock on innovation. In short he doesn't think so and indeed had this to say:
"China should not be seen as a copy cat - but a great force on future innovation. Between 2004-05 there was an increase in close to 40 % in filed patents from China."
Source: Sina
Also, regarding Baidu in particular, China Web2.0 Review noted recently that Baidu gained market share last year and strengthened its leadership in China’s search market. Meanwhile Google China lost a significant amount of market share:
"According to CNNIC report, 62.1% users choose Baidu as their preferred search engine, representing an increase of 10 percentage in one year, while Google China’s market share decreased 8 percentage to 25.3%. In Mr. Lv’s research, Baidu gained 13% market share in last year, almost two third users use Baidu as their first choice, during the same period, Google China lost about 12% shares."
Why the market share slump for Google in China? According to Tangos Chan, who is the publisher of China Web 2.0 review, "Google China did not think locally."
This theme that localization matters has come through very strongly in our series of posts on international web markets. Perhaps it even matters more than the technology.
Google's Carl Sjogreen gave a talk at the Future of Web Apps conference about how they built Google Calendar. Rakesh Agrawal took extensive notes, as did Tim Bonnemann.
What I love about Google is they consistently think 'Web Native' when developing web applications. My favorite example of that is Gmail, which changed the whole paradigm of web email. And that's nothing against the new Yahoo Mail Beta, which has a desktop UI and is a very fine app too. But when you build a browser-based app, then why not optimize the design for the Web and introduce new UI paradigms that weren't possible in the desktop era? That may be the early adopter in me speaking, but the innovation you do now will be the norm in the long-term.
Carl Sjogreen said that the Google Calendar team focused "on what the web can do that paper can't" - e.g. collaboration and access anywhere.
On that note, on ZDNet today I wrote about what we can expect in a Web Office. In a nutshell, expect something completely different from Microsoft Office:
...it's important to remember that with new technology comes new functionality. A term I use for this is 'Web native', meaning that the next generation of office software will not necessarily be the same as the past PC-based generation (typified by Microsoft Office). The new generation will have Web native functionality - including, but not limited to, collaboration. Rod Boothby likes to say that blogs and wikis are the first major 'office 2.0' apps, but I think a web-based suite will be so much more than publishing and collaboration features.
One new feature that I think will be common place is 'mashups', whereby data is sourced and combined from a variety of internal and external sources. Imagine an online spreadsheet for a marketing report where you gather data from all over the Web and across internal business units too.
There will be other Web native functionality too, things that we can't yet predict.
I referenced Zimbra, DabbleDB, Morfik, Zoho and ThinkFree as some companies that are building Web Native office applications. If, as Nick Carr suggested recently, office suites will be fully web-based by the early 2010s - then I'm betting that Web Native functionality will underpin this evolution.
Original link via Greg Linden
Next in our series on international Web markets is France. Other countries profiled so far have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, China, Turkey, Italy and Brazil. France has the 9th highest number of Internet users in the world, with 26.8 million. It has an Internet penetration of 44%, putting it below countries like the US, UK and Germany (all of which are over 60%). But France is similar to its neighbors Italy and Spain, which are both in the 40-50% range for Internet penetration. Perhaps more significant is the number of French language speakers on the Web, which is estimated to be 4.4% of all Internet users - or 45.8 Million. However that's only an estimated 12% of all French speakers, so there is plenty of room for growth there.
My thanks to Thomas Ezan and Jean-Pierre Christie for the information in this post. Both kindly sent me details about the French Web market and its most popular apps.
When I think of France and the Web, I think of Netvibes (the Personalized Start Page used by 5 million people according to recent reports), Kelkoo (the price comparison engine sold to yahoo), and Jeff Clavier (not a web app, but a French angel investor!). But obviously there is much more to the French Web, so I asked Thomas to tell me more...
R/WW: Do most people use French web apps/sites instead of the US ones?
Thomas: Not really, except for news websites. For example newspaper websites like LeMonde, Liberation and LeFigaro. There are also many internet and IT-focused websites like 01net. All of those sites are in french. The typical french person is not used to reading or talking in english, unlike in Germany, Netherlands and the nordic countries. There is also french version of Techcrunch.
R/WW: Do the big companies have French language versions of their products? (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc)
Thomas: Google is the number 1 website in France and the other big companies like msn, yahoo are also very well used in France. For example their email services are well used. They all have a french version (which they must do to target the french market). MSN Messenger is the number 1 IM service (AIM is not very well used here). The french versions of amazon and eBay are also very famous here.
R/WW: What are the biggest Web companies in France?
Thomas: I'm not sure, but meetic is number 1 as far as turnover is concerned (it's a dating site). And it's started to spread around Europe. There is also priceminister and 2xmoinscher, were people can sells second-hand stuffs (it's a kind of eBay without the auction concept).
The biggest e-shops are Cdiscount.com and Rueducommerce, were you can find anything (buying on the internet is now common in france, even for my mother!). Lastminute.com is the number 1 travel site. There is also kelkoo, a "price comparer" created by Pierre Chappaz and sold to Yahoo for millions.
Zlio: a kind of Loomia or MyPickList, which goes further in enabling you to create your own shop online (here is mine). Thus it's a "smart clone", by cloning and then innovating further... isn't it innovation ? ;-) [Richard: yes, definitely!]
3Tera, a company based in California, has announced what it calls a breakthrough technology - "disposable infrastructure". This technology is the foundation of their product AppLogic, which they say is the "first grid operating system that runs and scales existing web applications." It almost takes a Comp Sci PhD from Stanford to read 3Tera's press release, but in a nutshell what AppLogic does is allow Web companies to manage - and scale - all their applications, servers and storage with just a browser. Here's more from the press release:
"The system enables existing software to be packaged into completely self-contained, portable applications that can be easily deployed and scaled to dozens of servers on demand on any AppLogic grid, anywhere in the world. As a result, open source developers, Web 2.0 and SaaS companies can rapidly deploy Web applications without owning and operating hardware infrastructure, and pay only for the resources they actually use."
The term for this is 'utility computing', aka 'on-demand computing'. It means that a service provider makes available computer resources to their clients and charges them for the usage rather than the hardware. Kind of like a public utility such as your electricity company. Read/WriteWeb contributer Alex Iskold called this 'Compute Services' in his recent Web Platform Primer post.
This extract from 3Tera's About page gives some background on the problems of scaling:
"Successful online services have millions of users. Serving that many users means scaling the application to hundreds and often thousands of servers. But scaling online applications is an enormously difficult problem. It took companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon 10 years to learn how to do this well. This knowledge is among their most closely guarded secrets. It is not by accident thatGoogle has more patents on load balancing than on search.
3Tera has solved this problem. Our product, AppLogic, is the first grid operating system that runs and scales existing real-world web applications on grids of commodity servers. The breakthrough technology that enables this is called disposable infrastructure."
So what do they mean by 'disposable infrastructure'? In the press release Vlad Miloushev, president & CEO, notes:
"3Tera is working with hosting providers to offer reliable self-serve utility computing services that make Web applications easy to deploy, manage and scale. In the next decade, only the largest enterprises will be able to justify owning and operating their own servers."
(emphasis mine)
Interesting comment that in the near future only "the largest enterprises" will own and operate their own servers. I imagine in the future specialist companies like 3Tera, along with the big Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, will operate 'server farms' that become too cost efficient for other companies not to utilize.
3Tera strikes me as a company to keep an eye on - they're tackling a complex problem and they have a lot of potential customers out there. Look at all the 'web 2.0' startups that have popped up over the past year or so - most of them have big dreams of scaling up to hundreds of thousands, or millions, of users. 3Tera could be just the solution they turn to.
Next in our series on international Web markets is Japan. The information for this post was provided by Benjamin Joffe (CEO of Plus Eight Star Ltd) and Masashi Kobayashi (partner of Globis Capital Partners - one of the largest Venture Capital firms in Japan). We start off with an overview of the market, then list the main web companies in Japan. There is some extra commentary after that on why mobile dominates in Japan, the state of online advertising in Japan and its IPO market. There's something for everyone here! Thank you Benjamin and Masashi for the comprehensive and very interesting information about Japan's Web.
Benjamin: Japan today enjoys not only the fastest but also the cheapest broadband infrastructure in the world, with over 20 million households connected to broadband (out of 46 million). Yahoo! Japan, through its Yahoo! BB service, is among the largest providers with over 5M users. You can get 8M to 50M ADSL for prices between $20 to $45 a month, and 100M fiber optics for a $200 set-up fee and $30 monthly fee. There goes the myth of 'Japan does not have the Internet'!
Masashi: As a result of the aggressive entry by Softbank BB (aka Yahoo! BB), Japan today enjoys a very cheap and very high-speed Internet infrastructure. In addition, on the mobile side there is a very large diffusion of 3G and 3.5G feature-rich handsets and a solid wireless infrastructure. One thing to point out is that even with the growing usage of video-based services like Youtube, or movie content, there is not much stress on the network. In March 2006, more than 2 million Japanese and 5.2% of Internet users used Youtube! (ref).
Benjamin: Japan is around 1.5 years ahead of US in mobile. It is difficult to come up with an estimate, but the market maturity goes way beyond simply: "do they have more 3G users?". Here are some data points:
A lot of people in Japan buy not only digital (music, games, videos) but "real" or "offline" goods on their mobile. They use auction services, blogs and use assisted-GPS powered navigation services to walk the city. And they have been doing so for already 2-3 years, at least. Market maturity is not only about getting a device in people's hand, it is also about the service offering and the actual usage rate. Same for Internet: you can have a great infra with high-speed and no innovation.
Masashi: Unlike Silicon Valley, there are only a few high-quality services in Japan. The main reason for this is that there are only a handful of high-quality entrepreneurs. When magazines publish articles about Web 2.0 in Japan, Mixi, GREE, Hatena and Drecom appear all the time, but there is little mention of anyone else.
MIXI
Benjamin: Japan's largest SNS is named MIXI and has gone last week (Sept 18) onto the Japanese Mothers stock market. Its market cap reached 109 billion yen (US$930m), which makes the IPO the seventh-largest on the Mothers market. Its CEO Kenji Kasahara (30 y.o.) set up Mixi in June 1999 when he was a third-year student at the University of Tokyo. The company initially operated a recruitment advertising Web site and launched a social networking service in February 2004. In the year ended March, Mixi posted a pretax profit of 900 million yen (US$7.5m) on sales of 1.8 billion yen (US$15m). A large part of the revenue comes from advertising. Mixi's membership totaled 5.7 million as of Thursday. About 70 percent are those in their 20s and younger.
Masashi: The company whose development is the most interesting is probably Mixi. Mixi is Japan's leading SNS service. Its number of pageviews is second only to Yahoo! Japan. In September this year, Mixi IPOed and is valued currently at 200 billion JPY ($1.7 billion). With its profits rising rapidly, Mixi has become the flagship of Web 2.0 businesses. There is good information about Mixi here (English PDF).
Continue reading "Top Web Apps in Japan"SeeqPod's new online music tool lets you pick and choose songs from legions of MP3 blogs and other sources to create your own streaming playlists. In Listening Post.
Seeking ways to turn popularity into sorely needed cash, the video site will stage an old-fashioned battle of the bands -- thanks to a hefty assist from Cingular Wireless.
After digging through the most awesome examples of next-generation web services on the net -- and the most useless -- we've compiled this list of the best and worst. What's Web 2.0's killer app? And which app simply kills our will to live? By Michael Calore.
The best way to hear about new Microsoft product launches these days is to read their employees’ blogs. First we had Stuart Padley’s quickly deleted blog post with some additional information about the upcoming Microsoft Live Drive. Tonight we hear that Soapbox, a YouTube-like user uploaded video product that we first heard about two weeks [...]
Moo is an online printing service that now lets you turn your Flickr photos into small business cards. After logging in to your Flickr account, there’s a nice drag, drop and crop interface. The end result are thick, glossy cards that are long and narrow and about half the size of regular cards. [...]
Yahoo! stock has dropped more than 13% today since CEO Terry Semel told investors that ad revenue is slowing in the automotive and financial sectors. The company’s third quarter sales and profits will likely be at the low end of forecasts, the company’s CFO confirmed. Stock in Google, Amazon and eBay also took [...]
On a day that saw its stock take a hit, Yahoo! has teamed up with Current TV to launch Yahoo! Current Network, a video site with a mix of professional and user submitted videos arranged in channels. Current TV is a cable and satellite channel backed by environmentalist Al Gore that shows short user-submitted shows [...]
Google will flex political muscles — PAC to raise money for causes, candidates; lobbyists on board — Under fire on Capitol Hill, Google Inc. has boosted its political muscle by creating its first political action committee while taking steps to reach out to Republicans.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006…
Google Personalized Home--which I still think needs a snappier name--just got a handy new feature: tabs. In case your Personalized Home is feeling a bit cramped or you just want to inject a little organization, you can now distribute your widgets across an unlimited number of tabs. The implementation looks a lot like Netvibes': You create a new tab with the simple "New Tab" link, and you can drag and drop your existing widgets onto other tabs. There's currently no way to reorganize your tabs, so you'd better be happy with their order before you fill them up with widgets. Overall, though, it adds a new dimension of usefulness to Google Personalized Home. Now, when do we get tabs in Gmail?
[Via Google Blogoscoped]
In case your RSS Reader got the better of you over the working week, here's a snapshot of last week's Read/WriteWeb posts. The big web tech stories were Times Reader, Zune, Yahoo Mail Beta, iTV. Here are summaries of all our posts this week:
New York Times Reader Launches - NY Times releases the beta of its new desktop app, promising a better Web reading experience. Built with Microsoft WPF technology.
Netvibes Claims 5 Million Users - despite Netvibe's 5M user base (is that return users?), we're still a way off start pages being mainstream tools.
Zune - Social Networking Differentiates It From iPod - while the new Microsoft iPod-like device will offer social music sharing via WiFi, questions remain over its DRM.
Yahoo! Mail Beta Release - Exclusive Podcast With Ethan Diamond - Yahoo opens up the beta for its Ajax-powered web email, which has desktop-like user experience and great features such as calendar and RSS Reader integration.
Apple's iPod Success Won't Be Repeated With iTV - 30 people commented on this, most of them making good cases for Apple succeeding with iTV.
The Web VC Chart - Alex Iskold's well-researched and beautifully designed chart of Web VC investments. Keep the comments coming in, because we're going to do an update real soon on the chart.
Poll: Do Personalized Start Pages have a viable future? - 52% say yes, 46% no and 2% don't know what start pages are.
VCs on Web Technology: Judy Gibbons from Accel - this is well worth a read if you're a budding entrepreneur in the Web space. Judy has 25 years experience in the computer industry, so her advice should be noted.
What New Web Technology Has Apple Unveiled? - a wrap of Apple's announcements this week, including movies on iTunes and an as-yet unreleased device (currently named iTV) that will enable you to view video content on your television.
Sharpcast's Desktop/Web Synchronization - Soon For All Types Of Files - this is what Next Generation Web Technology is all about; solving a big pain point (synching files/data between PC, mobile and other devices) and making it all seem easy.
Smartpox: Bar Codes For The Web - Read/WriteWeb was the first publication to cover the oddly named Smartpox, which offers barcoding technology to connect the online and offline worlds.
Top Web Apps in Brazil - continuing our very popular series on international Web markets, we discovered that Brazil Internet users are very community-minded and social. And yes, a lot of them use Orkut.
World Internet Penetration Now 16% - Asia Growing Fast! - China and Asia in general are making great progress in Internet penetration. Despite the US and countries such as my own being above 65% penetration, much of the world is closer to 10-15% or lower.
Go2Web20.net is a very nicely designed Flash page with logos and basic information for most web 2.0 companies. Click on a logo to see an overview of the company and links from blogs discussing it. It’s also sortable and searchable. Very nice. The only issue I have with it is that it’s loading a little [...]
Mattcuttsarama: 21 Great SEO Tips From Google's Matt Cutts — Part of Jaimie Sirovich's adventure in SEO — This is a compilation of stuff Matt Cutts has said historically, minus some of the more recent stuff here, here, and here. I decided I'd dig backwards and document some of the older stuff.
Source: SEO Egghead
Author: Jaimie Sirovich
Link: http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/seo/mattcuttsarama-a…
Zune Promises MySpace-like Connectivity — Just got off the phone with Microsoft about the new Zune and the magic therein. It's a 30GB player that comes in three colors - black, white, and brown - and plays back most major file formats. That much you can read over at CrunchGear so head over there if you want the specs.
Source: TechCrunch
Author: John Biggs
Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/14/zune-is-here/
Xuqa is a sort of social experiment game idea thing. Looks weirdly interesting. TechCrunch reports they have stopped accepting venture capital since they have turned a profit, these days an elusive and hard thing to do, especially for web 2.0 start-ups. Currently the game played on the site is Poker, though there are plans to introduce other games as well. Players play against others and prizes are awarded to the top players. The other "game" is a virtual "hot-or-not" catwalk where people can judge each others hot pics to see who is the best looking based on social votes. Heck, CollegeClub and tons of other sites have been doing these hot-or-not things for ages as an added thing, so why Xuqa made money on it, and the others didn't I don't know, but it is impressive. Honestly I had never heard of the site before this, but it may have has some potential if it's making money already.
Today Yahoo is releasing the new Ajax-powered version of Yahoo Mail to all users in the US and across 18 international markets. Previously Yahoo Mail Beta (as it is known) was only available to a relatively small group of people.
I spoke exclusively to Ethan Diamond, director of product management for the new Yahoo! Mail, to talk about the product. Ethan was previously the founder of Oddpost, a pioneer in Ajaxian web email, which got acquired by Yahoo in July 2004 - so he is the perfect person to speak to when it comes to web email.
Download Read/WriteWeb Interview with Ethan Diamond (3.8 MB)
Yahoo! Mail is the No. 1 Web mail service in the world - it has 255 million users according to comScore's July 2006 figures. By comparision, MSN Hotmail has 234 million, AOL Mail 56 million and Google's Gmail 49 million. Check out our overview of the web email market, for more context. So this release of Ajax functionality in Y! Mail Beta to 255M-odd users represents the largest scale use of Ajax in the world - together with the release earlier this year of Yahoo's re-designed homepage.
Yahoo Mail Beta
The new Yahoo Mail Beta is touted as being as functional as a desktop email client (such as Outlook). Other new features include an integrated calendar timeline (including mashups with Yahoo Maps), drag and drop e-mail organization, message preview, tabs for messages, plus an integrated RSS reader. There are also plenty of links to other Yahoo properties, such as this one just above the inbox: "Start your own blog here" (which leads to Yahoo360).
In my testing of the product, my favorite feature so far is a seemingly simple - yet surprisingly effective - one: the ability to have multiple e-mail messages open at the same time using tabs. Given that I virtually live in my email inbox and often am conducting a few email conversations at a time, this feature comes in very handy!
My only gripe about the product is that it is advertising heavy - but then people could say the same about my blog! ;-) They are predominantly ads for other Yahoo properties though.
Calendar view
RSS Reader integrated with email
The podcast interview has been edited (mostly to cut down my long-winded questions I think!), but following are the questions I prepared for Ethan. I re-phrased some of them during the interview...
1) Can you give us a bit of history about both Yahoo Mail and Oddpost, how they've evolved over the years and eventually (finally?) become integrated. And leading on from that question, Yahoo acquired Oddpost in July 2004 - why has it taken so long for Yahoo Mail to incorporate some of the Ajax features that Oddpost had 2-3 years ago?
2) The new Yahoo Mail Beta will function more like a desktop client application - including using the traditional 3-pane view, having folders, drag and drop, and so on. Some would argue that web-based email requires a different UI paradigm than a desktop client - for example Gmail's "conversation view" and labels instead of folders are two features that I love. Why does Yahoo believe that the desktop UI paradigm is right for web-based email too?
3) Tell us more about the calendar timeline, which is one of the main new features. What makes it different from your main competitors (Google, Microsoft, AOL)? One difference seems to be the Yahoo Maps integration with calendar - is that available outside the US?
4) The integrated RSS Reader is an interesting feature, because once Yahoo Mail Beta goes live to your 250M or so mainstream users - that will automatically make Yahoo Mail by far the biggest RSS Reader on the planet. It will go a long way towards making RSS mainstream in fact. How will you promote this new feature to your user base, given that RSS feeds are still not widely used in 'the real world'?
5) Tabbed messages is a nice UI innovation, meaning you can open and compose different email messages in multiple tabs. How did that feature come about?
6) What's the marketing strategy for the beta roll-out - will you be aggressively promoting it across Yahoo's properties and in mainstream media?
7) What's the timeline for going live with the new Yahoo Mail Beta (i.e. when will the "beta" be taken off)?
8) What's your vision for web email for the next 5 or so years? Now that rich interaction can be achieved using Ajax and all the major Internet companies have done that with their web email services, what can we as consumers expect next from web email? More integration with other Web Office apps, for example?
Update: A screencast has now been made available.
Peter Chernin, CEO of MySpace's parent company, Newscorp thinks web 2.0 is driven by MySpace. He is quoted as saying "If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it's Flickr, whether it's Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace." He is naive and needs to do his research. It is true that many sites owe their new found and wide-spread success to the popularity of MySpace (like photobucket), but many of them were doing fine long before MySpace got popular. Flickr ha s been around doing its own thing regardless of MySpace for example. Hasn't he seen the web 2.0 poster floating around the web? Tons of web 2.0 apps don't have any kind of relationship with MySpace. File this one in the "CEOs say stupid things" folder.
This is the start of a new interview series on Read/WriteWeb, about venture capitalists (VCs) and their thoughts on 'next generation web'. The aim is to find out what Web technology trends and products VCs are tracking - and at the same time provide some expert tips and advice for Web developers and entrepreneurs.
In this first installment, we talk with Judy Gibbons of Accel. Accel is a Silicon Valley and London-based VC firm and is an investor in Web companies such as Facebook, Brightcove, Kosmix, Netvibes, Zimbra - and many others. Judy is part of Accel's Venture Development team, in their London office. She has 25 years experience in the computer industry, including working for Microsoft, HP and Apple. Before joining Accel, Judy was Corporate Vice President of MSN Global Sales and Marketing at Microsoft. Thanks Judy for participating in this interview!
R/WW: What web or new media companies have you invested in over the past 12-18 months?
Judy: In the London office we've invested in:
R/WW: Looking at upcoming web technologies, which trends are you interested in currently - and which trends do you see becoming increasingly important over the next 12-18 months?
Judy: It’s often referred to as web 2.0, but could more accurately be described as 'second generation internet' - and I think there are some recurring themes. For example:
These translate into a number of interesting business areas, some established but moving to second generation; some new. For example:
R/WW: In the blogosphere a certain type of 'web 2.0' company is endlessly hyped - e.g. Flickr, del.icio.us, YouTube - while other deserving companies struggle to get attention from bloggers. What are a few examples of companies that are under-hyped, in your opinion?
Judy: Personal home pages like PageFlakes & Netvibes. These represent the third generation of Internet usage: first portals because there was little content and it was hard to find; second search because there was an ever increasing amount of content if you could only track it down; now personalized ‘pull’ home pages, because most sophisticated users know what content and apps they want to check into every day - and they want these brought to them to improve productivity.
Also Vertical Search like Kosmix and Kayak and Trulia - we are so far away from this problem being solved. There is massive consumer demand and compelling business models. Google was just the beginning...
R/WW: What are the main differences in the Web industry in Europe versus Silicon Valley, other parts of the US, or Asia? Obviously easier access to VC funds in the Valley is one key difference, but are there others - for example the types of products being produced?
Judy: Vs The Valley in previous decades;
R/WW: For a Next Generation Web startup, which is more important - building the technology with defensible IP, or just putting your beta product out there and growing your customer base?
Judy: They’re related; it’s about building something that is compelling to end users, that keeps them coming back and gets them recommending it to friends; that creates feedback and new ideas, that results in new features and functionality that spawns compelling business models. The IP is often in the customer and market knowledge - as much as in the software. It’s about the knowhow; pure IP on its own is often not enough. Equally companies with good ideas who attract early users, but fail to build on this through innovation, usually fade away..
R/WW: In your view what is the #1 problem that web startup CEOs commonly have:
a. Funding
b. Team
c. Competition
d. Revenue
e. Growth
Judy: All of the above, to be frank. The order varies for a given start up and depends on what phase they are in. That’s the challenge; they have to execute well across all of these dimensions.
R/WW: This is a question a lot of our readers will be interested in - how does an entrepreneur get on Accel's radar?
Judy: The best way is to find someone to make an introduction, as this inherently qualifies the company; it’s not that hard – six degrees of separation and all that. They can look at the existing portfolio for example.
Failing that, a direct approach to the right VC with the right pitch. Preparation helps; the entrepreneur needs to know enough about how venture works to know it’s right for them and their business, know which VC at which firm is likely to be most interested (read bios on web sites) and be able to explain the business well.
Universal Music has accused YouTube and MySpace of infringing on the rights of their artists music videos during an investors conference. Universal's chief executive stated that the two companies owed them tens of millions of dollars in copyright infringement money. Universal is expected to release a statement about how they will deal with the infringers in due time.
YouTube has been known to take down copyright related materials when they have been notified by rights holder. It should be interesting to see how this pans out. The greatness behind sites like YouTube is held in the mass video appeal, from personal videos, to artist music videos. Take the music, and music videos away, and what are we left with? This could cause a little bump. However, what if YouTube and MySpace were to pay per view for each music video played?
In Universals Chief Executives speech to investors, he did state that record companies are keen at avoiding the mistakes that were made when MTV was set up, by letting artist's music to be aired for free, creating a multi-billion dollar company in the process.
