The heat index in most of the Northeast has been a few degrees into the triple digits for three days. But as your friends here at Appscout will gladly tell you, the Internet never sleep--for that matter, neither do award ceremonies. With that in mind, armies of Web stars in various interpretations of formal attire descended upon NYU's Skirball Center for Performing Arts for the 2008 Webby Film and Video Awards.
Chloe Albanesius is working on a post that will feature a complete rundown of the event, including all the now-infamous five-word acceptance speeches. For me, the high point of the evening was partaking in the red-carpet press gauntlet and getting a chance to chat up some comedy legends such as David Wain (pictured above, a self-proclaimed AppScout fan--I'll refrain from going all fanboy and declaring Wet Hot American Summer the funniest movie of all time), Lorne Michaels, Seth Myers, Tim and Eric, and the night's host, Judah Friedlander. We also spoke with Michel Gondry and Rosie Perez, as well as Web stars like Tay Zonday and the Obama Girl, Amber Lee Etting.
After the jump, videos of Tay Zonday singing Weezer, Amber Lee Etting waxing analytic about VP nominees, Tim and Eric talking about sketch-comedy PC optimization, an utterly confused David Wain, and more.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Best TV On the Web: Wainy Days
Don't know David Wain? Learn his name. He's making some of the funnier--and oh-so-definitely not-safe-for-work--online videos on his weekly show, Wainy Days. It's a "channel" on the Web site My Damn Channel.
I'd never heard of Wain until stumbling upon Wainy Days by accident, after following links for the Internet phenomenon called You Suck at Photoshop. In Wainy Days, Wain plays a fictionalized version of himself, constantly on the hunt for love. Or, just as often, sex. Non sequiturs and breaks with reality and the fourth wall are de rigueur. So is the recurring gag of pushing people down as they pass on the street.
A typical episode usually features Wain meeting a girl, getting the girl, and losing the girl in the most ridiculous way possible. For example, in "Dorvid Days," he runs off to LA to be with his online girlfriend Nora. She introduces him to her brother with "Stephen Hawking Disease." The brother gets lost and is mistaken for an ice cream cart by the ice cream guy. (Yeah, you read that right). Wain saves the brother. But the girl breaks up with Wain for the ice cream guy anyway.
And that's a polite example, one of the few that doesn't feature some over-the-top comedic violence, ridiculous sexual situations, and/or copious amounts of bodily fluids. (Did I mention it's NSFW? Seriously. Even with no nudity.)
Wain's street cred: He is the co-creator of comedy groups The State and Stella and directed the films Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten. The latter, recently released on DVD and iTunes, is heavily (but not annoyingly) pimped on all the most recent Wainy Days episodes. (And it's on my Netflix queue, believe me.)
Since Wain actually knows a ton of Hollywood talent from his films, he features actors you've actually heard of as guests on Wainy Days, including Rob Corddry (The Daily Show), Jonah Hill (SuperBad), Paul Rudd (The Ten, 40-Year-Old Virgin) and David Krumholtz (Numb3rs). And Wain is frequently helped out behind the scenes by former Stella and The State comrades such as Michael Ian Black--the man who used to be the voice of the beloved-by-some Pets.com sock puppet.
What's more, Wain knows many a cute starlet, and he usually casts them in roles where he can make out with them (at the very least). Who can blame him? Elizabeth Banks (Slither, Scrubs), Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein, Notes from the Underbelly), Callie Thorne (Rescue Me), Tawny Cypress (Heroes), and Julie Bowen (Lost, Boston Legal) have all felt the brunt of Wain's on-screen affections. Rashida Jones (The Office), however, played Wain in drag.
My Damn Channel is only six month old but is churning out the funny. Other shows are run by Harry Shearer (every other voice on The Simpsons) and bizarro "teen" comedian Andy Milonakis. Artists at My Damn Channel get 100 percent creative control, which is obvious. The kinds of things Wain pulls off would never make it on regular network television (well, maybe on HBO or IFC). That lack of a filter means the average viewer has to really like the artist's sense of humor to enjoy the show. In the case of Wainy Days, count me as a fan. The "second season finale" for Wainy Days is coming in February, so catch up now.
I'd never heard of Wain until stumbling upon Wainy Days by accident, after following links for the Internet phenomenon called You Suck at Photoshop. In Wainy Days, Wain plays a fictionalized version of himself, constantly on the hunt for love. Or, just as often, sex. Non sequiturs and breaks with reality and the fourth wall are de rigueur. So is the recurring gag of pushing people down as they pass on the street.
A typical episode usually features Wain meeting a girl, getting the girl, and losing the girl in the most ridiculous way possible. For example, in "Dorvid Days," he runs off to LA to be with his online girlfriend Nora. She introduces him to her brother with "Stephen Hawking Disease." The brother gets lost and is mistaken for an ice cream cart by the ice cream guy. (Yeah, you read that right). Wain saves the brother. But the girl breaks up with Wain for the ice cream guy anyway.
And that's a polite example, one of the few that doesn't feature some over-the-top comedic violence, ridiculous sexual situations, and/or copious amounts of bodily fluids. (Did I mention it's NSFW? Seriously. Even with no nudity.)
Wain's street cred: He is the co-creator of comedy groups The State and Stella and directed the films Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten. The latter, recently released on DVD and iTunes, is heavily (but not annoyingly) pimped on all the most recent Wainy Days episodes. (And it's on my Netflix queue, believe me.)
Since Wain actually knows a ton of Hollywood talent from his films, he features actors you've actually heard of as guests on Wainy Days, including Rob Corddry (The Daily Show), Jonah Hill (SuperBad), Paul Rudd (The Ten, 40-Year-Old Virgin) and David Krumholtz (Numb3rs). And Wain is frequently helped out behind the scenes by former Stella and The State comrades such as Michael Ian Black--the man who used to be the voice of the beloved-by-some Pets.com sock puppet.
What's more, Wain knows many a cute starlet, and he usually casts them in roles where he can make out with them (at the very least). Who can blame him? Elizabeth Banks (Slither, Scrubs), Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein, Notes from the Underbelly), Callie Thorne (Rescue Me), Tawny Cypress (Heroes), and Julie Bowen (Lost, Boston Legal) have all felt the brunt of Wain's on-screen affections. Rashida Jones (The Office), however, played Wain in drag.
My Damn Channel is only six month old but is churning out the funny. Other shows are run by Harry Shearer (every other voice on The Simpsons) and bizarro "teen" comedian Andy Milonakis. Artists at My Damn Channel get 100 percent creative control, which is obvious. The kinds of things Wain pulls off would never make it on regular network television (well, maybe on HBO or IFC). That lack of a filter means the average viewer has to really like the artist's sense of humor to enjoy the show. In the case of Wainy Days, count me as a fan. The "second season finale" for Wainy Days is coming in February, so catch up now.
Wainy Days Season 3 Premiers on MyDamnChannel
We got an e-mail from the folks at MyDamnChannel, letting us know about the premier of the third season of that old Appscout favorite, Wainy Days. Eric Griffith wrote up the show back in January upon stumbling upon it after a late night You Suck at Photoshop binge (we've all been there, right?).
We caught up with Wain again a few weeks back, when he was accepting a Webby for best online comedy series, alongside the aforementioned Photoshop duo.
If you haven't seen the show yet, the good and bad news is that you can catch up with the entire series in one sitting. Fans of Wain's work with sketch groups Stella and The State pretty much know what they're in for, but if you're unfamiliar with Wain's work, it ought be mentioned that Eric typed the letters NSFW about a half-dozen times in his writeup of the show.
Check out the new season here.
We caught up with Wain again a few weeks back, when he was accepting a Webby for best online comedy series, alongside the aforementioned Photoshop duo.
If you haven't seen the show yet, the good and bad news is that you can catch up with the entire series in one sitting. Fans of Wain's work with sketch groups Stella and The State pretty much know what they're in for, but if you're unfamiliar with Wain's work, it ought be mentioned that Eric typed the letters NSFW about a half-dozen times in his writeup of the show.
Check out the new season here.
Hands On with Paglo: A Search Engine for IT
One issue that a number of small and medium-sized businesses face when managing their IT infrastructure is keeping tabs on where everything is and what condition it's all in. From the condition of desktops across the organization to the types of servers in the datacenter and what they're all running to the number of mobile devices on the network, IT departments are organizations of any size need effective and efficient ways to gather information about their environment and changes in it at a moment's notice.
Paglo can help. I've been playing with Paglo for the past several weeks since its private beta went public, and I've been hard pressed to find a better tool to collect the wealth of data that Paglo does on all aspects of a business's IT infrastructure. Add to this the number of ways that Paglo allows you to conveniently customize dashboards and reports for ease of retrieval, and you have a service that could make IT executives at a number of modestly-sized companies very happy.
Many IT departments struggle with the challenge of how to manage and collect information about their infrastructure easily. I've been involved with IT departments making the transition between small business to large enterprise, and the task is much more daunting than simply making sure to keep a solid monitoring tool on at all times. It was difficult in the course of reading about and examining Paglo to try and pigeonhole it into a specific type of tool, like a monitoring tool, a configuration management database, an alerting tool, an asset management database. The truth is that Paglo does all of these things, and unlike many applications that try to do too many things at once, Paglo does them all pretty well.
At it's heart, Paglo is a search utility, and through the types of information you can obtain through targeted searches, IT staff can greatly minimize the time required to research and obtain information about their existing systems in order to diagnose issues, track changes, or proactively find problems.
Here's how it works: a systems administrator or engineer planning to use Paglo for the IT infrastructure that they manage downloads the Paglo crawler once the company is signed up with Paglo for service. They install the crawler on their own machine or any other computer with access to the corporate network, and the crawler than traverses the corporate network, collecting information about the company's IT infrastructure and sends it back to Paglo to be kept in the company's repository. Then, authorized users and IT administrators at the company can log in to Paglo's site to begin searching and retrieving information about their company's IT environment in a matter of moments.
The search functionality is where Paglo really shines. Because the crawler can collect a wealth of information about a company's IT environment, and uses a number of protocols to collect its information, you can use Paglo to not just see how many devices the crawler has encountered, but detailed information about those devices as well. For example, the Paglo crawler uses familiar protocols like SNMP to pull configuration data from servers, switches, and routers, so you can tell that the firewall that you knew was there is actually a Juniper SSG 500. You can see with a single search how many servers you have in your datacenter, and the breakdown of which ones are running what operating systems.
It would be one thing if Paglo stopped there, but it goes on to collect more information about the devices and systems it encounters, from firmware information to model and serial information--anything a systems admin may find useful, or an Operations Manager might find important when collecting broad information about their IT environment.
Paglo may sound daunting, but the service is extremely simple. When you log in, you're presented with a search bar and a brief glimpse at your available search index, that can include as much or little information as you like. The test account I used had inventory information, running processes and active devices on the corporate network, and a list of top searches, alerts, and dashboards at the bottom of the page. If, for example, I wanted all of my desktop and laptop users to grab a copy of the newly released Firefox 3 but didn't know how many of them already had it, I could simply type "Firefox" in the search bar to find any and all systems with Firefox in its configuration information. If I read about a vulnerability that's corrected by a specific Windows Server 2003 patch, I can see how many servers are missing it by searching for the patch number. I can even search for "devices by subnet" to see all of the devices on my network organized by their network segment.
As you perform searches that you think you'll do often, you can save those searches as "dashboards" that can be referred to quickly by any corporate user that logs into Paglo. The dashboards are available with one click from the sidebar menu, and the test account that I was given showed useful information like server CPU utilization, free disk space on all of the test company's servers, active alerts, and overall inventory of workstations, servers, printers, and other devices. Being able to access this type of information, like how much free disk space is available on xyz server, is critical to system administrations when trying to diagnose a problem. Being able to see this information easily in one tool without having to physically log on to the server to investigate can save time and energy. Being able to see how much free disk space is available across your entire datacenter however, can be a lifesaver and is critical reporting information for an IT department's internal customers at any business.
In addition to dashboards, you can turn your searches into alerts that will contact critical IT personnel when changes occur in your IT environment. For example, you can set Paglo to notify you when disk space gets low on a critical server, when a switch or router stops responding, or even something more nuanced like when a network printer is out of paper or a certain undesirable application appears on a system on your network.
Paglo offers its software as a service, meaning that Paglo hosts the application and its interface on their own and provides companies access to it for subscription fees. During its private beta, the company managed to sign up over 800 businesses, including universities, hospitals, and construction companies. The service is aimed primarily at businesses of small-to-medium sizes with about 50-1000 employees and IT resources that match up with those people.
The Paglo crawler is completely open source, so as the service gains traction in your organization, you can design plug-ins and add-ons to supplement the crawler's data collection abilities. Additionally, part of the benefit of Paglo offering its software as a service is that you have a broad community of Paglo users to share information with and draw knowledge from. If another company uising Paglo has developed an add-on that scans firewalls for active rulesets, that company can then publish the add-on to the Paglo community where other companies can then download it, use it, and even improve on it and re-post it.
Paglo calls these add-ons and tips "Share-Its," and encourages companies using the service to help each other solve difficult IT questions using Paglo, share their experiences using the service and how it's helped them manage their IT infrastructure, and even post the share-its they've developed for use in other organizations. Best of all, no company-specific data is posted with the share-it, just the add-on itself.
Security might be the only area that might make some companies a little wary of a service like Paglo. Because the service is hosted by Paglo and presented by Paglo to users, and because of the nature of a crawler like the one that collects information about your network and infrastructure and sends it to Paglo, some IT security personnel might need to be sold on the benefits of sending all of that sometimes sensitive technology information off-site to a third-party, even if it makes the environment easier to manage. Paglo makes every effort to keep company specific information private, but that may not be enough for some businesses who simply don't want to risk someone else knowing what they have in their datacenters or what applications their developers use or create. Paglo has no plans to offer their service to companies to deploy in-house, but when I asked about the issue of information security and possibly providing their search functionality to customers in-house, the response I got indicated that the door might be open to that type of offering in the future.
When I had the opportunity to speak to Paglo CEO Brian de Haaff and CTO Christopher Waters, they beamed about the broad functionality of their service and how valuable the information that Paglo collects could be to IT departments. The goal, they explained, is to provide a service that helps IT departments at small and mid-sized businesses that are often understaffed wrangle and manage increasingly complex IT environments and provide on-demand information about their applications, platforms, and infrastructure. Paglo is in open beta at the moment, and companies can sign up to use the service for free through the rest of the summer.
Paglo can help. I've been playing with Paglo for the past several weeks since its private beta went public, and I've been hard pressed to find a better tool to collect the wealth of data that Paglo does on all aspects of a business's IT infrastructure. Add to this the number of ways that Paglo allows you to conveniently customize dashboards and reports for ease of retrieval, and you have a service that could make IT executives at a number of modestly-sized companies very happy.
Many IT departments struggle with the challenge of how to manage and collect information about their infrastructure easily. I've been involved with IT departments making the transition between small business to large enterprise, and the task is much more daunting than simply making sure to keep a solid monitoring tool on at all times. It was difficult in the course of reading about and examining Paglo to try and pigeonhole it into a specific type of tool, like a monitoring tool, a configuration management database, an alerting tool, an asset management database. The truth is that Paglo does all of these things, and unlike many applications that try to do too many things at once, Paglo does them all pretty well.
At it's heart, Paglo is a search utility, and through the types of information you can obtain through targeted searches, IT staff can greatly minimize the time required to research and obtain information about their existing systems in order to diagnose issues, track changes, or proactively find problems.
Here's how it works: a systems administrator or engineer planning to use Paglo for the IT infrastructure that they manage downloads the Paglo crawler once the company is signed up with Paglo for service. They install the crawler on their own machine or any other computer with access to the corporate network, and the crawler than traverses the corporate network, collecting information about the company's IT infrastructure and sends it back to Paglo to be kept in the company's repository. Then, authorized users and IT administrators at the company can log in to Paglo's site to begin searching and retrieving information about their company's IT environment in a matter of moments.
The search functionality is where Paglo really shines. Because the crawler can collect a wealth of information about a company's IT environment, and uses a number of protocols to collect its information, you can use Paglo to not just see how many devices the crawler has encountered, but detailed information about those devices as well. For example, the Paglo crawler uses familiar protocols like SNMP to pull configuration data from servers, switches, and routers, so you can tell that the firewall that you knew was there is actually a Juniper SSG 500. You can see with a single search how many servers you have in your datacenter, and the breakdown of which ones are running what operating systems.
It would be one thing if Paglo stopped there, but it goes on to collect more information about the devices and systems it encounters, from firmware information to model and serial information--anything a systems admin may find useful, or an Operations Manager might find important when collecting broad information about their IT environment.
Paglo may sound daunting, but the service is extremely simple. When you log in, you're presented with a search bar and a brief glimpse at your available search index, that can include as much or little information as you like. The test account I used had inventory information, running processes and active devices on the corporate network, and a list of top searches, alerts, and dashboards at the bottom of the page. If, for example, I wanted all of my desktop and laptop users to grab a copy of the newly released Firefox 3 but didn't know how many of them already had it, I could simply type "Firefox" in the search bar to find any and all systems with Firefox in its configuration information. If I read about a vulnerability that's corrected by a specific Windows Server 2003 patch, I can see how many servers are missing it by searching for the patch number. I can even search for "devices by subnet" to see all of the devices on my network organized by their network segment.
As you perform searches that you think you'll do often, you can save those searches as "dashboards" that can be referred to quickly by any corporate user that logs into Paglo. The dashboards are available with one click from the sidebar menu, and the test account that I was given showed useful information like server CPU utilization, free disk space on all of the test company's servers, active alerts, and overall inventory of workstations, servers, printers, and other devices. Being able to access this type of information, like how much free disk space is available on xyz server, is critical to system administrations when trying to diagnose a problem. Being able to see this information easily in one tool without having to physically log on to the server to investigate can save time and energy. Being able to see how much free disk space is available across your entire datacenter however, can be a lifesaver and is critical reporting information for an IT department's internal customers at any business.
In addition to dashboards, you can turn your searches into alerts that will contact critical IT personnel when changes occur in your IT environment. For example, you can set Paglo to notify you when disk space gets low on a critical server, when a switch or router stops responding, or even something more nuanced like when a network printer is out of paper or a certain undesirable application appears on a system on your network.
Paglo offers its software as a service, meaning that Paglo hosts the application and its interface on their own and provides companies access to it for subscription fees. During its private beta, the company managed to sign up over 800 businesses, including universities, hospitals, and construction companies. The service is aimed primarily at businesses of small-to-medium sizes with about 50-1000 employees and IT resources that match up with those people.
The Paglo crawler is completely open source, so as the service gains traction in your organization, you can design plug-ins and add-ons to supplement the crawler's data collection abilities. Additionally, part of the benefit of Paglo offering its software as a service is that you have a broad community of Paglo users to share information with and draw knowledge from. If another company uising Paglo has developed an add-on that scans firewalls for active rulesets, that company can then publish the add-on to the Paglo community where other companies can then download it, use it, and even improve on it and re-post it.
Paglo calls these add-ons and tips "Share-Its," and encourages companies using the service to help each other solve difficult IT questions using Paglo, share their experiences using the service and how it's helped them manage their IT infrastructure, and even post the share-its they've developed for use in other organizations. Best of all, no company-specific data is posted with the share-it, just the add-on itself.
Security might be the only area that might make some companies a little wary of a service like Paglo. Because the service is hosted by Paglo and presented by Paglo to users, and because of the nature of a crawler like the one that collects information about your network and infrastructure and sends it to Paglo, some IT security personnel might need to be sold on the benefits of sending all of that sometimes sensitive technology information off-site to a third-party, even if it makes the environment easier to manage. Paglo makes every effort to keep company specific information private, but that may not be enough for some businesses who simply don't want to risk someone else knowing what they have in their datacenters or what applications their developers use or create. Paglo has no plans to offer their service to companies to deploy in-house, but when I asked about the issue of information security and possibly providing their search functionality to customers in-house, the response I got indicated that the door might be open to that type of offering in the future.
When I had the opportunity to speak to Paglo CEO Brian de Haaff and CTO Christopher Waters, they beamed about the broad functionality of their service and how valuable the information that Paglo collects could be to IT departments. The goal, they explained, is to provide a service that helps IT departments at small and mid-sized businesses that are often understaffed wrangle and manage increasingly complex IT environments and provide on-demand information about their applications, platforms, and infrastructure. Paglo is in open beta at the moment, and companies can sign up to use the service for free through the rest of the summer.
iTunes Store Hits 5 Billion Downloads
They may have seen a good deal of increased competition, as of late from the likes of mega retailers like Amazon, but Apple's iTunes store doesn't look like it'll be going away any time soon. The country's number one music retailer announced today that it had surpassed five billion downloads.
The online media store isn't doing too shabbily on the movie front, either. Users are currently purchasing 50,000 movies per day through iTunes, making it the world's most popular online movie store as well.
Now if only people would start buying iPods...
The online media store isn't doing too shabbily on the movie front, either. Users are currently purchasing 50,000 movies per day through iTunes, making it the world's most popular online movie store as well.
Now if only people would start buying iPods...
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Meez Launches Meez Nation, A Virtual World
Meez, a social entertainment community that allows users to create their own 3D animated avatars to socialize and play games, just announced the launched of its new virtual world, Meez Nation.
"The number one request from our community of more than 7 million users has been to add a virtual world," says Sean Ryan, CEO of Meez. "Meez Nation is a significant addition to our already potent mix of 3D avatars, a virtual economy and casual games. It will significantly boost user involvement and brand engagement on Meez."
You can use Meez Nation to explore a variety of neighborhoods, including public hangouts and personal Roomz that can be custom decorated and shared with friends. You can also stroll though the beaches of Chillville, walk in the wealthy area of Posh Heights, hang out in the metropolitan Uptown, cool down at a paradise called Arcadia, party at Hell's Kitchen, or stick around in the entry point neighborhood, Burbia.
The game includes the option to visit 50 Cent's Virtual Office to listen to songs from the artist's upcoming album. This room also allows you to participate in an animated rap battle and to purchase 50 Cent's music on iTunes through a provided link.
In the Roomz and neighborhoods of Meez Nation, you can chat among each other, listen to music, watch YouTube videos, and leave answering machine messages. In order to purchase items, you can also use Coinz, Meez Nation's virtual currency.
It appears that Meez Nation is providing a fun platform for teenagers and young adults to engage in, but how long will this virtual-world craze last? I think the success of Meez Nation will be dependent on how much the virtual world keeps up with the real world.
"The number one request from our community of more than 7 million users has been to add a virtual world," says Sean Ryan, CEO of Meez. "Meez Nation is a significant addition to our already potent mix of 3D avatars, a virtual economy and casual games. It will significantly boost user involvement and brand engagement on Meez."
You can use Meez Nation to explore a variety of neighborhoods, including public hangouts and personal Roomz that can be custom decorated and shared with friends. You can also stroll though the beaches of Chillville, walk in the wealthy area of Posh Heights, hang out in the metropolitan Uptown, cool down at a paradise called Arcadia, party at Hell's Kitchen, or stick around in the entry point neighborhood, Burbia.
The game includes the option to visit 50 Cent's Virtual Office to listen to songs from the artist's upcoming album. This room also allows you to participate in an animated rap battle and to purchase 50 Cent's music on iTunes through a provided link.
In the Roomz and neighborhoods of Meez Nation, you can chat among each other, listen to music, watch YouTube videos, and leave answering machine messages. In order to purchase items, you can also use Coinz, Meez Nation's virtual currency.
It appears that Meez Nation is providing a fun platform for teenagers and young adults to engage in, but how long will this virtual-world craze last? I think the success of Meez Nation will be dependent on how much the virtual world keeps up with the real world.
Customer Service 101: Microsoft Deletes MSN Music Servers
Remember when you heeded the music industry's piracy warnings, and eschewed file-sharing services such as Napster to purchase your music legally via the MSN Music Store?
Looks like taking your chances with the RIAA might have been a better option. As of August 31, Microsoft will delete its MSN Music license servers, so music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music Store will be accessible only via the five computers you authorized to play the tunes.
Buying a new computer or upgrading your operating system? Say goodbye to your music. The music restrictions do not just apply to new computers. If you upgrade from Windows XP to Vista, your MSN Music Store music will be gone.
"As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers," according to a Microsoft customer e-mail. "You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play."
Microsoft launched the MSN Music Store in September, 2004, in an effort to compete with Apple's iTunes, but it never made much of a dent in iTunes' business. Two years later, Microsoft started redirecting MSN Music Store shoppers to the Zune Marketplace.
Looks like taking your chances with the RIAA might have been a better option. As of August 31, Microsoft will delete its MSN Music license servers, so music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music Store will be accessible only via the five computers you authorized to play the tunes.
Buying a new computer or upgrading your operating system? Say goodbye to your music. The music restrictions do not just apply to new computers. If you upgrade from Windows XP to Vista, your MSN Music Store music will be gone.
"As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers," according to a Microsoft customer e-mail. "You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play."
Microsoft launched the MSN Music Store in September, 2004, in an effort to compete with Apple's iTunes, but it never made much of a dent in iTunes' business. Two years later, Microsoft started redirecting MSN Music Store shoppers to the Zune Marketplace.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Microsoft Backtracks, Allows MSN Music Access Until 2011
After taking some heat for its April decision to shutter its MSN Music servers, Microsoft this week backtracked and decided to allow access until the end of 2011.
"After careful consideration, Microsoft has decided to continue to support the authorization of new computers and devices and delivery of new license keys for MSN Music customers through at least the end of 2011, after which we will evaluate how much this functionality is still being used and what steps should be taken next to support our customers," Microsoft wrote in an e-mailed letter to customers that was posted on BoingBoing.
The software giant initially planned to delete its MSN Music license servers on August 31, meaning any music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music Store would only be accessible via the five computers users authorized to play the tunes.
Get a new computer or upgrade your operating system? Say goodbye to your music.
The announcement prompted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to demand that issue refunds for the lost music.
Microsoft launched the MSN Music Store in September, 2004, in an effort to compete with Apple's iTunes, but it never made much of a dent in iTunes' business. Two years later, Microsoft started redirecting MSN Music Store shoppers to the Zune Marketplace.
"After careful consideration, Microsoft has decided to continue to support the authorization of new computers and devices and delivery of new license keys for MSN Music customers through at least the end of 2011, after which we will evaluate how much this functionality is still being used and what steps should be taken next to support our customers," Microsoft wrote in an e-mailed letter to customers that was posted on BoingBoing.
The software giant initially planned to delete its MSN Music license servers on August 31, meaning any music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music Store would only be accessible via the five computers users authorized to play the tunes.
Get a new computer or upgrade your operating system? Say goodbye to your music.
The announcement prompted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to demand that issue refunds for the lost music.
Microsoft launched the MSN Music Store in September, 2004, in an effort to compete with Apple's iTunes, but it never made much of a dent in iTunes' business. Two years later, Microsoft started redirecting MSN Music Store shoppers to the Zune Marketplace.
YouTube Launches Screening Room
Many independent filmmakers try to expose their work to a large audience, but have a difficult time finding the right platform to market a film. You Tube just launched on Wednesday the YouTube Screening Room, which the company calls the world's largest theater.
Every other Friday, You Tube adds four new films to the Screening Room. Those who watch the videos are allowed to rate and leave their comments.
"Hopefully as they see thousands of people watching their films, it's going to be a very eye-opening experience," says Sara Pollack, YouTube's film and animation manager in a CNN article.
A majority of the films that appear on the site will be those that have won at international film festivals, but every once in awhile, YouTube says it will roll out movies that have never been seen before by an audience. The YouTube Screening Room welcomes submissions, and those interested can submit a film by sending an email to the site.
Every other Friday, You Tube adds four new films to the Screening Room. Those who watch the videos are allowed to rate and leave their comments.
"Hopefully as they see thousands of people watching their films, it's going to be a very eye-opening experience," says Sara Pollack, YouTube's film and animation manager in a CNN article.
A majority of the films that appear on the site will be those that have won at international film festivals, but every once in awhile, YouTube says it will roll out movies that have never been seen before by an audience. The YouTube Screening Room welcomes submissions, and those interested can submit a film by sending an email to the site.
Netflix Ends 'Profiles' Feature, Irks Customers
Online movie rental company Netflix has decided to do away with its "profiles" feature, which lets people set up separate movie queues within a single account.
"Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the Web site," according to a Thursday post on the Netflix blog.
The company will end the service, which launched in 2005, on September 1.
With profiles, a person who has a subscription that lets you rent three DVDs at one time, for example, can set up to separate up two profiles - allocating one DVD to themselves and two DVDs for their kids. The kids can add the movies they want while the subscription owner adds their selections to a list separate from the kids. To switch between profiles, you click on a drop-down menu at the top of the page.
"Continuing to maintain the profiles feature for the passionate few who use it (including myself) distracts us from the mission of presenting to all our members the easiest way to find the best titles for them from the 100k plus on DVD and the 10k plus available instantly," Netflix said.
The company promised to help "find better ways for families to share accounts than the existing profiles feature" but did not provide any additional detail.
The backlash has already started. An irate member slapped together a Web site (http://www.savenetflixprofiles.com/) with a petition that calls on Netflix to continue the profiles feature.
"As Netflix customers, we believe that this is a very useful feature, and in some cases the sole reason of retaining our memberships," the site reads. "We demand that Netflix reverse this decision, or otherwise when this change goes into effect, we will consider canceling our memberships and looking elsewhere for DVD rentals."
As of 5pm Eastern time, the petition had garnered about 350 digital signatures.
"Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the Web site," according to a Thursday post on the Netflix blog.
The company will end the service, which launched in 2005, on September 1.
With profiles, a person who has a subscription that lets you rent three DVDs at one time, for example, can set up to separate up two profiles - allocating one DVD to themselves and two DVDs for their kids. The kids can add the movies they want while the subscription owner adds their selections to a list separate from the kids. To switch between profiles, you click on a drop-down menu at the top of the page.
"Continuing to maintain the profiles feature for the passionate few who use it (including myself) distracts us from the mission of presenting to all our members the easiest way to find the best titles for them from the 100k plus on DVD and the 10k plus available instantly," Netflix said.
The company promised to help "find better ways for families to share accounts than the existing profiles feature" but did not provide any additional detail.
The backlash has already started. An irate member slapped together a Web site (http://www.savenetflixprofiles.com/) with a petition that calls on Netflix to continue the profiles feature.
"As Netflix customers, we believe that this is a very useful feature, and in some cases the sole reason of retaining our memberships," the site reads. "We demand that Netflix reverse this decision, or otherwise when this change goes into effect, we will consider canceling our memberships and looking elsewhere for DVD rentals."
As of 5pm Eastern time, the petition had garnered about 350 digital signatures.
Auction Typos Can Be Your Gain
Auction Bloopers is a new Web site that will search not only for the actual/proper spelling of an item but includes a variety of typos as well. The downside is that it means you'll have more pages to scroll through, but on the plus side you won't have to waste time seeing if the competition already decided to look up "Xbbox 360" before you.
Do an eBay search for a video game console or movie on DVD and you're bound to find dozens (if not hundreds) of auctions, and likely a lot of competition. However, try misspelling "Xbox 360" as something like "X-box" and you will find far few auctions and possibly far less competition from other bidders. Now you could try to type "box 360" and "xbox36" but why go through the trouble when a Web site can help you.
Post by Peter Suciu
Do an eBay search for a video game console or movie on DVD and you're bound to find dozens (if not hundreds) of auctions, and likely a lot of competition. However, try misspelling "Xbox 360" as something like "X-box" and you will find far few auctions and possibly far less competition from other bidders. Now you could try to type "box 360" and "xbox36" but why go through the trouble when a Web site can help you.
Post by Peter Suciu
Hands On: Viddix Impressive Presentations
I found a site which really impressed me. That's a good way to start a review. I'm impressed by Viddix.com, a website which allows you to "connect all kinds of content to the timeline of videos." Think of this as a Powerpoint presentation where your normally live part is digitized too.
Based in the Netherlands, this is a startup that's remained basically under-the-radar. In fact, back in October of '07 their own site proclaimed:
"While still testing, we will not be attracting too much attention to our concept. We will show it to some people and will see what happens. We think it's cool (although we have a lot to do) and hope you will come to like it too."
I've got a quick demo at the bottom of this entry which will explain this online application much better than I ever could. What I can tell you before you watch is, my Viddix presentation was really easy to do. I sat down in front of a camera, spoke for around a minute, uploaded my video, then watched it, stopping it to add cuepoints. The cuepoints can trigger links, text, images, RSS feeds, custom XML feeds or polls.
It's intuitive and incredibly simple to operate. Adding my cuepoints and custom iPanel content only took a few minutes. I wish there was a way to bring content on and off instead of leaving it until the next cuepoint is reached and that there was more control over the size and positioning of text, but those are small points. Viddix is free to use after registering.
Based in the Netherlands, this is a startup that's remained basically under-the-radar. In fact, back in October of '07 their own site proclaimed:
"While still testing, we will not be attracting too much attention to our concept. We will show it to some people and will see what happens. We think it's cool (although we have a lot to do) and hope you will come to like it too."
I've got a quick demo at the bottom of this entry which will explain this online application much better than I ever could. What I can tell you before you watch is, my Viddix presentation was really easy to do. I sat down in front of a camera, spoke for around a minute, uploaded my video, then watched it, stopping it to add cuepoints. The cuepoints can trigger links, text, images, RSS feeds, custom XML feeds or polls.
It's intuitive and incredibly simple to operate. Adding my cuepoints and custom iPanel content only took a few minutes. I wish there was a way to bring content on and off instead of leaving it until the next cuepoint is reached and that there was more control over the size and positioning of text, but those are small points. Viddix is free to use after registering.
Create Floating Definitions in Word
Q: I have a large Word document in which I want to insert a definition for a word or phrase, which you can read by hovering over the word or phrase with the definition becoming visible or via pop-up. For example, take the sentence, "The Governing Body is meeting to compose a vision for future expansion and direction of construction". When you hover over the underlined phrase, I would like this definition to appear: "A group of individuals that has the legal authority to make decisions for a company". The second problem is replacing the non-underlined phrase "Governing Body" with the definition-equipped Governing Body. I am using Word 2003, but also have Word 2000 and Word 2007. - Michael Fairshter.
A: While this type of popup definition is fairly common in Web pages, it's not something that's built into Word. However, by making use of the tools Word does offer, you can come very close. Here's how you'd do it in Word 2007:
Highlight the phrase to be defined and copy it to the clipboard
Click the Insert tab
Click Bookmark in the ribbon
Paste the phrase in as the bookmark name, replacing any spaces with underscores
Click Add
Click Hyperlink in the ribbon
In the Hyperlink dialog click the Bookmark button
Select the bookmark you just created and click OK
Click the Screen Tip button and enter your definition.
Click OK
That's it. When the reader hovers with the mouse over the underlined phrase the screen tip will appear. The phrase "Ctrl click to follow link" will also appear, but by linking the phrase to the bookmark we've ensured nothing bad will happen if the reader does Ctrl Click.
As for putting the same screen tip on other instances of the same phrase, you're going to have to do a little manual labor. Copy the tip-equipped phrase to the clipboard, then use Ctrl F to find each additional instance and paste over it. It's not a completely elegant solution, but it does the job. - Neil J. Rubenking.
A: While this type of popup definition is fairly common in Web pages, it's not something that's built into Word. However, by making use of the tools Word does offer, you can come very close. Here's how you'd do it in Word 2007:
Highlight the phrase to be defined and copy it to the clipboard
Click the Insert tab
Click Bookmark in the ribbon
Paste the phrase in as the bookmark name, replacing any spaces with underscores
Click Add
Click Hyperlink in the ribbon
In the Hyperlink dialog click the Bookmark button
Select the bookmark you just created and click OK
Click the Screen Tip button and enter your definition.
Click OK
That's it. When the reader hovers with the mouse over the underlined phrase the screen tip will appear. The phrase "Ctrl click to follow link" will also appear, but by linking the phrase to the bookmark we've ensured nothing bad will happen if the reader does Ctrl Click.
As for putting the same screen tip on other instances of the same phrase, you're going to have to do a little manual labor. Copy the tip-equipped phrase to the clipboard, then use Ctrl F to find each additional instance and paste over it. It's not a completely elegant solution, but it does the job. - Neil J. Rubenking.
Zoomii.com: A Virtual Bookstore, Complete with Shelves
Browsing online bookstores by scrolling through search results is so 2007. More and more services are trying to spice up online book shopping by providing new interfaces and methods to browse book catalogs, and Zoomii is no exception. The service takes the form of a virtual bookstore and allows you to browse a massive wall with actual books on it, organized by category. The goal of the site is to duplicate the feeling of being at a bookstore, wandering through shelves with different types of books on it.
The developer behind Zoomii loves bookstores so much that he wanted to bring the experience online. Zoomii is designed to make shopping for books on the Web as close to the real experience as possible. You can search for specific books if you're in the mood, or you can browse the shelves aimlessly. You can even bring up a legend of book genres and click the one you're interested in to zoom directly to the virtual shelf-space where those types of books live.
The fact that you can navigate the virtual shelves like you would an interactive map is what's really cool. You can zoom in on a bookshelf to get a better view of the books that are on it and click and drag the shelves around your browser window to move around the "bookstore." Zoomii sports almost 20,000 books on its shelves. If you see a book that's particularly interesting or that you'd like to add to your cart, simply click on the book's cover to add bring up detailed information about the book and a larger view of the cover.
Zoomii isn't a bookstore in and of itself however. All of the books on the virtual shelves and the other 160,000 books in the service's database are all piped in from Amazon.com, so when you use the service to find a book you'd like to buy and click to add it to your cart, it's really going in your Amazon cart. When you actually check out and purchase the book, it's a transaction between you and Amazon, so Zoomii isn't involved in managing your purchase, and your credit card information stays between you and Amazon. Zoomii is able to function as a virtual bookstore because it's part of the Amazon Associates Program, which means that when you purchase a book using Zoomii as a conduit, they get a percentage of the purchase price.
Zoomii is a fun little Web app, and while it may not make your life easier or streamline some task for you, it definitely blends Amazon's massive catalog of books with the feeling of shopping in a real bookstore, passing books on the shelves. The service is definitely a bit more interesting than scrolling through pages upon pages of search results and book recommendations.
The developer behind Zoomii loves bookstores so much that he wanted to bring the experience online. Zoomii is designed to make shopping for books on the Web as close to the real experience as possible. You can search for specific books if you're in the mood, or you can browse the shelves aimlessly. You can even bring up a legend of book genres and click the one you're interested in to zoom directly to the virtual shelf-space where those types of books live.
The fact that you can navigate the virtual shelves like you would an interactive map is what's really cool. You can zoom in on a bookshelf to get a better view of the books that are on it and click and drag the shelves around your browser window to move around the "bookstore." Zoomii sports almost 20,000 books on its shelves. If you see a book that's particularly interesting or that you'd like to add to your cart, simply click on the book's cover to add bring up detailed information about the book and a larger view of the cover.
Zoomii isn't a bookstore in and of itself however. All of the books on the virtual shelves and the other 160,000 books in the service's database are all piped in from Amazon.com, so when you use the service to find a book you'd like to buy and click to add it to your cart, it's really going in your Amazon cart. When you actually check out and purchase the book, it's a transaction between you and Amazon, so Zoomii isn't involved in managing your purchase, and your credit card information stays between you and Amazon. Zoomii is able to function as a virtual bookstore because it's part of the Amazon Associates Program, which means that when you purchase a book using Zoomii as a conduit, they get a percentage of the purchase price.
Zoomii is a fun little Web app, and while it may not make your life easier or streamline some task for you, it definitely blends Amazon's massive catalog of books with the feeling of shopping in a real bookstore, passing books on the shelves. The service is definitely a bit more interesting than scrolling through pages upon pages of search results and book recommendations.
Locomatic Manages Your Mac's Network Locations
If there's one thing that irritates a Mac geek, it's the fact that MacOS doesn't switch network profiles by default if you move between a wireless and a wired network, or even between multiple wired networks on its own. For example, when I move from the wireless network at the office to my wireless network at home, I have to change the network profile, called a "location," manually. Locomatic takes care of that irritation by detecting what network you're connected to and automatically adjusting the location to match.
For most Mac users, the fact that the locations don't switch automatically isn't a big deal; in most cases it's okay to configure your Mac to accept whatever network configuration it gets from the network's DHCP server or router. Unfortunately however, if you move between networks that require specific configuration, like custom DNS servers, static IP addresses, or a specific gateway, moving between the office and the home office might mean a trip into the Network System Preferences. That trip may not be a big deal to someone very familiar with MacOS, but it can be annoying for an expert and near-crippling for a novice.
Locomatic takes care of it for you, so your configuration profile changes automatically depending on the network you've connected to. Locomatic can handle wired and wireless connections, and can even handle networks that use proxy servers and other complex location information. As long as you configure the network profile once in the Network System Preferences, Locomatic can switch between them.
Additionally, the new version of Locomatic can even change your browser's home page and your default printer for you when you switch networks, so you don't have to take a trip into the Print and Fax System Preferences to change default printers from your office's network printer to your home printer when you head home for the day.
The developer behind Locomatic provides documentation and an older version of the software if you need help troubleshooting or learning to use the app. Locomatic is free (although the developer graciously accepts donations), and version 2.1 works with both Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5.
For most Mac users, the fact that the locations don't switch automatically isn't a big deal; in most cases it's okay to configure your Mac to accept whatever network configuration it gets from the network's DHCP server or router. Unfortunately however, if you move between networks that require specific configuration, like custom DNS servers, static IP addresses, or a specific gateway, moving between the office and the home office might mean a trip into the Network System Preferences. That trip may not be a big deal to someone very familiar with MacOS, but it can be annoying for an expert and near-crippling for a novice.
Locomatic takes care of it for you, so your configuration profile changes automatically depending on the network you've connected to. Locomatic can handle wired and wireless connections, and can even handle networks that use proxy servers and other complex location information. As long as you configure the network profile once in the Network System Preferences, Locomatic can switch between them.
Additionally, the new version of Locomatic can even change your browser's home page and your default printer for you when you switch networks, so you don't have to take a trip into the Print and Fax System Preferences to change default printers from your office's network printer to your home printer when you head home for the day.
The developer behind Locomatic provides documentation and an older version of the software if you need help troubleshooting or learning to use the app. Locomatic is free (although the developer graciously accepts donations), and version 2.1 works with both Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5.
Become a Professional Internet Surfer in Minutes
There are days when the phrase "professional Internet surfer" sums up my job description nicely. And while I did, in fact go to an accredited university, I can't help but think that if I had pursued a degree that was closer to that description, rather than spending countless hours in creative writing and literature courses, perhaps I'd be bringing in a touch more money at the end of the day.
The thing is, in the dark days when I went to college, as far as I know, no one actually offered this major. Now, thankfully, there's MyInternetDiploma. It seems a safe bet that the site isn't actually accredited, being that their courses don't extend much beyond filling out a few fields with personal information, clicking Send, and waiting for an e-mail (which, come to think of it, doesn't seem too far removed from my days at U.C. Santa Cruz). But what's accreditation (or proper grammar) in this fast-paced Web 2.0 world of ours?
So if you've got a couple of minutes and a valid e-mail, you too can be well on your way to a lucrative Web surfing career.
The thing is, in the dark days when I went to college, as far as I know, no one actually offered this major. Now, thankfully, there's MyInternetDiploma. It seems a safe bet that the site isn't actually accredited, being that their courses don't extend much beyond filling out a few fields with personal information, clicking Send, and waiting for an e-mail (which, come to think of it, doesn't seem too far removed from my days at U.C. Santa Cruz). But what's accreditation (or proper grammar) in this fast-paced Web 2.0 world of ours?
So if you've got a couple of minutes and a valid e-mail, you too can be well on your way to a lucrative Web surfing career.
Best TV (Commercials) On the Web: Fred
NewTeeVee posted last night about a mysteriously popular video show; apparently Fred is a YouTube wunderkind, coming out of nowhere to get four of the top 20 videos on the service this month. The top Fred video, entitled "Fred Loses his Meds," has been seen by 4.9 million people.
Who's Fred? Described on his channel as "a 6-year-old with anger management issues," his videos are really a pretty funny improved stream-of-consciousness spewing from the mouth of a 15-year-old playing at being 6, with the added touch of fast editing and turning up the pitch of his voice, so he comes off like a chipmunk on meth. (Okay, it's funny if you don't have a hyperactive 6-year-old of your own.)
The actor behind Fred, named Lucas, is probably going to be the next Andy Samberg (who made it to SNL through his Web videos). Or not. Judge his success by this: Fred's already doing commercials. The folks behind the Zipit Z2 Wi-Fi device for instant messaging and music playing, have built an entire site around Fred videos ("fredisodes") to feature his copious use of the device. Kids can send the annoying squirt's videos to parents, to let him beg for a Zipit on their behalf.
Fred's using the Zipit in his YouTube videos as well. I really like his whining in one that he paid more for his Zipit than his nemesis Kevin, because the price just dropped to $49.95. This comes in-between Fred's usual screams and yelling, the kind all parents are probably used to.
Fred's the brainchild of three teenage cousins (including Lucas) under the name JKL Productions. They launched their YouTube channel a couple of years ago by lip-syncing to a Hannah Montana tune after Lucas got a video camera for his birthday. It's obvious they've pushed their craft of online sketch videos from juvenile to professional enough (or just funny enough) to get an endorsement deal. It's the new American dream, come true.
Who's Fred? Described on his channel as "a 6-year-old with anger management issues," his videos are really a pretty funny improved stream-of-consciousness spewing from the mouth of a 15-year-old playing at being 6, with the added touch of fast editing and turning up the pitch of his voice, so he comes off like a chipmunk on meth. (Okay, it's funny if you don't have a hyperactive 6-year-old of your own.)
The actor behind Fred, named Lucas, is probably going to be the next Andy Samberg (who made it to SNL through his Web videos). Or not. Judge his success by this: Fred's already doing commercials. The folks behind the Zipit Z2 Wi-Fi device for instant messaging and music playing, have built an entire site around Fred videos ("fredisodes") to feature his copious use of the device. Kids can send the annoying squirt's videos to parents, to let him beg for a Zipit on their behalf.
Fred's using the Zipit in his YouTube videos as well. I really like his whining in one that he paid more for his Zipit than his nemesis Kevin, because the price just dropped to $49.95. This comes in-between Fred's usual screams and yelling, the kind all parents are probably used to.
Fred's the brainchild of three teenage cousins (including Lucas) under the name JKL Productions. They launched their YouTube channel a couple of years ago by lip-syncing to a Hannah Montana tune after Lucas got a video camera for his birthday. It's obvious they've pushed their craft of online sketch videos from juvenile to professional enough (or just funny enough) to get an endorsement deal. It's the new American dream, come true.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Nikon Capture NX 2 Image Editing Software Available
Nikon announced that Capture NX 2 image editing software is now available at authorized Nikon dealers and through the Nikon Mall online store.
Capture NX 2 (Mac and PC compatible) is designed for photography enthusiasts and provides powerful tools "operated by simple yet visually intuitive controls" for easier photo processing. Capture NX 2 utilizes U Point technology to give photographers access to Control Points that enhance color, exposure, and other image quality settings quickly and easily.
NX 2 works with JPEG, TIFF, and RAW files. The company claims it has a minimal learning curve and that users will experience simplified image browsing, selection and labeling and improved batch-processing capabilities.
A 60-day free trial is available at Capture NX's Web site. It's also available at the Nikon Mall. List price is $109.95 to upgrade from Version 1 or $179.95 for the full version.
Capture NX 2 (Mac and PC compatible) is designed for photography enthusiasts and provides powerful tools "operated by simple yet visually intuitive controls" for easier photo processing. Capture NX 2 utilizes U Point technology to give photographers access to Control Points that enhance color, exposure, and other image quality settings quickly and easily.
NX 2 works with JPEG, TIFF, and RAW files. The company claims it has a minimal learning curve and that users will experience simplified image browsing, selection and labeling and improved batch-processing capabilities.
A 60-day free trial is available at Capture NX's Web site. It's also available at the Nikon Mall. List price is $109.95 to upgrade from Version 1 or $179.95 for the full version.
Un-Block Startup Programs in Vista
Q: I downloaded and installed the latest rendition of Startup Cop Pro from PC Magazine. It works great but I am not happy with the way it interfaces with Windows Vista. I always get the bubble stating that Windows has blocked some programs from starting. The only program that is blocked is Startup Cop Pro. I have not been able to find any way to authorize this program to run without my intervention each time I start the computer. Is there a way to add it to an authorized list or does the author of the program have to create it as an authorized Windows Vista program? It would be great if the end user could modify the authorized list but I cannot find such a reference at the Microsoft site. - Gordon Gipson.
A: I recently answered a question about how to prevent that "blocked some programs" balloon when it's caused by using MSCONFIG. In that case the solution is simple - you manually let MSCONFIG run once so that you can tell it to stop trying. Startup Cop Pro is another story entirely. It's a program that must run at startup but that requires User Account Control authorization to proceed. For security, Vista just won't let such a program launch from any of the standard startup locations. So what can you do?
The solution lies in scheduling a task that runs at startup. You might think Vista would block this too, but there's a reason it doesn't. Any process can tweak the standard startup locations without triggering UAC, so those locations are considered dangerous. But launching Task Scheduler requires UAC confirmation, and thus Vista trusts scheduled tasks. Here's what you do:
Click the Start orb and enter Task Scheduler
Enter an Administrator password or click Confirm as required by UAC
Click the Create Task link (not Create Basic Task)
On the general tab name the task Startup Cop Pro
Select a user account that has Administrator privileges
Check the option "Run only when user is logged on"
Check the box "Run with highest privileges"
Click the Triggers tab and click the New button
Select "At log on" from the drop-down list at the top
Check the "Any user" option
At the bottom under Advanced Settings check the Enabled box and click OK
Click the Actions tab and click the New button
Click Browse and locate
In the "Add arguments" box enter /Startup
Click the Settings tab
Check the box "Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed"
Uncheck the box "Stop the task if it runs longer than:"
Click OK, OK
Whew! Now launch Startup Cop Pro, click Settings, and uncheck the "Run Startup Cop Pro at startup" box. When you reboot Startup Cop Pro will launch at startup with no gripes from Vista. Of course you can apply this technique to any program that's blocked from ordinary startup by Vista's UAC. - Neil J. Rubenking.
A: I recently answered a question about how to prevent that "blocked some programs" balloon when it's caused by using MSCONFIG. In that case the solution is simple - you manually let MSCONFIG run once so that you can tell it to stop trying. Startup Cop Pro is another story entirely. It's a program that must run at startup but that requires User Account Control authorization to proceed. For security, Vista just won't let such a program launch from any of the standard startup locations. So what can you do?
The solution lies in scheduling a task that runs at startup. You might think Vista would block this too, but there's a reason it doesn't. Any process can tweak the standard startup locations without triggering UAC, so those locations are considered dangerous. But launching Task Scheduler requires UAC confirmation, and thus Vista trusts scheduled tasks. Here's what you do:
Click the Start orb and enter Task Scheduler
Enter an Administrator password or click Confirm as required by UAC
Click the Create Task link (not Create Basic Task)
On the general tab name the task Startup Cop Pro
Select a user account that has Administrator privileges
Check the option "Run only when user is logged on"
Check the box "Run with highest privileges"
Click the Triggers tab and click the New button
Select "At log on" from the drop-down list at the top
Check the "Any user" option
At the bottom under Advanced Settings check the Enabled box and click OK
Click the Actions tab and click the New button
Click Browse and locate
In the "Add arguments" box enter /Startup
Click the Settings tab
Check the box "Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed"
Uncheck the box "Stop the task if it runs longer than:"
Click OK, OK
Whew! Now launch Startup Cop Pro, click Settings, and uncheck the "Run Startup Cop Pro at startup" box. When you reboot Startup Cop Pro will launch at startup with no gripes from Vista. Of course you can apply this technique to any program that's blocked from ordinary startup by Vista's UAC. - Neil J. Rubenking.
Facebook Overtakes Myspace In Global Views
According to numbers recently issued by Web metrics firm ComScore, MySpace no longer has the edge in global views. Last month saw Facebook pull ahead of News Corp.-owned MySpace, racking up 123.9 million unique visits and 50.6 billion page views, versus MySpace's 114.6 million visits and 45.4 billion page views, according to CNET's The Social blog.
The above image speaks volumes about the two sites. Facebook has seen a steady increase in users since the site first opened its doors beyond college campuses back in October, 2006. MySpace, meanwhile (at least according to ComScore), has seemingly plateaued in the past year, due no doubt in large part to Facebook's runaway success. This trend will likely only increase in the near future, thanks to Facebook's embracing of "the world's biggest market," China.
The above image speaks volumes about the two sites. Facebook has seen a steady increase in users since the site first opened its doors beyond college campuses back in October, 2006. MySpace, meanwhile (at least according to ComScore), has seemingly plateaued in the past year, due no doubt in large part to Facebook's runaway success. This trend will likely only increase in the near future, thanks to Facebook's embracing of "the world's biggest market," China.
Google Launches Web Traffic Search
In the Web game, it's all about traffic numbers, and as such, there are no shortage of sites devoted to measuring such metrics. As Download Squad aptly points out, however given limited or no access to server data tends to put such sites in a difficult position, and as such, it's impossible to know just how accurate their results are. However, when Google enters the proceedings, people will have to sit up and take notice.
The company recently added a feature that lets users search for Web sites on their Google Trends page. Apparently the site gets its metrics though search engine traffic, third party marketing numbers, and "anonymous Google Analytics figures."
The company recently added a feature that lets users search for Web sites on their Google Trends page. Apparently the site gets its metrics though search engine traffic, third party marketing numbers, and "anonymous Google Analytics figures."
Hands On: One Hundred Push Ups
It seems the best websites are those online for a purpose. In this case, it's Steve Speirs and his "One Hundred Push Ups" site, trying to give a little Internet love back. Steve had completed an exercise plan from a long since abandoned website, leaving him fit enough to do 100 push ups. He wrote about his progress in his blog and then forgot about it.
With the original site gone and Steve's site now being the only reference, people started turning to him. "I started receiving multiple emails asking if I had copies of weeks 5 and 6 of the plan. Luckily I had a few Word docs saved locally and was able to reply to all the requests. I attempted to contact the original web site's owner to find out what happened to the site, but never heard anything back. " With an obvious need, Steve put up his own site.
In this case, Steve's giving instructions for a fitness plan he's already tried successfully. "I really liked the simplicity of the plan, the progressive nature of the workouts and of course the end result of being able to do one hundred consecutive push ups." Me too.
Recently, I've taken to hiking a local (small) mountain. It was during a 'runner's high' moment (what sad shape am I in, if I can get a runner's high from walking) that I decided to add this push up goal. Last night I began my own quest for 100 push ups. In the pre-rest which determines your original level of fitness, I managed seven push ups. It's understandable. I'm middle aged and spend most of my waking hours sitting. Today, I'm really sore. But, I've also gotten one step closer to my six week goal.
The plan shows you how many push ups to do, three days a week. My first session was 7, 7, 5, 4 with sixty seconds between each set. At the end, I did as many additional as I could - four. It's a start.
Will I get to 100 in six short weeks? That would be very cool. No, it would be more than cool. It would be amazing.
With the original site gone and Steve's site now being the only reference, people started turning to him. "I started receiving multiple emails asking if I had copies of weeks 5 and 6 of the plan. Luckily I had a few Word docs saved locally and was able to reply to all the requests. I attempted to contact the original web site's owner to find out what happened to the site, but never heard anything back. " With an obvious need, Steve put up his own site.
In this case, Steve's giving instructions for a fitness plan he's already tried successfully. "I really liked the simplicity of the plan, the progressive nature of the workouts and of course the end result of being able to do one hundred consecutive push ups." Me too.
Recently, I've taken to hiking a local (small) mountain. It was during a 'runner's high' moment (what sad shape am I in, if I can get a runner's high from walking) that I decided to add this push up goal. Last night I began my own quest for 100 push ups. In the pre-rest which determines your original level of fitness, I managed seven push ups. It's understandable. I'm middle aged and spend most of my waking hours sitting. Today, I'm really sore. But, I've also gotten one step closer to my six week goal.
The plan shows you how many push ups to do, three days a week. My first session was 7, 7, 5, 4 with sixty seconds between each set. At the end, I did as many additional as I could - four. It's a start.
Will I get to 100 in six short weeks? That would be very cool. No, it would be more than cool. It would be amazing.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Fandango Buys Movies.com
Fandango announced today that the ticket purchasing hub has acquired the formerly Disney-owned film site, Movies.com.
"We are pleased to expand our rich entertainment reach through this strategic addition of Movies.com," said Fandango CEO, Chuck Davis, of the move. "We'll be able to leverage our combined assets to offer millions of new moviegoers the best movie-related information available on the Web."
Both sites initially launched in 2000. In the subsequent years, Fandango branched out, receiving some 6.3 million unique visitors a month. Movies.com's success, meanwhile, has been a bit more incremental, with some 1.9 uniques a month. According to a release issued by Fandango, "There is little duplication between the audiences of the two sites."
Ticketing services for Movies.com will now be handled by Fandango.
"We are pleased to expand our rich entertainment reach through this strategic addition of Movies.com," said Fandango CEO, Chuck Davis, of the move. "We'll be able to leverage our combined assets to offer millions of new moviegoers the best movie-related information available on the Web."
Both sites initially launched in 2000. In the subsequent years, Fandango branched out, receiving some 6.3 million unique visitors a month. Movies.com's success, meanwhile, has been a bit more incremental, with some 1.9 uniques a month. According to a release issued by Fandango, "There is little duplication between the audiences of the two sites."
Ticketing services for Movies.com will now be handled by Fandango.
Nokia Buys Mobile App Plazes
Leading handset manufacturer Nokia announced today plans to acquire Plazes, a Berlin-based "social-activity service." Launched nearly three years ago, Plazes is a mobile location-based service that lets users plan, document, and share social events with friends and family, tagging activities with a specific place and time.
"This acquisition helps Nokia to accelerate its vision of bringing people and places closer together, in line with our broader services strategy," said Nokia's head of services and software. "In addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring on a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this area."
Nokia's purchase of the 13-person German company is expected to close sometime in the third-quarter of 2008, at which point Plazes will be folded into Nokia's Services and Software division.
"This acquisition helps Nokia to accelerate its vision of bringing people and places closer together, in line with our broader services strategy," said Nokia's head of services and software. "In addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring on a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this area."
Nokia's purchase of the 13-person German company is expected to close sometime in the third-quarter of 2008, at which point Plazes will be folded into Nokia's Services and Software division.
Earth Album Mashes Google and Flickr to Show You the World
If you've ever wanted to see Mongolia but couldn't find the time, or you're stuck in a cubicle and dreaming of your trip to Fiji, Earth Album wants to help. The service is deceptively simple, but it's one of the coolest Google Maps and Flickr mashups I've seen. Simply drag the map around like any other Google Map, and as you click on locations around the world, photos from Flickr tagged with that location's name are displayed over the map.
Virtually every part of the world is represented at Earth Album. The service is great for the occasional desktop vacation, when boring cubicle walls just aren't enough to keep you inspired, or if you're curious about what a certain part of the world or its people look like. The map behaves like any other Google Map, you can click and drag the map around or use the directional buttons in the upper-left corner of the map. Zoom in and out on the map by using the mouse wheel or the controls on the map.
When you find a location you're interested in, simply click on its name on the map, and a stream of Flickr photos tagged with that country, city, or region will appear on the screen. Click on any one of them to see a larger version of the photo and to read the caption the user added when he or she uploaded the photo to Flickr. If you're looking for a specific place, you can click the link at the top of the screen to "find a place" and a search box will appear on the screen. Type in your destination, and the map will jump to any place in the world, and display photos tagged with that location.
The beauty of Earth Album is that you really do get a feeling for how big the world is by scrolling around and seeing all of the different places but you also get a feeling for how personal it is to the people who live in or visit those same places. You can click on areas of the planet, no matter how remote, and find photographs from that location, even if those photographs are of wildlife or rolling landscapes. Additionally, you can let the service bring up photos from your area by clicking the "find yourself" link at the top of the page.
For those days when cubicle walls get you down and the commute home doesn't scratch that itch to see the world, Earth Album can take you anywhere in the world. From entire countries to tiny cities and towns, all it takes is a few clicks to show photos from almost any part of the planet.
Virtually every part of the world is represented at Earth Album. The service is great for the occasional desktop vacation, when boring cubicle walls just aren't enough to keep you inspired, or if you're curious about what a certain part of the world or its people look like. The map behaves like any other Google Map, you can click and drag the map around or use the directional buttons in the upper-left corner of the map. Zoom in and out on the map by using the mouse wheel or the controls on the map.
When you find a location you're interested in, simply click on its name on the map, and a stream of Flickr photos tagged with that country, city, or region will appear on the screen. Click on any one of them to see a larger version of the photo and to read the caption the user added when he or she uploaded the photo to Flickr. If you're looking for a specific place, you can click the link at the top of the screen to "find a place" and a search box will appear on the screen. Type in your destination, and the map will jump to any place in the world, and display photos tagged with that location.
The beauty of Earth Album is that you really do get a feeling for how big the world is by scrolling around and seeing all of the different places but you also get a feeling for how personal it is to the people who live in or visit those same places. You can click on areas of the planet, no matter how remote, and find photographs from that location, even if those photographs are of wildlife or rolling landscapes. Additionally, you can let the service bring up photos from your area by clicking the "find yourself" link at the top of the page.
For those days when cubicle walls get you down and the commute home doesn't scratch that itch to see the world, Earth Album can take you anywhere in the world. From entire countries to tiny cities and towns, all it takes is a few clicks to show photos from almost any part of the planet.
Take a Trip to Malware City
"There are eight million stories in Malware City...". Well, not yet, but BitDefender's new free resource at www.malwarecity.com really tries to grab visitor interest with a gritty film noir style. Black-and-white images, scuffed and worn-looking headings, and an invitation to "join our army" (that is, subscribe to the newsletter) greet visitors to the site. The content isn't vastly different from what's offered by informational sites from other vendors, but the approach is engaging.
In Malware City, you can check the threat level (currently at 75%), view an interactive virus map (is Canada really 99.06% infected?), and run a free online virus scanner that will clean up any mess it finds. Blog posts report on topics of interest such as rogue security software and phishing. The site reports security-related news, and it's not all BitDefender-centric--I noticed articles about TrendMicro, McAfee and Symantec on the main page. Everywhere you go, whether ito blogs, news pages, or the online dictionary of security terms, the smudged, rough user interface lets you know you're in Malware City.
The site is totally ready for a huge spike in popularity. Its Fan Zone is already popping with themed wallpapers as well as buttons, banners, and bars that fans can use to decorate their web sites. Whether or not it becomes a popular destination, Malware City should prove to be a useful resource for news and information about malware, and there's always that handy free scan. The city opens today; take a look.
In Malware City, you can check the threat level (currently at 75%), view an interactive virus map (is Canada really 99.06% infected?), and run a free online virus scanner that will clean up any mess it finds. Blog posts report on topics of interest such as rogue security software and phishing. The site reports security-related news, and it's not all BitDefender-centric--I noticed articles about TrendMicro, McAfee and Symantec on the main page. Everywhere you go, whether ito blogs, news pages, or the online dictionary of security terms, the smudged, rough user interface lets you know you're in Malware City.
The site is totally ready for a huge spike in popularity. Its Fan Zone is already popping with themed wallpapers as well as buttons, banners, and bars that fans can use to decorate their web sites. Whether or not it becomes a popular destination, Malware City should prove to be a useful resource for news and information about malware, and there's always that handy free scan. The city opens today; take a look.
Twitter Spy Lets You See What People Are Tweeting Right Now
Thousands of people are posting new messages to Twitter every moment, and depending on how many people you're following, you might get more messages than you bargained for. Even so, what makes blogging fun is the ability to peek into the lives of other people.
Twitter Spy gives you a window into what people around the world are posting on Twitter right now. The site updates automatically as new Twitter messages are posted, and a Google Map at the top of the page displays the country from where the message originated with every refresh.
Twitter Spy reminds me a bit of Twistori, another service that updates itself automatically as new Twitter posts come in. The difference is that where Twistori is an experiment in how people use Twitter to express their loves, their wishes, and their beliefs, Twitter Spy makes no such distinction about the types of messages it displays. The site displays the Twitter public feed in real-time and lets you see instantly every message that is posted and where the poster is from on a map.
Perhaps what's most remarkable about Twitter Spy is that it smashes any notion that Twitter and obsessive micro-blogging is somehow an American pastime. In a short sitting, I saw everyone from professionals in the US complaining about their work days, teenagers in Argentina sharing the latest in their lives, a blogger in Portugal confess his blogcrush for another blogger in the US, even a news agency in Sapporo, Japan, posting its headlines to its Twitter account.
If you find an author you know or like, you can pause the feed and start it again whenever, or you can filter the feed for a specific user, country, or even number of followers to get certain kinds of tweets.
Granted, the majority of the messages you'll see at Twitter Spy are the types that you would expect from Twitter: what people are planning for dinner, where they are right now, what movie they're going to see tonight, poorly worded political proclamations, and responses to previous tweets by friends. Even so, it's fascinating to sit and watch all of that information stream by as it's posted in real time and watch the map move from country to country as new messages appear.
Twitter Spy gives you a window into what people around the world are posting on Twitter right now. The site updates automatically as new Twitter messages are posted, and a Google Map at the top of the page displays the country from where the message originated with every refresh.
Twitter Spy reminds me a bit of Twistori, another service that updates itself automatically as new Twitter posts come in. The difference is that where Twistori is an experiment in how people use Twitter to express their loves, their wishes, and their beliefs, Twitter Spy makes no such distinction about the types of messages it displays. The site displays the Twitter public feed in real-time and lets you see instantly every message that is posted and where the poster is from on a map.
Perhaps what's most remarkable about Twitter Spy is that it smashes any notion that Twitter and obsessive micro-blogging is somehow an American pastime. In a short sitting, I saw everyone from professionals in the US complaining about their work days, teenagers in Argentina sharing the latest in their lives, a blogger in Portugal confess his blogcrush for another blogger in the US, even a news agency in Sapporo, Japan, posting its headlines to its Twitter account.
If you find an author you know or like, you can pause the feed and start it again whenever, or you can filter the feed for a specific user, country, or even number of followers to get certain kinds of tweets.
Granted, the majority of the messages you'll see at Twitter Spy are the types that you would expect from Twitter: what people are planning for dinner, where they are right now, what movie they're going to see tonight, poorly worded political proclamations, and responses to previous tweets by friends. Even so, it's fascinating to sit and watch all of that information stream by as it's posted in real time and watch the map move from country to country as new messages appear.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Almost 70 Artists Tapped to Create iGoogle Themes
Google today is launching a series of new themes for the iGoogle personalized homepage. The collection is the result of collaborations with nearly 70 different artists from across the globe. Google is commemorating the occasion with a "Google doodle" on the search homepage designed by Jeff Koons.
The long list of participants includes artists from the world of design, fashion, and music, including Coldplay , Oscar de la Renta , Dolce
The long list of participants includes artists from the world of design, fashion, and music, including Coldplay , Oscar de la Renta , Dolce
EFF Demands Refunds for Invalid MSN Music Store Purchases
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Tuesday demanded that Microsoft issue refunds for MSN Music Store purchases that will be inaccessible after Microsoft deletes the music store servers this summer.
Microsoft announced last week that as of August 31, the company will delete its MSN Music license servers, so music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music Store will be accessible only via the five computers you authorized to play the tunes.
Customers can apparently burn their purchased music to CDs and upload that to their new computers, but EFF says that is "woefully insufficient to redress the problem."
"Microsoft is asking its customers to invest more time, labor, and money in order to continue to enjoy the music for which they have already paid," Shari Steele, EFF executive director, wrote in a letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Steele called on Ballmer to formally apologize to customers affected by the change. Customers should also be offered a refund for music purchased, or replacements from an online store that offers the same tracks in a DRM-free format, she wrote.
She also requested that Microsoft provide customers with proof of purchase, work with industry partners to eliminate DRM from the Zune music catalog, and widely publicize its efforts "so that Microsoft customers know their options."
Microsoft general manager Rob Bennett told CNet last week that continued support for Music Store purchases was impractical, and that the focus should instead be placed on the Zune. "No one ever foresaw being in this situation," Bennett said.
EFF was skeptical. "The situation was easily foreseeable when Microsoft shut down the MSN Music Store back in 2006," Steele wrote.
Microsoft launched the MSN Music Store in September, 2004, in an effort to compete with Apple's iTunes, but it never made much of a dent in iTunes' business. Two years later, Microsoft started redirecting MSN Music Store shoppers to the Zune Marketplace.
Microsoft announced last week that as of August 31, the company will delete its MSN Music license servers, so music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music Store will be accessible only via the five computers you authorized to play the tunes.
Customers can apparently burn their purchased music to CDs and upload that to their new computers, but EFF says that is "woefully insufficient to redress the problem."
"Microsoft is asking its customers to invest more time, labor, and money in order to continue to enjoy the music for which they have already paid," Shari Steele, EFF executive director, wrote in a letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Steele called on Ballmer to formally apologize to customers affected by the change. Customers should also be offered a refund for music purchased, or replacements from an online store that offers the same tracks in a DRM-free format, she wrote.
She also requested that Microsoft provide customers with proof of purchase, work with industry partners to eliminate DRM from the Zune music catalog, and widely publicize its efforts "so that Microsoft customers know their options."
Microsoft general manager Rob Bennett told CNet last week that continued support for Music Store purchases was impractical, and that the focus should instead be placed on the Zune. "No one ever foresaw being in this situation," Bennett said.
EFF was skeptical. "The situation was easily foreseeable when Microsoft shut down the MSN Music Store back in 2006," Steele wrote.
Microsoft launched the MSN Music Store in September, 2004, in an effort to compete with Apple's iTunes, but it never made much of a dent in iTunes' business. Two years later, Microsoft started redirecting MSN Music Store shoppers to the Zune Marketplace.
12th Annual Webby Award Nominees Announced
The Webby Awards announced this morning the nominees for their 12th annual awards ceremony, in the Website, video, and blog categories. Celebrating their own five-word acceptance speech limit (the sort of brevity to which we wish the rest of the world's countless award ceremonies would adhere), the announcement ushered in the nominees with the Web 2.0-friendly tagline, "more power to the people."
Among the more notable nominees this year are, "I Got a Crush on Obama," "Swift Kids for Truth," The Guardian's Comment is Free, The Huffington Post, Eyes on Darfur, and MAPLight. A full list of the nominees, along with a categorical breakdown (more than 100 in all) can be found over at the Webby Awards' official site.
"This year more than ever, we've really begun to see the Internet live up to ts early promise of empowering people," said the awards' executive director, David-Michel Davies. "Many of this year's nominees are taking politics and advocacy to an entirely new level, making it more fun, meaningful, and exciting than ever before."
The awards have also opened up voting to users. Beginning today and running through May, users can vote on the awards here. The winners will be announced on May 6th in New York. The film and video awards will be held on June 9th.
Kyle and I attended last year's ceremonies. Check out our coverage here and here.
Among the more notable nominees this year are, "I Got a Crush on Obama," "Swift Kids for Truth," The Guardian's Comment is Free, The Huffington Post, Eyes on Darfur, and MAPLight. A full list of the nominees, along with a categorical breakdown (more than 100 in all) can be found over at the Webby Awards' official site.
"This year more than ever, we've really begun to see the Internet live up to ts early promise of empowering people," said the awards' executive director, David-Michel Davies. "Many of this year's nominees are taking politics and advocacy to an entirely new level, making it more fun, meaningful, and exciting than ever before."
The awards have also opened up voting to users. Beginning today and running through May, users can vote on the awards here. The winners will be announced on May 6th in New York. The film and video awards will be held on June 9th.
Kyle and I attended last year's ceremonies. Check out our coverage here and here.
Webby Party Celebrates People's Voice Awards: Vote Now!
It's been a long journey, and it's almost over: The 12th annual Webby Awards nominees were announced April 8, and online voting for the People's Voice Awards was launched the same day. Voting for the "Oscars of the Internet" ends tomorrow, and to celebrate the entire affair, sponsor Nokia hosted a party at its store on 57th St. and 5th Ave. in New York last night.
Voting closes tomorrow, so this is your last chance to weigh in before winners are announced on May 6th. You have to register to vote. Four main groupings--Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film
Voting closes tomorrow, so this is your last chance to weigh in before winners are announced on May 6th. You have to register to vote. Four main groupings--Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film
Web Histories Playing Larger Role in Divorce Proceedings
Lipstick on the collar? One too many late nights at the office? Internet browsing histories?
Divorce lawyers are seeing an increase in the number of cases that cite Web logs as evidence, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
About 79-percent of divorce attorneys polled by the Academy reported an increase in the number of cases using Internet browsing histories during divorce proceedings in the past five years, while 44-percent cited an increase in the use of spyware to gather evidence.
"Many spouses will use the Internet in order to act anonymously, but in many ways it's the most public thing someone can do," James Hennenhoefer, president of the AAML, said in a statement. "Internet activity can provide valuable glimpses into the kinds of hidden activities that a husband or wife might be trying to conceal and spyware programs can help to make this kind of monitoring extremely easy to conduct."
Evidently, typing things like "how to cheat without getting caught" into Google, signing yourself up for a marriedbutlooking.com account, or writing up one too many "casual encounters" posts on Craigslist is not advisable if you'd prefer to emerge from divorce court with your bank account intact.
Think about that when you're taking advantage of the open bar at your friends' weddings this summer. Forget the blenders and the Williams Sonoma gift cards. It's all about the tracking software. Ah, romance.
Divorce lawyers are seeing an increase in the number of cases that cite Web logs as evidence, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
About 79-percent of divorce attorneys polled by the Academy reported an increase in the number of cases using Internet browsing histories during divorce proceedings in the past five years, while 44-percent cited an increase in the use of spyware to gather evidence.
"Many spouses will use the Internet in order to act anonymously, but in many ways it's the most public thing someone can do," James Hennenhoefer, president of the AAML, said in a statement. "Internet activity can provide valuable glimpses into the kinds of hidden activities that a husband or wife might be trying to conceal and spyware programs can help to make this kind of monitoring extremely easy to conduct."
Evidently, typing things like "how to cheat without getting caught" into Google, signing yourself up for a marriedbutlooking.com account, or writing up one too many "casual encounters" posts on Craigslist is not advisable if you'd prefer to emerge from divorce court with your bank account intact.
Think about that when you're taking advantage of the open bar at your friends' weddings this summer. Forget the blenders and the Williams Sonoma gift cards. It's all about the tracking software. Ah, romance.
May Day Boycott Looming, EBay Revises Impact of 'Bug'
The extended eBay boycott that concluded Sunday will not be the last hurrah for sellers angry about recent policy changes. Organizers are gearing up for a May Day strike of the online auction site.
"We have picked the date of May 1 [because] it gives us time to organize and spread the word, [and] it coincides with the month the new feedback changes go into effect," Mary Killion, a seller who has been organizing boycott efforts through eBay's forums, wrote in a recent post. "And personally, I always think of May as the month when things really begin to grow."
eBay sellers large and small have pledged not to list, buy, or peruse any of eBay's listings during the open-ended event. But while sellers are eager to participate in the strike, many are doubtful that their actions will result in eBay changing its policies.
"I'm afraid that if they do reverse the current changes, they will just find another way to slap us in the face," said Sandra Campbell, a power seller who was with eBay since its inception, but has since defected to other online auction sites.
"Do I think the situation will change? Honestly I don't, because I think the goal of eBay management this time is to fundamentally change the nature of the site, making it more a retail mall of homogeneous goods than an antique market or (heaven forbid) a flea-market," wrote Lillian Bauer, a seller since 1998 who shut down her eBay store last week.
appscout973:http://www.appscout.com/2008/03/may_day_boycott_looming_ebay_revises_impact_of_bug.php#more
At issue are policy changes that went into effect on February 20. Though the site decreased listing prices and made certain offerings free of charge, they also stripped sellers of the right to leave feedback, and increased the percentage of the final sale that goes to eBay.
Annoyed sellers revolted and called on sellers to boycott the site during the week of February 18. They later extended that strike to March 9.
Boycott results have been difficult to quantify, however. The sellers pushing for eBay strikes have organized themselves through online petitions, MySpace pages, Facebook groups, and eBay forum postings, but appear to currently lack a cohesive strategy that would best be able to battle an e-commerce giant like eBay.
Killion wrote in the forums that her group is in the process of choosing state leaders who will handle media contacts and news distribution.
Organizers have not had much luck negotiating with eBay.
"It would be my pleasure to discuss all of these issues with eBay," said Timothy Church, a former seller who is running the Boycott EBay MySpace page. "Currently, however, eBay has made it very clear to me they are not interested in negotiating."
eBay has been relatively unfazed by the boycotts. Though auction statistic Web sites reported a 13 percent drop in eBay listings during the first week of the boycott, eBay brushed off those stats and said they failed to take into account a 20-cent listings promotion that caused a spike in pre-boycott listings.
This is not the first time eBay has faced an angry community of sellers. The site has implemented several changes over the past few years, including 2005 and 2006 rate hikes that also prompted seller boycotts.
Sellers were not as irked by those changes as they are about the most recent overhaul.
"We didn't have a problem with the rate increases in 2006," said Ilene Rachford, an eBay seller since 2000 who recently moved her business to Neoloch. "It was just the cost of doing business. And we feel the same way about the new increases."
"What we absolutely cannot abide by is the new feedback rule," she continued. "This is completely, totally unfair and will destroy sellers in an instant. Now sellers will be open to feedback extortion, more unpaid items, buying scams and a host of other problems, simply because the buyer 'can'... and the seller has no recourse."
"What eBay fails to realize is that their sellers were also buyers," Rachford said. "Chasing them away makes that a double whammy."
Occasional powerseller Linda Adler said she sent a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission "charging eBay with fraudulent practices, restraint of trade, and operating a vertical monopoly thought PayPal and eBay."
FTC complaints are non-public, so the agency was unable to provide information on how many eBay-related filings it may have received.
Sellers thought they had narrowed in on one such fraudulent practice last week when listings from eBay-owned shopping.com popped up on ebay.com.
eBay admitted that shopping.com listings were accidentally placed on eBay, but denied that the move was intended to pad listing numbers during the boycott. Instead, a glitch related to the gallery function had resulted in shopping.com posts showing up on eBay, according to a spokesman.
An eBay spokesman told PC Magazine at the time that 5,000 shopping.com listings were erroneously placed on ebay.com. After sellers expressed doubt about that number in the comments section, eBay was asked to again confirm that it was indeed 5,000. The same spokesman responded Friday that he had originally told PC Magazine that eBay pulled 35,000 listings, but a review of the interview confirmed that he said 5,000.
Sellers were also up in arms over deleted eBay forum posts. The auction site reserves the right to delete posts it deems inappropriate, but some sellers said their posts were deleted simply because they criticized eBay.
One deleted post obtained by PC Magazine called eBay a monopoly and attacked another user as "stupid" and a "sucker." Another sarcastically called people "crackheads" and called another user dumb for believing "eBay-speak."
In deleting these posts, eBay cited its rule that bans profanity, vulgarity, hate speech, disruptive, or hostile comments, interpersonal disputes, or threats of violence on its boards.
Another deleted comment called on users to joint the SUBAT Fight FeeBay boycott. It did not contain obscene language, but referred to eBay as a tyrant and pledged to "give them a war."
When asked about deleted posts, an eBay spokesman denied last week that comments were pulled down strictly for being anti-eBay. If any such posts were deleted, it was "accidental," he said. "We're not afraid of hearing from our community and allowing them to post and discuss things and be angry on our boards."
Editor's Note: The eBay spokesman confirmed Monday that the number of postings pulled from shopping.com was indeed 35,000.
"We have picked the date of May 1 [because] it gives us time to organize and spread the word, [and] it coincides with the month the new feedback changes go into effect," Mary Killion, a seller who has been organizing boycott efforts through eBay's forums, wrote in a recent post. "And personally, I always think of May as the month when things really begin to grow."
eBay sellers large and small have pledged not to list, buy, or peruse any of eBay's listings during the open-ended event. But while sellers are eager to participate in the strike, many are doubtful that their actions will result in eBay changing its policies.
"I'm afraid that if they do reverse the current changes, they will just find another way to slap us in the face," said Sandra Campbell, a power seller who was with eBay since its inception, but has since defected to other online auction sites.
"Do I think the situation will change? Honestly I don't, because I think the goal of eBay management this time is to fundamentally change the nature of the site, making it more a retail mall of homogeneous goods than an antique market or (heaven forbid) a flea-market," wrote Lillian Bauer, a seller since 1998 who shut down her eBay store last week.
appscout973:http://www.appscout.com/2008/03/may_day_boycott_looming_ebay_revises_impact_of_bug.php#more
At issue are policy changes that went into effect on February 20. Though the site decreased listing prices and made certain offerings free of charge, they also stripped sellers of the right to leave feedback, and increased the percentage of the final sale that goes to eBay.
Annoyed sellers revolted and called on sellers to boycott the site during the week of February 18. They later extended that strike to March 9.
Boycott results have been difficult to quantify, however. The sellers pushing for eBay strikes have organized themselves through online petitions, MySpace pages, Facebook groups, and eBay forum postings, but appear to currently lack a cohesive strategy that would best be able to battle an e-commerce giant like eBay.
Killion wrote in the forums that her group is in the process of choosing state leaders who will handle media contacts and news distribution.
Organizers have not had much luck negotiating with eBay.
"It would be my pleasure to discuss all of these issues with eBay," said Timothy Church, a former seller who is running the Boycott EBay MySpace page. "Currently, however, eBay has made it very clear to me they are not interested in negotiating."
eBay has been relatively unfazed by the boycotts. Though auction statistic Web sites reported a 13 percent drop in eBay listings during the first week of the boycott, eBay brushed off those stats and said they failed to take into account a 20-cent listings promotion that caused a spike in pre-boycott listings.
This is not the first time eBay has faced an angry community of sellers. The site has implemented several changes over the past few years, including 2005 and 2006 rate hikes that also prompted seller boycotts.
Sellers were not as irked by those changes as they are about the most recent overhaul.
"We didn't have a problem with the rate increases in 2006," said Ilene Rachford, an eBay seller since 2000 who recently moved her business to Neoloch. "It was just the cost of doing business. And we feel the same way about the new increases."
"What we absolutely cannot abide by is the new feedback rule," she continued. "This is completely, totally unfair and will destroy sellers in an instant. Now sellers will be open to feedback extortion, more unpaid items, buying scams and a host of other problems, simply because the buyer 'can'... and the seller has no recourse."
"What eBay fails to realize is that their sellers were also buyers," Rachford said. "Chasing them away makes that a double whammy."
Occasional powerseller Linda Adler said she sent a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission "charging eBay with fraudulent practices, restraint of trade, and operating a vertical monopoly thought PayPal and eBay."
FTC complaints are non-public, so the agency was unable to provide information on how many eBay-related filings it may have received.
Sellers thought they had narrowed in on one such fraudulent practice last week when listings from eBay-owned shopping.com popped up on ebay.com.
eBay admitted that shopping.com listings were accidentally placed on eBay, but denied that the move was intended to pad listing numbers during the boycott. Instead, a glitch related to the gallery function had resulted in shopping.com posts showing up on eBay, according to a spokesman.
An eBay spokesman told PC Magazine at the time that 5,000 shopping.com listings were erroneously placed on ebay.com. After sellers expressed doubt about that number in the comments section, eBay was asked to again confirm that it was indeed 5,000. The same spokesman responded Friday that he had originally told PC Magazine that eBay pulled 35,000 listings, but a review of the interview confirmed that he said 5,000.
Sellers were also up in arms over deleted eBay forum posts. The auction site reserves the right to delete posts it deems inappropriate, but some sellers said their posts were deleted simply because they criticized eBay.
One deleted post obtained by PC Magazine called eBay a monopoly and attacked another user as "stupid" and a "sucker." Another sarcastically called people "crackheads" and called another user dumb for believing "eBay-speak."
In deleting these posts, eBay cited its rule that bans profanity, vulgarity, hate speech, disruptive, or hostile comments, interpersonal disputes, or threats of violence on its boards.
Another deleted comment called on users to joint the SUBAT Fight FeeBay boycott. It did not contain obscene language, but referred to eBay as a tyrant and pledged to "give them a war."
When asked about deleted posts, an eBay spokesman denied last week that comments were pulled down strictly for being anti-eBay. If any such posts were deleted, it was "accidental," he said. "We're not afraid of hearing from our community and allowing them to post and discuss things and be angry on our boards."
Editor's Note: The eBay spokesman confirmed Monday that the number of postings pulled from shopping.com was indeed 35,000.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
PosOrNot: A Game that Raises HIV/AIDS Awareness
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is very real and affects millions of people worldwide every day, but there are a number of misconceptions and stereotypes about people who have the disease. Together with MTV and the Kaiser Family Foundation, celebrity musicians and icons like Fall Out Boy, Wyclef Jean, Perez Hilton, Will.i.am, Atmosphere, and Rise Against are launching Pos or Not, a Web game that forces you to examine those misconceptions.
Pos or Not shows you real photos of real people and forces you to choose whether the person pictured has HIV/AIDS or not based mostly on their photo. Once you make your selection, you find out the truth and learn a little about the person pictured and their life--with or without HIV/AIDS.
25 years after the first HIV/AIDS cases started cropping up in America, it's remarkable how many people still think that people affected by the disease look a certain way or are of a certain ethnicity or social group. In fact, the core message of Pos Or Not is that people with HIV/AIDS look just like everyone else, and whether you have the disease or not everyone has a story to tell about how HIV/AIDS has touched their lives.
The game itself is simple; you're presented with a photo and some very basic information about the person pictured, and you choose whether the person in the photo is HIV positive or HIV negative. Once you make your selection, you're taken to a page that shows you whether that person is actually HIV positive or negative and reveals a little information about the person.
The site is modeled after Hot or Not, and after you see whether your guess was right or wrong, you get to read a little about the person you just voted on. If the person is HIV positive, you can read the story of how they learned they were positive and how it's changed their life, and if the person was HIV negative, you can read about how HIV/AIDS has changed their life. Afterwards, you move on to the next person and get to choose all over again.
In addition to the game, Pos or Not also has talking tips and other resources for people who want more information on HIV/AIDS. The site sports hotlines and contact information for organizations dedicated to helping people with or affected by HIV/AIDS, some basic information about the disease to help readers clear up their misconceptions, and a guide to getting tested.
Once you go through a few photos and realize how wrong you are when you're judging someone based only on a photograph and brief personal bio, the site reminds you that the only way to really know yourself is to get tested. It doesn't take too long for you to realize while you're playing the game that it's impossible to know whether someone is HIV positive just by looking at them, or even by knowing a little about them.
Pos or Not shows you real photos of real people and forces you to choose whether the person pictured has HIV/AIDS or not based mostly on their photo. Once you make your selection, you find out the truth and learn a little about the person pictured and their life--with or without HIV/AIDS.
25 years after the first HIV/AIDS cases started cropping up in America, it's remarkable how many people still think that people affected by the disease look a certain way or are of a certain ethnicity or social group. In fact, the core message of Pos Or Not is that people with HIV/AIDS look just like everyone else, and whether you have the disease or not everyone has a story to tell about how HIV/AIDS has touched their lives.
The game itself is simple; you're presented with a photo and some very basic information about the person pictured, and you choose whether the person in the photo is HIV positive or HIV negative. Once you make your selection, you're taken to a page that shows you whether that person is actually HIV positive or negative and reveals a little information about the person.
The site is modeled after Hot or Not, and after you see whether your guess was right or wrong, you get to read a little about the person you just voted on. If the person is HIV positive, you can read the story of how they learned they were positive and how it's changed their life, and if the person was HIV negative, you can read about how HIV/AIDS has changed their life. Afterwards, you move on to the next person and get to choose all over again.
In addition to the game, Pos or Not also has talking tips and other resources for people who want more information on HIV/AIDS. The site sports hotlines and contact information for organizations dedicated to helping people with or affected by HIV/AIDS, some basic information about the disease to help readers clear up their misconceptions, and a guide to getting tested.
Once you go through a few photos and realize how wrong you are when you're judging someone based only on a photograph and brief personal bio, the site reminds you that the only way to really know yourself is to get tested. It doesn't take too long for you to realize while you're playing the game that it's impossible to know whether someone is HIV positive just by looking at them, or even by knowing a little about them.
Google Ocean in the Works.
Having already conquered the earth and the sky, Google is setting its sites on the next undiscovered frontier--the ocean. The search company has been assembling teams of oceanographers at its Mountain View, CA offices to begin work on the next major facet of its ever-enlarging Earth project: Google Oceans, a 3D map of that big wet spot that takes up nearly three-fourths of our global real-estate.
Google is remaining tight-lipped about the project at the moment, but CNet reports that the company is planning to "[overlay] layers that depict phenomena like weather patterns, currents, temperatures, shipwrecks, coral reefs, and algae blooms, much like the National Park Service and NASA provide additional data for Google Earth and Google Sky."
The upcoming project may hold as much interest for professional oceanographers and enthusiasts as it does for the general public, allowing easy virtual access to a terrain that has always been notoriously difficult to traverse. And of course, the difficulties may also translate into delays for the creation of the project.
"It would take about 100 ship years to map the oceans at high resolution," Dave Sandwell, a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told CNet.
After all, it's not just a simple matter of retrofitting those Street View vans.
Google is remaining tight-lipped about the project at the moment, but CNet reports that the company is planning to "[overlay] layers that depict phenomena like weather patterns, currents, temperatures, shipwrecks, coral reefs, and algae blooms, much like the National Park Service and NASA provide additional data for Google Earth and Google Sky."
The upcoming project may hold as much interest for professional oceanographers and enthusiasts as it does for the general public, allowing easy virtual access to a terrain that has always been notoriously difficult to traverse. And of course, the difficulties may also translate into delays for the creation of the project.
"It would take about 100 ship years to map the oceans at high resolution," Dave Sandwell, a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told CNet.
After all, it's not just a simple matter of retrofitting those Street View vans.
AOL, Real, Yahoo Could Owe Songwriters $100 Million
A U.S. district court ruled Wednesday that AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo must pay a percentage of their music-oriented revenues to the American Society of Composers, Artists, and Pusblishers (ASCAP) after the three companies were unable to agree on the rates owed the songwriters.
In total, ASCAP said, the payments owed by all three companies could equal $100 million.
"The Court's finding represents a major step toward proper valuation of the music contributions of songwriters, composers and publishers to these types of online businesses - many of which have built much of their success on the foundation of the creative works of others," said ASCAP president and chairman Marilyn Bergman. "It is critical that these organizations share a reasonable portion of their sizable revenues with those of us whose content attracts audiences and, ultimately, helps to make their businesses viable. This decision will go a long way toward protecting the ability of songwriters and composers to be compensated fairly as the use of musical works online continues to grow."
The district court was brought in as a "rate court" to determine what rates the Web sites should pay, as per a 2001 court ruling. The hearing took place during Oct.-Nov. 1997, during which the court heard from a dozen witnesses and reviewed 203 exhibits. The fees are in addition to what all three sites pay the record labels for music and to video providers like CBS for their videos.
In a ruling made public by ASCAP, the court notes that early moves in Internet-delivered music went largely unregulated. In a footnotes, the court reminds us that Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.4 billion in 1999; for 1998, the company had recorded $8.4 million in advertising revenue. However, an estimated 8.2 billion music streams were delievered in 2005, a 3,700 percent increase from the 270 million streams served in 2000.
The "open period" during which Yahoo began serving streams began July 1, 2002; AOL's began on Jan. 1, 2005, while Real's began on the same day in 2004. ASCAP proposed that the court estimate all fees through 2009. The organization attempted to calculate the music-oriented revenues of all three companies, and apply a 3 percent licensing fee to each.
Because both comScore and Nielsen assign differing values in terms of users and traffic, ASCAP valued AOL's fees at roughly $13 million, as per the graphic above. RealNetworks was assessed a fee of about $21 million, under ASCAP's estimate. In each case, related services (like Real's Rhapsody) were taken into account.
The court ruled that AOL, Real, and Yahoo would each pay a slightly lower 2.5 percent of its "music-use-adjusted revenue," or a percentage of the amount of money brought in by users and advertisers on the music-oriented Web pages or services. In the case of AOL and Yahoo, that would in turn be modified by the number of hours users spent on the music-oriented portions of the Web site, divided by the total number of hours spent visiting the site at large. (Real, because it was deemed a music-only service, did not have this modifier applied to it.)
Specifically, the court found that for 2006, AOL would owe ASCAP $5.95 million, and Yahoo would owe $6.76 million. The court found that there was not enough data to assess the appropriate fee for RealNetworks.
In total, ASCAP said, the payments owed by all three companies could equal $100 million.
"The Court's finding represents a major step toward proper valuation of the music contributions of songwriters, composers and publishers to these types of online businesses - many of which have built much of their success on the foundation of the creative works of others," said ASCAP president and chairman Marilyn Bergman. "It is critical that these organizations share a reasonable portion of their sizable revenues with those of us whose content attracts audiences and, ultimately, helps to make their businesses viable. This decision will go a long way toward protecting the ability of songwriters and composers to be compensated fairly as the use of musical works online continues to grow."
The district court was brought in as a "rate court" to determine what rates the Web sites should pay, as per a 2001 court ruling. The hearing took place during Oct.-Nov. 1997, during which the court heard from a dozen witnesses and reviewed 203 exhibits. The fees are in addition to what all three sites pay the record labels for music and to video providers like CBS for their videos.
In a ruling made public by ASCAP, the court notes that early moves in Internet-delivered music went largely unregulated. In a footnotes, the court reminds us that Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.4 billion in 1999; for 1998, the company had recorded $8.4 million in advertising revenue. However, an estimated 8.2 billion music streams were delievered in 2005, a 3,700 percent increase from the 270 million streams served in 2000.
The "open period" during which Yahoo began serving streams began July 1, 2002; AOL's began on Jan. 1, 2005, while Real's began on the same day in 2004. ASCAP proposed that the court estimate all fees through 2009. The organization attempted to calculate the music-oriented revenues of all three companies, and apply a 3 percent licensing fee to each.
Because both comScore and Nielsen assign differing values in terms of users and traffic, ASCAP valued AOL's fees at roughly $13 million, as per the graphic above. RealNetworks was assessed a fee of about $21 million, under ASCAP's estimate. In each case, related services (like Real's Rhapsody) were taken into account.
The court ruled that AOL, Real, and Yahoo would each pay a slightly lower 2.5 percent of its "music-use-adjusted revenue," or a percentage of the amount of money brought in by users and advertisers on the music-oriented Web pages or services. In the case of AOL and Yahoo, that would in turn be modified by the number of hours users spent on the music-oriented portions of the Web site, divided by the total number of hours spent visiting the site at large. (Real, because it was deemed a music-only service, did not have this modifier applied to it.)
Specifically, the court found that for 2006, AOL would owe ASCAP $5.95 million, and Yahoo would owe $6.76 million. The court found that there was not enough data to assess the appropriate fee for RealNetworks.
Wakerupper: Your Personal Wake Up Call
I know its much easier for me to get up if my phone is ringing than if my alarm clock is going off. The alarm clock I can ignore, but the ringing of the phone and the constant beeping of my voice-mail alert is difficult to sleep through. The hard part is finding someone willing to call you at 7 in the morning with the unpleasant task of waking you up. Wakerupper, a Web service that will call you at a scheduled time with a reminder message, will do that for me, and can also help me remember important tasks when I'm awake.
Wakerupper is more useful than the name implies. The service will automatically call you with any reminder at any time of the day. You can schedule reminders months in advance, and if you sign up for a beta account, you can manage and keep track of those events. The service is free to use, but beta accounts are private, so you'll need to e-mail the service to get in it. Beta testers also get access to new features as they're rolled out, such as voice reminders, snoozing reminders, recurring calls, and more.
Wakerupper will call you at any time of day that you select with a custom message. Simply choose the date and time you'd like to receive your call and your time zone, and type in a short reminder message you'd like included with your call. The service will call you at the appointed time and read the message you've typed in to you, whether it's "wake up," or "don't forget your flight leaves in an hour."
The service is free to use, and anyone can schedule a reminder. Private beta accounts are also free for the moment, but the site's terms of service leave the door wide open to "premium" accounts in the future that may have a subscription fee, and will likely sport all of the features that the developers are working on now.
As with any service that asks for data as personal as a phone number, the privacy policy is a good thing to read. Wakerupper promises that it will never share or sell your telephone number unless its ordered to by a court. It goes on to state that it currently does not work with advertisers, but if it ever did it would never provide personal information. It looks as though Wakerupper, when it decides to monetize its services, will try to make money from premium accounts and not from selling customer information.
Wakerupper was conceived as a way to get a personal wake-up call without calling the desk of your hotel (if you're even sleeping in a hotel), but it can also remind you not to miss your flight, that you have an important meeting this afternoon, or that you have a dinner date. The site suggests that you use Wakerupper to alert you when it's time to get up, to remind you to take medication--or even to fake an emergency to get out of a boring meeting or bad date.
Wakerupper is more useful than the name implies. The service will automatically call you with any reminder at any time of the day. You can schedule reminders months in advance, and if you sign up for a beta account, you can manage and keep track of those events. The service is free to use, but beta accounts are private, so you'll need to e-mail the service to get in it. Beta testers also get access to new features as they're rolled out, such as voice reminders, snoozing reminders, recurring calls, and more.
Wakerupper will call you at any time of day that you select with a custom message. Simply choose the date and time you'd like to receive your call and your time zone, and type in a short reminder message you'd like included with your call. The service will call you at the appointed time and read the message you've typed in to you, whether it's "wake up," or "don't forget your flight leaves in an hour."
The service is free to use, and anyone can schedule a reminder. Private beta accounts are also free for the moment, but the site's terms of service leave the door wide open to "premium" accounts in the future that may have a subscription fee, and will likely sport all of the features that the developers are working on now.
As with any service that asks for data as personal as a phone number, the privacy policy is a good thing to read. Wakerupper promises that it will never share or sell your telephone number unless its ordered to by a court. It goes on to state that it currently does not work with advertisers, but if it ever did it would never provide personal information. It looks as though Wakerupper, when it decides to monetize its services, will try to make money from premium accounts and not from selling customer information.
Wakerupper was conceived as a way to get a personal wake-up call without calling the desk of your hotel (if you're even sleeping in a hotel), but it can also remind you not to miss your flight, that you have an important meeting this afternoon, or that you have a dinner date. The site suggests that you use Wakerupper to alert you when it's time to get up, to remind you to take medication--or even to fake an emergency to get out of a boring meeting or bad date.
MADD Lashes Out Against Grand Theft Auto IV
The other day, a coworker was singing the praises of the latest installment in the Grand Theft Auto series; she rattled off a list of all of the activities in which one can engage in the world of Liberty City. One of her favorites--beyond the standard car-jacking, hooker bludgeoning fare--was the ability to drive drunk.
Advocacy group, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), are, perhaps not unsurprisingly, less happy about that feature. "Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke," said MADD in a statement issued to coincide with the game's release. "Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable."
The non-profit organization is asking the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to bump the game up from Mature to Adults Only. It's also--perhaps less realistically--asking Take 2 Interactive and developer Rockstar Games games to stop distributing the title, which is expected to pull in some $400 million at launch.
Rockstar responding to the request by telling the Associated Press, "We have a great deal of respect for MADD's mission, but we believe the mature audience for Grand Theft Auto IV is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game's content. For the same reason that you can't judge an entire film or television program by a single scene, you can't judge Grand Theft Auto by a small aspect of the game."
Naturally. Shame on them for overlooking the equally prominent scenes of murder and general mayhem.
Advocacy group, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), are, perhaps not unsurprisingly, less happy about that feature. "Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke," said MADD in a statement issued to coincide with the game's release. "Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable."
The non-profit organization is asking the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to bump the game up from Mature to Adults Only. It's also--perhaps less realistically--asking Take 2 Interactive and developer Rockstar Games games to stop distributing the title, which is expected to pull in some $400 million at launch.
Rockstar responding to the request by telling the Associated Press, "We have a great deal of respect for MADD's mission, but we believe the mature audience for Grand Theft Auto IV is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game's content. For the same reason that you can't judge an entire film or television program by a single scene, you can't judge Grand Theft Auto by a small aspect of the game."
Naturally. Shame on them for overlooking the equally prominent scenes of murder and general mayhem.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Songerize Gets That Song Out of Your Head
I think one of the best ways to get rid of a song that's in your head is to hear it played. Songerize can help; the service lets you type in a song title and an artist's name, and it will find and play the song for you. The service is perfect if there's a song you want to hear or share with a friend right away. Alternatively, Songerize might be the perfect weapon in your arsenal if you're the insidious type who likes to put songs in other people's heads.
Songerize reminds me a bit of Songza, a similar service that allows you to search for a song and then play it. But Songerize is designed for finding individual songs when you know both the title and the artist's name. If you're missing either of those pieces, Songerize has difficulty finding your track. If it does find your track, though, it immediately starts playing it.
Songerize shares databases with its more feature-rich cousin, Seeqpod. The service describes itself as the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for Seeqpod, so if you're looking for more options and remixes of specific songs, you should visit Seeqpod instead. Songerize is designed specifically to be used when you absolutely have to hear a specific song or you want your friends to hear the song that you've been humming all day.
I had a few problems with the songs buffering shortly after they started to play, but the database managed to find the bulk of the songs I searched for. Some of the more obscure artists were nowhere to be found, but all of the popular tracks were easy to find.
Songerize is fun to use, and perfect to call up when you and a coworker get into a discussion about a song you heard in a commercial. Don't expect Songerize to be a music discovery engine or to sport all the features that other, larger music search engines have. Songerize's strength is that it's quick, easy, and can find just about anything and play it in a snap.
Songerize reminds me a bit of Songza, a similar service that allows you to search for a song and then play it. But Songerize is designed for finding individual songs when you know both the title and the artist's name. If you're missing either of those pieces, Songerize has difficulty finding your track. If it does find your track, though, it immediately starts playing it.
Songerize shares databases with its more feature-rich cousin, Seeqpod. The service describes itself as the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for Seeqpod, so if you're looking for more options and remixes of specific songs, you should visit Seeqpod instead. Songerize is designed specifically to be used when you absolutely have to hear a specific song or you want your friends to hear the song that you've been humming all day.
I had a few problems with the songs buffering shortly after they started to play, but the database managed to find the bulk of the songs I searched for. Some of the more obscure artists were nowhere to be found, but all of the popular tracks were easy to find.
Songerize is fun to use, and perfect to call up when you and a coworker get into a discussion about a song you heard in a commercial. Don't expect Songerize to be a music discovery engine or to sport all the features that other, larger music search engines have. Songerize's strength is that it's quick, easy, and can find just about anything and play it in a snap.
Streamzy: Centralize Your Streaming Music
A number of Web services have popped up recently that will play a song for you on demand. Sites like Songerize and Songza let you search for a song and play it instantly, but Streamzy takes the idea a step further. If you sign up for an account at Streamzy, you can create custom playlists, add the music that you find to those playlists, and come back to your tunes anytime from any Internet-connected computer.
Streamzy is simple to use: Search for music using the artist or song name, and select how many search results you'd like. The service goes out, grabs music from sites that host the music and make it available for streaming, and cleans up any bad results before you click Play. From there, you can click any of the songs in the search results to start streaming it, or drag it to the playlist window at the bottom of the page. The service starts you off with a default playlist; to add more you'll have to sign up for a Streamzy account (free).
The service's goal is to give you one place to search for music, stream it immediately, and save it for the future. Once you're signed up, you can create multiple playlists and add as much music to them as you like. They automatically save, and you can return to them anytime from any Internet-connected computer. You control the music and volume with the player controls in the upper left corner of the page.
Streamzy is a brainchild of Seeqpod, the same folks behind Songerize. Songerize allows you to search for a single song and instantly play it, and Seeqpod allows you to search more broadly and play anything you find. Streamzy takes the search functionality from Seeqpod and lets you save the tunes that turn up from your searches. Songza is similar: it allows you to search, play instantly, and also sports playlist features, but you can have only one playlist at a time; Streamzy allows you to create as many as you like. Streamzy and its Seeqpod-based brothers may not be as clean as Songza, but I'd be surprised if multiple playlists didn't turn up in Songza within weeks.
Part of what makes Streamzy so special is the fact that it draws upon Seeqpod's broad database of music sources. You can find just about anything you might want to hear, and because you can save it all to playlists that you can return to, it's almost like owning the music. In order to stay legal, the service doesn't allow you to buy or download the music, so you can't take your tunes offline.
The service is brand new, and it shows; the info pages are scarcely populated and don't offer a ton of information. Even so, Streamzy is a lot of fun to use, and the site is pretty snappy. Music loads quickly, the interface is simple to use, and I can certainly see leaving Streamzy up in the background playing music while I'm working.
Streamzy is simple to use: Search for music using the artist or song name, and select how many search results you'd like. The service goes out, grabs music from sites that host the music and make it available for streaming, and cleans up any bad results before you click Play. From there, you can click any of the songs in the search results to start streaming it, or drag it to the playlist window at the bottom of the page. The service starts you off with a default playlist; to add more you'll have to sign up for a Streamzy account (free).
The service's goal is to give you one place to search for music, stream it immediately, and save it for the future. Once you're signed up, you can create multiple playlists and add as much music to them as you like. They automatically save, and you can return to them anytime from any Internet-connected computer. You control the music and volume with the player controls in the upper left corner of the page.
Streamzy is a brainchild of Seeqpod, the same folks behind Songerize. Songerize allows you to search for a single song and instantly play it, and Seeqpod allows you to search more broadly and play anything you find. Streamzy takes the search functionality from Seeqpod and lets you save the tunes that turn up from your searches. Songza is similar: it allows you to search, play instantly, and also sports playlist features, but you can have only one playlist at a time; Streamzy allows you to create as many as you like. Streamzy and its Seeqpod-based brothers may not be as clean as Songza, but I'd be surprised if multiple playlists didn't turn up in Songza within weeks.
Part of what makes Streamzy so special is the fact that it draws upon Seeqpod's broad database of music sources. You can find just about anything you might want to hear, and because you can save it all to playlists that you can return to, it's almost like owning the music. In order to stay legal, the service doesn't allow you to buy or download the music, so you can't take your tunes offline.
The service is brand new, and it shows; the info pages are scarcely populated and don't offer a ton of information. Even so, Streamzy is a lot of fun to use, and the site is pretty snappy. Music loads quickly, the interface is simple to use, and I can certainly see leaving Streamzy up in the background playing music while I'm working.
MLB.com Updates Multiple Streaming Feature
With the launch of an upgraded version of MLB.TV Mosaic from MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), the Internet and media company of Major League Baseball, and Ensequence, an interactive TV company, baseball fans worldwide can watch their favorite sport in more ways than one--six, to be precise.
MLB.TV Mosaic now allows fans to view up to six high-quality streaming videos of live, final, and preview games; available games are featured at the top of the screen. Subscribers can watch up to six live games at once streaming at 1.2MB on 16:9 video feeds and can personalize their own video mosaic configuration. And with just a double click, a game can go full-screen.
"What we're doing today is not quite TV-quality, but it's getting closer and closer," said Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLB.com.
The application also updates fans on the latest news from their favorite teams with an interactive player tracker and fantasy baseball alerts. The tracker gives people the opportunity to create a fantasy roster and a list of their favorite teams. Alerts post every time something happens in a live game with one of the tracked players, so subscribers will not miss a thing.
I got to see a quick demo of the service yesterday. The video quality was impressive with a crisp and clear look. It was like watching the game on a TV with high resolution, high enough in fact to feel like you were on the ball field with the players.
The application also includes an archive of highlighted baseball games from 2005. MLB.TV Mosaic is now available for $119.95 for the premium season package (or $19.95 monthly), which includes the multiple-stream games. MLB.com also offers a basic package for $89, featuring lower resolution and one-game streams only.
MLB.TV Mosaic now allows fans to view up to six high-quality streaming videos of live, final, and preview games; available games are featured at the top of the screen. Subscribers can watch up to six live games at once streaming at 1.2MB on 16:9 video feeds and can personalize their own video mosaic configuration. And with just a double click, a game can go full-screen.
"What we're doing today is not quite TV-quality, but it's getting closer and closer," said Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLB.com.
The application also updates fans on the latest news from their favorite teams with an interactive player tracker and fantasy baseball alerts. The tracker gives people the opportunity to create a fantasy roster and a list of their favorite teams. Alerts post every time something happens in a live game with one of the tracked players, so subscribers will not miss a thing.
I got to see a quick demo of the service yesterday. The video quality was impressive with a crisp and clear look. It was like watching the game on a TV with high resolution, high enough in fact to feel like you were on the ball field with the players.
The application also includes an archive of highlighted baseball games from 2005. MLB.TV Mosaic is now available for $119.95 for the premium season package (or $19.95 monthly), which includes the multiple-stream games. MLB.com also offers a basic package for $89, featuring lower resolution and one-game streams only.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Now in Handy Google Maps Form
If there's one thing we need as a society, it's a further blurring of the lines between reality and Grand Theft Auto. Google and gaming network IGN have teamed up to bring a Google Maps version of Liberty City. The map features keys for points of interest, restaurants, shopping, services, nightlife, missions, secrets, and various other key features that were submitted by GTA players.
Says coworker and GTA-obsessive Whitney Reynolds: "It let me know where to finally find some hookers " Now that's a five-star recommendation if ever I've heard one.
P.S.: The pictured location above is roughly equivalent to the location of my real-world apartment, so if you find yourself in the neighborhood killing hookers, make sure you pop in and say hi.
Says coworker and GTA-obsessive Whitney Reynolds: "It let me know where to finally find some hookers " Now that's a five-star recommendation if ever I've heard one.
P.S.: The pictured location above is roughly equivalent to the location of my real-world apartment, so if you find yourself in the neighborhood killing hookers, make sure you pop in and say hi.
NY Lawmakers Revive Online Tax Issue (Again)
Sick of hearing about taxes yet? Well, hold tight, our representatives in the New York state legislature have a little treat for residents who enjoy online shopping - more taxes!
If you buy something online, you're largely exempt from state taxes you might incur if you'd made the same purchase in an actual store. Technically, you're supposed to report your online purchases and pay taxes on them, but no one really does that.
New York lawmakers last week, however, approved a budget package that includes a bill that would force online stores like Amazon.com to collect sales tax.
Retailers have long argued that they don't have to collect state sales tax if they don't have a physical presence in a particular state - an position backed up by a 1992 Supreme Court ruling. What might cause problems for Amazon, however, is its affiliate program - which has participants all across the country.
appscout973:http://www.appscout.com/2008/04/ny_lawmakers_revive_online_tax.php
Affiliates can place links to Amazon on their personal Web pages and collect money if someone clicks on that link and makes an Amazon purchase. Under the law passed by New York, however, if a writer based in Brooklyn has an Amazon affiliate link on his Web site or blog, Amazon must collect sales tax from anyone who makes a purchase through that writer's link since he is based in New York - even if Amazon has no physical presence in the state.
Only affiliates who make at least $10,000 from affiliate programs would be subject to the New York law, but that could still be a headache for retailers.
New York Gov. Paterson is expected to approve the measure, as it could bring in up to $50 million in additional revenue.
Former Gov. Spitzer tried to push a similar plan last year, but pulled the idea after it made unfavorable headlines.
UPDATE: The New York Post reports that out-of-state businesses with a Web presence in New York could encounter audits and bills for back taxes if they do not register with the state by June 1, but those who do comply will receive amnesty.
If you buy something online, you're largely exempt from state taxes you might incur if you'd made the same purchase in an actual store. Technically, you're supposed to report your online purchases and pay taxes on them, but no one really does that.
New York lawmakers last week, however, approved a budget package that includes a bill that would force online stores like Amazon.com to collect sales tax.
Retailers have long argued that they don't have to collect state sales tax if they don't have a physical presence in a particular state - an position backed up by a 1992 Supreme Court ruling. What might cause problems for Amazon, however, is its affiliate program - which has participants all across the country.
appscout973:http://www.appscout.com/2008/04/ny_lawmakers_revive_online_tax.php
Affiliates can place links to Amazon on their personal Web pages and collect money if someone clicks on that link and makes an Amazon purchase. Under the law passed by New York, however, if a writer based in Brooklyn has an Amazon affiliate link on his Web site or blog, Amazon must collect sales tax from anyone who makes a purchase through that writer's link since he is based in New York - even if Amazon has no physical presence in the state.
Only affiliates who make at least $10,000 from affiliate programs would be subject to the New York law, but that could still be a headache for retailers.
New York Gov. Paterson is expected to approve the measure, as it could bring in up to $50 million in additional revenue.
Former Gov. Spitzer tried to push a similar plan last year, but pulled the idea after it made unfavorable headlines.
UPDATE: The New York Post reports that out-of-state businesses with a Web presence in New York could encounter audits and bills for back taxes if they do not register with the state by June 1, but those who do comply will receive amnesty.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Excel Displays Formulas Instead of Results
Q: I have a recurring problem in an Excel spreadsheet, and there is probably an easy solution. First I export a QuickBooks report to an Excel file, then insert a column. If I try to use a formula in that new column, only the formula displays, not the result. But I can use formulas in a new row, below the original data. Can you please tell me how to get around this? - Gerry Erdman.
A: This is an odd one. When you exported your file it created an Excel file in which text-only columns and columns of blank cells were actively formatted as Text. When you inserted a column to the right of one of these, Excel carried over the forced Text format. In the future you should click the column header to select the whole column and format the cells as General before typing any formulas.
For formulas you've already entered, those that display the formula text rather than their values, changing the format to General is not enough. You must delete the cell contents, change the format and then re-type the contents. If it's a complicated formula, highlight the formula text in the address bar, copy it to the clipboard, delete the cell, change the format, and then paste it back. Whew! It's definitely easier to just correct the format before typing anything. - Neil J. Rubenking.
A: This is an odd one. When you exported your file it created an Excel file in which text-only columns and columns of blank cells were actively formatted as Text. When you inserted a column to the right of one of these, Excel carried over the forced Text format. In the future you should click the column header to select the whole column and format the cells as General before typing any formulas.
For formulas you've already entered, those that display the formula text rather than their values, changing the format to General is not enough. You must delete the cell contents, change the format and then re-type the contents. If it's a complicated formula, highlight the formula text in the address bar, copy it to the clipboard, delete the cell, change the format, and then paste it back. Whew! It's definitely easier to just correct the format before typing anything. - Neil J. Rubenking.
Keyboard Goes Goofy
Q: I hope you can help, because Dell doesn't seem to know the answer. I have an Inspiron 6400 purchased a couple of years ago, but it has an annoying issue. Whenever I use the apostrophe, quotation, or tilde keys, it will not appear until I make another key stroke. Nobody seems to be able to tell me why it's doing it, and all the Dell technical staff I've spoken to have no idea either. Oh yeah, if you hit certain keys after the initial press, you will also get special characters for different languages? Thanks for your time. - Jan Chanas.
A: This article will help you set things straight: Keyboard Goes Berserk. What you've got isn't as wildly weird as the Dvorak keyboard (where all the keys are laid out completely different). You have accidentally chosen the U.S. International keyboard. This keyboard is designed to let you enter foreign characters that use diacritical marks (accents etc). Press single-quote and then e to get , or tilde and then n to get , and so on. Follow the instructions in the other article to select the standard US English keyboard and "lock" it in place. - Neil J. Rubenking.
A: This article will help you set things straight: Keyboard Goes Berserk. What you've got isn't as wildly weird as the Dvorak keyboard (where all the keys are laid out completely different). You have accidentally chosen the U.S. International keyboard. This keyboard is designed to let you enter foreign characters that use diacritical marks (accents etc). Press single-quote and then e to get , or tilde and then n to get , and so on. Follow the instructions in the other article to select the standard US English keyboard and "lock" it in place. - Neil J. Rubenking.
iTunes Offers Movies Same Day as DVD Release
Beginning today, iTunes customers will be able to purchase new movies through Apple's video store on the same day as their DVD release. A number of high profile studios are on board with the new initiative, including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment, and First Look Studios.
New releases will be priced at $14.99 a piece--$5 more than the standard iTunes film. This week's list of new releases includes American Gangster and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
"We're thrilled to bring iTunes Store customers new films for purchase day-and-date with the DVD release," said iTunes vice president, Eddy Cue. "We think movie fans will love being able to buy their favorites from major and independent studios."
New releases will be priced at $14.99 a piece--$5 more than the standard iTunes film. This week's list of new releases includes American Gangster and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
"We're thrilled to bring iTunes Store customers new films for purchase day-and-date with the DVD release," said iTunes vice president, Eddy Cue. "We think movie fans will love being able to buy their favorites from major and independent studios."
iTunes Movie Purchases Now Available Through Apple TV
Apple yesterday announced a deal that would make new movies available on iTunes the same day that they're released on DVD. They're were apparently a little less vocal about another new feature to their movie store, which lets users purchase movies through Apple TV, where users were previously only able to browse and rent movies through the set top device.
Another minor update: the addition of a "Top Sellers" category to the "Top Movies" menu, which, according to iLounge, demonstrates the capability of live updates to to Apple TV's iTunes subsections with a full system update.
Another minor update: the addition of a "Top Sellers" category to the "Top Movies" menu, which, according to iLounge, demonstrates the capability of live updates to to Apple TV's iTunes subsections with a full system update.
Facebook Allows Unwanted 'People You May Know' Deletions
There's nothing better than signing on to Facebook and seeing the faces of people you have purposely not friended staring back at you via the "People You May Know" box.
Yes, I know them. High school frenemies, that kid who totally slacked off on a group project in college, someone you met once at a random happy hour in 2003, your former roommate's co-worker's brother, whatever. Thanks for the heads up, but I'm not interested.
"People You May Know" is well-intentioned and has occasionally offered up a few people I've actually ended up friending, but when it first launched, it did not include the option to tell Facebook that you did not want to be friends with the person they were suggesting.
Mercifully, the site announced Friday that you can now click a handy "x" next to a suggested friend's picture if you never want to see their face again.
"The person you 'x' won't be notified and that feedback will be used to improve the quality of the future suggestions. In addition, you will not appear as a suggestion for the person that you 'x' out," according to the Facebook blog. "If you 'x' all of the suggestions we have, eventually the box will disappear."
Yes, I know them. High school frenemies, that kid who totally slacked off on a group project in college, someone you met once at a random happy hour in 2003, your former roommate's co-worker's brother, whatever. Thanks for the heads up, but I'm not interested.
"People You May Know" is well-intentioned and has occasionally offered up a few people I've actually ended up friending, but when it first launched, it did not include the option to tell Facebook that you did not want to be friends with the person they were suggesting.
Mercifully, the site announced Friday that you can now click a handy "x" next to a suggested friend's picture if you never want to see their face again.
"The person you 'x' won't be notified and that feedback will be used to improve the quality of the future suggestions. In addition, you will not appear as a suggestion for the person that you 'x' out," according to the Facebook blog. "If you 'x' all of the suggestions we have, eventually the box will disappear."
Monday, August 17, 2009
Update: EBay Sues Craigslist Over Policy Changes, Diluted Share
EBay sellers saw little response from the company to their anger over eBay's recent policy changes, but now it looks like the online auction house is getting a taste of its own medicine. EBay on Tuesday filed suit against Craigslist for implementing new policies that eBay claims diluted its economic interest in Craigslist by more than 10 percent.
In 2004, eBay acquired a minority 28.4 percent stake in Craigslist. But changes made in January by Craigslist's board of directors "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest in Craigslist by more than 10 percent," according to eBay.
The board, or Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster, "breached their fiduciary duties in violation of Delaware corporate law," eBay said.
"The recent actions by the Craigslist directors have disadvantaged eBay and its investment in Craigslist," Mike Jacobson, eBay senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. "Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist's board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions. We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay's stockholders and preserve our investment."
The actual filing against Craigslist is being kept under wraps due to "confidentiality restrictions," so additional details were not available. Craigslist said it will have a statement later this afternoon.
UPDATE: Craigslist issued its response:
"Ebay has filed suit against craigslist and its board of directors. We are surprised and very disappointed by Ebay's unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us. Coming from a company that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions to us beforehand seems unethical, and suggests ulterior motives. We have always done our best to protect the well-being of craigslist and the craigslist community, and will continue to do so. Ebay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened -- unless a hostile takeover of craigslist, or the sale of Ebay's stake in craigslist to an unfriendly party, is their ultimate goal. (In which case, they're out of luck!) For our part, we have always treated Ebay very fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development."
In 2004, eBay acquired a minority 28.4 percent stake in Craigslist. But changes made in January by Craigslist's board of directors "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest in Craigslist by more than 10 percent," according to eBay.
The board, or Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster, "breached their fiduciary duties in violation of Delaware corporate law," eBay said.
"The recent actions by the Craigslist directors have disadvantaged eBay and its investment in Craigslist," Mike Jacobson, eBay senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. "Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist's board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions. We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay's stockholders and preserve our investment."
The actual filing against Craigslist is being kept under wraps due to "confidentiality restrictions," so additional details were not available. Craigslist said it will have a statement later this afternoon.
UPDATE: Craigslist issued its response:
"Ebay has filed suit against craigslist and its board of directors. We are surprised and very disappointed by Ebay's unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us. Coming from a company that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions to us beforehand seems unethical, and suggests ulterior motives. We have always done our best to protect the well-being of craigslist and the craigslist community, and will continue to do so. Ebay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened -- unless a hostile takeover of craigslist, or the sale of Ebay's stake in craigslist to an unfriendly party, is their ultimate goal. (In which case, they're out of luck!) For our part, we have always treated Ebay very fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development."
Craigslist CEO: eBay Lawsuit is Hypocritical
EBay is no stranger to the tactics over which the online auction site is suing Craigslist, according to a Thursday blog post from Craigslist CEO James Buckmaster.
"Although our response to each of eBay's unfounded claims will have to wait, it's worth pointing out that eBay is suing us for implementing protections for Craigslist that it clearly believes are perfectly appropriate for protecting itself," Buckmaster wrote in an entry titled "Kettles and Pots."
EBay filed suit against Craigslist last month for unfairly diluting its stake in Craigslist. According to court documents released this week, eBay agreed to give up its right of first refusal if it ever launched a service that would compete with Craigslist. EBay unveiled classifieds Web site Kijiji.com in the U.S. last year - and Craigslist promptly revoked eBay's right of first refusal. In January, Craigslist re-organized stock allotments to put eBay's stake below 25 percent, which basically gives the online auction site little say in Craigslist operations.
The move - known as a poison pill - is at the heart of the eBay lawsuit, but in his blog post, Buckmaster points to a 2004 eBay filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in which eBay reserves the right to implement a poison pill situation.
"We could use the additional shares of common stock to oppose a hostile takeover attempt or delay or prevent changes in control of management," eBay wrote in a filing that requested additional shares. "For example, without further stockholder approval, we could adopt a 'poison pill' that would, under certain circumstances related to an acquisition of shares that we did not approve, give certain holders that right to acquires additional shares of common stock at a low price."
EBay is also suing Craigslist for implementing an indemnification agreement, and having staggered board elections, but according to SEC filings, eBay has made the same moves in the past, according to Buckmaster.
Craigslist said it will file its formal response to the eBay suit in the next several weeks.
"Although our response to each of eBay's unfounded claims will have to wait, it's worth pointing out that eBay is suing us for implementing protections for Craigslist that it clearly believes are perfectly appropriate for protecting itself," Buckmaster wrote in an entry titled "Kettles and Pots."
EBay filed suit against Craigslist last month for unfairly diluting its stake in Craigslist. According to court documents released this week, eBay agreed to give up its right of first refusal if it ever launched a service that would compete with Craigslist. EBay unveiled classifieds Web site Kijiji.com in the U.S. last year - and Craigslist promptly revoked eBay's right of first refusal. In January, Craigslist re-organized stock allotments to put eBay's stake below 25 percent, which basically gives the online auction site little say in Craigslist operations.
The move - known as a poison pill - is at the heart of the eBay lawsuit, but in his blog post, Buckmaster points to a 2004 eBay filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in which eBay reserves the right to implement a poison pill situation.
"We could use the additional shares of common stock to oppose a hostile takeover attempt or delay or prevent changes in control of management," eBay wrote in a filing that requested additional shares. "For example, without further stockholder approval, we could adopt a 'poison pill' that would, under certain circumstances related to an acquisition of shares that we did not approve, give certain holders that right to acquires additional shares of common stock at a low price."
EBay is also suing Craigslist for implementing an indemnification agreement, and having staggered board elections, but according to SEC filings, eBay has made the same moves in the past, according to Buckmaster.
Craigslist said it will file its formal response to the eBay suit in the next several weeks.
Microsoft Debuts Popfly Game Creator
Microsoft has launched a new addition to its Web page/mashup creator, Popfly Like its parent app, Popfly Game Creator was designed with non-programmers in mind, giving users the ability to create games without any code knowledge.
Popfly Game Creator starts users off with 18 customizable templates, including "Space Boy," "The Big Race," and "Space Shooter." Users can also forgo the templates and build games "from the ground up." GameCreator offers further customization, including 389 game "actors," 70 different songs, and 24 background scenes.
The app will make its public debut at this weekend's Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA.
Popfly Game Creator starts users off with 18 customizable templates, including "Space Boy," "The Big Race," and "Space Shooter." Users can also forgo the templates and build games "from the ground up." GameCreator offers further customization, including 389 game "actors," 70 different songs, and 24 background scenes.
The app will make its public debut at this weekend's Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA.
NBC Launches iCue Educational Site
NBC extended its educational offerings today by introducing iCue, a "collaborative learning community." The site uses information gathered by MIT's Educational Arcade, a "research group devoted to integrating gaming and peer collaboration into traditional learning activities and environments."
Short for Immerse, Connect, Understand, and Excel, iCue offers hundreds of videos from NBC News, discussion forums, and personal networking. All are aimed at teaching and connecting students. The site is designed around the iCue CueCard, which operates as a media player, note-taking tool, flash card, and trading card.
"At NBC News, we have made a big commitment to working in the education space, and this project is the most substantial one yet," said Steve Capus, president of NBC News. "There is tremendous opportunity to combine our vast resources of information with an audience that is hungry for it in an environment they are comfortable consuming it. That, combined with the technology of iCue which dramatically alters how video, digital content and peer networking can be used to support student learning in a safe, engaging virtual environment, makes this an incredibly exciting project."
Today's launch is devoted to NBC News' Decision '08 coverage. Over the summer, the site will add a number of topics, including U.S. history, U.S. government and politics, and English language and composition.
Short for Immerse, Connect, Understand, and Excel, iCue offers hundreds of videos from NBC News, discussion forums, and personal networking. All are aimed at teaching and connecting students. The site is designed around the iCue CueCard, which operates as a media player, note-taking tool, flash card, and trading card.
"At NBC News, we have made a big commitment to working in the education space, and this project is the most substantial one yet," said Steve Capus, president of NBC News. "There is tremendous opportunity to combine our vast resources of information with an audience that is hungry for it in an environment they are comfortable consuming it. That, combined with the technology of iCue which dramatically alters how video, digital content and peer networking can be used to support student learning in a safe, engaging virtual environment, makes this an incredibly exciting project."
Today's launch is devoted to NBC News' Decision '08 coverage. Over the summer, the site will add a number of topics, including U.S. history, U.S. government and politics, and English language and composition.
The Real Losers in the Failed Microsoft-Yahoo Deal
Officially, it's now two days after Microsoft walked away from the Yahoo deal. However, given the little information currently available (statements from Microsoft and Yahoo, mainly) we really can't say that much for certain. On to the speculation, then!
At this point, the most likely outcomes seem to be:
1.) A run on Yahoo's stock. Michael Arrington rightly points out that Yahoo's market cap increased from $26.2 billion to nearly $40 billion, primarily based upon the speculation that Microsoft would pay $31 per share to acquire the company. Those speculators will likely be furious, to put it mildly. Will Yahoo's stock price crater? Most likely, although the first few hours of Monday's trading session will likely tell the tale. Some have suggested that the stock price will crash down to about pre-merger-proposition levels, or about $19. My guess is that it bounces around like crazy and settles at about $22 to $24 -- people still have hope. But boy, are some people going to learn a harsh lesson about sure things.
1a.) Shareholder lawsuits. A no-brainer. Someone will pull the trigger.
2.) Yahoo ties up with Google on some search advertising. On this issue, the Magic 8 Ball seems murkier. Ballmer wanted to buy Yahoo's search team ( the "Panama" project) and if it outsources search to Google, that team may move onto other projects, Henry Blodget argues. Blodget argues persuasively that that's a good thing, as Yahoo can thus focus on areas where it can win. I'm a bit hard-pressed to tell the difference between AOL, (which outsourced its search) MSN, and Yahoo anyway; all three are portals trying to glom onto as much content as they can.
3.) A shareholder revolt, leading to a push to remove Jerry Yang, Yahoo's chief executive. Also a likely outcome. But is there a large enough contingent? On this, I have no idea.
4.) Microsoft's own "scorched earth" bid. Microsoft lets Yahoo's stock price plunge, and then returns to the table with a significantly lower bid. This is an intriguing possibility, but my gut says that when Ballmer walks away, he walks away for good.
If he does so, there are still a couple of favorable outcomes. First, Yahoo's Panama engineers know they have a job waiting for them in Redmond, and Microsoft could simply slowly aggregate the search talent it wants. Microsoft still has fundamental problems with its online strategy, namely the way it vomits content onto its MSN page.
A targeted search engine could also begin to refine that content somewhat, using historical searches and contextual information to present a more relevant page. That would also allow MSN to redesign itself in a cleaner, more Google-like image. (Compare the front page of Yahoo to MSN if you doubt me.)
Here's Forrester's Charlene Li on the subject:
Microsoft must define and deliver on a strategy that shows how they can "win" now without Yahoo! as a search jump start. (Frankly, we were skeptical that Microsoft could have integrated Yahoo quickly and effectively to realize the full value and vision of the acquisition). Rather than continue to chase Google's dominant search position, Microsoft should redefine the "battle" to one where search is an integrated part of the marketing mix. Microsoft has assets and relationships that GOOG doesn't have: 400 million users relationships through communication tools like Hotmail and Messenger, the aQuantive acquisition, strong display advertising business, and investments/relationships like Facebook. Moreover, AdCenter is well positioned to service advertisers on both the display and search sides, although actual offeringDeal is offs that tie the two together are still in the works. But the thing they don't have today is a strong search user experience, the root of the problem.
Second, I'm of the opinion that Microsoft needed Yahoo far more than Yahoo needed Microsoft, at least from a strategic perspective. But I'm still not convinced that bringing another portal into Microsoft's fold is in the best long-term interests of the company. I've never really found the value in social networking online, versus forging real-life connections (even via email); however, Microsoft might be better off investing in a smaller social-networking firm and start learning how this social stuff works. (Microsoft's research into social networking, SNARF, is tangential.)
My take: In the near-term, Yahoo's stock plunges, shareholders file lawsuits, shareholders start calling for Yang's head. Microsoft, meanwhile, pulls back, waits, and considers its options yet again. The real losers? Everyone that bet on this merger happening, at least for now.
At this point, the most likely outcomes seem to be:
1.) A run on Yahoo's stock. Michael Arrington rightly points out that Yahoo's market cap increased from $26.2 billion to nearly $40 billion, primarily based upon the speculation that Microsoft would pay $31 per share to acquire the company. Those speculators will likely be furious, to put it mildly. Will Yahoo's stock price crater? Most likely, although the first few hours of Monday's trading session will likely tell the tale. Some have suggested that the stock price will crash down to about pre-merger-proposition levels, or about $19. My guess is that it bounces around like crazy and settles at about $22 to $24 -- people still have hope. But boy, are some people going to learn a harsh lesson about sure things.
1a.) Shareholder lawsuits. A no-brainer. Someone will pull the trigger.
2.) Yahoo ties up with Google on some search advertising. On this issue, the Magic 8 Ball seems murkier. Ballmer wanted to buy Yahoo's search team ( the "Panama" project) and if it outsources search to Google, that team may move onto other projects, Henry Blodget argues. Blodget argues persuasively that that's a good thing, as Yahoo can thus focus on areas where it can win. I'm a bit hard-pressed to tell the difference between AOL, (which outsourced its search) MSN, and Yahoo anyway; all three are portals trying to glom onto as much content as they can.
3.) A shareholder revolt, leading to a push to remove Jerry Yang, Yahoo's chief executive. Also a likely outcome. But is there a large enough contingent? On this, I have no idea.
4.) Microsoft's own "scorched earth" bid. Microsoft lets Yahoo's stock price plunge, and then returns to the table with a significantly lower bid. This is an intriguing possibility, but my gut says that when Ballmer walks away, he walks away for good.
If he does so, there are still a couple of favorable outcomes. First, Yahoo's Panama engineers know they have a job waiting for them in Redmond, and Microsoft could simply slowly aggregate the search talent it wants. Microsoft still has fundamental problems with its online strategy, namely the way it vomits content onto its MSN page.
A targeted search engine could also begin to refine that content somewhat, using historical searches and contextual information to present a more relevant page. That would also allow MSN to redesign itself in a cleaner, more Google-like image. (Compare the front page of Yahoo to MSN if you doubt me.)
Here's Forrester's Charlene Li on the subject:
Microsoft must define and deliver on a strategy that shows how they can "win" now without Yahoo! as a search jump start. (Frankly, we were skeptical that Microsoft could have integrated Yahoo quickly and effectively to realize the full value and vision of the acquisition). Rather than continue to chase Google's dominant search position, Microsoft should redefine the "battle" to one where search is an integrated part of the marketing mix. Microsoft has assets and relationships that GOOG doesn't have: 400 million users relationships through communication tools like Hotmail and Messenger, the aQuantive acquisition, strong display advertising business, and investments/relationships like Facebook. Moreover, AdCenter is well positioned to service advertisers on both the display and search sides, although actual offeringDeal is offs that tie the two together are still in the works. But the thing they don't have today is a strong search user experience, the root of the problem.
Second, I'm of the opinion that Microsoft needed Yahoo far more than Yahoo needed Microsoft, at least from a strategic perspective. But I'm still not convinced that bringing another portal into Microsoft's fold is in the best long-term interests of the company. I've never really found the value in social networking online, versus forging real-life connections (even via email); however, Microsoft might be better off investing in a smaller social-networking firm and start learning how this social stuff works. (Microsoft's research into social networking, SNARF, is tangential.)
My take: In the near-term, Yahoo's stock plunges, shareholders file lawsuits, shareholders start calling for Yang's head. Microsoft, meanwhile, pulls back, waits, and considers its options yet again. The real losers? Everyone that bet on this merger happening, at least for now.
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