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Original Signal delivers the best Web 2.0 news on the Web.
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MySpace Finally Completes Mobile Trifecta with BlackBerry App
It's inevitable. News surfaces about a new iPhone or Android application and almost immediately it's followed by "When are we getting our BlackBerry app?"And with good reason. For all the buzz about Google and Apple handsets, BlackBerry remains the dominant force in smart mobile devices. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that MySpace has released an application for the BlackBerry platform. What is surprising, however, is how long it has taken.SponsorReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez covered the announcement of the Research In Motion (RIM) and MySpace development efforts back in September. At that time, only the iPhone had a MySpace app. Today, there's an app available for Android, as well. And that leaves RIM a little late to the party.As Sarah asked in a previous review:"This app is very much like the Facebook app for Blackberry, which was announced back in late 2007. Now, almost a year later, a MySpace version is planned. Why the holdup?"Why indeed? Granted, developing for any new platform is a challenge. As is supporting multiple platforms on a single site. But, at first blush, the new BlackBerry app doesn't appear to be doing anything revolutionary. It seems to simply recreate a subset of the functionality found on the Web site. The only major difference being that it is formatted for the smaller screen. And in reality, the development of the app - from the announcement of the MySpace and RIM partnership to the release - has actually been fairly short. Deciding to build the app - rather than the time it took to build the app - was definitely the gating factor. And that raises another question.Why BlackBerry? Why Now?The answer might be the most obvious one: the BlackBerry demographic is changing. In the past, the majority of BlackBerry users were interested in one thing: an easy way to read and respond to email. Even the phone seemed secondary. Today, as more and more activities are being moved to mobile devices, BlackBerry has a much wider appeal - and it's not all business people. This new breed of BlackBerry users want to do more than respond to email. And RIM is working to make sure that they meet that demand, albeit in a "following rather than leading" fashion. But are there really BlackBerry users on MySpace? There are a few. As of this writing, the number of BlackBerry friends is sitting at nearly 18,000 users. And the MySpace Mobile site - http://m.myspace.com - is seeing a very respectable 14 million monthly unique mobile visits, which is right in-line with numbers that Facebook mobile is seeing. If the BlackBerry app is actually meeting a need, we should see both of those numbers grow substantially over the next few months. Still the question remains: why now? And how does this continued push to the mobile platform play into some of MySpace's latest revenue plans, like MyAds? The answers to those questions are still a little murky. We'll just have to wait and see how many BlackBerry friends Tom adds over the coming months.Discuss
This Christmas, OfficeMax’s ElfYourself.com Will Get a JibJab Twist
A year ago, one of the surprise holiday breakout hits on the Web was ElfYourself.com. It was a promotional viral video site created by OfficeMax that let people upload their pictures and create dancing elves that they could then send as e-cards to family and friends. ElfYourself turned out to be the fastest growing site last December, peaking at 39 million unique visitors in the U.S. (and attracting a total of 100 million unique visitors worldwide throughout the campaign).When Greg Spiridellis, CEO of JibJab Media, saw ElfYourself, it resonated with him because JbJab is organized around a similar series of "Starring You" videos that allow people to upload their photos so that they can star in the videos, and send them as digital cards. The JibJab videos also often involve dancing characters.
Microsoft Releases Major Update to Windows Live: New Applications and Third-Party Integration
Microsoft just announced the availability of a number of new and updated online applications in its Windows Live suite: Windows Live Photos, Profiles, People, and Groups. In addition, Microsoft also announced that it will allow its users to integrate content from a large number third-party services, including Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, Twitter, and Yelp. Microsoft will begin rolling out these new services to U.S. customers in the coming weeks and expects them to be available globally in 54 countries by early 2009.SponsorNew ServicesWindows Live Photos: This is one of the most interesting new applications, and we will publish a more in-depth review of it a little bit later tonight. Basically, this is Microsoft's answer to Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa Web Albums. Live Photos allows you to share your pictures with granular privacy controls, and thanks to the "What's New" feed, the new Live Photos service will also allow you to monitor the photos of your friends on Windows Live.Windows Live Profiles: The new Live Profile aggregates and displays your activity on Windows Live and third-party services. Somewhat similar to FriendFeed, users can choose to aggregate their activities on other services like Yelp or Twitter on this profile page as well. In the next few months, Microsoft will also integrate a large number of other third-party services, including LiveJournal, Digg, Last.fm, iLike, Seesmic, and SlideShare.One of the highlights of the new profile is that it includes extremely granular privacy controls.These profiles, together with the updated Windows Live Groups, are the hub of Microsoft's social networking strategy around Windows Live. Windows Live People: This is the central address book for all Windows Live services. It integrates directly with your Hotmail contacts and it will also allow you to invite your contacts from third-party services like LinkedIn (with more to be added later). Here, you can also organize your contacts into categories, and chat with them directly through the Windows Live Messenger for the Web.Windows Live FrameIt: This is an interesting new service which allows you to to send photos and other content such as news or traffic information to digital picture frames. So far, Microsoft has not announced a lot of details about it, but we know that the hardware partners include Navteq, ViewSonic, and RMI. Updated ServicesWindows Live Groups: As rumored, Microsoft will also update MSN Groups and replace it with the new Windows Live Groups. These groups are tightly integrated with the other Live services, including the revamped Live Calendar, Live Photos, and SkyDrive.SkyDrive: Microsoft's online storage solution has been upgraded from 5GB to 25GB.MobileMicrosoft is also releasing mobile versions of these new and updated services that should work on any mobile web browser. This is BigOverall, these new services represent a major upgrade to the online part of the Windows Live suite. Microsoft is clearly trying to challenge both Yahoo and Google with its new photo application, while the new profiles and groups tie all the Live services together into a very sophisticated social network.According to Microsoft's PR materials about this release, its main mission in designing these new services was to give users a better way to manage their digital lives. Judging from what we have seen so far, Microsoft has definitely succeeded in creating a compelling set of applications that, thanks to its tight integration with Microsoft's desktop applications, will surely drive a lot of new users to Windows Live.Discuss
Sheep Line Up in Perfect Twitter Formation
Today the sheeps were out in force showing the full power of the sheep. First we had sheep signing up to follow "the cold" of Kevin Rose. Let's not even talk about how Kevin should be using his own service instead of pushing his competitor's service and what it must be like to be Leah Culver when her boss is using the competition. The cold of Kevin has nearly 1,000 followers so far. I am looking forward to the Sarah Lacy's "pocketbook thoughts" account.The bigger sheep hearding happened with a new ranking service for Twitter called Twitterank. You had one sheep start the chain to the rest of the sheep and then we had a good sheep movement. Adam Ostrow has a good recap of the "sheep effect" in which he explains that the site may have been used to grab passwords for Twitter. The Twitterank developer now states he had no interest in stealing your passwords. Frankly these rating services for Twitter are plain stupid. As I've written before a real stats program would show retweeting, outbound links, profile views, ya'know useful stuff.Louis Gray believes everyone is good and he isn't afraid to give out his Twitter password to anyone! Louis does mention that even if a malicious hacker got access to his Twitter account, all they could do is make up bad things which would be removed once Louis calls Twitter CEO Evan Williams to remove the nasty tweets.The bottom line is this - you need to think before you give out your password. Don't assume that some "friend" on Twitter has verified the service. As Twitter grows in popularity, I can only imagine that more phishing schemes will start to show up. While today's issue would have only grabbed your Twitter password, what if they grabbed something more important?So what's the lesson we have learned today sheeps? Don't be a sheep! Use your noodle!CN Sponsor: CloudContacts - make your business cards work for you!Other CenterNetworks Coverage: iminlikewithyou, FriendFeed, Web Jobs
Kevin Rose Allegedly Guilty of Felony Computer Hacking
With a sensational headline like that, you might think that we had a hold of some stellar inside sources at the FBI. In fact, though, it’s commonly available information you can find at a number of blogs (and very likely in your very own Twitter account.Kevin Rose set up a Twitter account yesterday pretending to be his cold, which amazingly accrued during the previous 24 hours over 787 followers:@kevinscold: hanging out w/@kevinrose, making his head hurt and nose stuffed up… hopefully he’ll take me to @digg tomorrow.How is this felony computer hacking? As both we and Techdirt’s Mike Masnick have explained over the last few month, a very dangerous precedent is being set in the trial of Lori Drew in the aftermath of teenage Megan Meier’s cyberbullying and subsequent suicide. Kevin’s actions in creating a fake Twitter profile for his recent cold mirror the actions Lori Drew is being accused of doing on MySpace.Back in May I noted what a stretch it was to call the act of creating a fake profile on MySpace “accessing a protected system.” Only in the biggest stretch in the sense of the word can you call MySpace a protected system, especially when what all Drew did was click on a very prominent sign-up button, and then enter false information for the personal data.Mike Massnick noted that developments have occurred in the case yesterday:While the judge in the case decided not to dismiss the case, he apparently has decided that evidence of Meier’s suicide will not be allowed in the case. This, at least, is a good decision. The lawsuit itself has nothing to do with the suicide, and allowing it to be used in front of a jury would likely lead to the same emotional response that resulted in the original charges being filed. Of course, with the case getting so much widespread publicity, you’d have to imagine that many jury members will already be familiar with what happened in the case.The fact that so many potential jurors will already be familiar with the story is exactly the problem with the judge deciding to let stand the case, despite the strong reasons for dismissal. This means that even though said jurors will likely be instructed not to take the mitigating circumstances of Megan’s death into consideration, they will.This will set an unfortunate precedent for the future. It’s important to note that Lori isn’t being prosecuted for what she did with the fake MySpace profile, only that she set one up.I don’t think that realistically those of us that set up a joke profile like Kevin’s can expect prosecution for every frivolous act. On the other hand, it does set up the dangerous situation in which we’re all liable for criminal prosecution at any moment. By making innocuous actions criminal, it completely devalues and blinds law enforcement to actual online criminal behavior.In an age where anyone’s free speech becomes illegal, only unpopular speech will be prosecuted. In other words - was harassing a young woman and taunting her to the levels of extreme emotional distress immoral and wrong? You’d be hard pressed to find someone to say no to that. Does that mean that the law should be perverted so that she can face justice by way of the legal system? I say no - the cost to all of us is simply too great.We’ve all created fake profiles similar to what Kevin did yesterday, and if Lori Drew’s prosecutors have their way, we could all see headlines like the one above with our names in Kevin’s spot, and the convictions will be a lot more easy for prosecutors to achieve.---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:MySpace Bullies: These People are ScumLori Drew Indicted over Megan Meier CyberbullyingShould There Be a Law Against Asshats Like Me? Kevin Rose: Mobile Web Is The Next Big ThingDiggers Revolt Over New Comment System (Resolved?)YA DIGG? Yahoo Buying Digg, AllegedlyUStream to Play Host to Digg Townhall
Workstir Opens Its Trustworthy Classifieds To The Public
Craigslist is great (I use it all the time), but there are few things more unnerving than inviting a total stranger billing himself as a "HANDY MAN, AT YOUR SERVICE!" to your house to make a few repairs. The vast majority of transactions on the site go smoothly and without incident, but there's a reason Cragislist advises you to meet up in a public place and let a friend know what you're doing, just in case. And even if the guy you hired isn't a creep, there's still a chance he won't be any good at his job.Workstir is looking to take some of the guesswork out of hiring for services like home repair, cleaning, and child care. The site, which we've described as a Craigslist/Yelp hybrid, allows you to post service requests to a forum frequented by these service providers, much as you would in the Craigslist 'Looking for' section. These service providers then contact you through Email. But instead of making you verify their credentials independently, each service provider will have a Workstir profile that features photos, their interests, and reviews from other Workstir users who have dealt with them in the past.
My.Gov: How Obama Can Use the Net to Improve Government
President-elect Obama promised during his campaign to create a "Google for government." Now that he's on his way to the White House, let's imagine what this might look like, and how such a tool could change the way people relate to those tasked with running our country. The first image this phrase brings to mind is some sort of search engine that would allow citizens to see what the government is doing, especially how it's spending money. While useful, it's not enough, as it lacks a key element: a personalized front end for government services. Think "Amazon for government," where a vast array of products and data is personalized and displayed in simplified form.Many people view the government, the federal government specifically, as a remote entity that imposes taxes and provides little tangible benefit in return. There is an opportunity here to fundamentally alter the relationship between government and citizen to be more like that of a customer and vendor.What I would like to see is my.gov, where I can go to get a snapshot view of government services I use or for which I am eligible. By way of comparison, consider banks, most of which now offer sophisticated web services that aggregate financial data from many sources (deposit accounts, credit cards, investments, mortgage, etc.) and display them on a financial dashboard. What would a dashboard for government look like? It could include, among, other things:A summary of your current social security account, projected benefits, etc. (you get one of these in the mail each year, no reason the same data can't be delivered via web)Your IRS account, including a summary of what's been paid in, contact information for your account rep, links to online filing forms, etc.Stats about recent projects funded in your vicinity, so you can see how federal funds are being spent in your area.Stats such as treasury bond yields and a current balance sheet for the government as a whole.Votes by your elected officials in Congress, compared against other districts, averages, etc.White House decisions or court rulingsSupport for RSS and other push/alert mechanismsThe point is that given the right tools, you could build a portal that provides you with personalized information about government services you are enrolled in and mandates and rulings that affect you by pulling in data from various systems behind the scenes. It might start out with just a few pieces of info, but could be expanded over time. The key is personalization, with an emphasis on customer service, so users visit frequently.In the long run, the goal should be to build something that is a cross between Amazon (for viewing and managing government services) and Google (for finding and managing information, such as funded projects in your district). Whether they be average citizens or those whose job it is to track the government, the idea is to build an interface that makes government more transparent and more like a vendor or service provider, rather than a faceless abyss for taxpayer dollarsThis practice of aggregating information from many sources and providing tools for personalizing a site to meet individual needs is old hat for those of us in the web industry. The Obama administration would do well to commission people from companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and others to draw up wireframes of what my.gov could be, as well as a strategy for building a first-generation version of it. My guess is that, if allowed to experiment, a skunkworks team could build an impressive site in not much time. After all, Silicon Valley's leading companies and sites were built using paltry amounts of money and on far more limited timeframes compared to federal projects (the Dept. of Homeland Security, for example).The most important benefit of such a system, apart from improving accessibility and customer service, would be to recast the relationship between taxpayer and government. If the user can see direct relationships between taxes paid in, and services provided or benefits delivered to his or her community, it will become clear that government is not as wasteful as it may first seem, and that it does many things that most people are unaware of.I think we're entering a period of great change, one comparable to that of FDR. It would be a great thing if we could apply what we've learned from the past decade in web commerce to build similar interfaces for government services and statistics. The result for us as taxpayers -- more transparency and better service -- would be a win for everyone involved.
A Scary Line Has Been Crossed For VCs
At a recent presentation at Harvard Business School, Adeo Ressi argued that the VC model is broken. That is nothing new for Ressi, who is the founder of the VC-rating site theFunded. He is kind of like the Nick Denton of the VC world, always saying that the sky is falling. It's just that at this moment he happens to be right. The slides from his presentation are embedded below, but really all you need to look at is the one above. It shows that the money going into VC funds is now more than the money coming out of VC funds. That line was crossed last June and there is no going back anytime soon.
Multiply Launches Collaborative Professional Photo Printing
Multiply, a social network largely geared towards adults, has launched a new set of printing features that allow members to order professional prints of their photos directly from their online albums and those of their friends. Available photo products include photo books, calendars, cards, and standard prints. The site uses an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to place photos, allowing users to cull shots from both their own online albums and those of their friends. Users can collaboratively put together a photo book, but are also free to copy and manipulate each album to their liking (for example, parents could work together to create a photo book of their little league team, customizing the cover of each printed book to feature a photo of their own child).
Web-based Office to work on Macs, iPhone
A Microsoft blog reiterated this week that the Web-based version of Office won't be tied to either Windows or Internet Explorer.In a blog posting on its Channel 10 site, a Microsoft blogger noted that, owing to support of Firefox and Safari, the forthcoming Office Web Applications will run on Linux and the iPhone.The blogger, Microsoft's Sarah Perez, also noted that Microsoft won't be mandating use of Silverlight, its rival to Adobe's Flash."Silverlight is not required," Perez said in the Q-and-A posting. "Using Silverlight will enhance the user experience, resulting in sharper images and improved rendering. Also, the Office Live Workspace has integrated Silverlight technology into the multi-file upload function for a better experience."Microsoft has said a technical preview of the Web-based Office apps will come later this year. Microsoft hasn't explicitly said there will be a free version, though executives have said the apps will be part of Office Live, which comes in both free and subscription flavors. Perez takes that to mean--as do I--that there will be both free and paid options.On the corporate side, Microsoft has said the Office Web Applications will be tied to SharePoint.The forthcoming Web-based version of Microsoft Word, like online versions of Excel and PowerPoint, won't be limited to the PC, Microsoft says.(Credit: Microsoft)
Vuclip Searches and Trans-codes Web Video to Mobile
Judging by the number of people lined up to talk with Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO Vuclip, and the interest from judges immediately after his presentation today at the Under the Radar conference (Mountain View), it seems Vuclip may be Under the Radar's next dealmaker.Why is Vuclip so cool? Because the company's objective to make it completely frictionless has been achieved. No login, no fee, and an easy to use interface has made Vuclip a hit with consumers. During September 08, Vuclip claims to have had over 100 million page views and served in excess of 17 million videos worldwide. We had a chance to talk with Jakatdar after his presentation.SponsorVuclip (previously blueapple.mobi), a mobile video search and trans-coding service makes searching, finding, and playing video on mobile phones extremely simple. In less than 15 seconds, Vuclip will search for video on the Web, trans-code (or convert) it on the fly, and deliver it to your mobile phone in the correct format. And this is what sets it apart from competitors.Trans-coding and Video Search for Mobile PhonesWhile trans-coding sounds like a simple process, surprisingly few companies can do this. Videos come in all sorts of formats and need to be converted before they can be played on a mobile phone. According to Jakatdar, there are only about 20 companies that claim to do trans-coding, and of those, only 10 percent do it on the fly (Avot, Rip ...
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