Web Nectar: April 2007

HDTV: Facts you need to know before buying an HDTV

Yahoo's Ben the Gadget Hound lists six must-know facts about HDTVs, which he says most people don't use properly. For example, the seemingly obvious:

Your new HDTV needs an HD feed: Just plugging your regular cable or satellite box into your new HD set won't get you a high-def picture. You'll need to contact your cable or satellite provider and ask for an HD set-top box (satellite subscribers may also have to upgrade their dishes), and you may want to sign up for an HD subscription plan, as well (which typically offer channels like Discovery HD Theater and HDNet).

Before you storm the comments with cries of "Well, duh!", keep in mind a recent study that says nearly half of all HDTV owners don't even have an HD feed. We've offered similar HDTV guides in the past (like this one and this one), but I gotta give props to Ben for this novice-friendly, spot-on list of facts many people just don't seem to know. —Rick Broida

[via] Lifehacker

Love And Money: Thanks to this week's sponsors

Thanks to this week's sponsors for being the uninterruptible power supply in the Lifehacker super computer: Canon, Don Julio, MSNBC, Mio, Nokia, Sonos, Sprint, Toyota, and Verizon. Interested in powering all these life hacks? Advertise with Lifehacker.

[via] Lifehacker

Lifehacker Top 10: LH Top 10: USB thumb drive tricks

Is that a gigabyte in your pocket? And are you putting it to good use? The explosion of USB thumb drives gives anyone the ability take some serious file storage space along with their house keys.

Developers and road warriors have come up with all sorts of innovative techniques for putting these tiny roomy disks to good use. Step into my office for a list of our top 10 favorite thumb drive tricks.

Lifehacker's Top 10 USB Thumb Drive Tricks

What's your favorite thumb drive hack? Tell us about it in the comments. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Download Of The Day: Uncensor the Internet Firefox extension

Firefox only: If you're a filthy mother****er who loves reading your swears in all their uncensored glory, David from the Ironic Sans weblog has put together a great little Firefox add-on called Uncensor the Internet that turns all that censored text into the bawdy bile it was born to be. Why?

There's an article on-line from Money Magazine called "50 Bulls**t Jobs." That's right. Bulls**t. With those two asterisks in there. Come on. We know what word they mean.

Uncensor the Internet is available as both a Greasemonkey script and Firefox extension, so install whichever suits your druthers. On the flip side, if you're not a crude a..hole, check out previously mentioned Profanity Filter. Uncensor the Internet is free to download, works wherever Firefox does. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Mac Tip: Add favicons to the Firefox bookmark toolbar

Mac OS X only: In a strange and somewhat inexplicable move (to make Firefox more like Safari?), Mac versions of Firefox don't put favicons in the bookmarks toolbar. I hate this, as we've always extolled saving toolbar space by using a web site's favicon.

Luckily there's the Mac Favicon Firefox theme, which is an exact replica of the default theme, but with favicons enabled in the toolbar. I've never been much for Firefox themes, but this one-tweak theme is something I can get behind. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Time Tracker: Estimate, track, and invoice your time with Cashboard

Web site Cashboard helps you track your time, then facilitates the invoicing and payment process for your work.

Aside from the after-the-fact invoicing, Cashboard also lets you create and send estimates to potential clients. What's more, if you're a Basecamp user, Cashboard ties directly into Basecamp, linking things like tasks and todos, time, and clients. Cashboard is free for tracking one active project at a time, with premium accounts if you need more. If Cashboard doesn't do it for you, you might also want to check out previously mentioned Side Job Track. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Request Line: It's our pleasure to serve you

Getting ready to duck out before the boss asks you to work this weekend? Before you do be sure to hit up the comments with post requests, so we can productively waste your time as efficiently as possible next week.

Links, tips, story ideas, questions for the editors or other readers, and even - dare I say - Lifehacker Code software requests are all welcome here. What, no comment login? Just give in and apply already! You know you want to. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Download Of The Day: iPodifier video converter (Windows)

Windows only: Freeware application iPodifier monitors user-defined folders for videos, automatically transcodes them to an iPod-compatible format, adds them to iTunes, and then syncs them with your iPod.

Awesome, right? There are a lot of to-iPod transcoding tools out there, but iPodifier has clearly had a lot of thought put into set-up-and-leave-it automation. iPodifier can watch any folder for new video, so that means you can keep an eye on your bittorrent directory, your DVR TV shows, etc. In fact, if you're a Windows MCE user, Rick has already detailed how to copy MCE-recorded shows to your iPod with iPodifier. If you do any transcoding to get videos on your iPod, you can't do any better than iPodifier. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Health: See what 300- to 400-calorie meals look like

The Diet Blog has a great gallery of 300- to 400-calorie meals that look mighty healthy and tasty to boot.

This is a good follow up to the previously mentioned 200-calorie gallery, which put into perspective a 200-calorie portion of healthy foods versus less healthy fare. This gallery actually displays several healthy 300- 400-calorie meals, most of which look delicious. These are the kind of well put-together meals that make dieting seem not so bad, helping you realize that a chicken and rice dish looks a lot more appealing than that unsexy stack of rice cakes. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Weekend Project: Clean out the filing cabinet at Office Depot tomorrow

The Get Rich Slowly weblog reports that Office Depot has a free offer going on tomorrow, Saturday, April 28th:

Shred-it, the world's leading on site document destruction company and Crime Stoppers USA will bring their expertise to Office Depot stores to help people take action against identity theft and fraud. Shred-it mobile shredding trucks will be on site and consumers are invited to bring all the documents they can carry for shredding.

Souds like a good time for a post-taxes financial records purge. See also which financial records to keep and how long to keep them. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Download Of The Day: Xplorer2 file manager (Windows)

Windows only: The Xplorer2 lite file manager is a superior alternative to Windows' built-in file Explorer.

Xplorer2 sports a tabbed, 3-paned interface. The first displays the file and folder hierarchy for easy navigation. The other 2 panes are specific folders, which make it really easy to move files between two places or work with two sets of files at once. You can save favorite locations or even bookmark sets of folders associated with particular tasks and projects. Xplorer2 is self-contained (therefore thumb drive-friendly) and has a very mature set of keyboard shortcuts, which reader Ludwig summarized for us in an email. Check 'em out after the jump.

After just a few minutes of playing with Xplorer2 it's easy to see all the places where Windows Explorer really does fall short. Got a favorite alternate file manager? Tell us about it in the comments. Xplorer2 Lite is a free download for personal use, and it's Windows only. Thanks, Ludwig! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Tgif: This week's best posts

For a once-weekly update on Lifehacker's best posts, subscribe to our Highlights feed - or get a handful of daily best posts with out top stories feed.

This week's best posts include:

LH Top 10: Home networking tricks
"By now you've probably got several connected computers at home, sharing an internet connection, maybe a printer and files between them. But are you getting the most out of your home network?"
Alpha Geek: Turn an old hard drive into an external drive
"The best possible fate for an old internal drive is to become a super-handy external drive, which it can do with a small investment of time and money."
Hack Attack: Control multiple computers with a single keyboard and mouse
"You don't need a hardware switch to share one keyboard and mouse amongst several different computers. All you need is the free, cross-platform application, Synergy."
Geek to Live: Build an internet jukebox with Jinzora
"With Jinzora installed on your home server, you can browse your music library, create playlists on the fly and stream your music from home over the internet to another computer or handheld anywhere."
Coolest Workspace Contest: The home-integrated office
"Check out three reader submissions: the sunny cacti office; the Mac-based living room-cum-office; and the pink persuasion office."
Lifehacker Code: Swept Away (Windows)
"Swept Away is a simple system tray utility that automatically minimizes applications that you aren't using."

IM Survival Tips: Productivity and instant messenger
"...a few tips that can help balance chatty-McChatting with worky-McWorking."
Download of the Day: Protect Textarea (Greasemonkey)
"...monitors the textareas on a web page and alerts you if you try navigating away from the page before submitting the changes in the textarea."
Download of the Day: Launchy 1.2.5 (Windows)
"...the new Runny plugin supports customizable commands with multiple arguments."
Browse the web with keyword shortcuts
"OpenDNS, a free domain name service, lets you visit web sites just by typing keyword shortcuts into your browser's address bar."

[via] Lifehacker

Google Calendar: Add a Google Calendar event with just one line

The always helpful Google Tutor has written up a little-used (at least for me) shortcut when adding events in Google Calendar:

If you're using Google calendar, you don't have to enter the detailed view just to add the basic information on a new entry you're creating. Instead, you can just type it in with one line. Say I wanted to change the time to reflect 12 to 3 p.m. instead of the time I clicked (8 a.m.). Instead of clicking on the edit event details link, I just type in the time along with the event description.

He goes on to say that you can not only edit the time, but location as well - nothing groundbreaking here, but it does save you a few clicks. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Blogging: How do you post to your blog? Let me count the ways

Just how many different ways can you post stuff to your blog? Library Clips has come up with quite a few; around 18 in fact.

There's the standard bookmarklet and button options, but there's also quite a few on this list that I haven't seen before. What's your preferred platform from which you share your blogging wisdom with the world? Thoughts in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Food: Make that Chinese take-out more healthy

Back in Skinny Jeans blogger Stephanie Quilao has come up with five different ways to make your favorite Chinese take-out a bit more healthy. My favorite tip:

Order Wonton soup instead of the Wonton appetizer. Yes they are really crunchy and yummy, but fried Wontons are loaded with fat and calories, and so is the sweet & sour sauce you dip them in. With Wonton soup, you can eat the Wontons minus all the fried fat calories, and get that nice warm cozy soup feeling.

Since I'm probably going to be grabbing some take-out this weekend, this post couldn't have come at a better time. Do you have some ancient Chinese take-out secrets? Thoughts in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

WordPress: Make your own theme with the Wordpress theme generator

Want to customize the look of your Wordpress blog, but don't have the programming chops to do so? You might want to try the Wordpress Theme Generator, a handy way to whip up your own personalized theme.

You can mix up your own colors, settings, layouts, etc. and then preview it in real-time so you can catch mistakes before they go live. When you're all done, you walk away with a free, downloadable, fully customized Wordpress theme. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Microsoft Office Tip: Add people to the Safe Senders list

Tech-Recipes has posted a fast and dirty way to get your friends off of the Outlook 2007 hit list: add 'em to the Safe Senders list. Here's how you do it:

Click Actions, mouseoverJunk E-mail, and select Junk e-mail Options.

Select the Safe Senders tab.

At the bottom, check the Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List checkbox.

Click OK.

It sure is irritating to have this happen and this is a quick fix; it's specific to Outlook 2007 but I believe it will work similarly on previous versions of Outlook as well.

— Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Graphics: Create an organization chart with OrgChartWiki

Need an organizational chart for your company? You might want to check out Forbes' new site aptly named OrgChartWiki, where you can create org.charts for your company or take a looksee at a few publicly listed companies such as Google, Motorola, and Microsoft.

The interface is very simple: all you do is pretty much drag and drop. You can also use this site to search within companies employee databases - you'll be able to pull up their current organizational status. It's simple, yet oh so super nichey functional. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Gardening: How to get the best looking lawn in the hood

It's beginning to look a lot like spring/summer in my neck of the woods, with the dulcet tones of lawnmowers filling the air. British DIY store Godfrey's has a few tips that practically guarantee jealous fits from your neighbors, such as:

Cut it regularly, ideally once a week.

Water occasionally - watch your moisture levels.

Check out the lawn food, but apply sparingly.

I know from experience that many fertilizers and other lawn supplements can do more harm than good, and wil actually "burn" your grass, so use with caution. What are your best lawn care tips? Thoughts in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Bill May Save Net Radio (Tom Spring/Today @ PC World)

Bill May Save Net Radio — On Thursday a bill that could save Internet radio was submitted to Congress. The bill, Internet Radio Equality Act, would stop a new royalty scheme that Internet broadcasters say will shut them down because it will cost them too much money.

Source: Today @ PC World
Author: Tom Spring
Link: http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004240…

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[via] Techmeme

Six Basic Truths of Free APIs (Nat Torkington/O'Reilly Radar)

Six Basic Truths of Free APIs — Amazon and Google have recently shattered a common misconception: that free APIs are a commons of goodies to be built on top of for fun and profit, like open source software. If you think that, then here are six things you need to know about free APIs:

Source: O'Reilly Radar
Author: Nat Torkington
Link: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04…

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A tale of two Web 2.0 conferences and mashups (Dion Hinchcliffe/Enterprise Web 2.0)

A tale of two Web 2.0 conferences and mashups — I've just come off a whirlwind conference tour that started in San Francisco last week with Web 2.0 Expo and ended with the Web 2.0 Kongress yesterday in Frankfurt. I was fortunate enough to be able to speak at both conferences and it was fascinating …

Source: Enterprise Web 2.0
Author: Dion Hinchcliffe
Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=104

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GE Shares Rally on Citigroup's Push for Unit Spinoffs (Update7) (Bloomberg)

GE Shares Rally on Citigroup's Push for Unit Spinoffs (Update7) — General Electric Co. shares staged their biggest rally in more than four months after Citigroup Inc. analysts said the company should spin off NBC Universal, GE Money and the real-estate division.

Source: Bloomberg
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid…

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At Mix, Microsoft's Windows Live platform group loosens up (Martin LaMonica/CNET News.com)

At Mix, Microsoft's Windows Live platform group loosens up — Microsoft next week at its Mix07 conference plans to detail more generous business terms for partners to use its Live online services and to open up new application programming interfaces for Windows Live Spaces.

Source: CNET News.com
Author: Martin LaMonica
Link: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9713301-7.html

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[via] Techmeme

Firefox Extension: Smart Digg Button (Derek van Vliet/Neothoughts)

Firefox Extension: Smart Digg Button — The Smart Digg Button extension for Firefox places a button in your status bar. It uses the newly released Digg API to determine if the web page you are currently viewing has been submitted to Digg. — If the page you are viewing has been submitted to Digg …

Source: Neothoughts
Author: Derek van Vliet
Link: http://neothoughts.com/2007/04/27/firefox-extension…

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[via] Techmeme

Idea: Uncensor the Internet with Greasemonkey (David/Ironic Sans)

Idea: Uncensor the Internet with Greasemonkey — There's an article on-line from Money Magazine called "50 Bulls**t Jobs." That's right. Bulls**t. With those two asterisks in there. Come on. We know what word they mean. So why not just say it? If they think we're adult enough …

Source: Ironic Sans
Author: David
Link: http://www.ironicsans.com/2007/04…

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[via] Techmeme

Is Zunch Communications' Bankruptcy a Sign of Things to Come? (Kevin Newcomb/Search Engine Watch Blog)

Is Zunch Communications' Bankruptcy a Sign of Things to Come? — Zunch Communications has declared bankruptcy, but Zunch Worldwide lives on. The new entity bought the assets and took on some of the debts of SEM firm Zunch Communications in October 2006, and that company finally filed for bankruptcy last week.

Source: Search Engine Watch Blog
Author: Kevin Newcomb
Link: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070427-152623

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[via] Techmeme

WSJ censoring Vonage's Ads? (Paul Kapustka/GigaOM)

WSJ censoring Vonage's Ads? — When we looked at the back page of Friday's Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal, it looked like the delivery person had perhaps taken offense with the Vonage ad campaign about its patent case with Verizon, with what looked like some black-pen editing …

Source: GigaOM
Author: Paul Kapustka
Link: http://gigaom.com/2007/04/27/wsj-censoring-vonages…

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[via] Techmeme

10 Signs That You May Be a Blog Addict (David Wallace/SearchRank Blog)

10 Signs That You May Be a Blog Addict — Blogs exist on just about every variety of subject one can imagine. And more and more blogs come online each and every day. But what does it take to really have an active blog that people will subscribe to and come back again and again to read?

Source: SearchRank Blog
Author: David Wallace
Link: http://www.searchrank.com/blog/2007/04/10-signs-of-a…

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[via] Techmeme

Virtual Earth API V5 is released (Virtual Earth)

Virtual Earth API V5 is released — Just in time for your weekend coding pleasure, version 5 of the Virtual Earth Software Development Kit is live today. There's a boatload of new features and enhancements, among my favorites are mouse events for polygons and polylines and great layering support.

Source: Virtual Earth / Live Maps
Link: http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com/blog/cns…

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The Perfect DB Storage Array (Don MacAskill/SmugBlog)

The Perfect DB Storage Array — I've long known that YouTube had a secret weapon in their datacenter codenamed 'Colin', but yesterday at the MySQL Conference, I met three more secret weapons - codenamed 'Paul' and his team (sorry, guys, I've forgotten your names!). — Paul and his team are incredible.

Source: SmugBlog: Don MacAskill
Author: Don MacAskill
Link: http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/04/27/the-perfect…

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[via] Techmeme

Justin.tv to get boot from S.F. landlords (Jessica Guynn/San Francisco Chronicle)

Justin.tv to get boot from S.F. landlords — (04-27) 18:50 PDT — One San Francisco landlord has decided that the company producing Justin.tv is a crowd. — Complaining of raucous parties and other disruptive behavior, the landlord of the San Francisco high-rise that has become …

Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Jessica Guynn
Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007…

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Gizmodo Exclusive: Exclusive Pics of the Vudu - Video Store In A Box (Gizmodo)

Gizmodo Exclusive: Exclusive Pics of the Vudu - Video Store In A Box — These are the first pictures of the box, remote control and UI of Vudu, a video store in a box that is going to engage in a battle royale with Apple TV come June. The service will launch with thousands of movies …

Source: Gizmodo
Link: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gizmodo-exclusive…

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Schools say iPods becoming tool for cheaters (Associated Press)

Schools say iPods becoming tool for cheaters … MERIDIAN, Idaho (AP) — Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious — students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other.

Source: Associated Press
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/04/27/ipod.cheating…

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Coming Soon, Justin.tv's The Homeless Chronicles (Om Malik/NewTeeVee)

Coming Soon, Justin.tv's The Homeless Chronicles — Justin.tv is soon going to be homeless. — The four members of the start-up behind the online reality television show are being evicted by their landlords, Trinity Management Services, due to complaints of raucous parties and other disruptive behavior.

Source: NewTeeVee
Author: Om Malik
Link: http://newteevee.com/2007/04/28/coming-soon-justintvs…

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Exclusive: Outgoing Sony exec Kutaragi already planning PS4 (Yoshiko Hara/EE Times)

Exclusive: Outgoing Sony exec Kutaragi already planning PS4 — TOKYO — Playstation inventor Ken Kutaragi, who will retire as chairman and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. on June 19, is already thinking ahead to Playstation 4 and beyond. — In an exclusive interview with EE Times …

Source: EE Times
Author: Yoshiko Hara
Link: http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml…

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Wi-fi laptop fears for children (BBC)

Wi-fi laptop fears for children — Computers with wireless internet should not be placed on children's laps, says the head of the government's committee on mobile phone safety research. — Professor Lawrie Challis told the Daily Telegraph children using wi-fi networks should be monitored until research …

Source: BBC
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6602561.stm

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The Week MTV Dropped Flash (Ryan Stewart)

The Week MTV Dropped Flash — Friday night and I'm reading feeds about RIAs. I'm not sure what that says about me, but hey, what can you do. This one is about the MTV reversion from their touted all-Flash site back to HTML. It's interesting to see things like this happen.

Source: Ryan Stewart - Rich Internet Application Mountaineer
Author: Ryan Stewart
Link: http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=784

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10 Firefox extensions you could live without

We've spent a fair bit of time telling you about useful Firefox extensions. Some can help you with social bookmarking, while others improve your full screen browser experience, and some change the way you interact with Gmail.

But there's a whole other world of Firefox extensions out there. The ones that don't do anything particularly handy at all. PC Magazine's gone and profiled 10 useless Firefox extensions. Here are a few of our favorites:

The Stop! Hammer Time! extension provides you with an M.C. Hammer icon in your toolbar. When you click on it, the page you're currently on will stop loading and you'll hear "Stop! Hammer Time!"
Confuscator lets highlight text on a web site and then confuse it. In other words, it will pop up as a new box, but the words will be garbled. While this doesn't seem very useful, you can also use it to translate a page into pig-Latin. Now that's cool.
Leet Key converts text into leet speak as you type. You can also highlight text on a webpage that you'd like to convert. You can also convert text to ROT13, BASE64, HEX, URL, BIN, DES, Morse code, or several other useless codes.

Useless? Yes. But still kind of fun. If you consider bogging down your web browser with tools that you'll only use once fun, that is.

[via] Download Squad

Wiley publishing sends fair use beat-down to science blogger

The next time one of your fair-use zealot friends starts in on a tirade over dinner, you may want to pay closer attention. Shelly Batts, a Phd candidate at the University of Michigan, recently received a nasty-gram from Wiley, publishers of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, ordering her -- in some fairly stern language -- to remove a diagram she'd used in a post on her site.

"In short, I was threatened with legal action if I didn't take it down immediately. I used a panel a figure, and a chart, from over 10+ figures in the paper. I cited and reported everything straight forwardly. I would think they'd be happy to get the press" wrote Batts. You'd think Wiley's legal team would recognize one of the most clear cut cases of fair use possible; that of excerpting for scientific discussion. Then again, you'd think a host of other mega-corporations would be familiar with existing fair-use statutes and recognize when their intellectual property is being used in a responsible, legal manner. Not so.

When will we see legislation to protect bloggers, writers and video editors from these intellectual property bullies?

[via Boing Boing]

[via] Download Squad

Backup your Mac online with Mozy

Mozy has been offering an excellent automated online backup service for Windows users for a while now, but the company has now launched a Mac OS X client.

There's a dearth of companies offering backup solutions for Mac users. While some may say that's because Macs don't crash as frequently as Windows machines, that doesn't help if you happen to have your Macbook stolen.

Mozy lets you store up to 2GB of data online for free, and charges $5/month for unlimited storage. You can either backup your entire hard drive on a regular basis, or you can do a partial backup covering specific files like your iTunes or iPhoto collections.

You'll need Mac OS X 10.4 to play with the new beta.

[via TechCrunch]

[via] Download Squad

3D virtual desktop manager for Windows

Yod'm 3D is a nifty virtual desktop application that gives Windows users some of the wow factor of Beryl and Compiz bring to Linux desktops.

The free program lets you create four virtual desktops, which is nothing too special. You can do the same thing with Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Manager. But Yod'm 3D lets you switch between desktops by flipping through the sides of a 3D cube.

There's no installation necessary. You just download the program, unzip it to a folder, and select your language. You can configure Yod'm 3D to automatically start up with Windows, or ou can just click the .exe file when you want to start.

Flipping through desktops is a 2-handed operation by default. You click Ctrl+Shift and then use the arrow keys or mouse to navigate. You can configure it to use different keys. For example, if you select Ctrl, you can press and hold your right Ctrl key for a second and then use the arrow keys to move between desktops all with one hand. Since you need to tap and hold to bring up the cube, you can use the Ctrl key normally under most circumstances.

Dragging windows from one desktop to another is a little tricky. You have to make sure the window isn't maximized. Then you left click and hold the title bar with your mouse and hit the activate key. Now you can drag your window to another desktop.

[via lifehacker]

[via] Download Squad

Steve Jobs puts damper on iTunes subscription rumor

Apple CEO Steve Jobs tells Reuters he has no plans to offer a subscription option for iTunes customers, despite claims that Apple was working on just such a system.

To be honest, the rumor seemed a bit unlikely, coming from an unknown company. And it's not like Apple would really need to involve a third party if it wanted to implement a subscription model.

Jobs says the subscription model has failed for most other companies that have implemented it. Apple, on the other hand has sold more than 2.5 billion songs over the past four years through the iTunes store.

Subscription service allows the record labels to collect money on an ongoing basis and provides users with a large music library. But Jobs says there's not much consumer demand for subscription based services where, if you stop paying, you lose all of your music.

[via] Download Squad

Sony to launch YouTube competitor in Japan

Sony is set to announce a video sharing site in Japan tomorrow. While this makes Sony just the latest in a long line of companies trying to get in on some of that YouTube-style action, Sony does have the benefit of owning quite a bit of video content that it can push onto the website.

News Corp and NBC Universal last month announced they would launch a similar site this year.

While Sony is launching its EyeVio site in Japan, the company plans to expand the service to other countries if it performs well.

Sony hopes to avoid the lawsuits that have plagued Google by actively monitoring the site for copyright violations from the get go, rather than waiting for content producers to contact the company with complaints. Of course, this raises the question: Without copyrighted videos, will anyone user the new site? There are conflicting reports over whether YouTube owes its success more to user-generated video or clips from programs like The Daily Show.

[via] Download Squad

My Space - teams with Burnett for "Political Idol"

Reality TV guru Mark Burnett, (think Apprentice and Survivor) is teaming up with MySpace to launch a hybrid internet/TV reality series called "Independent", to find a US independent presidential candidate in early 2008. The winner will receive $1 million, however, it is not theirs to keep. They may use it to start their own campaign or donate it to a political cause.

Contestants will be able to declare their candidacy through MySpace Videos and get public feedback via their MySpace profiles. Once winnowed down, the chosen contestants will participate in a reality series TV show where they will interact with supporters (or not) and the public. An interactive "town hall" will give MySpace users and TV viewers a chance to rate their performance. (No word yet if Simon Cowell is participating).

The project hopes to tap the young online community and get them involved in the political process. Clearly, this new endeavor as well as MySpace's other political forays, shows it is intent on making a big mark on the American political landscape.

So, what's the show's tagline going to be? "America has spoken" or "You're Hired"?

[via Adweek]

[via] Download Squad

Swept Away - Lifehacker Code

Lifehacker has been on a bit of a tear lately, releasing their very own utilities as downloads, like the Better Gmail Firefox extension. This latest one is a Windows-only utility called Swept Away, which will automatically minimize running applications that are not in focus based on a timer.

The application is very reminiscent of Spirited Away for the Mac, (warning, link is not English, but the download link is easy to find on the right-hand side of the page) which is a very popular utility to hide running windows that are not actively being used.

[via] Download Squad

Googleholic for April 27th 2007

In this issue of Googleholic we cover:

No more Google Calendar maintenance
Google is the most visited site in the world
Google vs Yahoo's revenue
SEM money is spent on Google and Yahoo
Google and Intel
AdWords serving exploits
Google in Iowa
Google homepage glitch

Continue reading Friday's Googleholic...

Continue reading Googleholic for April 27th 2007

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Meshly - instant message web 2.0 style

It's part Twitter, part Digg, part Newsvine, part BlinkList, part - uh, well you get the picture. If you're feeling the Web 2.0 thing is getting a little cluttered, well there's yet another new thing you might want to try for fun. It's called Meshly, and you use it with your IM client to post links you want to share and then people vote on them.

Dejavu all over again? Nope, not here. Meshly has a cute fluffy robot single eye icon with antennae that you instant message with. Meshly prompts you for a brief description of your post, asks for the URL, asks you to tag the post, and then, voila! provides the post link to you. Although it's kind of weird at first, you start to grow fond of the old Mesh. And he/she stays in your IM address book with the green light on. Ready. For you. For anyone. To IM him/her.

Tip: If you're the competitive type (you know who you are) and want your post to make it to the front page - you have a reasonably excellent chance of doing so. Some posts have only one vote and they are living on the front page. This non-crowded state may not last for long though.

[via techmeme]

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Kerr-Ching! Vista launch proves massive profit boost for Microsoft

While Mac OS and Linux have made significant gains over the past few years against Windows, if Redmond's latest profit figures are anything to go by the Windows era is far from over. On the back of the release of the latest Windows operating system, Vista, and a new edition of Office, Microsoft has posted a staggering 65% gain in third quarter profits.

The quick start for Vista is good news for the world's biggest software manufacturer as it demonstrates that consumers are not hesitating to adopt the new OS and we can expect to see Vista dominating the world's computers in coming years.

On the back of the sales figures, Microsoft's net income rose to almost $4.93 billion for the past year - a rise of a staggering $2 billion on the previous year. Microsoft's slinky new operating system has had mixed reviews from critics, but consumers are clearly not showing any such concerns as they flock to the new operating system which has enhanced communications and usability features.

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Bill introduced to save internet radio

Congressman Jay Inslee and eight cosponsors have introduced the Internet Radio Equality Act, designed to combat the recent rate hike implemented by the Copyright Royalty Board.

If no action is taken, royalty rates on internet music broadcasts will jump significantly on May 15th, potentially putting many small netcasters out of business.

Among other things, the new bill would:

Nullify the Royalty Board decision.
Change the arbitration process for internet radio rate setting.
Establish that the minimum annual royalty a netcaster has to pay can be no higher than $500.
Set a transitional royalty rate that is the same as the rate paid by satellite broadcasters.

The bill gives the save net radio crowd a chance to rally behind a specific action. Up until now, they'd been asking folks to write their local members of Congress to demand action. Now they're asking for people to call legislators and ask them to support the bill.

[via] Download Squad

Adobe CS3 SDK's available, more to come

Adobe has released Creative Suite 3 for the masses, which means their attention can now turn to the SDKs for the developers in the audience (that's: Software Development Kit for the rest of us). After all, we can't design by built-in filters and plugins alone, can we? Mark Niemann-Ross, Adobe's Developer Evangelist, has announced on his Adobe Blog that some of the SDKs are in fact ready and poppin' fresh from the oven. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign (including Server) and four more are already available, with SDKs for the rest of their CS3 products on the way. You can keep an eye on Mark's post for updates as new kits become available, or simply check out Adobe's Developer Center as well.

[via] Download Squad

Sell it on eBay, ship it with Amazon

Amazon is expanding its program allowing independent sellers to use its 20 distribution centers around the world to ship packages. For the first time, the company is allowing people who sell items on other, competing services (say, eBay) to use Amazon's shipping resources.

Amazon's Fulfillment by Amazon program has been available since last fall, but it was unavailable to those selling their goods through web services other than Amazon.

Basically, the service allows small stores to send their inventory to Amazon for storage. When a customer purchases an item, Amazon will pull the product from inventory, pack it and ship it. Sure, you have to pay to ship your goods to Amazon and again to the customer. But if you don't have room in your home or small shop to store your inventory, it might be cheaper than buying more retail space.

While part of eBay's success is based on the fact that the company doesn't need its own shipping or storage space, Amazon already had 10-million feet of space for its own shipping operations. It can leverage some of those resources to help small businesses while making a profit.

[via] Download Squad

Yahoo! the new AOL homepage looks awfully familiar

AOL -- this blog's parent company -- has launched a redesigned home page, and you know, there's something awfully familiar about the layout. We just can't quite put our finger on it.

The portal's easier to navigate, has a nice set of links on the lefthand side -- oh yeah, and it looks almost exactly like the Yahoo! home page.

The wise-crackers at digg are having a field day with this one. One of our favorite quotes:

"What are you talking about? This is *so* not a rip-off of Yahoo. For example: Whereas Yahoo has search links of: Web, Images, Video, Local, Shopping ...the AOL site has links of Web, Images, *News*, and Local.

You could make the case that this is an intuitive web design for any company to follow, but it does look awfully similar.

For a company trying to reinvent itself as a web portal rather than a internet service provider, AOL really needs to focus on new and innovative services rather than playing a game of follow the leader by copying sites like Google, digg and Yahoo!.

Of course, we have to admit that investing in a blogging network was a great start.

[via TechCrunch]

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Cage Match: Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista

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I haven't used basecamp, until now

Okay, confession time. Despite being an early adopter for most things, I hadn't caught the basecamp train and got on board. Why you ask? I had no good use for it, though it is an excellently crafted application. I love software, and thus I checked it out, but for some reason I didn't see how its use would fit into my busy life, until now.

Becoming a self-employed web developer threw my daily routine out the window in a big way, and my preciously corporate sanctioned work-flow as well, giving me a new set of problems. One new problem I've had is process tracking, central information storage and updating, and project management. If this sounds like three problems, you're right, but they are tightly connected.

Having many projects and lots of information to track, share, and modify, basecamp handles with ease and makes me work less and takes care of these problems without taking too much of my time. I am finally "with it" when it comes to project management.

Developing software is no picnic (as you know), but now at least I know where the utensils are. Try eating potato salad without a fork, and you'll get the idea. If you haven't checked out basecamp (by 37 signals) it is worth it, there is a free account, awesome simple tutorial videos, and a great application to help you track life and work.

If you are with it, and use basecamp religiously (or casually), do you have tips for a basecamp beginner like me, or ideas to get more out of basecamp? We're all ears.

[via] Download Squad

Find songs you (might) like with Audiobaba

Audiobaba Music services like Pandora are designed to play music you'll like by examining the first song you input and evaluating songs you thumbs up or down in the future.

But what if you just want the recommendations, but don't have time to listen to the music now? That's where Audiobaba comes in. The web service lets you type in a single artist or song title, and presents you with a list of songs that sound similar.

You can "bookmark" the songs, which essentially means adding it to a favorites page, listen to a 30 second preview, or buy music from Amazon or iTunes. That's about it.

It has a simple, easy to use interface and would be a great service -- if its algorithm worked a little better. For example, Modest Mouse's "Black Cadillacs" brings up results including Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69."

And while clicking on the purchase option for Glen Phillips "Dam Would Break" brings up his acoustic rendition of the song on Amazon, you get the Toad the Wet Sprocket version at iTunes. So you might wind up buying a track that doesn't match the sample you heard at Audiobaba.

[via Mashable]

[via] Download Squad

OLPC could run Windows?

One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte revelaed this week that the $100 laptop will actually run about $175 -- and that it might be able to run Windows, not just Sugar OS, its customized version Linux.

While Sugar OS is designed to make the machines as user-friendly as possible, Negroponte says developers have been working with Microsoft to ensure that the machines could also run Windows, possibly the $3 version of Windows XP that Microsoft recently announced it would sell to governments of developing nations.

As for the price, it'll take about 3 million orders to make producing and distributing the little computers cost effective. 7 countries have expressed interest in placing orders, but no money has changed hands yet. Negroponte says the $100 figure was always a long term goal, and he hopes to reduce the price by 25 percent per year once production begins.

[via] Download Squad

Smart Digg Button for Firefox

See that little number in the bottom right-hand corner of this screenshot? Yep, that number tells you how many votes a recent DownloadSquad story got on Digg.

Smart Digg Button is a new Firefox extension using the recently released Digg API.

Once you install the extension, a little box shows up at the bottom of your browser window. If you're viewing a page that has not already been submitted to Digg, you'll have the option of submitting it yourself. If you visit a site that's already been dugg, you can see at a glance how many votes the page has received.

Other social bookmarking sites including Furl, Reddit, and StumbleUpon have their own Firefox add-ons that serve a similar role. But now you can have the complete set.

[via lifehacker]

[via] Download Squad

Guest Editor This Week

I'm on holiday all this week and during that time Josh Catone will be Guest Editor of Read/WriteWeb. You may remember Josh from such posts as Internet Killed The Television Star and Crowdsourcing: A Million Heads is Better than One. Josh is a talented writer, as well as being co-founder of the web's largest community dedicated to Ruby on Rails development - Rails Forum. His personal blog is mockriot. I've said to Josh that he can post what he likes here, as long as it's about web technology of course :-)

Read/WriteWeb's other writers will also be contributing, so you shouldn't notice much difference - although it will probably be lighter posting this week than usual.

So without further ado, I am off to enjoy a one week break from blogging and online life in general! If you are thinking of emailing me during this time, don't expect a response ;-) I will be back at the Editor's desk from Monday 30 April, when Microsoft MIX in Las Vegas kicks off. I will be covering that event live, so see you then!

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Kyte: It's Like Twitter That Moves

Kyte launched today, and as Rex Dixon pointed out, it has already been discussed ad nauseum. But never one to shy away from the latest hot trend, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Kyte is a media remixing service that lets anyone "create their own interactive TV channel," which basically means you can upload video, photos, and audio and mix them into slideshows that other people can watch.

Of all the comparisons being made -- and there are many -- SplashCast made the most sense; they appeared to be more or less the same application, so I initially set out to compare them. But after playing with both services for awhile, I realized that in terms of editing together media, there isn't much that either can do that more mature video editing services like Jumpcut, eyespot, or motionbox can't do. Video? Check. Photos? Check. Audio? Check. Text? Check. Create a channel, leave comments, share on MySpace? Check, check, check. All that, and with generally more intuitive editing tools, in my opinion. However, editing, isn't what makes Kyte compelling.

What makes Kyte compelling, are its mobile and social tools. The ability to watch TV from your phone (assuming your handset and service plan is compatible) is nifty, so is chatting with other users watching the same video and leaving in-video polls for real-time feedback. But what will really get users excited is that Kyte lets people broadcast live video direct from their high-end cell phone, which makes the service more like Twitter or Ustream.tv.

As Kyte says in their introduction video, if you want to do a live stream of the banana you're holding, you can. And I fear, that somewhere, someone will very soon being producing a live show of stationary fruit.

Conclusion

While I admit that the constant-blogging phenomenon is one that I don't really get (I lead a pretty mundane life; this video I made on Jumpcut this morning with my cell phone while playing around with various video editing services is proof of that), there's no denying that Twitter has struck a chord with users. And what's better than live blogging your location and thoughts in text? Perhaps, doing it in video.

User who are looking for a way to put up slide shows or edit videos for the web would be better served by more mature services dedicated to media editing, but Kyte might find a niche among people of the Twitter crowd who yearn for a more visual way to show the world what they're up to. One thing Kyte needs to fix post-haste: the annoying noise that sounds every time a new users signs into the chat room. It is, well, annoying, and really distracts from the video you're trying to watch.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Video Podcasting Comes of Age with ON Networks

Valleywag recently declared podcasting dead (or at least conceded the battle to Apple). But iPod's play video, remember, and video podcasting (or vidcasting, or vlogging -- pick your favorite term) is alive and well, and still a wide open space. Mostly when we think of online video, however, we think of amateur videographers talking into a webcam. Even some of the most well-known and respected video podcasts have a distinctly amateur feel too them. Diggnation and ScobleShow, which attract hordes of viewers for their content, are still mostly shot with hand held consumer/prosumer-level cameras, are obviously unscripted, and are often marred by low-quality audio.

A new video podcast network, ON Networks has a killer combination that many video podcasts lack: quality and content. ONN boast a lineup of 8 shows ranging from "Zen Living," in which an attractive host guides viewers toward a healthier life, to "Raw Golf," which takes an indy band and films them at a golf lesson, to "Budget Health Nut," a cooking show that would feel at home on the Food Network.

As a former film student (one of my many discarded college majors), what immediately struck me about ONN was their high production values. The video is sharp and high quality, with impressive motion graphics, and very little of the noticeable background hum that plagues so many amateur online videos. Further, the onscreen talent in ONN productions is actually quite talented.

One of the best podcasts produced by ON Networks is the cooking show "Stump the Chef." The premise is that a professional chef is given 3 random ingredients and must then create a meal that pleases the palates of a panel of judges. If that sounds familiar, that's because the show has a feel very similar to "Iron Chef," complete with a pair of announcers providing a whispered, golf-style commentary speculating about what the chef is preparing. However, because of the show's polished presentation and the host's charisma, it is compelling entertainment.

ONN's shows, which range from 5-10 minutes in length, are packaged as nicely as they are produced. Their site features a slick, large-sized flash video player, RSS subscriptions, comments, and eventually the ability to embed clips on other pages.

Conclusion

There's no denying that video is very hot right now. But even the most well produced video podcasts, like the snarky news daily Rocketboom, have an amateurish feel (notice that audio echo?). Some people will certainly argue that this is part of their appel. However, I think that as with traditional blogging, eventually we'll see the rise of more professionally produced content that will turn the video podcasting into real business.

That's not to imply that Revision3 and PodTech aren't making any money. More accurately, I am pegging them as the first generation of podcasting business where quality of content matters more than quality of production. In the future, though, production values will begin to matter more because advertisers (and viewers) will have more choices. ON Networks, which produces some of the nicest video podcasts I have seen, and in non-tech areas to boot, may be the beginning of that trend.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Citizendium One Month Later

Citizendium, the Wikipedia fork (sort of) that aims to be a more credible alternative to Wikipedia, was launched into public beta on March 25th, which makes it nearly one month old. So how does it stack up to its progenitor?

First some background. Citizendium was founded by Larry Sanger, a 38-year-old who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University that some say was a co-founder of Wikipedia (though that's disputed, according to Sanger's own Wikipedia page). The idea behind Citizendium is to improve on the wiki-model by adding what they call "gentle expert oversight" -- which more or less means that qualified users approve articles before they are officially added to the encyclopedia. Further, contributors are required to use their real names, which Sanger hopes will encourage civility and stem the flame wars and ad homenim attacks that plague Wikipedia talk pages on contentious articles.

"It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving," Sanger told the Associated Press when the site launched. Citizendium outlined the lofty goal of unseating "Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online" in an October 2006 press release.

Running the Numbers

Citizendium was initially meant to be a true fork of Wikipedia, meaning that the articles would be seeded using Wikipedia content and edited and reworked where necessary over time. But on January 18, 2007, while the site was still in private development, Sanger made the decision to keep only articles that were original or had been heavily edited from their Wikipedia counterparts. This drastically cut down the number of articles on the site, but ensured that visitors would not be viewing duplicate Wikipedia content.

Citizendium marks files in three ways: CZ Live (articles being written), Approved (articles that have been given the stamp of approval by experts), and a separate draft status for previously approved articles that are being edited. Citizendium currently has 13 approved articles, and 1625 being written (by my quick count). Though obviously an unfair comparison to 6-year old Wikipedia, they trail the wiki encyclopedia giant by about 1.5 million articles.

Can Citizendium match Wikipedia's growth rate?

A more fair comparison would be to look at Wikipedia's early statistics. In its first month, Wikipedia had about 15 articles and 10 users. By the second month, 140 entries, and by the fifth month, 2,300 articles at a rate of 16 new entries per day. By June 2001, Wikipieda also had 110 users. It is probably important to note when making these comparisons that while Citizendium was opened to the public just a month ago, people have been working on the site since November 2006, and had about 900 authors and 200 editors at launch.

"I didn't see the kind of excitement I saw in the early days of Wikipedia," Sanger admitted to the AP. "You get excited about something if you've taken responsibility for it, if you've created it yourself. By conceiving of ourselves as a big mop-up organization for Wikipedia, we essentially lock ourselves into being a version of Wikipedia. ... In order to have a robust, distinct identity, it's important, I think, that we start over." This was part of the reason that Sanger made the decision for Citizendium not to be a true fork of Wikipedia.

Comparing Content

It's hard to compare Citizendium's content to Wikipedia's because there just isn't very much of it. The 13 approved articles are generally more fleshed out than their Wikipedia counterparts, but not necessarily more accurate. In many ways, the Wikipedia articles read like an abridged version of the more extensive Citizendium entries.

But in at least one case, I actually preferred the Wikipedia entry to the approved Citizendium one. For the article on dogs, Wikipedia's entry begins, "The dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is a domestic subspecies of the wolf, a mammal of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term encompasses both feral and pet variants. It is also sometimes used to describe wild canids of other subspecies or species." The Citizendium entry, meanwhile, starts off, "Domesticated from selected wolves thousands of years ago, the dog is often called 'man's best friend'. Throughout the world today, dogs are found associated with humans, although certainly not always as a part of the household!"

In this case, the conversational tone of the Citizendium entry seems out of place for an encyclopedia. Further, and I don't profess to be an expert on canine evolution, I caught a PBS documentary a few weeks ago that said some scientists dispute the theory that humans actively domesticated wolves. Wikipedia's entry makes mention of this, while Citizendium's approved article does not.

The 'CZ Live' articles are mostly woefully inadequate. Wikipedia trumps them in almost every case, so comparing them isn't really worthwhile. For amusement's sake, though, compare Citizendium's article on itself to the Wikipedia entry on the site.

Conclusion

Really, the verdict is still out on Citizendium. It is far to early to see how it will stack up against Wikipedia. However, because Wikipedia has such a strong network effect, and such a widely recognized brand, it will be hard to get people excited about Citizendium. Unless something strange happens to drive people away from Wikipedia, I'm not placing any bets on Citizendium. But that's not to say I want it to fail. It is certainly an intriguing idea that could very well yield a more reliable body of work.

However, and both Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and Larry Sanger agree on this, neither Citizendium nor Wikipedia should be used as primary sources for serious academic research.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Yahoo! Travel: Heavy on Content, Light on Personalization

Editor's Note: It might be helpful to read Sramana Mitra's Overview of the Online Travel Space prior to reading this review.

In this article we will analyze the Yahoo! Travel site based on the Web 3.0 framework. The site provides information on travel destinations, best bargains on hotel and travel fares. It has an attractive interface and navigation is simple and easy. However, as a late entrant, it needs to do so much more to differentiate and become a "destination".

Context

Yahoo! Travel has a very broad and vivid categorization, which gives its users both convenience and ease of choice while planning for their trip. The site provides good contextual information for both leisure travelers and business travelers.

There are eight sub categories, Travel Guides, Hotels, Flights, Cars, Cruises, Vacations, Deals, and FareChase. The Deals section is broken down into four sub categories (Popular Categories, Lifestyle, Price and More Deal Providers), which have been further categorized to help users search for deals more easily.

Content

Like all other Yahoo! sites the Travel site is also rich in content. The site allows users to search and book flights, hotels, cars, and also plan for their travel.

The Travel Guides section, for example, provides detailed information on more than 40,000 cities and 500,000 places to stay across the world along with reviews, maps and pictures of these locations. It also covers the history, culture, accommodation, festivals and carnivals, dining, drinking, nightlife entertainment, shopping, sports, and special attractions of these locations. Travel Guide also contains maps, weather reports and currency converters for each destination.

Yahoo! currently provides Travel content on Mobile through a partnership with Travelocity via Yahoo! Everywhere, which has agreement with service providers and manufacturers of Web-connected devices in 26 countries where it provides the same travel content in 14 languages.

Commerce

Yahoo! Travel through its partnership with Travelocity and other sites provides users booking facilities, which enables it to earn commission on the flights, hotels, vacations, cruises or cars booked through its sites. There is, however, nothing differentiated in its offering versus other more established providers of travel booking.

Community

Yahoo! has been lagging in community features and in its Yahoo! Travel site, it tries to do a decent job of integrating consumer generated media, such as reviews, RSS Feeds, message boards and Flickr. Flickr is an interesting integration as it allows users to share their travel photographs. This is Yahoo! Travel's most powerful repository of user generated content, and creating better ways for the travel community to engage around it would be an excellent way to leverage their photo sharing community.

The site also allows users to share their trip plans. Though the site has message boards and reviews posted by users, it lacks punch and the site would do well to integrate videos, discussion forums, chat with travel advisors, blogs on important destinations, etc. to increase the level of engagement.

I wrote a few few posts, one on how to incentivize user generated content and one on how Washington Post's Blogroll has collected 100 Blogs that Lufthansa has bought CPM advertising on. I believe, Yahoo could do a much better job incenting and harnessing user generated content, as well as creating blog networks so that advertisers can buy ad inventory on them as a block, just like Lufthansa did via the Washington Post.

Personalization

Yahoo! Travel offers personalization through My Yahoo! It enables users to plan their trip, check and track their reservations and travel profiles, receive emails and alerts on various travel destinations, fares and newsletters, sharing of trips, etc. The site also allows users to copy and customize someone else's trip plan.

Nonetheless, there is no personalization based on travel styles (luxury, backpacking, culture, outdoors, romantic bed & breakfasts), budget ranges, amenity requirements, etc. Paper travel guides have always provided this sort of segmentation information. However, websites have always the unique advantage of being able to provide better search and personalization facilities, which so far remains unaddressed. It is also Yahoo's greatest opportunity for strong differentiation in a market landscape that is fast standardizing.

Vertical Search

Yahoo! Travel has convenient search functions and allows users to search from a multiple range of hotels, flights, car rentals, vacations, cruises and deals. The site also allows consumers to search for hotel, flights and rental cars simultaneously. In 2006 Yahoo! acquired FareChase, a travel search engine that allows users to search and compare fares of flights and hotels online and connects the user directly to the travel provider's site.

Again, there is nothing wowing about what they've done here, and my above recommendations on more category-specific vertical search functionality would help immensely.

In general, segmentation would also allow content to be licensed from category specific travel guides. For example, for travelers in search of uniqueness, the French Guide du Routard is an excellent source. It tells you, not only which hotel to stay in, but also which rooms in the hotel are the best. Similarly, the Rough Guides have catered to budget travelers for generations, and knows the cheapest dives that still serve good food in many far-away destinations.

Business Model

Yahoo earns more than 88% of its revenues from advertisements. The ad rates for the travel site are in the range of $0.32 - $0.57 CPC. The major advertisers on Yahoo! Travel are Avis, InterContinental Hotel Group, Wynn, Sheraton, and Hertz. It doesn't look like Yahoo! Travel has got its act together quite yet on the advertising side, but presumably it will, and advertising rates will climb up.

Conclusion

The final rating for Yahoo! Travel using my Web 3.0 Rating is as follows: Context: A; Content: A-; Community: B; Commerce: A-; Personalization: C; Vertical Search: C Overall : B

Do you agree? What are your thoughts on Yahoo! Travel?

[via] Read/WriteWeb

The Expansion of Social Networks

Inventing new software for enterprises is really hard. Selling it to them is nearly impossible. For a startup to break through the thick doors of the enterprise takes years. But even when lady luck smiles on a startup, the joy is short lived. The next morning its back to the daily grind -- being a one product company means that you constantly have to start over selling to a new place.

Back in the old days IBM had perfected the game of not only opening the enterprise channel, but continuously supplying them with new products. Enterprises were offered bundles, end-of-the-year specials, discounts and all manner of tricks that helped keep the channels open.

Fast forward to 2007 and social startups are faced with much the same problem. A handful of them succeeded at building the modern version of the channel -- a large audience of frequent users. But is a large audience enough? Should the startup perfect what they have or should they leap into another vertical? And if the answer is yes, how far should the service extend? In this post we will take a closer look at growing social networks and consider how they are looking at vertical expansion.

Generic Networks vs. Specialized Networks

Before answering the questions posed in the introduction it helps to understand the differences between generic and specialized social networks. For the purpose of this post, we define a generic network as one that exists primarily to keep in touch and a specialized network is one where people are brought together based on the specific common interest. According to this definition Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and even LinkedIn are considered generic social networks. del.icio.us, Flickr, LibraryThing and Flixster, on the other hand, represent specialized networks.

The main advantage of a specialized network is that it can offer a better user experience. Because of its specialty its user interface can be more focused and rich. As an example, consider Flixster. In our recent review we pointed out the impressive set of features for movie fans. Another good example is Last.fm - a popular social music site. Last.fm offers its users an add on to iTunes and other popular music players that automatically captures their music attention data. It then uses sophisticated automation to connect users with similar taste in music. Thus, Last.fm is an example of a specialized social network with not only a rich set of features, but with a notable specialized infrastructure.

The disadvantage of specialized networks is that they are somewhat limited to their specialty. It is not a set in stone limitation as we will discuss below, but it is a limitation. Users perceive specialized networks as such and rolling out completely different functionality can be surprising and quite risky. On the other hand, generic social networks such as Facebook have much more flexibility in the set of features that they can build. In fact, adding a specialty is likely to be perceived positively by most users because they come to generic networks with a "one-stop-shop" mentality.

Generic Networks Adding Specialties

Consider these questions:

How many Facebook users are also Flickr users?
Why would a Facebook user also use Flickr?

While we do not know the answer to the first, we can answer the second one. The Facebook user would only use Flickr to share non-Facebook photos. One possible use case is to share photos with family members who are not Facebook members. It is clear from people's profiles, however, that the majority of the Facebook users utilize Facebook's photo sharing capabilities. And taking it a bit further, if students are both busy and lazy the chances that they will use two photo sharing sites is slim. So likely, Facebook wins this faceoff. The same goes for events. Yes, there are other, richer event sites, but again what Facebook has today is good enough for its users.

As another example of a generic network adding a specialty consider MySpace rolling out a rather obvious Digg clone. Here the situation is not quite as clear. First, news is new to the MySpace crowd, which is not really the same audience as on Digg. The jury is still out on this one, but judging by the top headline things are not going that well so far:

The problem with this integration is that it is simply a clone. Plus, it is not integrated into MySpace in a way that people could use. Users are forced to essentially go to a separate site. The feature is not part of the user flow and as a result, MySpace appears not to have properly leveraged their enormous audience. To be successful, the integration needs to be meaningful.

What Expansions Make Sense?

However unsuccessful a single integration may be, we know that a successful integration can be potentially valuable for both the expansion and retention of an existing user base. Lets look at the broader set of opportunities for existing generic social networks:

The single most important metric for the social networks looking at a vertical is monetization. Over the last few years these sites mastered the eyeballs game and they now need to demonstrate value by turning those eyeballs into dollars. This can be done in a few ways, though the major ones are advertising and affiliate programs. Looking at the diagram above, we see for example, that social bookmarking and social news verticals could be interesting plays. Both of these do not have much technical complexity and have straightforward, but perhaps limited, monetization in the form of text ads.

Last.fm and other music social networks are difficult to replicate because of their more technical feature set. However, since music market is huge, we can expect that more generic social networks would be considering it. Clearly MySpace is already there, and has been since day one, but Facebook might still consider launching a wider music play, particularly because of its appeal to students (who are notorious consumers of popular music). Along the same lines, film and book offerings might also make sense from the monetization point of view. Photos and videos are tougher to monetize, but we should expect that generic social networks might get into video sharing as soon as someone figures out profitable and clean way of making money in this vertical.

Conclusion

As the competition between generic social networks heats up and the pressure to monetize the audience increases we are likely to see these sites add support for more verticals. Despite the fact that they are not going to be able to offer the same rich set of features that specialized networks are can offer their die hard fans, the expansion is threatening. The generic social networks have these advantages:

They have a bigger audience to play with
They can get away with 80% of features
They have the luxury to try different things and "see what sticks"

However, adding too many specialties might be bad, because not all of them will be effectively integrated and absorbed (again, see the MySpace News example), and this could turn off regular users of the site. The generic networks need to consider costs, upside, and most importantly, their audience before integrating a particular vertical. The right mix of verticals can lead to faster growth and definitive monetization.

We are already seeing examples of these expansions and more are likely to follow. Which ones? Only the time will tell. Please let us know what you think is likely to happen next.

The title image is from iConnectDots

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Senduit Is An Easy Way To Send Files

In 37Signals' ubiquitious web app design philosophy book, "Getting Real," they talk about "underdoing" your competition. "Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to everyone else. Instead of oneupping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing," they write in big bold letters in the second chapter.

New York-based Davidville is probably best known for their excellent tumblelogging service Tumblr. But before Tumblr, they made a splash, albeit a smaller one, with Senduit, a file uploading service that's stripped down to basics. Whether or not Davidville has read "Getting Real," they certainly prescribe to some of the ideas laid out in that book.

Senduit is a very simple, and unadorned file uploading site. It is immediately apparent what the site does and how to get things done. There are no ads on the main page and there is no sign up required. Instead users are greeted by simple, two part instructions, a textbox for choosing the file to upload, a drop down menu for choosing when the file should expire, and a big "upload" button. That's it.

Files uploaded to Senduit are automatically removed from the server in 30 minutes to 1 week depending on what you specify when you upload. Senduit accepts any type of file up to 100mb in size. During uploads, Senduit displays an "upload in progress" bar (which sadly, does not display actual progress -- the only thing I wish the service did differently). Once uploaded, you are sent to a page with the URL for your file, which is short and resembles a TinyURL address. I.e., http://www.senduit.com/XXXXXX -- where 'XXXXXX' is a random string of numbers and letters.

The download page is the only page on the site with any advertising. Downloads start automatically and Senduit's servers are very speedy: I routinely get 1800-2000k/sec (note: I have a 20mbps connection, but even friends with slower connections report good download speeds on files I send through Senduit).

Conclusion

Compared to similar services like YouSendIt, DropSend, or the ad-cluttered MegaUpload, Senduit is a breath of fresh air. It is simple, clean, and exceptionally easy to use. There is certainly room for sites like YouSendIt and DropSend as well, which both offer premium services such permanent file hosting, branded services, and larger file size caps. But for quickly sending small to medium sized files, nothing beats Senduit.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

TripAdvisor: The Web's Strongest Travel Community

We have been discussing the online travel industry and have covered Yahoo! Travel from a Web 3.0 perspective already. Here we take a look at the offering from online travel community behemoth TripAdvisor.

TripAdvisor was founded in February 2000 and is among the world's largest online travel communities with over 20 million unique monthly visitors and approximately 5 million registered members. TripAdvisor is currently part of Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE). The site is a winner of PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites and Forbes' Best of the Web.

Context

TripAdvisor provides recommendations for hotels, resorts, inns, vacation packages, and travel guides. The site is broken up into distinct categories like Find Hotels, Flights, Read & Write Reviews, Browse Destinations, Rants & Raves, GoLists, TripAdvisor Forums, Helpful Links, Top Business Hotels, TripAdvisor Inside, and Photo and Video Sharing, but the organization could be better. The users have the freedom of moving quickly from one category to another, but the organization doesn't necessarily create an integrated contextual experience. TripAdvisor doesn't flow with the natural rhythm of the travel planning experience.

In fact, the key problem with TripAdvisor is its organization. I tried to look at the photos of Giraffe Manor B&B in Nairobi, but after scrolling through numerous pages, I couldn't find them, even though the reviewer claims to have posted them.

Content

TripAdvisor has a wide range of content. The site contains information on over 180,000 hotels and 91,000 restaurants in 23,000 cities. Users can also browse travel destinations across the world with the aid of a travel map and as the searches narrow down, the user is provided with a local map showing local attractions and the best deals for local hotels.

TripAdvisor is wiki-enabled, which facilitates millions of travelers to view, contribute, and edit the guides available on more than 24,000 destinations worldwide. The site also has photos and videos. The site has tie-ins with over 17 business partners in the travel industry including Expedia, Sabre, Orbitz and American Airlines.

Community

TripAdvisor has the largest travel community on the web, which is visited by more than 500,000 travelers every day. The TripAdvisor Forum allows users to post their experiences about tours, express opinions, recommend hotels, resorts, inns, vacations, travel packages, vacation packages, post questions and answer or advise other members of the forum. Users can also post photos and videos of their tours. TripAdvisor allows users to create a travel blog on TravelPod.

TripAdvisor is by far the most successful in engaging a global community of travelers in sharing their experiences and reviews on the site. The Rant & Rave function can make or break the reputation of a hotel or a restaurant in a nanosecond, and is tremendously helpful to travelers!

Commerce

TripAdvisor has tie-ins with a number of commerce sites such as its parent Expedia, Hotels.com, British Airways, Delta, Priceline and Lastminute.com, all of which aid its users in booking flights, hotels, vacations or cruises, enabling the site to earn commission revenue. This, however, is a commodity function, available on all travel sites.

The TripAdvisor Store retails various TripAdvisor Gear through a partnership with Cafepress. Items sold by TripAdvisor include hats, mugs, clothing, bags etc. The site has identified a way of monetizing its brand, but so far, this looks like a fairly shabby effort, since to be blunt, the merchandising, by and large, sucks. They should look at how National Geographic does its merchandising, by creating unique products sourced from various parts of the world - jackets from Nepal, wool slippers from Tibet, caps from Peru - rather than this bland catalog of insignia products.

Personalization

TripAdvisor offers some good personalization and travel planning options. Each personalized page contains full information about the user, stating the person's recent travels or booking, contributions to TripAdvisor, reviews and also includes user preferences for travel (pleasure or business), spending habits, and vacation choices. The personalization facility allows users to organize and plan one's trip, save hotels, attractions, compare hotels, make a list of places one would like to visit, add maps and notes, organize items by destination or days, and create a personal travel guidebook to save, print or email.

The site also informs the registered users with a time-sensitive e-mail newsletter for travelers planning a vacation, giving customized e-mail alerts on specific hotels, attractions and cities of their choice. The site also has other personalized newsletters like TripWatch and Weekend Getaway Guide provided through email.

Vertical Search

TripAdvisor offers user-friendly search options for hotels and flights enabling users to select from multiple options according to their preferences, but there is nothing special or overly different about it.

I would like to plan a trip centered around B&Bs in Andalucia (Southern Spain). How do I do that? The vertical search option simply doesn't get sophisticated enough quite yet.

Business Model

TripAdvisor has an Alexa traffic rank of 504 and has more than 20 million unique monthly visitors. The site has display advertising as well as cost-per-click advertising. Travel Ad Network is TripAdvisor's exclusive advertising representative for display advertising. Advertising and Commissions on bookings constitute their primary revenue streams.

Conclusion

My final Web 3.0 Rating is: Context: A-; Content: A-; Community: A+; Commerce: B-; Personalization: B+; Vertical Search: B-; Overall : A-

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Saving Links Through IM with Meshly

Meshly is not really like Twitter; it is not really like del.icio.us; and it is not really like digg. But comparisons to all three are fair when trying to figure out just what exactly Meshly actually is. Like Twitter, Meshly is an instant blogging application, like del.icio.us it is about saving links, and it has a voting component that closely resembles digg.

The best way to describe Meshly is as an instant messenger based bookmarking tool. Using either MSN, AIM, or GTalk instant messengers, users post, tag, and describe links to Meshly. The entire sign up process is done via instant messenger, and is pretty painless. Once links are posted to the site, people vote on them digg-style so the best each day, week, and month are highlighted. Users can comment on the links via the site, or browse by tag like on del.icio.us.

Meshly also lets users create a personal "channel," if they so desire. Channels are sort of like a personal tag for all of your links that lets people watch, discuss, and vote on links you add them. Any channel or tag can be made into a widget that you can embed into your website.

Adding a link to Meshly goes something like this:

User: post
meshly: adding a new post. type cancel at any time to quit.

please enter the url for the link
User: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_expansion_of_social_networks.php
meshly: enter a title for the link
User: The Expansion of Social Networks
meshly: enter a brief description of the link
User: Alex Iskold looks at how social networks will expand into niche verticals and what that means for everyone (general social networks and niche ones alike).
meshly: enter post tags (keywords) seperated by spaces (example: funny tech robots)
User: web2.0 socialnetworks vertical iskold readwriteweb
meshly: what channel(s) should i submit your post to?

enter 1 or more channel names seperated by a space. if the channel doesn't exist, a new channel will be created.

post to general if you don't know where to place this post.

(example: general yourblogname scienceinterest)
User: web2.0
meshly: about to post:
The Expansion of Social Networks
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_expansion_of_social_networks.php

Alex Iskold looks at how social networks will expand into niche verticals and what that means for everyone (general social networks and niche ones alike).

filed under: web2.0 socialnetworks vertical iskold readwriteweb
posted to: web2.0

okay? (y/n)
User: y

Conclusion

It would be easy to dismiss Meshly as just another digg or del.icio.us clone with a gimmick (IM posting). But Meshly is well made, if not so polished in presentation, and posting from IM is convenient and should appeal to the Twitter set, who expect instant gratification. Their widget is a very clever addition, that allows people to create a link blog without really having to do any work, and could help spread the site. See a cool link? IM Meshly and it gets posted to your widget automatically.

There is a bit of confusion between tags and channels, however -- the two seem redundant to me, and Meshly would also be wise to add a standard bookmarklet so people can add links without going through the IM bot.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Adobe Takes Flex Open Source

Adobe Systems announced last night that they will be open sourcing their Adobe Flex framework so developers can access their source code to enhance its ability to create Rich Internet applications. The Flex SDK and docs will be available through the Mozilla Public License. Adobe Flex, initially released in 2004 by Macromedia, and available since 2006 as a free SDK from Adobe, is a set of technologies to support the development of RIAs, web apps with the features and functionality that mimic traditional desktop applications.

By open sourcing the technology, Adobe is realizing the potential of embracing the developer community. By providing open tools they are helping to foster a developer environment that can result in the creation of cool features and functionality and further developer the framework to suit developer needs. Other open source projects from Adobe include the contribution of source code for ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation and the open source WebKit engine in the Apollo project.

"The definition and evolution of Flex has been influenced by our incredibly talented developer community from day one," said David Mendels, senior vice president, Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe in a press release. "The decision to open source Flex was a completely natural next step. I am incredibly excited to deeply collaborate with the developer community on Flex, and further fuel its momentum and innovation."

With their latest open source release, developers are able to download and contribute to source code for the Flex compiler, components, and application framework. What is not included in the release is Flex Builder and Flex Data Services. Flash itself will also remain closed. Because some companies may not want to use the open source framework, Adobe still offers its commercial licenses with variable terms. I suspect that not many will opt for the paid license route, however. Adobe Systems has set up internal processes to ensure that security and stability remain core elements of Flex, knowing that any security breaches could be disastrous.

In the end, what this means that Adobe is further feeding the Apollo ecosystem to support applications and developers in creating and deploying Rich Internet apps that will benefit the end user. They have a $100 million venture arm to support the development of Apollo applications and with the Adobe Media Player. Going open source is a way to galvanize support within the developer community, though it remains to be seen what kind of uptake and flexibility it will actually provide. Adobe is certainly going "all in" with its software. Often times, big corporations will aim to emulate the openness and idealism of the new Internet economy, but fall short in the execution.

In terms of a timeline for its release, Adobe projects a pre-released version of their Flex product "Moxie," posting daily software builds of the Flex SDK for public download and we should expect the full open source Flex to be released during the second half of this year. The source code for the framework itself is already available in the Flex 2.0 SDK.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

WorkHack Redefines 'Simple' Task Management

To-do lists should be simple, or so claims WorkHack, a task list web app that takes simple to a whole new level. There are very nearly no features to WorkHack. There is no sign up, no tagging, no due dates, no multi-user support. Just to-do lists, organized into three priority categories (High, Medium, and Low) and sorted by color or size.

Getting started with WorkHack is easy: just plug in the captcha text on the main page and go. Tasks are added by entering them into the large textbox on your to-do list page, and assigning a priority level. Tasks are marked by color (red for High, orange for Medium, and green for Low) or, if you turn on the option, by size (the bigger the task, the more urgent). When you are finished with a task, click "Done" and it disappears from view (though you can turn on an option to make WorkHack display completed tasks, and re-add them with a single click).

You can reorder tasks via drag and drop, and save the current order (which WorkHack will revert to if you reload the page or toggle the visualize by size option). To return to a to-do list later you can bookmark it (or memorize the tasks group number, which is in the URL). WorkHack has RSS and XML options that allow you to export and take your data with you.

Conclusion

At first I was annoyed that WorkHack didn't let you edit tasks. But as they say in their FAQ, "It is ok if you misspelled a word or two; it is just a to-do list. Use the frustration to finish the misspelled tasks faster." And they have a point. To do lists should cause as little distraction as possible. Spending time fretting over making your to-do list perfect, or assigning convoluted priority scores and due dates and tags is counterproductive. Managing your list of tasks is never something that should be on your list of tasks.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Interview with Chris DiBona of Google

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to hear Chris DiBona, the Open Source Program Manager at Google, speak at a TiE Pittsburgh event. At the event, Chris provided an extremely insightful presentation on the state of the open source market. After the event, Chris and I exchanged emails and he agreed to do a interview for Read/WriteWeb.

Before joining Google, Chris was the editor of Slashdot. You can also read more of his thoughts on open source and life at Google on his personal blog and listen to his podcast with Leo Laporte, FLOSS Weekly.

I tried to cover three major themes in my questions to Chris:

How Google Leverages Open Source
How Google Contributes to Open Source
General Questions about the Open Source Software Marketplace

I decided to provide the entire interview in this post rather than only highlight specific responses. Part of this is due to the fact that I found it all very interesting (even the questions where Chris wasn't able/willing to respond.) I do end the post with a few of my thoughts in the conclusion, but even more I'd love to leverage the Read/WriteWeb audience's collective intelligence - please leave your thoughts and observations in the comments below .

How Google products leverage Open Source

Q: What is the review process before an open source component is included in a Google product?

A: We have a variety of tools that we have written to ensure compliance with the licenses that are used by open source projects, and we code review incoming programs and libraries.

Q: How many open source projects does Google currently leverage across all Google applications?

A: Sorry, we don't talk numbers. Many.

Q: What open source projects are leveraged most deeply?

A: There are two projects that we'd miss more than any others. The first is the Linux kernel and the second is MySQL. Both are in heavy use at the company.

How Google contributes to Open Source

Q: What is the process Google goes through to decide what projects are released as open source?

A: The primary issue is if we have the engineering staff to work on the problem. We have a variety of engineers donating their 20% time to open sourcing software that they'd like to see released from the company. There are some other short legal reviews around trademarks and patents, as well.

Q: (Since it is that time of year) What 'summer of code' project last year were you most proud of?

A: I can't pick just one! I was most proud that we were able to serve so many students in so many countries. It was quite a feat to run a truly global student program.

Q: What other initiatives (beyond summer of code) do you have to support open source projects?

A: We donate a fair amount of money and time to projects including places like the OSU Open Source Labs, the Apache Projects, the EFF, creative commons and smaller efforts like MusicBrainz. We also employ a variety of developers who work on external projects as their job. For instance we employ Linux second in command Andrew Morton, Samba co-developer Jeremy Allison, Guido Van Rossum of python and so many more.

Miscellaneous "Open Source Marketplace" questions

Q: In your opinion, where in the software stack will there be the most new Open Source projects started in the next year?

A: I don't have a considered opinion for this question. I think the voip stuff will continue to develop and be quite exciting.

Q: Are their any commercial applications, which you believe are especially vulnerable to an open source competitor emerging?

A: I think that vulnerable is the wrong word. Here's how I think of it: if a commercial entity finds that they can no longer sell their software because a viable open source project has risen to displace them, they really have to decide if they want to start selling services around the open source offerings or get out of that particular line of business. IBM has done a terrific job of the former.

Q: What is Google's view of the different Open Source Licenses?

A: We think there are too many of them, and that is why we support only a subset on our project hosting system on code.google.com. This subset includes what we think are the most important licenses, including the BSD, Apache, GPL and other licenses. That mirrors how we feel about them internally. I like to think that we have a very nuanced view of how licenses should be accommodated internally.

Q: What percentage of current GPL projects do you think will move to GPL v3? What do you anticipate the effect of this being?

A: Well, all of the FSF projects will switch, as will Samba. Others will switch over time if the GPLv3 drafts continue in the direction they seem to be heading and thus the effect will be pretty minor. That said, anytime a license revs, there will be a period of confusion while people expand their thinking to include the new license.

Q: Seeing as most of Google's products are browser-based, and given Firefox 3 will be an 'information broker' and will support offline web apps, Google's relationship to Mozilla seems crucial over the next few years. So how closely is Google working with Mozilla on these developments?

A: I don't handle the Mozilla relationship, so I'm going to pass on this one. We are happy to have them involved with the Summer of Code, for sure!

Conclusion

In John Battelle's interview with Eric Schmidt at last week's Web 2.0 Expo, Eric talked about their being four 'major thrusts' around Google (see interview on YouTube - four major thrusts reference starts @ 7:28) The first of these being "building the world's most interesting super computers that are running new data services, application services, search services and so forth." Note: the other three 'thrusts' were end user services, advertising, and embracing their unique culture.

While Google has not open sourced the page rank algorithm and other pieces of their systems, it was interesting for me to look at Google's commitment to Open Source as it relates to building these supercomputers. There is little doubt that if any company could attempt to recreate applications like MySQL and Linux it is Google. However, they have instead chosen to embrace and support the various open source communities and leverage their existing application tools.

Additionally, I find Chris' observations about IBM "selling services around the open source offerings" particularly insightful. It is an interesting extension of some of the topics discussed at the Web 2.0 Expo on open source business models.

Finally, I'd like to thank Chris for taking the time to answer my questions. I know he is quite busy and I hope you found the interview as interesting as I did.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Travelocity: Great Content and Even Better Commerce

We have already discussed Yahoo! Travel and TripAdvisor from a Web 3.0 perspective. Continuing our look at the online travel industry we will evaluate Travelocity next.

Travelocity, launched in 1996, is an online travel agency, and is owned by Sabre Holdings. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Travelocity is ranked number two among the most-visited travel sites in the world with over 13 million visitors per month.

In general, most travel sites that have been around for a while offer a certain baseline set of functionality, that including Airline, Hotel, and Car Rental Bookings, as well as Vacation Packages, Cruises and Deals. I am looking at where these sites need to go in the Web 3.0 era.

Context

Context, so far, is limited to two rather broad areas: Business Travel and Pleasure Travel. In my opinion, this is hardly enough, since both Business Travel and Pleasure Travel come in many forms. Business Travel could be hyper luxury, i.e., a CEO traveling with his Board of Directors and the entire team staying at the Four Seasons, or it could be a sales rep of a startup going to a tradeshow, and staying in the cheapest motels possible.

Similarly, pleasure travel can also swing to both ends of the spectrum. The luxury traveler in search of the finest Aman resorts is a very different "context" than the student backpacker looking for Youth Hostels. I would like to see these Context nuances included as options in the navigation.

Travelocity, having been around for so long, has a vast amount of content and inventory. Without Contextual navigation, this repository of information is way too time-consuming and click-consuming to plod through.

Content

Travelocity is rich in content and covers information for over 700 airlines, more than 50,000 hotels and about 50 car rental companies across the world. The site offers over 6,500 vacation packages, tours and cruises and has travel content in 12 languages including English, French, and German.

The interesting differentiated aspects are what I will focus on. Travelocity is the only major travel site that allows users to book train tickets.

Travelocity's Activities section is also nice. It allows you to book theatre and sports tickets, site seeing tours, etc. in more than 200 cities. It clearly stands out. I would, however, like Travelocity to include local festivals as well.

Going back to my earlier example of planning a trip in Andalucia (Southern Spain), let's say I am looking to stay at small, romantic Bed & Breakfasts in various cities and small villages: Toledo, Granada, Cordoba, Seville, Arcos De La Frontera, etc. I want to know how the local festival dates line up with my travel dates, and how should I arrange my trip to work those in.

Also, local entertainment and local reviews are super important, and a mashup of information from the travel guides (Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Guide du Routard), review sites (Yelp, Chowhound, CitySearch), would be very nice to access through Travelocity.

Further, I like to dance the Argentine Tango, and I would love to be able to know where to go dancing and when, in each city, from right within the Travelocity environment, without having to go scouting separately on the web.

None of this exists yet, but in this age of mashups, it ought to. The place-smart search technology exists, to tag local content in a way that sites can mash them up easily. Travelocity should investigate a small Canadian company called Cquay, to make this happen.

Community

Travelocity lacks good community features. The only community feature that deserves mention is hotel and tour review, but that is old functionality. They should take a lesson from TripAdvisor, whose Community features are simply fantastic. The site does allow photo sharing with collaboration via Snapfish, trying to emulate Yahoo's integration of Flickr. Good idea. Not a great implementation, though.

Commerce

Travelocity earns commission on hotels and other services booked through its site, which is pretty much the standard revenue model in this business. The site, in collaboration with Hotlink, sells its "Gnome" range of merchandise, and does a much better job at it than TripAdvisor but still leaves a lot to be desired. A good innovation is the Travelocity Hotel Gift Card and the Travelocity Credit Cards. Travelocity Rewards MasterCard is a good co-branding strategy that the site is pursuing in collaboration with MasterCard.

Personalization

Travelocity's personalization options allow users to view and save their trips, receive alerts about low airfares to favorite destinations by emails in collaboration with FareWatcher, receive change notifications, upload and share photos. Nothing great. Nothing earth shattering.

What would be earth shattering: integration with the frequent flyer programs of various airlines. The day Travelocity can automatically book a coach class ticket on British Airways, and then use my miles to upgrade it to business class, capture my meal preferences, and order special diets at the hotels I reserve through them, I would give them better points for Personalization.

Another area of Personalized service that I wish they would tackle, is taking care of all the little behind the scenes adjustments automatically if I need to change travel dates on a specific, complex itinerary. That would make me leap for joy, as this is one of the most painful things in life. I will write about a small startup that is attempting innovation in this area soon.

Vertical search

I found vertical searches in Travelocity to be more user-friendly than TripAdvisor. By and large, all the Airline, Hotel, Car Rental searches happen as one would imagine, but there is no imagination in any of this quite yet.

They should think of vertical search based on Context. In the Context of First Class Business Travel, the search interface should look very different, than how it looks in the context of budget backpacking vacations. The requisite amenities, the navigation and search options presented to the user, all need to be different.

Business Model

Travelocity makes most of its revenues on commissions. However, with an Alexa traffic rank of 604, according to comScore, Travelocity is one of the most effective advertising options for sponsored search advertisers, having a 6.5% click-through rate, compared to the 4 - 5 percent click-through rates achieved by Expedia or Orbitz. The advertising rates for Travelocity vary between $25 - $55 CPM. Travelocity earned revenues of $1.1 billion in 2006, an increase of 31% over 2005.

Conclusion

My final Web 3.0 Rating for Travelocity: Context: B+; Content: B+; Community: C; Commerce: A; Personalization: C; Vertical Search: C; Overall : B-

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Listen To The News With BlueGrind

When the people at BlueGrind say they're in beta, they mean it. The website nearly doesn't work at all. Even the 'About' and 'Contact' pages don't yet exist, so this post is going to be full of a lot of speculation. That said, however, BlueGrind is too compelling for me to pass up.

BlueGrind is a text-to-speech technology provider. Their website, or what of it exists right now, talks a lot about "textcasting" and turning your text into a podcast. It is exciting to think that someday there might exist a website that could automatically turn your blog into a podcast for blind website visitors or simply for people to take your words with them on their iPods.

Since, as I said, BlueGrind doesn't yet give many hints on what their service will actually do, I can only speculate. What would be great, is if blog owners could plug in a feed and have their posts automatically turned into speech and fed back into a widget on their page, with MP3s available for download. Of course, none of that is really worth anything if it sounds terrible.

What BlueGrind's website does offer right now, is a tech demo. You can listen to TTS recordings that are fed from various news sources, or after signing up, upload your own. I decided to give it a little test to see what it could do and tried to trip up the service. Below are the results.

Here is the full text that I used for the demo:

Hello readers. You are listening to a test of the BlueGrind technology for Read/WriteWeb. I have often been skeptical of screen readers. We all remember the crummy sounding, far-too-robot-like voices from the 1990s. But this one sounds pretty good. Let's see if we can trip it up. How will it pronounce the name of the president of Iran? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That was actually better than many television news personalities! How will it handle some symbols? I will be purchasing $5 worth of widgets @ 7%. The order # is 440993-442.

Because BlueGrind does not offer a widget (yet?), I used one from MyFlashFetish for the purposes of this demo. (Just press the triangle.)

I was impressed by how well BlueGrind's technology was able to tackle my test. The only place it really messed up, was skipping the # symbol. But that's a relatively minor slip. I'm not sure if this technology is licensed or developed in house, but in my opinion it is ahead of AT&T Labs' TTS demo. Of course, as with most screen reading technology, BlueGrind's accents the wrong words on occasion, which can be a bit jarring for listeners, but that's to be expected.

Conclusion

It still remains to be seen what services BlueGrind will offer to bloggers. Their page mentions podcasting in a conventional manner (i.e., downloading and taking MP3s with you), but it's anyone's guess whether they will offer a service that allows bloggers to stick text-to-speech stuff directly on their own blog posts with a widget (as I hope), or simply feed content into a BlueGrind portal and require bloggers to send their visits to the BlueGrind website to retrieve TTS content.

What do you think of BlueGrind's text-to-speech technology? Do you know of any other players in this area?

[via] Read/WriteWeb

Amazon, VCs Woo Seattle-area Developers

Two days after wowing Wall Street with earnings handily beating all estimates, Amazon held an event wooing local (Seattle area) web developers and venture capital firms alike. Perhaps its just a coincidence after adding US$7 billion in market capitalization the last two days, but money definitely seems to be following Amazon's investment in Web Services (AWS). Madrona Venture Group, a VC firm in Seattle, helped sponsor the event, with a long list of VCs working the room.

Regardless of whether you use Amazon services, if you are a Web 2.0 company, it makes sense to keep these firms to keep in mind for funding. And if you are using Amazon web services and are looking for money, you might want prepare your elevator pitch and contact one of the below:

Of course, the competition for their attention may be strong, as a full room came to hear a presentation focused mainly on Amazon's developer offerings and what they can do for business owners. One claim repeated several times was that Amazon eliminates 70% of the non-differentiating work for web startups. That means, things like building server farms, maintenance, and any operation that doesn't distinguish you from your competition. 70% strikes me as a bit high, but then my company produces desktop applications so I may not be the best judge. The other 250 people in the room were generally nodding their heads in agreement.

If you're already familiar with the Amazon web services pitch, there wasn't much new in the presentation. However, a question and answer session led by Andy Jassy, Senior VP of AWS, to clarify that Amazon is in fact building a distinct line of operation with its own investments and not using idle capacity sitting around until the next Christmas season, was interesting. True, they have not yet opened up Elastic Cloud Computing, but the servers currently running EC2 are dedicated for that purpose.

Some Take-aways

One participant wondered why Amazon hasn't started its own venture capital arm to make strategic investments in their AWS platform. Then we looked around the room and noticed all the engaged VC representatives and came to the conclusion they didn't need to.

The question of 'What happens if <Big Company> moves in on this space?' is becoming more common, and the big company on everyone's mind in this part of the world (Seattle) is Microsoft. To this, the only thing the AWS folks could do was smile and claim first mover advantages. However Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group mentioned that he had just returned from a Silicon Valley forum where people thought Microsoft simply can't ignore what's happening here much longer. I did hear a rumor that the first Microsoft data center has come online in the last month, and one can only speculate about Google and Akamai, so stay tuned...

Speaking of data centers, there was a question among some attendees about whether Amazon actually owns or leases them. If someone from Amazon would like to clarify this in the comments, that would be appreciated.

Finally, something to watch for. Up to now, most of Amazon's success stories are in the consumer market. Since Amazon runs one of the largest consumer web sites, this makes a certain amount of sense. However, they must have designs on the business market too. While they have the technology, and events like today's certainly show developer interest, it may take a bit more effort to convince corporations their platform is secure enough for enterprise data. Once corporate IT departments begin buying in to Amazon's vision, the other big technology houses will be forced to respond. Given the recent stock market activity on AMZN, that time may come sooner rather than later.

[via] Read/WriteWeb

EQO Gets $9 Million Series B

Vancouver-based EQO, makers of a mobile VoIP and IM client, just closed a $9 million second round financing on top of their $4 million CDN (~$3.5 US) series A financing. The round was made by existing investors GrowthWorks and BDC Capital, with new investor, Ventures West, taking the lead. EQO is a J2ME application that [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Y Combinator's Unathorized European Clone

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Y Combinator can now consider itself twice flattered. Y Combinator’s funding methodology of investing a small amount of money across a wide array of young entrepreneurs has already inspired other programs, such as TechStars out of Colorado. And earlier this week, Y Combinator was cloned again, this [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Scribd Rocking Along, Rumored Financing

It looks like Y Combinator funded Scribd, a “YouTube for documents” is close to closing its first round of financing, possibly from Redpoint Ventures. Om says this is done; our sources say it will close next week. The rumored valuation of more than $10 million is very high, although the current trend is for entrepreneurs [...]

[via] TechCrunch

GrandCentral Mobile Is Live

Telephone management startup GrandCentral launched a mobile version of the service yesterday, although they have not announced the product yet. The mobile site is available at grancentral.com/mobile. It will not load properly from a desktop browser, but it works just fine from all the mobile devices I tested. I assume they are blocking normal browsers [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Stockpickr Acquired By TheStreet.com

In January StockPickr announced an investment stake and partnership deal with TheStreet.com. It looks like both sides liked the deal; this evening TheStreet.com announced that they acquired the company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Stockpickr is one of a few new startups in the financial markets space that we’ve been tracking. See our [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Mozy Goes Mac - First Really Useful Mac Hard Drive Backup Solution

Mozy is in the news again after announcing a huge enterprise deal with General Electric last week. Today they’ve pushed a Mac version of their desktop backup solution for consumers. I’ve been using it for a week, and it’s extremely good. Previously Mozy and competitor Carbonite were excellent ways of backing up Windows based hard drives. [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Adobe Open Sources Parts Of Flex Platform

Adobe have announced tonight, via Robert Scoble and the ScobleShow that they are opening up the Flex platform under a Mozilla Public License (an Open Source license). Flex is a group of technologies (much similar to .NET or J2EE etc.) that provides a more programmer-friendly development environment for Flash, rather than a graphics-driven environment that [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Cozmo Wants to Kill Your TV

TiVo came along and is helping kill the idea of a TV time slot. The growth of on demand online video has been helping finish the job. Cozmo.Tv wants to create a TV 2.0 by changing the way you consume online video from a random walk to personalized content. Next week at Always On, they [...]

[via] TechCrunch

AOL One Step Behind Again: New Home Page Identical To Yahoo

AOL has started beta testing a new home page (the main AOL.com portal). AOL Senior Product Manager (and occasional TechCrunch contributor) Frank Gruber introduced it on his personal blog earlier today, although he is not the product manager for the product. Nice portal…but it is nearly identical to Yahoo home page, which was redesigned last [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Steve Jobs: "People want to own their music"

Apple’s Steve Jobs, perhaps the most important person in the music industry today, says again that Apple is not planning on selling music via a subscription model like many of his competitors. The strategy certainly makes sense as long as as Jobs continues to win territory in his war against DRM, and the subscription music services [...]

[via] TechCrunch

My Twitter Account Deleted, Restored

I’ve become a bit of a twitterholic over the last month or so, and update my twitter page frequently with updates that don’t belong here or on Crunchnotes. I’ve suffered through a slow and sometimes down site without complaint - they’re growing like a weed and need some time to stabilize. But then my account was [...]

[via] TechCrunch

ScratchYourself: Viral Sweepstakes That Brands Could Love

A new service called ScratchYourself came to our attention today. It’s a fairly simple Flash application that lets users upload an image and build a lottery-style scratch card from it. During the beta period people have a chance to win some very limited cash prizes that total $90 or so per day across all winners. [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Akamai Releases FoxTorrent 1.0 - Firefox BitTorrent Add-on

Red Swoosh (acquired by Akamai for $15 million earlier this month) released v1.0 of FoxTorrent today. This is a fully functional BitTorrent client for Firefox that works cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and has a very cool additional feature - the ability to stream files as they are downloading. This is no Azureus (my BitTorrent client [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Sponsor Break

We’d like to take a moment and thank our sponsors and readers that help us keep TechCrunch humming… Voxbone - A VoIP carrier providing centralized access to local phone numbers and toll-free numbers around the world. They have their own network entirely devoted to voice traffic powered by Cisco routers and switches. With their network, you [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Wakoopa: Last.fm For Desktop Applications

Last.fm does for music what Dutch startup Wakoopa wants to do for your desktop applications. Like Last.fm, Wakoopa uses a downloaded tracker, except if follows how often you use applications instead of listen to music. Similarly, Wakoopa has also built a Rails-powered social website around the data, letting users share their preferences with friends, write [...]

[via] TechCrunch

Create online slideshows with Slidez

Slidez lets you create slick photo slideshows you can share with others or embed in your web site.

Just upload your photos using a simple batch-loader tool, then create a new "presentation" (essentially an album). You can drag and drop photos from your main library to the presentation and use the same method to re-order photos within it. Slidez gives you some basic options for tweaking your presentation, like choosing a background color and a location for image thumbnails.

Completed presentations can be e-mailed to others, embedded in a site or shared via an XML feed. It's all very slick and Flash-y; the slideshows themselves appear quite professional. I could envision a photographer using Slidez to show off samples of his/her work. Of course, you can do the same thing with Flickr and other online-slideshow tools. But Slidez is fast and easy, and it gets the job done with a minimum of hassle. —Rick Broida

[via] Lifehacker

MacGyver Tip: Use an index card as a funnel

hipster%20funnel.png

Cranking Widgets blogger Brett needed a funnel to add transmission fluid to his car--and devised a very "hip" solution:

I drive a 1965 Buick, so I could damn near crawl into the engine compartment and take a nap. But for some reason, the fill tube for the transmission is arranged almost perfectly horizontal, making the funnel a necessity. At that point, I whipped out the Hipster PDA from my back pocket, fashioned a crude funnel and added the necessary fluid.

Ah, the Hipster--is there anything it can't do? (In case you're not familiar with it, the Hipster PDA is basically a stack of 3x5 cards. Brett used a blank one for his on-the-fly funnel.) Thanks, Andrew! —Rick Broida

[via] Lifehacker

How to keep your lens cap from getting lost

lens%20cap.png

DIY site Instructables demonstrates an ingenious way to keep tabs on your SLR lens cover.

All you need is a small piece of self-adhesive Velcro. Affix one side to the back of the cover, the other to the bottom of your camera (making sure not to block any important doors or access points, of course). Then, when you remove the cap from the lens, just stick it to the bottom of the camera. To me this is a much better solution than those little "leash cords," which leave the cap dangling and always in the way. Got a better idea for lens-cover management? Put it in the comments. —Rick Broida

[via] Lifehacker

Google announces Web History

Google%20web%20history.png

Ever wish you could find a site you visited in the past? Google's impressive new Web History makes it possible. Here's the scoop straight from Google:

Web History lets you look back in time, revisit the sites you've browsed, and search over the full text of pages you've seen. All you need is a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled. The Toolbar, as part of your browser, helps us associate the pages you visit with your Google Account.

In other words, yes, Google tracks the sites you visit, a fact that won't sit well with some users. But, wow, this is incredibly useful. You can view personalized trends (top queries, top sites, etc.); sort your site history by searches, web pages, news, images, maps and other criteria; and see "interesting items" based on your history.

What are your thoughts on this sure-to-be-controversial new offering? Killer tool or privacy buster? Hit the comments to make your feelings known. —Rick Broida

[via] Lifehacker

Love and Money: Thanks to this week's sponsors

Thanks to this week's sponsors for helping us serve up a never-ending river of productivity pointers: Canon, Casio, Don Julio, MSNBC, Mio, Nokia, Sprint, Toyota, Verizon, and Webroot's Spy Sweeper. Wouldn't you like to advertise with Lifehacker?

[via] Lifehacker

LH Top 10: Home networking tricks

Photo by Joseph Zollo

Amazing things happen when you connect a few computers together with cable or wireless signal. By now you've probably got several connected computers at home, sharing an internet connection, maybe a printer and files between them. But are you getting the most out of your home network?

Today's top 10 lists our favorite networking techniques, all of which can be done with free software and a little elbow grease. After the jump, get your LAN on with our top 10 home networking tricks.

Lifehacker's Top 10 Home Networking Tricks

How do you trick out your network? What's on your top 10 home network list? Let us know in the comments. — Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Organize a collection with Flickr

The Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories weblog details how to organize and catalog a collection (think stamps, coins, or in this case, a super ball collection) using the popular photo sharing application, Flickr.

Using a clearly defined tagging system, the author's collection is extremely well organized, and the post - aside from serving as a great demonstration of the benefits of tagging over a traditional folder system - offers a good framework that anyone with a collection could tweak to organize their goods in Flickr-style. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Download of the Day: GOM Player (Windows)

Windows only: GOM Player is a freeware, lightweight multimedia player with support for most popular video and audio codecs you throw at it.

GOM is designed with looks in mind. Not only does it have an attractive interface, but it's optimized for viewing several different display types (whether you have a high-quality display or TV output). While we generally recommend Lifehacker favorite, the cross platform VLC to play any media you throw at it, VLC isn't the prettiest or friendliest player around, and that (understandably) turns some people off. GOM offers somewhat of a middle ground, and should play pretty much any thing you throw its way. GOM is freeware, Windows only. Thanks Sam! — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

DIY online magazine publishing with PublicSquare

Web application PublicSquare offers a full-featured online publishing tool designed to help you create a webzine, community newspaper, newsletter, etc., with a simple, usable interface.

While there are roughly 8.4 billion blog publishing tools out there, the more traditional news/magazine format is less available as a DIY web option. PublicSquare looks like it may bridge that gap. PublicSquare offers a free account with limitations - 2GB transfer/month, 10MB file upload space (if you plan to host a lot of images, you'll probably want to host them elsewhere). Overall the free account is a great option if you're just getting started and want to put together and manage an online paper. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Lifehacker's Coolest Workspace Contest - Win $500 at Amazon!

It's that time of year again: Lifehacker's 2nd annual Coolest Workspace Contest opens its doors for submissions starting today! We want you to snap a few pictures of your favorite workspace - your home office, desk, studio, etc. - and send them into Lifehacker HQ. Over the next several weeks, we'll feature our favorites every Thursday on Lifehacker. Once that portion comes to a close, the Lifehacker readers will vote for the workspace they deem to be the Coolest, and the winner gets a $500 gift certificate to Amazon!

For inspiration, check out last year's winner Ryan Irelan's Orange Simplicity setup in the gallery below. Check out contest details and more of last year's featured workspaces after the jump.

Starting next Thursday, we'll feature the hottest, coolest, sexiest, most inventive workspace submissions we receive. And this year, we're amping up the prize to a whopping $500 Amazon gift certificate.

Official Contest Rules:

To enter, send 3 to 6 photos to tips at lifehacker.com with Coolest workspace contest in the subject line.
Include a description of your setup, with as many interesting details as possible.
Your photos should be at least 600 pixels wide, but feel free to send larger. Just remember that they'll need to be viewable at 600 pixels (our default gallery size). By sending them into tips at lifehacker.com, you're giving us permission to publish them here on Lifehacker.com.
The Lifehacker editors will choose their favorite workspace submissions to feature on the site. Not every submission will be chosen.
Your submission's more likely to be chosen if you tell us about your setup and if your pictures really show off your space. Impress us!
All the submissions that will be featured on the site will be voted on by Lifehacker readers in our "unscientific" polling application.
To verify that the workspace is really yours, get Lifehacker.com up on the screen at your computer. Any photos that look like they've been nicked from an Ikea catalog won't be chosen.

The contest will run for the next several weeks, with the first workspace highlighted next Thursday. For the legal nitty gritty, check out Gawker Media's contest rules.

For more inspiration, check out all of last year's featured workspaces in the gallery below:

Most importantly, let's see us some photos! Impress us!

[via] Lifehacker

Download of the Day: Send Later (Thunderbird)

Windows/Mac/Unix (Thunderbird): The Send Later Thunderbird extension lets you schedule the delivery of emails composed in Thunderbird.

If you're keen on sending emails with Thunderbird's Ctrl-Enter shortcut, then incorporating the Send Later command should be a cinch - just hit Ctrl-Shift-Enter. You'll see the Send this email later dialog, which lets you set the exact minute you'd like the email sent (keep in mind Thunderbird will need to be open at that time). If this seems familiar, it's because it performs the same task advertised by previously mentioned Send Tools, but some readers had trouble getting SendTools to work reliably, and it's not supported in Thunderbird 2.0. Send Later, on the other hand, is 2.0-ready. It's also free, works wherever Thunderbird does. — Adam Pash

[via] Lifehacker

Request Line: Your post wishes can come true

As the Spice Girls so eloquently said, "Tell us what you want, what you really really want." Hit up the comments with your post suggestions, story ideas and any hackin' techniques on your mind, and we'll get to writing about 'em next week.

This here's your open thread to query the LH hive mind, too. Interested commenters are standing by to help you out with all those Ask Lifehacker Readers questions you submitted to the tips box but we editors passed on. So get to it! In need of a comment login? Here's how to to zigazig ah. Photo by dusdin. — Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

LH Faceoff: DIY wallets

We've got a thing for home-built wallets around here at Lifehacker. Whether it's paint chips, keyboard innards or duct tape, anyone can put together a good-looking money holder. Today's fun Friday vote-off pits our favorite hand-rolled wallets against one another in the DIY wallet faceoff.

Any wallet creations we left off the list? Post 'em in the comments. — Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Ten easy ways to go green

earth%201.jpg

In honor of Earth Day this Sunday, the eco-friendly Lighter Footstep web site's put together 10 easy ways to reduce your impact on the planet:

These ideas will save you money, cut energy use, and help balance your household's greenhouse gas budget -- the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere to produce goods or electrical power.

Suggestions include using CFL lightbulbs, unplugging (not just turning off) appliances when they're not in use and tweaking your home heating and cooling systems for efficiency - all easy habit changes that can make a difference. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

TGIF: This week's best posts

Overwhelmed by the daily onslaught of Lifehacker posts? Don't give up on us. Subscribe to the top stories feed for a handful of our best posts every day. The features feed is one long-form original post per weekday, and for the super-time-strapped, the Highlights feed is a once-weekly digest of the best posts on Friday evening.

This week's best posts include:

Lifehacker Code: Better Gmail (Firefox extension)
"I've compiled the best Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail into one handy Firefox extension, called Better Gmail."
Hack Attack: Supercharge your Gmail
"Today I'll show you how to use Better Gmail along with a few other Gmail add-ons to turn Gmail into the best email application you've ever used."
LH Top 10: Free Computer System Recovery Tools
"Don't pay the extortionists at the computer repair shop 800 bucks to get your data back or start up your dead computer. Plenty of free tools can help you and are available for download right now."
Geek to Live: Sync Google Calendar and Gmail contacts to your desktop
"The big question hesitant users have about web-based applications like Gmail is: 'How do I get my data if I'm offline?' A beta, open source project called GCalDaemon attempts to answer to this question."
Screenshot Tour: Watch TV over the internet with Joost
"One of the loudest buzzing apps of late is Joost, a TV-over-the-internet program (Windows and Mac) promising to bring a full-fledged, high quality television experience to your computer without the need for a capture card or any other hardware."
Download of the Day: Thunderbird 2.0 (All platforms)
"The good folks at Mozilla dropped the latest version 2.0 of the Thunderbird email client today, which supports Gmail-like tagging, Windows Vista and better search capabilities."
Google Spreadsheets adds charts
"Google Spreadsheets, which brings Excel-like number crunching to your browser, has added chart capabilities."
LH Code: Gmail Date Search (Greasemonkey user script)
"When it comes to date searches, putting together the syntax for a specific date search is a pain in the ass."
Google Earth adds hiking trails
"...the Trimble Outdoors Trips layer features GPS-marked trails for activities including hiking, biking, backpacking and running."

[via] Lifehacker

Reduce your impact with the Emissions Calculator

The EPA has a nifty tool to help us all figure out just how much of an impact our homes are having on the environment with the (somewhat unfortunately named) Personal Emissions Calculator.

The tool takes about 5 minutes to walk through; you basically are asked questions about your household's average energy consumption. At the end, you're given an estimate of how much energy you're using and tips to reduce it. It's a good way to remind ourselves to go easy.— Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

How much sleep do we really need?

The BBC has an interesting article discussing the old chestnut of eight hours of sleep every night: do we really need that much, or do we need even more?

Basically, it all depends on us finding our unique sleep mojo. For instance, I function really well on around 9 hours, but I have three kids. Enough said. Then again, I know some ~~weirdos~~ people who do just fine on around five hours of sleep, which just sounds like torture to me. How about you - what is your prime sleep number? Thoughts in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Search across social networks with yoName

Easily search across a variety of social networking sites - MySpace, Friendster, Xanga, Digg, etc. - with yoName, a search service that quickly and easily searches by email addy, username, or first and last name.

For example, if you've ever wanted to more easily track down your work colleague's embarrassing Sanjaya tribute on MySpace, but wanted to avoid the seizure-inducing graphics for as long as humanly possible, this might be a good place to do it. Each search result has a handy drop down arrow so you can if the person you're looking for has been found accurately; a nice touch so you don't have to click unnecessarily. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Double team your to-do list with a Gmail/Gcal combo

Productivity blog Lifehack.org has a simple yet practical post on how to make Gmail and Google Calendar basically rock the living daylights out of your to-do list.

We've certainly blogged about this kind of stuff before, but it's so worth a reminder, especially for those of us who are somewhat organizationally-challenged (speaking hypothetically here, of course). So 'fess up: what are the most fantastically Lifehacker-ish ways you've been able to mind-meld Gmail and Google Calendar thus far? Let us know in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

The New Upcoming - Whew! The new release of Upcoming is finally out the door. (Waxpancake/upcoming.yahoo.com)

The New Upcoming — Whew! The new release of Upcoming is finally out the door. We're still working out the bugs, so let us know if you find anything broken or weird! Lots to talk about, and I'm sure you'll have lots of questions, so let's get right into it. What's new? — Upcoming Grows Up

Source: upcoming.yahoo.com
Author: Waxpancake
Link: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/news/archives/2007/04/19…

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Most frequently visited websites - not what you'd expect (Jeremyliew/Lightspeed Venture ...)

Most frequently visited websites - not what you'd expect — March's Comscore numbers just came out. I took a look at the top 2000 web domains, but this time I ranked them by number of visits per month. The results were a little surprising. Here are the 41 sites that were visited 10 times …

Source: Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog
Author: Jeremyliew
Link: http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/most-frequently…

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Rupert, the Cowardly Internet Lion (Owen Thomas/Business 2.0 Beta)

Rupert, the Cowardly Internet Lion — What is it about the Web that made Rupert Murdoch lose his taste for synergy? Offline, his News Corp. (NWS) empire is as self-promoting as always. But MySpace, Murdoch's Internet jewel, can't even seem to promote its own services.

Source: Business 2.0 Beta
Author: Owen Thomas
Link: http://blogs.business2.com/beta/2007/04…

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STUMBLEUPON LAUNCHING SITE-SPECIFIC STUMBLING (Rafe Needleman/Webware.com)

STUMBLEUPON LAUNCHING SITE-SPECIFIC STUMBLING — This is weird. Last night it occurred to me that Webware should have a "StumbleUpon"-like feature: In other words, that there should be a button on the site that links to a random Webware review — because if you don't come to the site frequently …

Source: Webware.com
Author: Rafe Needleman
Link: http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9710886-2.html

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Google Web History - Good and Scary (Anil Dash)

Google Web History - Good and Scary — Many years ago, when the web was a simpler place, one of the scariest monsters conjured up to describe the privacy threats that lurked on the Internet was the DoubleClick cookie, used for tying your ad-viewing behavior on the web to your real-world identity.

Source: Anil Dash
Author: Anil
Link: http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/20/google_web_hist

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Were video games to blame for massacre? (Winda Benedetti/MSNBC)

Were video games to blame for massacre? — Pundits rushed to judge industry, gamers in the wake of shooting — Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney and opponent of violent video games, said Va. Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui played 'Counter-Strike,' Valve Software's popular multiplayer game.

Source: MSNBC
Author: Winda Benedetti
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18220228/

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Users force Dell to resurrect XP (BBC)

Users force Dell to resurrect XP — Responding to customer demand Dell has restarted selling new PCs with Windows XP installed on them. — The decision reverses a policy begun in January that meant Windows Vista was the only operating system available on almost all new home machines.

Source: BBC
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6575089.stm

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Amazon Sues Alexaholic...Everyone Loses (Tim O'Reilly/O'Reilly Radar)

Amazon Sues Alexaholic...Everyone Loses — Alan Graham published a great account of my discussion with Jeff Bezos about Alexaholic (now Statsaholic at the Web 2.0 Expo on Monday. Entitled Amazon sues Alexaholic...Everyone Loses, Alan's blog entry does a good job of summarizing the the conversation …

Source: O'Reilly Radar
Author: Tim O'Reilly
Link: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04…

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Southwest reaching for Wi-Fi in sky (Kelly Yamanouchi/Denver Post)

Southwest reaching for Wi-Fi in sky — Southwest Airlines is exploring how to put Wi-Fi Internet service on its airplanes, as the no-frills carrier seeks to add some frills. — Southwest plans to outfit a few planes with in-cabin wireless Internet service that would "allow for e-mail …

Source: Denver Post
Author: Kelly Yamanouchi
Link: http://www.denverpost.com/portal/ci_5708425?source…

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Blackberry reveals failure cause (BBC)

Blackberry reveals failure cause — The maker of the Blackberry wireless e-mail device says an insufficiently tested software upgrade was the cause of this week's network failure. — Blackberry's US and North American users lost their service on Tuesday and Wednesday as a result of the problem.

Source: BBC
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6574767.stm

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Google draws privacy complaint to FTC (Stefanie Olsen/CNET News.com)

Google draws privacy complaint to FTC — Three public-interest groups are expected to file a joint complaint on Friday with the Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into the potential threat to consumer privacy posed by Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick.

Source: CNET News.com
Author: Stefanie Olsen
Link: http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-6177819.html

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U.S. Database Exposes Social Security Numbers (Ron Nixon/New York Times)

U.S. Database Exposes Social Security Numbers — The Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of people who received loans or other financial assistance from two Agriculture Department programs were disclosed for years in a publicly available database, raising concerns about identity theft and other privacy violations.

Source: New York Times
Author: Ron Nixon
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/washington/20cnd…

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Target stores to pick up Apple TV (AppleInsider)

Target stores to pick up Apple TV — Big-box retailer Target is poised to become the next third-party retailer to market Apple Inc.'s new Apple TV device at its brick-and-mortar retail stores, AppleInsider has learned. — The bullseye-themed shop will join Best Buy, which agreed to cary …

Source: AppleInsider
Link: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/20…

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Social Networking Dethroning Sex in Terms of Online Traffic (Bob Caswell/Computers.net)

Social Networking Dethroning Sex in Terms of Online Traffic — The Economist (subscription required) has an interesting piece on sex and the Internet, which revolves around the graph pictured to the right. While the online porn industry was valued at $1 billion back in 2002 …

Source: Computers.net
Author: Bob Caswell
Link: http://www.computers.net/2007/04/social_networki.html

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PODCASTING: Battle over - and Apple won (Valleywag)

PODCASTING: Battle over — and Apple won — Can we officially declare the end of the podcasting boom? Sure, internet users will continue to subscribe to audio files, the experience will become ever more like interactive radio, and existing broadcasters will supply their programs in chunks — just like the visionaries predicted.

Source: Valleywag
Link: http://valleywag.com/tech/podcasting/battle-over…

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Seeing through walls (Tom/New Scientist Technology Blog)

Seeing through walls — Have you considered that someone could be reading what's on your monitor from a few rooms away? It's unlikely, but possible, as work by Cambridge University computer security researcher Markus Kuhn shows. — A radio antenna and radio receiver - equipment totalling less than £1000 - is all you need.

Source: New Scientist Technology Blog
Author: Tom
Link: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04…

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MacBook hacked in contest at security event (Joris Evers/CNET News.com)

MacBook hacked in contest at security event — update VANCOUVER, B.C.—Shane Macaulay just got himself a free MacBook. — Macaulay, a software engineer, was able to hack into a MacBook through a zero-day security hole in Apple's Safari browser. The computer was one of two offered as a prize in the …

Source: CNET News.com
Author: Joris Evers
Link: http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6178131.html

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CanSecWest Vancouver 2007 - Register Conference Dojo Speakers ... (CanSecWest Applied Security Conference)

CanSecWest Vancouver 2007 — Register Conference Dojo Speakers Agenda Past Events Hotel & Travel Contact — CanSecWest 2007 — The eighth annual CanSecWest conference will be held April 18-20 2007, a t the Mariott Renaissance Harboursider hotel in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia.

Source: CanSecWest Applied Security Conference: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Link: http://cansecwest.com/post/2007-04-20-14:54:00…

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HandBrake 0.8.5b1 Released (Jbrjake/HandBrake)

HandBrake 0.8.5b1 Released — "I don't want to go on the cart! I feel fine. I... feel... happy!" — After a 14-month hiatus, a brand new development team, a project forked then unforked, and literally hundreds of revisions... We are pleased to announce the release of HandBrake 0.8.5b1 !

Source: HandBrake
Author: Jbrjake
Link: http://handbrake.m0k.org/?p=48

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[via] Techmeme

Myth crushed as hacker shows Mac break-in (Nancy Gohring/InfoWorld)

Myth crushed as hacker shows Mac break-in — Dino Di Zovie was able to remotely break into a Mac as part of a contest designed to illustrate security flaws in OS X — A hacker managed to break into a Mac and win a $10,000 prize as part of a contest started at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver.

Source: InfoWorld
Author: Nancy Gohring
Link: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/20…

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[via] Techmeme

AMD gooses Opteron to 3 gigahertz (Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

AMD gooses Opteron to 3 gigahertz — Advanced Micro Devices has begun quietly selling new 3GHz versions of its dual-core Opteron server processor. — The new "special edition" models, the 2222 SE and 8222 SE, feature higher performance but consume up to 120 watts compared with 95 watts …

Source: CNET News.com
Author: Stephen Shankland
Link: http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-6178158.html

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[via] Techmeme

Microsoft hit with patent suit over .Net (Robert Mullins/InfoWorld)

Microsoft hit with patent suit over .Net — Vertical Computer Systems is suing Microsoft for allegedly using without permission its patent for a 'method of generating Web sites' as part of the .Net framework — Vertical Computer Systems is suing Microsoft for patent infringement related …

Source: InfoWorld
Author: Robert Mullins
Link: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/20…

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[via] Techmeme

Google Search History becomes Google Web History

While Google's renaming things, the search giant has gone and changed its search history feature to Google Web History.

With the new name comes a nifty new feature: search your web history. Got a phrase stuck in your head and can't remember where you read it? If you perform a web search you might be inundated with irrelevant results. But perform a search of your personal web history, and since you'll only get results from sites you've visited that phrase might pop right out on top.

On the other hand, in order to gain this function, you've got to agree to let Google spy on all the sites you visit. Sure, that's nothing new, but somehow it feels a bit more big brother-ish now that you can search your history.

You'll need a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled to play.

[via] Download Squad

Googleholic for April 20th 2007

In this issue of Googleholic we cover:

Google's AJAX Feed API
Google's new Product Search
Subscriber link in Google News
Rivals angry over DoubleClick deal
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt defends the DoubleClick deal
Google recruiting in Korea
The nerd paradise
Pennysaver coupons on Maps

Continue reading Friday's Googleholic...

Continue reading Googleholic for April 20th 2007

[via] Download Squad

Upcoming.org Redesigns, Merges With Yahoo Accounts, Gives Stuff Away

Yesterday afternoon, popular social event website and Yahoo! property Upcoming.org surprised users by redesigning and requiring the merging of existing accounts with Yahoo! accounts. ~~The changes came without warning, possibly in an attempt to avoid a user backlash similar to that which erupted after big brother Flickr a few months ago.~~ announced the merging of accounts As way of making it up to their users, Upcoming is giving away a bunch of special Upcoming.org t-shirts to 'old skool' users who've been using the site for a while.

On the redesign side of the news, the new look is cleaner, faster to load, and introduces a whole new way of browsing events which centers around more specific metro's and integrated maps. The new interface is overall more media driven, and resembles in a way the recent Facebook redesign.

In addition to the most obvious changes mentioned above, Upcoming.org is no longer actually upcoming.org, but upcoming.yahoo.com.

Update: Apparently the updates were not unannounced; they were posted on the official blog multiple times. They did not, however, send an email notice to users in the same way Flickr did.

[via] Download Squad

Intel spills the beans on Vista service pack release date

With Windows Vista barely out the door, Microsoft's been quiet about when the company will issue its first major update for the operating system.

But someone forgot to send the memo to Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who made some comments regarding Vista Service Pace 1 during a financial presentation this week. Responding to a question about how enterprise users have been slow to adopt Vista, Otellini said he expected that to change when Microsoft release an operating system update in the fourth quarter of 2007, "probably in the October-November time frame."

Officially, Microsoft says it's still too early to put a date on the release. Does that mean Otellini leaked some information that he shouldn't have? Or was he just stating his assumption that Service Pack 1 would be available later this year. Either way, we're going to assume Otellini's educated guess is a heck of a lot more educated than ours.

[via] Download Squad

Dell offers Windows XP again but wants you to buy Vista

Dell is paying attention to the feedback gathered from its IdeaStorm site, and it's making some changes. No, they're not offering a system with Linux preloaded just yet. But they are bringing back the option of ordering a new PC with Windows XP.

While Microsoft plans to kill off Windows XP by the end of the year, many users are still a bit nervous about running th newer Vista operating system.

There may be compatibility issues with software they need to run, or they might just not feel like learning a whole new operating system when they're perfectly happy with the one they've been using for the last five years. And most people remember that Windows XP got a lot better with Service Pack 2, so they might be holding out for Vista updates.

Anyway, Dell is offering new computer buyers the choice to buy a system preloaded with Vista or XP. But as you can tell from the chart above, they try to stack things in favor of Vista by pointing out all the things it can do that XP can't. Noticeably absent from the list? Boot up quickly.

[via CyberNotes]

[via] Download Squad

Mix up your photos with Mixercast

Mixercast is a web based application currently in alpha that allows you to take video, photos, and sound off of your computer or websites like YouTube and Flickr and create embeddable players to display them.

Creating your Mizercast is done much like creating a DVD in iDVD. You upload images into the designer and then drag and drop them where you want them to be in your MIxercast. There are tons of pre-made templates to choose from with places built-in for your media to be added. For advanced users theres a deisgner option taht gives you a little more control over your Mixercast deisgn than you get with a typical template.

The site will currently allow you to upload off of your computer, download pictures from a stock photo site, and record a video with your webcam, as well as upload video from from YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr with support for others like Facebook, Shutterfly, and eBay on the way.

Once you're done creating your Mixercast you can email it to friends, post it directly to your MySpace Blogger or Meebo page, or take the embed code and embed it on your own webpage. If you have a lot of images to share this is a fun and easy way to do it.

[Via GigaOm]

[via] Download Squad

StumbleUpon lets you find random Wikipedia, Myspace pages

How often have you been using the StumbleUpon toolbar to find random sites on the internet when you stopped and said to yourself, wouldn't it be great if I could specify that I want to find random government web sites, or perhaps PBS pages?

Umm yeah. Well, meeting a demand that may not have existed, StumbleUpon has launched a new feature called StumbleThru.

Basically, you can go to the StumbleThru start page and click on Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, Blogspot, WordPress, The onion, PBS, Physorg, CNN, the BBC, .GOV, or .EDU. You'll be taken to a page that fits the description.

The selection's not exactly random. You'll only be taken to a site that's been rated highly by fellow stumblers. If you happen across a page fitting these criteria that you like during your non-stumbling adventures on the internet, you can use the StumbleUpon toolbar to give it a thumbs up, and presumably future StumbleThru users could be directed to that site. Another interesting thing to note is that once you click on Wikipedia, BBC, or any other StumbleThru selection, all the pages you Stumble to will be in that category until you select another category or reset your toolbar to "all."

In other news... there's no update yet on the rumor that eBay is purchasing StumbleUpon.

[via Mashable]

[via] Download Squad

How many page views a month does a Web 2.0 company need to get an IPO?

We are in a crazy time right now as far as internet companies go. Just like 1999, they are popping up everywhere, and everyone is doing something 2.0 related. Only difference now, they are all online based applications.

Well, what would it take for a Web 2.0 company to hold an initial public offering? Michael Kanellos looked into this with Opus Capital partner Ken Elefant. Ken stated that his firm will not even think about investing in a 2.0 company unless they have one billion or more page views.

So what's the math here? A web 2.0 company needs to pull in at least $5 million/ month to be independent. Ultimately what Ken says is that in order for companies to be viable, their best bet is to get bought out by an established player. For more on Michael's findings check out Cnet.

[image via TechStartups]

[via] Download Squad

Better Gmail Firefox add-on

Gmail could very well be one of the most hackable web services of all time. One only needs to check our Gmail tag to see what tools are available for enhancing one's experience, and now we have a slick new cross-platform Firefox add-on to link to from our friends at Lifehacker: Better Gmail. As its name suggests, Better Gmail rounds up a number of popular Greasemonkey scripts and other extras into a handy management UI, complete with links to homepages if you need to find out more about any of the included extras. As you can see, this add-on packs a wallop, including many of our old (and new) favorites such as the Macros script (for many more keyboard shortcuts Gmail should really have in the first place), an Unlabelled label hack and a Filter Assistant which brings that handy email client functionality of building filters from a currently selected message. Of course, one could run out and find all these scripts on their own, but Better Gmail takes the clicking out of that process and wraps all this great stuff into one handy extension, complete with the ability to disable it all in one fell swoop in case you need to get back to Gmail's basics.

Better Gmail is of course provided for free here.

[via] Download Squad

Google enters the video conferencing market

Google has purchased Swedish video conferencing company Marratech, possibly with the goal of adding a video conferencing application to Google Pack or Google Apps.

Unlike several competing video conferencing applications, Marratech requires a desktop download. Clients are available for PC and Mac users. This would hardly be the first desktop application from Google, which already offers the Google Desktop search program and the Picasa picture organizing software.

But it would also be interesting to see Google tie video conferencing into its online office suite, allowing users to discuss documents, spreadsheets, and presentations all from a single web-based interface.

No word on when Google will launch its video conferencing application or how much it will resemble Marratech's current offering.

[via] Download Squad

Create a video inbox with EyeJot

Eyejot takes basic email and combines it with video to give you...video email. With Eyejot you can send and receive video messages with friends and business colleagues. The service is free, and doesn't require you to download any software or install anything to get started. Your inbox is an inbox of video that can be viewed directly on the webpage from any computer or any browser where ever you are.

The service could be great for people who travel but want to keep in contact with their children or family members who are in a different time zone or for people who always have the problem of coming off the wrong way in emails. Your Eyejots are not designed to be broadcast, or sent to large groups of people, but rather as a way to communicate through video emails.

The service is completely free , with a minimal cost "Premium version" expected soon that will allow users to receive messages on their mobile phones as well as email and record longer messages.

[Via EmilyChang]

[via] Download Squad

Fit websites on your mobile browser with Mowser

Web browsers on mobile phones and PDAs are notoriously bad at rendering web pages meant to be viewed on monitors with resolutions of 1024x768 or higher resolutions. Pages can take an incredibly long time to load, and once they do, you're often presented with the least important information first as the browser puts all the navigation links from the left side of the page first, followed by the content.

Mowser is one of the latest web-based solutions for these problems. There's no program to download, just one website to bookmark. You navigate to Mowers.com, and then type in the URL of the page you want to visit. Mowser splits the page up into a series of smaller pages that will load faster. It also strips out most of the graphics.

The site also has a list of popular sites that are already designed for the small screen.

Overall, the idea is great, but the execution is so-so. For example, if you use the link to the New York Times News River, everything looks great on a mobile browser. But if you type www.nytimes.com into Mowser, the first screen you see is a page of navigation links. It's not until halfway through the second page that you start to get articles.

The developer has a video walkthrough on the company blog if you want to get a full look at Mowser's features. For a list of similar resources, check out Download Squad's roundup of mobile start pages.

[via WebWare]

[via] Download Squad

Apple in position to strong-arm record labels

Legal music downloading is like bottled water. To a lot of people it seems strange to pay for something that you can easily get for free. But like bottled water, legal downloading has become popular. There are people who pay for music. They're out there. And in this game of legal digital music, Apple is king. iTunes has long dominated the market, and they show no signs of slowing down.

In fact, they took a step in the direction of tightening their stranglehold on the every-growing digital music world when they struck a deal recently with EMI music. You see, EMI shareholders were worried that their company was falling behind in the digital music race, and EMI wanted to do something about it. So, like a big city con-man spotting an overweight Midwesterner with a fanny-pack, Apple came running. They convinced EMI to let them sell music owned by EMI with no anti-piracy protection whatsoever. The lack of any Digital Rights Management on the music would allow Apple to have iTunes/iPod interact with other technology platforms, which is something being pushed on them by European regulators. The fact the EMI -- the third largest record company -- would sign such a deal places huge pressure on other record companies to follow suit. Since Apple holds 80% of all North American digital music sales will allow them to use the EMI deal to push around the other companies, and likely get it's way.

Apple pushing other companies around? Trying to force companies into shaky deals that are only of benefit to themselves? Who are they trying to be, Microsoft?

[via] Download Squad

Outsource your dirty work with Do My Stuff

Today after work you have to pick up your dry cleaning, get an oil change, pick up the kids from soccer practice, buy groceries, make reservations for dinner, and find a birthday card for your mother in law. Short on time? Why not hire someone else to do it?

DoMyStuff is a new website designed to find other people to do your dirty work for you. On the site you can list "anything" you need to have done and then allow others to bid on your task. When you post your listing you can decide how long people have to bid as well as limit those allowed to bid by their location or user rating. Once bidding ends users can select an assistant from applicants. Payments are placed in an escrow account to make sure everyone stays honest, and there is a message board where clients can communicate with the people they hire while they're completing longer tasks.

The site is very similar to RentaCoder which specializes in outsourcing software and website assistance, except for people who need help with day to day tasks rather than code.

[Via ArsTechnica]

[via] Download Squad

Teenie Bopper social network site Piczo gets a larger vocabulary

One thing that tends to take a while in the Web 2.0 market is the expansion to non-English speaking markets. Even Google is guilty of waiting a while to open up services for non-English speaking residents of the world.

Piczo, the social network that specializes in the teen market, has finally expanded to include other languages. The second place superstar in the social space for teens now has international versions for users in Germany, France and Spain.

It's a move that hasn't come soon enough for the over 1.2 million users in Germany alone. Piczo's current user base is approx. 25 million users worldwide.

[via webware]

[via] Download Squad

Web designers RIP, Zude is here

Seems like someone has some kind of beef with web designers, or a passion to see more bad design online, but at least it seems like a cool service.

Zude is a new online service that lets people quickly and easily design their own websites. Through the Web 2.0 technology that Zude employs, people will be able to drag and drop content creating enhancements for the MySpace sites of the internet. This includes widgets, pictures, videos and images with the ability to resize, rotate and move the elements around the page.

Zude launches May 1st, and the scheduled fee for the service will be $25 a year for a blank customizable space. The premise for the service is great. It allows people that are not able to code and put together a website the ability to express themselves online, but are we headed to a geocities, MySpace, everything all over the place online world? Just as long as this service doesn't extend to the business sector, web designers should still be employable (we hope).

[via profy]

[via] Download Squad

Library Thing - "Facebook for books"

If you're a book lover, Library Thing is a useful tool to help you catalog your books online, write and read book reviews, see what other people like you may be reading and participate in book discussion threads. In a matter of a few minutes you can add books to your online catalog, tag 'em, and rate them using a star system. Based on your selections, you can then see who else shares your excellent taste in their own book arsenals. Think Facebook for books.

You can catalog up to 200 books for free and if you go beyond that you can get a paid account for $10 per year or $25 for a lifetime membership. There's a little widget you can add to your blog, if you wish, which shows visitors what you're reading. Library Thing is currently beta-testing LiveJournal and MySpace widgets.

Some other nice features include:

Import data from files and web pages. Supports Delicious Library, BookCollector, Amazon Wishlists.
Export all records as tab delimited text.
Mobile look-up - http://www.librarything.com/m/

[via] Download Squad

How to reduce disk space used by Windows Vista system restore

So you just bought a new notebook with Windows Vista and a roomy 120GB hard drive. But after using it for just a couple of days, you notice that you've only got about 90GB free. You could swear there was more room available when you brought it home, so it can't be that Windows takes up 30GB. And you hadn't installed too many programs yet, or added your entire music and video collection yet. So what gives?

Well, it turns out Windows Vista handles system restore a little differently than Windows XP. Whereas with XP, you could adjust how much memory system restore took up with a little slider bar, there's no visible way to adjust your system restore memory settings on Vista. And by default, Windows sets aside a hefty 15% of your hard drive.

In principal, this is great, because not only is Windows backing up your system settings, but there's a new feature that copies your files as well, making it easy to restore your system in the event of an emergency. But while Windows Vista Home Premium will backup those files for you, it turns out that you need to upgrade to Vista Ultimate if you actually want to restore from that backup. If you have no intention of doing that, here's how you can adjust the amount of memory your computer allocates for system restore:

Continue reading How to reduce disk space used by Windows Vista system restore

[via] Download Squad

BuyYourFriendADrink does just what it says

How many startups does it take to screw in a light bulb? Probably just one, but while nobody's created screwinalightbulb.com, it seems like there's a new Web 2.0 startup to do just about everything else. Today's example of a service you didn't know you needed? BuyYourFriendADrink.com, which lets you... buy a drink for a friend online.

Here's how it works, you login to the website and order a drink for a certain dollar amount. Your friend is sent a code that can be redeemed at participating bars. Right now, about 40 bars in and around New York City are signed up, and the company plans to expand to other metropolitan areas later this year.

But does it work? WebWare's Caroline McCarthy reports that it does. She received a code as a text message, showed her phone at a New York bar, and the bartender entered the code into the bar's credit card system the same way she would for a gift certificate.

While this might not be that useful in everyday life, it's nice to know you can buy your friends a drink even if they live in New York and you're in Chicago. Or perhaps it's a good way to make sure you don't drink too much on a given evening. Just send yourself enough money for two or three beverages before you head out and leave your cash and credit cards at home.

[via WebWare]

[via] Download Squad

Windows Live Spaces gets an facelift

Windows Live Spaces launched some new features yesterday turning the site into more of a social networking site than the pure blogging/homepage site it once was.

The newness starts with a new homepage design that keeps you up-to-date with changes in your friends pages. In addition to the basic homepage changes users can now send personal messages back and forth as well as add a guest book to their page that allows other users to leave photos and videos as comments.

For those who want to add a little more flair to their Live Space the site has added more customizable options for pages allowing you to incorporate personal photos into your page design or choose from built-in templates. Photo albums also received a slight upgrade; allowing you to view all of your photo albums on the same page.

Microsoft is getting serious about Web 2.0, and only 2 full years behind the rest of the world.