Yahoo is reported to be working on a new social networking service that matches college students to employers. Yahoo Kickstart give users profile pages which are focused on the user’s resume, LinkedIn style, as opposed to a Facebook or MySpace profile. Corporations and wannabe employers are then provided with groups that users can join, but with a catch: to join a group you need an invite via a former student who works at that company. For those users who would prefer something a little more social, University pages are open to all students and include discussion forums, bulletins and events. According to CNet, Yahoo Kickstart is currently a concept only and may or may not see the light of day, either as a stand alone product or as part of an existing Yahoo property such as 360. Yahoo’s has been trying to deal itself in to the hot social networking space for some time, but with little or no success. The Yahoo 360 blogging come social networking product never took off and Yahoo failed to acquire Facebook. There were even rumors that Yahoo was trying to buy Bebo in May. More recently Yahoo was rumored to be working on a social networking product by the name of Yahoo Mosh. → Read More
White label video host Fliqz launched a toolbar (IE only) that lets you easily upload and embed video content anywhere embed code is accepted. It doesn’t require a registration and hosts the videos on Fliqz servers for free. It’s a sort of distributed YouTube. Getting a video up is simple. Just select the content from your computer and press upload. Once uploaded the toolbar will spit back some embed code so you can embed the video in a Fliqz player like below. Fliqz also remembers your upload history in case you want to embed them on multiple sites. There also appears to be no limit to how much you can upload and no easy way to discover who’s responsible for posting copyrighted content. Flock has a similar video management functionality for YouTube built into their browser, minus the hosting. http://www.fliqz.com/players/base/swf/FliqzBasePlayer.swf?playerSkin=http://www.fliqz.com/players/base/swf/FliqzPlayer.swf&file=6633cbc639af4730ba03e0aa6dbaa28c&hidepanel=1&autoplay=0&progressive=1&wsdl=http://services.fliqz.com/API/videoservice/052907/wsdl.xml&allowFullScreen=true → Read More
The New York Times is reporting that NBC will not renew its contract to distribute television shows via Apple’s iTunes service. The agreement was set to autorenew at the end of 2007, but includes a provision that allows NBC to terminate the agreement at the end of the first term with 90 days notice. Disagreements over pricing and DRM seem to be behind the decision. That means iTunes users will not be able to download popular NBC shows, including Battlestar Galactica, The Office and Heroes, to their iPods. Was the decision influenced by NBC’s ownership stake in the iTunes-competitive upcoming Hulu service? Almost certainly. The last thing the TV networks want to see is Apple having the kind of control over TV content that they do with music – 76% of online music sales come from iTunes. NBC accounts for 40% of digital video downloads on iTunes. → Read More
Here’s a strange new social site that we just got a tip on – ArtOfOffice is a Microsoft site that launched yesterday. It is a place for Mac users to upload artistic content made using Office applications. The community then shares, rates, remixes and discusses the content with other Mac users. See here and here for example content. As far as I can tell you don’t actually have to be using the Mac version of Office to use the site. Mac users are not impressed, however. Mostly because the announcement of ArtOfOffice came shortly after the announced delay of Mac Office 2008 from 2007 to 2008. Users were left wondering about Microsoft’s priorities. In the blog post announcing the new products, the Microsoft Mac team was lambasted for wasting time on side projects while Office 2008 was delayed. The first comment to the post: Us: Where’s Office 2008 and what’s in it? You: Look at this nifty website we found! Another reader: Jesus, have you guys got a product to ship deadline or not? And: Whether or not it took even five seconds of your time, it just looks bad and it sends the wrong message. Read the comments that follow nearly every post you guys put on this blog. Understand the very real frustrations people have with your product. Realize that people are very skeptical that you are going to do much of anything to resolve the issues in the next version of office. In that perceptual environment, does it make good PR sense to unveil some art site? Or, even though it took no staff resources, do you maybe just not go there. Don’t you think it makes it look like you have all the wrong priorities from the perspective of your customers? All we know is that while no one is willing to tell us much, if anything, about how our myriad problems with your product are getting solved in the next version, you sure found it important to let us know about some art site. The disconnect between you guys and your user base is truly stunning. The Mac team responded by saying that the project wouldn’t cost them “even a day” in shipping Office 2008, but the negative comments kept coming in. The timing of the launch of this new site was, perhaps, a little off. Thanks for the tip Amit. → Read More
The Twitter team must have had a Red Bull machine installed at the offices, because suddenly they’re launching new stuff left and right. They recently added search and Gmail import features to the service. And on Friday they are launching a new area of the site called “Explore” where they’ll list some of the tools people can use to interact with Twitter off the site itself. Along with Explore they will also be releasing a new visualization tool called Twitter Blocks – “an abstract way to navigate your Twitter neighborhood or block. Twitter sent us these screen shots but we haven’t had a chance to see it in action yet. Cofounder Biz Stone says “It’s a crazy, interactive, animated 3D application so it’s easier to understand when you interact with it.” Twitter brought in Stamen Design to help with the project, the same team behind some of the Digg visualization tools launched last year. Motorola is sponsoring the new Explore site. Screen shots below: → Read More
PeekYou is a fairly new site that competes in a growingly crowded people search space. The site offers the standard features we’ve come to expect from people focused search sites. A general user profile includes tags, which are divided into three categories (life, work and school) for context, web links including social network profiles, bio and picture. PeekYou was founded by Michael Hussey, the creator of sites including RateMyTeachers.com which were later acquired to MTV. Hussey sees PeekYou as being “the ultimate reindexing of the web and a virtual people pages, spanning the entire web and assigning unique identities to individuals made up of everything from Social Networking pages, blog posts, news stories and known online aliases.” OK, so that is a handful, but he is at least aiming high. The site launched in July 2007. PeekYou competes directly with Spock and in some respect with Wink as well (see our Spock coverage here, others here), so a direct comparison is called for. I like PeekYou in some ways more than Spock. It could be the aesthetics: PeekYou is much nicer to look at and seems to play more nicely as well in terms of editing, where as Spock may provide better links due to its higher user numbers, but it just doesn’t look nearly as nice. The data in PeekYou, at least for the couple of people I checked, also seems to be more accessible (for now). For example, comparing Michael Arrington on PeekYou and Spock (here and here) you get an immediate idea on what Michael is about in PeekYou, where as in Spock there may be more tags and relationships, but they are partially buried and not always immediately clear in terms of context. All up, Spock may be getting all the attention, but PeekYou does offer a decent alternative. → Read More
French social video site DailyMotion has raised a $34 million round from Advent Venture Partners LLP and AGF Private Equity, a division of Allianz AG. The new round comes on top of $9.5 million in previous financing from Atlas Ventures and Partech International. The round puts DailyMotion’s total financing beyond that of their competitors, even MetaCafe’s $45 million total financing. Dailymotion’s executive chairman, Mark Zaleski, said the new funds will “allow us to reach operating profitability”. These larger investments may be a sign of increasingly competitive times or a desire to take their companies all the way to a public offering. YouTube only raised $11.5 million to reach their exit. DailyMotion has faired well in the competition for second place amongst video sites. They currently attract 37 million visitors a month. Some of this success is no doubt due to the viewers drawn to pirated content hosted on the site. For instance you can still get complete episodes of The Office. They were also recently found guilty of copyright infringement in July. This is despite implementing Audible Magic’s fingerprinting technology back in June. However, as others have, they are seeking to clean up their act. When they launched in the U.S., they announced they would seek legal content deals and begin rewarding top content producers. Today’s announcement is more specific, highlighting plans to negotiate deals with makers of music, movies and TV shows. Dailymotion has already signed deals with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Another French company Blogmusik cleared its record in France, signing a deal to continue streaming music as part of a suspected revenue sharing plan. U.S. based Pandora is still kept from going international because of the webradio royalty rates. → Read More
If at first you don’t succeed in suing an anti-spyware maker for identifying your program as spyware, try, try again. Apparently adware/spyware peddler, Zango, didn’t like PCTools and Kaspersky Antivirus calling it like they see it. → Read More
Let me start by saying that I’m the proud owner for a 37-inch Olevia LCD HDTV. I love the thing. I got it brand new at Fry’s for under $600, including tax. That’s a fantastic deal, especially since the TV itself is kickass. But now I’m thinking upgrade, as Syntax is unveiling a 65-inch LCoS TV next week, and it promises to kickass as well. LCoS is a cousin to both DLP and LCD, using the mirror theory behind DLP but with standard liquid crystals, on silicon (not silicone). It makes for a bright, clear picture, and is relatively cheap to manufacture. That means this 65-inch, 1080P HDTV will retail for under two-large, a great deal. We’re looking forward to seeing this unit in doorbuster specials on Black Friday, so keep us on your screen between now and then to see how low it goes. Press Release [via Slippery Brick] → Read More
Oh, boy, the first pictures of the Zune 2. All credit to the Giz, if you couldn’t tell by the inconspicuous watermarkage. We can deduce from the one and only picture that there will be two models, a regular, hard drive-based model (80GB) and a 4/8GB flash-based model. AKA, exactly what you’d expect from a DAP/PMP in 2007. Take note, Apple. Supposedly, the photos have been corroborated by a second source, but who could put it past Microsoft to pepper the Internet with fakes and mockups? First Zune 2 and Zune Flash Shots [GIZMODO] → Read More
I’m pretty sure this I’ve seen this thesis before, but who am I to argue with an Australian newspaper I’ve never heard of? The long and short of it is, the PS2 is a long ways away from tapping out. Sony likes to think the system has a good three to four years left, but developers are more likely to say that the number’s closer to two to three years. Either way, the system with the dumbest commercials ever is still kicking. → Read More
HP’s new dx2250 desktop — and AMD-based workstation — will come pre-loaded with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The PC, which will cost about $500, is currently available in Australia because, as we all know, kangaroos live there. → Read More
The above image illustrates what I’ve been feeling for years now. And you’re all welcome. From XKCD [Good Comics] → Read More
Would you trust him to unlock your iPhone? Fact: it is legal to unlock your iPhone. Sorta. The AP—you may have heard of it—decided to see just how legal it is for Joe User to unlock his iPhone. As it turns out, so long as you’re unlocking the iPhone and there’s no money involved (unlike other organizations that wanted to charge a fee for the service), it seems you’re in the clear. It’s when an individual or individuals decide to make money that AT&T may be able to sue you into the stone age. Basically, Craig from Degrassi inspired the AP to investigate the whole deal. An act from the Library of Congress last year should mean that Craig and those like him are safe and sound. No doubt everyone on Slashdot would agree. IPhone Hackers Could Face Legal Battle [AP/Yahoo via AppleInsider] → Read More
Good for you, Sony. You get points for finally throwing in the towel on your CONNECT Music Service. Granted you stopped trying to patch it well over a year ago and it never really worked correctly in the first place but kudos to you for shutting it down by March of next year. That oughta give all those people who never used the service a chance to back up all the songs they never purchased. → Read More
DesignMyRoom launched this afternoon – It’s a new product from a company called Swatchbox Technologies that allows people to decorate a real room virtually via a photograph of the room and DesignMyRoom’s library of stuff. Previously the company, which has been around for 11 years, sold 2 million copies of desktop software that has similar functionality as the online tool. If you thought MyMiniLife was cool, wait until you spend some time playing around with this. The first step is to pick an empty room, or upload a photo of your own room. You then start decorating it by adding a floor, paint, fixtures, furniture, etc. I made my own room during testing – see the before and after photos above. I also made the project public, so anyone can log in to it and make changes. Have at it. Objects can be resized, rotated and moved around the room. The next step, the company says, is to allow users to upload their own images and insert them into the room. They’ve also paid attention to details – notice the shadows behind the clover and the lamp, for example, and the light coming into the room from the windows. It also would be great if they created an embeddable version of the projects (something I assume they’ll do eventually). There is a clear and really good business model here – selling people the real stuff once they’ve seen it virtually in their room. The company also makes money through product placement and other advertising. → Read More
How many pictures are stored in your cell phone? It’s a rhetorical question, but I can speculate that there are a bunch. Camera phones aren’t new, but until recently the picture quality, well for lack of a better description, sucked. Three years ago I took a picture of Bill Cosby and not one single person who I showed it to could tell it was him. Still, I do take pictures with my camera phone and I have been searching for a better solution. I tried posting the photos on the phone company’s site, but that required me to have to go to their web address to view them. One day, I went to see my pictures and they were gone, timed out. Next, I tried emailing them to myself (and others) and while that worked, I was paying the phone company for the privilege of sending myself an email of pictures to store or print. Of course the photos sucked anyway, so why even bother? → Read More
The image carving/resizing video we posted last week has sparked quite a conversation. Most people have been very positive, although there has already been at least one response saying its a bad thing for the web (which seems a little dramatic to me). Patrick Swieskowski emailed us this afternoon to say he’s created an online demo of the idea, based on using the seams of images to make the alterations. It shows how well this works in action, and users can upload their own images and manipulate them. For now images can only be shrunk. Pat says he’s working on a way to increase the size of images by seam insertion, too. → Read More
There are several startups gunning to be the top Facebook ad platform: Lookery, FBExchange, RockYou, and Cubics. SocialMedia also became one of the early players when they launched their Appsaholic advertising network soon after F8. Previously only a select group of developers were able to sell ads through the service. However, they’ve now opened it to everyone through a self-service model, and some developers are making some real cash off of the service. Appsaholic isn’t banner advertising like Lookery offers, or developers can get through traditional ad networks. Instead, Appsaholic sells click-throughs to other Facebook applications across their network of affiliated sites. It’s similar to FB Exchange’s link exchange model, but has more features (reporting) and seems easier to use (FBEx requires separate filings, Appsaholic can use PayPal). They have plans for other models as well, including a advertising that rewards users for engaging in advertisements. How It Works Developers become a member of the network by tracking their application on Appsaholic and adding some embed code to their application. The embed code adds an iFrame that serves paid links on their affiliates’ applications. The links go to the highest “AdRanked” advertising developer on their live bidding market. AdRank is determined by multiplying two factors, the offered price per click, and the advertising application’s quality score. The quality score is based on a function of the application’s clickthrough rate and viral growth within the network. The idea is that higher quality applications should be rewarded with cheaper advertising. This dissuades disliked apps from spamming the service. So, for example, a developer whose application has a quality score of 60 and is willing to bid $.10 per click, has an AdRank of 6. Since ads are served in AdRanked order, the developer could boost his AdRank and position in the queue by bidding a bit higher. Currently PPC rates are 10 to 20 cents. Appsaholic takes 12-30% of that revenue. How It Pays While that doesn’t sound like a lot, people are still making some significant cash off the platform. Click through rates vary from 0.2%-3.0%, effectively paying about $0.60-$3.00 for every thousand visitors to your application. SocialMedia’s Seth Goldstein is optimistic and only sees these rates as the beginning. The company cites Greg Thompson as one of their recent successes. Thompson, a contract programmer from London, Ontario, is known for making the popular Facebook application My Aquarium. The application has → Read More
So this PMP looks kinda neat. It’s from LG and it’s called the T54, not to be confused with the T1000. It’s more or less the same PMP you can find in any Best Buy or yard sale at this point: 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacities, plays every audio/video format under the sun (save for AAC), built-in FM radio and DMB, etc. One more pic where? → Read More
San Francisco, CA
