07 Sep 2008 16:53:12 | Paul Glazowski | -local,Channels,Google,News,Opinion,San Francisco-San Jose,Web Apps,web,BSI,German Information Security,google chrome,security | Comments
Germany’s Office for Information Security, also known as the BSI, has apparently looked at Google’s Chrome browser and felt a pinch of uneasy déjà vu (a la Microsoft), only this time sensing that the company behind the software wants to know too much about you, too often. As a result, the BSI is advising anyone who’ll listen to steer clear of the crayon invader’s brand new beta. At least for anything other than experimental tasks.
Though this isn’t a warning stretched to the whole EU, the fact is that the BSI’s red flag has been shown by a number of German media stalwarts, including Berliner Zeitung and Tagesschau, the second of which is a news program widely viewed by the public. Which makes for fairly substantial news. And just so we’re thorough, the way we’ve learned of this official relay is the through the German blog Spreeblick, sourced by Philipp Lensen of Google Blogoscoped. Lensen summarized the matter thusly:
The Federal Office for Information Security warned Internet users of the new browser Chrome. The application by the company Google should not be used for surfing the Internet, as a spokesperson for the office told the Berliner Zeitung. It was said to be problematic that Chrome was distributed as an unfinished advance version. Furthermore it was said to be risky that user data is hoarded with a single vendor. With its search engine, email program and the new browser, Google now covers all important areas on the Internet.
To be honest, a part of me wishes to draw a bit of humor from this news chain. After all, it’s not as if Google hasn’t walked this line before. It manages vast amounts of user data, regularly distributes “unfinished advance version(s)” of software and services, and generally gives privacy hawks the willies. On the other hand, we knew this moment would come.
All this conversation about Google this and Google that, Google so easy and Google so smart. The Chrome project aggregates pretty much every concern into one quick install. Naturally the whistle gets blown. This time from Germany’s own BSI. The issue of security can really only be compounded by the fears of a one-stop shop for both corporation and criminal. The premise of those fears: Google Chrome equals Google Concentrate. “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you,” goes the song.
There’s more of this on its way, to be sure. Regardless of intent or execution, words of caution ring more loudly than calm, and with holes in Chrome to fill, it’s easy to see why various folks would prefer people dabble rather than dive. No doubt, this discussion will be an open one for long time hence, and Google as it is known today will never escape the cloud of suspicion that hovers ever more darkly. All the company can do now is…deal.
Just to lay the cards fully out onto the table, I used Google Translate to put articles from both Berliner Zeitung and Spreeblick into poor, algorithmically-arranged English.
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07 Sep 2008 15:04:31 | Paul Glazowski | -local,Lists,New York,News,olympics,video,web,youtube,2008,beijing,Paralympic Games | Comments
As we noted earlier, the 2008 Paralympic Summer Games in Beijing held their official opener on Saturday. The next week and a half will bring roughly 4,000 athletes from 150 countries into one athletic village, challenging one another for hundreds of medals gold, silver and bronze in nearly two dozen sports. With that in mind, if you’re keen on taking in the views and the news as they come from the Chinese capital, here are a few places to stay abreast and in tune.
While the NBCOlympics.com isn’t playing host to events scheduled through the 17th of the month, when the Paralympic games officially wrap up, the NBC Universal Sports website is, according to Alan Schwarz of The New York Times’ Rings blog, slated to present 50 hours of live coverage, as well as on-demand footage. In order to watch live coverage, viewers in the US will be required to schedule their days to an early morning routine, seeing as how many events will take place as early as 5 AM ET.
So far, two videos are presented in the Universal Sports archive: one for the opening ceremony held Saturday; the other a highlight reel of the ceremony plus coverage of a portion of Day 1 events. As for software compatibility, video is not presented in Silverlight, nor Flash, but in Windows Media format. Mac users can view coverage through a browser plugin called Flip4Mac. Personal experience shows this option to stutter and flicker at points, but it is a mostly decent delivery.
Another way to watch the Paralympic games up close is through ParalympicSportTV. This is done through Narrowstep, and while video detail isn’t particularly outstanding, the channel is tagged with the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) label, an association which might be of interest to some. If you have trouble viewing content at the main ParalympicSportTV page, an archive has also been established on YouTube. Nearly three dozen clips have been added to the collection so far.
Want extra reading material to go with the IPC’s coverage? The committee president, Sir Philip Craven, has gone ahead and created a blog, to which he has posted daily items for a short time. The broader Paralympic.org website is home to a good amount of news and resource information, too.
Across the Atlantic, the BBC offers a page within its Sport section devoted to Paralympic happenings. Of course, there’s ample focus on competitors from Team Great Britain, but according to BBC News, live streams are being offered “for six hours a day through the red button.” Quite thorough, I think. That is in addition to evening showings on BBC2 and via the BBC’s iPlayer service.
Lastly, being an American, I think it behooves me to briefly mention the U.S. Paralympics Team website, which is just chock-full of material to pore over. It last links to news stories, video clips, photo galleries, event results, and even a link to Universal Sports’s Paralympic coverage. Plus, if what you see gets you interested enough to take part in paralympic game play yourself, you can head over to its event page to see if something is happening in your area in the near future.
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If a post on Facebook’s developer blog is accurate, you have less than a week to make your call for no change. That’s right, no change. a group of members have coalesced behind a petition, massing together “Against the ‘New Facebook’” to send Zuckerberg and the rest of them out in Palo Alto a message: “We’re not saying get rid of the new layout, just that they should keep the old one and let us choose which layout we want like skins. Color options would be good too.”
As Compete’s trendspotters made known this past week, many Facebook users have switched over to the “new” Facebook, also called “beta,” only to revert back to the old way. Yet, the company is choosing to switch the network over by default in a matter of days, not months, as I myself envisioned it would. If you’re not fond of the idea of a site-wide shift, join the gentle opposition. Their goal at present is to reach 1 million registrants. As of 7:50 PM ET Saturday, they collectively number 424k-strong. The count has been 11 days in the making. Thousands enter the fold by the hour. All to invoke no change, but rather, a choice. Where do you fall? (Note: We made mention of a parallel movement yesterday, less than half the size, with nearly the same title. It happens.)
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As we noted late last month, Google affixed its name to the GeoEye Inc’s GeoEye-1 satellite, in order that the Web giant get dibs on some high-resolution imagery produced of our little planet in orbit. Well, today marked the blastoff sequence, followed by a successful launch.
According to the AP, it started fighting gravity at 11:50 AM today from vertical stasis at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Video posted to the GeoEye website marks the occasion.
GeoEye isn’t just a rudimentary upgrade to satellite photography of typical Google Maps-like order. It’s designers regard it as having “the highest resolution of any commercial imaging system,” with the capability to show detail within one square foot or so. And of course, Google isn’t the exclusive name to share space on the cylinder of GeoEye-1. Boeing Launch Services provided the rocket, and its purpose will be “environmental matting to agriculture and defense.” Nonetheless, Google will reap fruits of the digicam’s labor. The data begins to flow in 45-60 days’ time, said Google’s Kate Hurowitz in late August.
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So a whole lot of people thought Microsoft’s Silverlight technology warranted an install to watch the summer games in Beijing at NBCOlympics.com. And another big crowd felt different, thinking, among other things, that the use of Adobe Flash would naturally suit them just as well.
Following the main events in China (the Paralympics opened today), the limit of Microsoft’s exclusivity deal with NBC was made clear this past week when NBC broadcast live coverage of the NFL’s opening game between the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins in celebratory preparation to do the very same for games occurring every Sunday night for duration of the next 17 weeks - and all in Flash. NFL.com, too, displayed Thursday’s game and will routinely cover Sunday matches here on in.
The no-show-Silverlight talk doesn’t end there. Suzanne Tindal of CNET’s Webware quoted Microsoft senior program manager by the name of Scott Hanselman as having said at the company’s own Tech.Ed conference that “we’re going to see a 100- to 1,000-fold speed increase in JavaScript as Google and the guys at Mozilla…kick us in the arse.” Furthermore, Jonas Follesø of Cap Gemini, an IT and business consultancy, commented that JavaScript will pose a serious challenge to Silverlight - more so than Flash has thus far.
An interesting position for Silverlight to find itself in, for sure. As it is basically known, Silverlight is a platform for developing rich Internet applications. More so with the 2.0 beta than with versions to come before, given its support for .NET and so forth. Therefore, juxtapositions with both Flash and JavaScript are rightfully made. Which means that if Silverlight is to have any chance at the kind of ubiquity shown by its more common competitors, it needs to do far more than solidify video delivery partnerships with the likes of NBC. It must inhabit a vast supply of Web applications of all types. Which, to speak reasonably here, isn’t so inevitable. Years of assimilation among Web users needs to happen to achieve an all-around permanence. Flash and JavaScript developers know this. Unfortunately for Microsoft, those forces didn’t have monsters of such dimensions to spar with.
It’s not an impossibility for Silverlight to grow, mind you. Given the right level of attention to the platform, Microsoft could mark its Olympic foray as only the first big starter in the long slog toward mass adoption. But “could” is the key word. The hill climbs (yes, climbs plural) will be trying. One, as I noted above, is to convince the public of its validity and utility in the presence of two semi-household names. There’s a toughie.
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Rhonda from MySpace says the network has had a spam infestation in its application profiles. So much so that it shut down the forum display. Complaints were coming in like crazy. Now users interested in “more exciting forums” are advised to carry on their conversations elsewhere for the time being. Free bulletins are suggested. How’s that suit you?
At the risk of making an irate user base even more angry and loud, perhaps this is the only way to really put the spoilers in a chokehold. Though as Nick O’Neill of Social Times writes, “it shows that MySpace doesn’t have…control over (its) spam situation,” which only puts the site in negative light it’s spent quite some time working to emerge from. Facebook, meanwhile, has instituted a spam reporting system that’s considered to be at least partially effective, if not fully.
So, how should should one look at this outcome? Glass half-full, or half-empty? The first category is where I fall. Better to have nothing than lots of nothing, I think. How about you?
Update: Rhonda from MySpace offers a clarification of her original post in the comments. Useful to read.
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Next week, DEMOfall 08 hits San Diego, California for 3 days, and a total of 72 companies will, according to Chris Shipley, Mary A. C. Fallon, and the rest at DEMO setting the stage, “launch disruptive innovations.” The span of companies is as wide-reaching in design as they are in global placement. Shipley & Co are promising to showcase everything from battling spam (effectively); a game development utility for the masses, sharing and selling photographs, and lots else. And they’ve gone ahead and offered up an early look at the names slated to pitch their product or service to the crowd. And a big tease this list is. Here are some Web-centric highlights that we’ll be keeping an eye on.
Alerts, Bellevue WA - Information, delivered. News, weather, notes, etc. Telnic, London, England - Store, update, publish contact information. Awind, Junghe, Taiwan - Your digital home, plus WiMax. beeTV, Milano, Italy - Personalized video. ffwd.com, San Francisco, CA - “Your personal remote control for video on the Web.” Invision TV, Bethesda, MD - An “Internet video guide.” RemoTV, New Haven, CT - Stream media to any Internet-connected device. Blue Lava, Honolulu, HI - Immerse yourself in your photography. Kadoo, Washington, DC - Share files, etc. with specific people. MeDeploy, Hamden, CT - Distribute media in lots of places. Quickly. Easily. MixMatchMusic, Burlingame, CA - Connect with musicians. Photrade, Cincinnati, OH - Sort of iStockPhoto-like. Name has received mention on Mashable. Echonest, Somerville, MA - Music recommendation through APIs. Paragent, Muncie, IN - Remote desktop management. Accordia Group, New Rochelle, NY - Business relationship management. Arsenal Interactive/HeyCosmo, Mountain View, CA - Social “unification.” Familybuilder, New York, NY - Build a family tree within a social network. (I.e., Facebook, Bebo.) TravelMuse, Los Altos, CA - We’ve covered this startup before. We loved. Zazengo, Santa Cruz, CA - Social activism networking. We previously highlighted one network build on Zazengo, called MalariaEngage. GreenSherpa, Santa Barbara, CA - Personal cash flow management. Rudder, Inc, Houston, TX - Financial analysis in your inbox. Momindum, Paris, France - mash documents with video presentations. Qtask, Burbank, CA - All manner of project collaboration. iWidgets, San Francisco, CA - Social marketing. Semanti Corp, Alberta, Canada - Semantic Web cataloguing. SkyData, San Mateo, CA - LinkedIn, Facebook, Outook, Google, Salesforce, SugarCRM, NetSuite in one. WebDiet, Henderson, NV - Eat healthy, be healthy, wherever you are. CrowdSpring, Chicago, IL - Crowdsource ideas. We covered these guysback in March. Sim Ops, San Francisco, CA - easily build your own games.
This is a fairly important question to consider, I think. The gaming industry clocks in billions of dollars in revenue each year, a good portion of which is devoted to mobile sales. Yet if mobile Web use is going to continue climb at the solid clip, and mobile phones are to be smart and powerful enough to conquer interactive entertainment, is there room for platforms devoted primarily to gaming?
While Sony’s PSP hasn’t seen itself become a phenom of the mobile gaming space, the Nintendo DS is an item which has often been touted as something of a marvel; nearly as cool as the Wii when it first arrived. Nintendo has consistently sold millions for several quarters. And the company will undoubtedly sell more. But just how much more? And if/when momentum slows to a trickle, then a crawl, and then stops, what comes after? Does Nintendo move into software exclusively, bringing Mario, et al. to the iPhone, Android devices, Nokia handhelds, and other systems?
What triggered my interest in this subject isn’t gaming itself. The most I would consider myself is a very occasional gamer. Once in a while a little Sudoku, some Tetris, some chess. Also, I’ve recently been draw to the “Cannon Challenge” [iTunes URL] game freely issued by Discovery for iPhone/iPod touch users. Otherwise my free moments are devoted to other pursuits. No, gaming isn’t really the focus here. Rather, it is the way in which mobile platforms themselves are evolving that is the basis for this comment. They are evolving to the point that Nintendo’s handhelds, and those of its competitor(s), will be no more. Why? Internet connectivity. More precisely, always-on Internet connectivity.
It’s been said constantly for over a year now by various persons well-known and not so well-known: the iPhone is a great gaming platform. Leo Laporte of TWiT, The Tech Guy, and The Lab fame, says so. Regularly. The co-hosts of “Diggnation” offer similar praise for the thing. I’ll say so, too. And by categorial association, I would say a number of other smartphones are similarly equipped to provide gameplay that’s visually impressive and entertaining as well. Indeed, because of computing power alone, it might be argued that the likes of Nintendo won’t be able to extend its legacy in a tangible sense for many more years.
Yes, it’s important to emphasize this new and very big nail in the coffin of convention. It’s a point that has been echoed with increased volume in recent months. The ever-present mobile Web. If game developers take up the task of engineering titles to connect players with one another without limit to place or time - or, reversely, dependent on place and time - the sort of gaming that comes with the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP in their current Wi-Fi-enabled form, is going to quickly become outdated.
Of course, Sony has a convenient bridge to the next era of mobile gaming in its partnership with Ericsson in the mobile phone world. That is something Sony should address, and sooner rather than later. But Nintendo, interestingly enough, doesn’t have that option. Not yet, at least. And rather than establish exclusives with one handset maker or another, it may well be better off investing little to naught in hardware and focus instead on publishing titles compatible with the modern smartphone platforms of today.
Not too long ago a report released by comScore noted that US mobile subscribers’ had essentially balanced pan-Atlantic rate of 3G adoption with residents of Europe, after years of lagging behind. If comScore’s numbers are anything accurate, they only add weight to the line that mobile phone gaming is the logical extension to come from the market. The next cash cow. Naturally, this requires that consumers take to the all-in-one approach to mobile communications, which they’ve been slow to do. But the advent of Nokia’s newest N-Series devices as well as those from Apple and Samsung, etc., have done much to whet the consumer palate. So much so that a migration is simply inevitable.
To be sure, this is a good thing. Change rarely does good things for nostalgia, but it enables progress to continue on. The sheer volume of possible applications of GPS- and 3G- and 4G-infused networking, let alone gameplay, piques the interest of millions of people. Privacy is of course an ever-present concern. But gamers have made plain their desire to take the multiplayer experience as far as it can allow. That has been the case with Xbox Live fans, PC-based MMORPG devotees, and it will also be true for mobile gamers, too. Heck, the possibilities given via the Nintendo DS specifically have intrigued a global supply of users. So gaming over wireless cellular telephony spectrum is really just upping the ante. It is very much within reach.
Now, there is a limit to what you can do given that sort of infrastructure and personal componentry. A small screen can only provide so much opportunity to developers. But the social aspect is where things go big. It’s more a matter of developers’ thinking anew about the handheld world, and seeing what they’ve already constructed in the realm of iPhone and Android, they presumably won’t be short for ingenuity for many years to come.
Which brings us back to the future that Nintendo - and to lesser extent, Sony - will encounter and be forced to navigate. Mobile gaming is critical to its business, regardless of its clear success with the Wii. Will we see Mario soon emerge on the N96, a BlackBerry’s touchscreen, the iPhone, and a Sony Ericsson Walkman of some sort? I’ll venture to say yes. Somewhat soon, anyway. It’s only sensible that they make it happen. If only because it has become increasingly evident that smartphones themselves are now being designed to be the next generation of all-purpose playgrounds, and Nintendo could well make a fortune introducing itself and its trademark craftwork to the wider world of pocket computers and the cloud they inhabit.
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Granted, the viewing experience delivered by each publisher individually is generally a more pleasant one. And ABC-based video, as you might expect, cannot be viewed through Mefeedia directly. The network has had an near-exclusive hold on its Web-based content for a number of years, so far only allowing syndication with the likes of Veoh, an official partner since late June. However, on the whole, the convenience of Mefeedia, more palpable than ever, is really something to note.
Naturally a search base of 15,000 sites and sources is absolutely immense, and gives Mefeedia something to trumpet in its sector of the market. But what sort of experience such depth provides is what in the end gives Mefeedia some real-world purpose. It’s not only how much a user’s search delivers, but what is presented on request. And that is what makes the service’s latest enhancements important. They help to further the relevance of Mefeedia. The breadth of premium content in the space is growing in great strides, and Mefeedia must at once make sense of user-generated material as items from professional producers large and small.
Of course it’s far from complete in its effort to grasp the field, though if it plays its role correctly, it’ll always have room to expand. What’s more, another slight negative is that its presentation of content is not so current all the time. For instance, you couldn’t catch the latest episode of a Web-only show like Revision3’s “Diggnation” at this very moment. But this challenge is something that has afflicted a number of Web video sites before. And seeing as how Mefeedia plays the part of a search utility, it’s further removed than places closer to the market’s “ground level,” which poses one more collective hurdle to continuously leap past. Still, it presses on.
And on the technical end, it seems to be doing quite well. Video quality can be quite high, if sourced appropriately. That’s why, as was the case in spring, I think Mefeedia is a name to keep an eye on. Rich with RSS and richer yet with things to see, its value is evident. And it is likely only going to increase as it gives viewers more reasons to stay longer with these new names added to the roll.
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Chances are if you’re reading this, it’s probably a little late to watch the action unfold live, but if you are in fact up at the wee hours of the morning this Saturday, you could be in for a treat. By treat, I mean finding embarrassing and possibly titilating videos favorited by your contacts on FriendFeed.
Paul Bucheit, one of the founders of FriendFeed, logged on at about 1 AM to fire off the following missive:
Vimeo changed the ids and urls used in their feeds, so all vimeo content is now showing up a second time. For unrelated reasons, some old YouTube videos are now being picked up as well (but these are not dups). The good news is that they are all very entertaining
It seemed innocuous at first, but then a few folks who had apparently over a year ago favorited some fairly pornographic videos had their predilictions in pr0n exposed to everyone on their list.
I’m intentionally not linking to these threads on FriendFeed because as it turns out at least one of these folks hold fairly high profile positions, and had already gone to sleep once these videos started showing up on FriendFeed. Because of the way FriendFeed works, people began commenting and “liking” the pornographic items, and then the potentially damaging favorites spread much further beyond those in their immediate list.
It uncovers a brand new type of public relations danger for those that lifestream - everything that is old can be new again, thanks to the glitchy wonders of automation. More importantly, a failure to scrub every possible damaging favorite, like, comment or post from a publicly available feed has the potential to end your career.
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06 Sep 2008 03:42:26 | Steven Hodson | Los Angeles,Opinion,San Francisco-San Jose,bill gates,jerry seinfeld,microsoft,Seinfeld | Comments
So, Microsoft ex-CEO and incredibly rich philanthropist Bill Gates got together with Seinfeld and made a commercial. Now if you haven’t seen it yet I won’t hold it against you but it definitely has been one of the more talked about subjects in the tech blogosphere since its debut.
Not surprisingly just about everyone who has commented on it thinks it is either stupid or it just made no sense at all. Mind you a lot of these people commenting all over the place are the firsts ones to offer up how they think Microsoft should combat the rising tide of Apple and that advice doesn’t include Jerry Seinfeld.
I finally took some time today to watch the video which is on more tech blogs that you can shake a stick at and all I can say is I thought it was a great ad. Sure the beginning of the ad is kind of a head shaker so I can kind of understand why people may have fallen asleep after the first ten seconds and missed the rest of it.
However it was the beginning of the ad that was important it was as Loren Feldman said the last part of the ad that was the important part. While I may not agree with Loren on his sage advertising advice for Microsoft I definitely agree with him on that part.
Another interesting evaluation of the ad comes from Chris Baskind who suggests it wasn’t a matter of selling anything or trying to woe over the Mac users. It was a matter of trying to set the brand identification.
The campaign debut isn’t about selling Windows, trying to out-irony Apple, or reversing the fact that Microsoft’s strongest current marketing image is the strangely lovable PC Guy in those Mac spots . It has one purpose: to brand Jerry Seinfeld as the new face of Microsoft.
Like Chris I agree that in this case Microsoft could feel satisfied that the mission was accomplished. That said I want to also address the points that are being raised in the tech blogosphere about not wooing over the Mac users or that they weren’t selling anything in the ad.
First off let’s look at where this ad was playing - the tech blogosphere. This very minor and small part of the Internet is populated primarily by Apple fans and Microsoft isn’t stupid enough to believe that there is any chance of converting them. Chances are that even in the wider world there would be very little chance of converting Mac users back to using Windows.
That isn’t the objective here, no matter how much the people in the tech blogosphere might have wanted Microsoft to embarrass itself by going head to head with the Apple cool machine. They would have lost and potentially hurt themselves even more PR wise.
Instead they are trying to go the route of resetting the popular perception of Microsoft. Windows will come later but first they have to get the point across that the Microsoft of this generation is not the Microsoft that just about all of us have grown up with. Tie that in with the face of a comedian who is still popular with people in the real world and it is a plan that could work.
Besides, do you think that people are going to easily forget the image of Bill Gates doing that ass wiggle across the parking lot at the end of the commercial? I don’t think so.
Owning a car can give you a great sense of freedom… then you have to figure out where to park it! More and more tools are popping up on the Web to help you locate both long and short term parking. Here are 15 services that cover everything from free spots to event parking, long term parking, and more.
Do you use the Web to find parking? If so, tell us about your experiences in the comments.
Parking Comparison Sites
AboutAirportParking.com - Has listings for over 400 parking lots near over 100 international airports. Can add optional services like valet, car wash, mechanics and more. You can read more about this site in our Startup Review.
BestParking.com - Allows you to compare parking rates of various garages in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Also offers a mobile version.
ParkingAnytime.com - Locate garages, lots, free parking and more for a given area. Limited to Chicago, IL during their beta phase.
ParkingCarma.com - See real-time data of available parking spaces. If you register, you can reserve parking spaces in advance. Serves multiple US cities.
PrimoSpot.com - Gives you information on parking conditions in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and will show you the actual parking rules for a specific space. The service plans to include more cities. You can read more about PrimoSpot here on Mashable.
Streetlinenetworks.com - Not operational yet, Streetline is putting monitors in 24,000 San Francisco metered parking spots so people will know where spots are available. Read a summary of Streetline’s services here on Mashable.
Parking Spot Rentals
CraigsList.org - As with just about anything else you can sell or rent, CraigsList has numerous listings for parking spaces.
ParkAtMyHouse.com - Specializes in renting out parking spaces around sporting venues, airports or just about anywhere. Available in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.
ParkingHunter.com - Lists available spaces to rent in cities such as Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Vancouver and more.
ParkLet.co.uk - Offers listings of thousands of parking spaces available for rent all over the United Kingdom.
ParkingSpotter.com - Helps you locate parking spots for major events, airports or everyday use.
Editor’s Note:This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
20-word Description: toksta brings IM and chat (text, voice, video) to social networks and websites. 100% free, hosting included + worldwide revenue share.
CEO’s 100 word description: toksta brings real time communication to your social network or website by providing free (or white label), hosted IM and chat solutions featuring text, voice and video chat. Our goal is to prevent users from leaving your community to chat via external applications like Skype, MSN or ICQ. Add a cool new feature for your users within minutes and benefit from our worldwide revenue or ad view share. All solutions are design customizable with a facebook-like chat bar and deeply integrated with your community (friends list, ignores, profile pictures etc.).
Mashable’s Take: There are many ways to add communication tools to your site these days such as instant messaging with a Meebo widget or an audio/video message forum via UserPlane. toksta is offering a fully customizable real-time text, audio and video chat system for your website. You can add your own logo, change colors, fonts and the background image.
The toksta IM runs directly in the Web browser and users can chat via their own profile no matter what other IM service or social networking site they are connected to at the time. Best of all, no installations or additional logins are necessary which is a big plus for your website visitors.
What’s the catch? toksta can offer all this for free because it is financed by advertising, but the ads are not as huge or as pervasive as with other ad-supported services. As a matter of fact, the ads are only displayed during what they call waiting time as things load on the screen. toksta also offers a Revenue Sharing program that will allow site owners to share some of the earnings. They do offer a white label service that will allow you to remove all ads or even add your own advertisements.
From all first impressions, toksta seems to be worth a look if you’re considering adding a live communications platform to your site and don’t mind intermittent advertisements. It’s easy to install and the price is right.
Despite statistics indicating that many users who migrate over to the new Facebook design are reverting back to the old, all signs point to the imminent launch of redesign. Yesterday, the company wrote on its developer blog that “over 30 million people have checked out the new profile, and many are using it as their profile full time. We’re nearing the time where we’ll switch over remaining users by default. We expect most of this to take place over the next week.”
Meanwhile, today users of the old Facebook are seeing the following message, indicating the switch over is near:
Previously, the only indication of the new Facebook (outside of the endless blog posts of course) to users still on the old version was the bar at the top giving them an opportunity to try it out. So far, about 35% of users haven’t been to the new Facebook at all, according to the Compete stats released earlier this week.
Clearly, Facebook is now doing everything they can to make sure all users know that change is afoot, in hopes of avoiding another user revolt like that they saw with the launch of News Feed and Beacon. Will it work? The group “people against the new Facebook” has more than 70,000 members, and our comments in posts about the redesign have been decidedly mixed.
Redesigns have caused chaos with the masses since the days of AOL 2.0, so you can almost guarantee plenty of angst when Facebook flips the switch. But at least the company has done a much better job of communicating its changes this time around. We’ll be watching closely when the new design goes live next week.
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05 Sep 2008 16:33:51 | Mark Dykeman | Opinion,Search,Web 2.0,Web2.0 Startups,social networking,social software,web,gamers,gaming,mmorpg,social media,world of warcraft | Comments
There are two major pursuits that lead people to plant their butts in front of computer screens and pound on keyboards for hours without pay. One group of people loves social media in all forms, shapes, and sizes: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, blogging, etc. The other group loves to play around in massively multiplayer fantasy worlds based in magic and technology. These two groups are more alike than unlike, with one key difference. The second group usually realizes that they are playing a game; the first group usually doesn’t.
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are a popular pastime where people immerse themselves in fantasy worlds. Players spend many hours in games like World of Warcraft (WoW), amassing gold, experience, and property while making an uber-powerful character. Other online games like Everquest, Entropia Universe, and EVE Online project the same allure as WoW, while simpler brethren like Kingdom of Loathing, Gothador, and Adventure Quest have their own loyal players. This isn’t a new phenomenon either: MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions) and MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), earlier forms of online games with a heavy reliance on text have been around since the late 1970’s.
It’s pretty clear that you’re in a different world when you’re playing a MMORPG. You can explore that world on your own, but it’s often profitable to partner with other players to help beat down your foes and become stronger. Sometimes your foes are just products of the game. In other cases you battle other players like yourself in order earn wealth, fame, and bragging rights.
Do you see some parallels with social media?
Social media sites are normally grounded in reality (The Sims and Second Life straddle both pursuits), but everyone’s playing a character when they join these communities. Most of the time people try to be themselves, but they may use an alias or avatar to represent themselves. Goal attainment can be a big part of social media as it is part of MMORPGs. Socialization and communities flourish, in different forms, in games and social media. Let’s compare these two pursuits:
Friends/Contacts vs. Allies – some social media users have army-size followings. A number of social media users have attracted thousands of followers, particularly on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed. Similarly, MMORPG players try to build alliances with some of their fellow players. The more famous players may gain followings similar in size to Twitter followings. They’re fan clubs by other names. The likelihood of direct interaction with someone with that many followers: minute, unless you already have some kind of connection to them.
Stats and Skills/Experience – MMORPG players want to make their characters stronger, smarter, tougher, and faster, so they play often to gain skills, while using equipment and performance enhancing stuff to make themselves even stronger. The social media user works on increasing comparable stats. If they are a blogger, they want to increase page views, subscribers, comments, and inbound links. They want to get recommendations and endorsements, get added to blogrolls, or otherwise gain social proof. Followers in social networking is another statistic that seems to show one’s strength.
Quests/Deeds vs. Accomplishments - games often require characters to complete a series of tasks in order to win some prize, e.g. go kill fifty goblins to get a pouch of gold, a potion, and a new sword. Similarly, social media users may participate in contests to win social credibility by doing things like:
* Hitting the front page of social news and bookmarking sites * Winning awards from peers or authority figures * Compete against other social media users for recognition
Property/Territory vs. Publications – some people like to personalize their stomping grounds in MMORPGs to show ownership. They buy land, put dwellings up, and add distinctive furnishings. Similarly, websites, books, eBooks, articles, online courses, consulting gigs, and more are the ways that social media users can make a more lasting mark on the Web.
Entrepreneurism - both MMORPG players and social media experts can sell their skills to help other users with their goals. They often bend the rules while doing this, but there’s as much a market for getting uber-skilled characters and MMORPG wealth as there is to getting Digg front pages and high exposure in other social news and bookmarking sites. Gamers sometimes sell their characters and equipment at a profit while some people sell blogs, websites, and applications to make money.
You might think that these are superficial comparisons that cast both pursuits in negative lights. That’s quite understandable, because I’ve focused on the selfish and materialistic aspects of these games. Both MMORPGs and social media sites do have a number of positive characteristics that they share.
Both pursuits have a social component. They allow people from different cities, countries, ethnic backgrounds, and other demographic categories to interact. You learn a lot by interacting with people, even if it’s over the Web. Good friendships have been made through both pursuits, sometimes culminating in real-life friendships and romantic relationships whether it’s via Facebook, Twitter, or a Ning group – the same can happen in games. Both games and social media sites also allow us to maintain existing relationships when friends move away. Social media sites have a professional networking and career building component. I can’t say for certain that MMORPGs have the same, but who knows? You can also use both types of applications to explore worlds, real or imagined, as a way to satisfy creative, recreational, and social needs.
The bottom line is that MMORPGs and social media site are far more alike than unalike. They can both be used for serious pursuits, but they have a huge recreational component. When taken to competitive extremes, the pursuit of social media goals and MMORPG character power can have damaging effects on the user’s personal life. Moderation is a key survival skill. In both pursuits, if things get too intense or obsessive, it’s best to remember that they are mostly recreational pursuits.
In other words, don’t forget that they are just games.
Mark Dykeman is a former Everquest, Entropia Universe, Kingdom of Loathing, and Gothador player who (mostly) switched his addictions to social media. You can find him building up his social media character at Broadcasting Brain, on Twitter, and at FriendFeed.
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05 Sep 2008 16:03:30 | Adam Ostrow | News,hulu,joost,ONLINE VIDEO | Comments
Joost – one of last year’s hottest startups and so far one of this year’s biggest flops – is pulling a 180 in strategy. According to Om Malik, the video service will kill off its desktop client and replace it with a Web version that will utilize a “small plugin that would embed itself in the browser and allow you to grab files using the P2P technologies”
Although the required download was long one of the biggest criticisms against Joost, the company now faces another big challenge: content. While Joost has scored a number of deals with the likes of CBS and Major League Baseball, one look at the Joost homepage tells you the current state of the company’s catalog.
With all due respect to He-Man & Shera, there is no way Joost on the desktop or the webtop can compete with the likes of Hulu, which has thousands of recent episodes of hit shows like The Office, The Daily Show, and House, just to name a few. Considering Hulu is backed by News Corp and NBC Universal, it’s doubtful Joost will be able to do much to improve its catalog either, since Hulu’s huge competitive advantage is its access to content. Making things even worse, Joost’s own investor and partner CBS has many shows available on its website that are nowhere to be found on Joost.
While shifting to a Web-based product is a much needed move, it seems like too little, too late, unless the company also makes a radical shift in content strategy. At the moment, Joost – which has raised $45 million - has essentially become like a lower tier cable channel, which simply doesn’t work online because of the infinite number of alternatives.
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Many new points of view
There are four vastly different ways that you can view all of this information. There’s the default patent-pending Timeline view which displays the data in chronological order. There’s the flipbook which creates a dynamic photo album type of viewing experience. The List view is a traditional top to bottom list view and the Map view creates a Google Maps type of display of the information. So you can look at the same information from several different angles depending on your preference. No matter which one you choose, you’ll never look at these topics the same way again. Best of all, everything can be viewed in place without requiring you to leave the site. For example, you can view Flickr photos and YouTube videos right inside the timeline.
Seeing is believing
Here are some examples of what you can do with Dipity:
- Howard Stern uses Dipity on his website - So does Billy Joel for his biography - Here’s a mashup of Dipity with YouTube that they ca
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There are two major pursuits that lead people to plant their butts in front of computer screens and pound on keyboards for hours without pay. One group of people loves social media in all forms, shapes, and sizes: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, blogging, etc. The other group loves to play around in massively multiplayer fantasy worlds based in magic and technology. These two groups are more alike than unlike, with one key difference. The second group usually realizes that they are playing a game; the first group usually doesn’t. 
Social media sites are normally grounded in reality (
While Joost has scored a number of deals with the likes of CBS and 
