Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman is a 22 year old law student in Egypt who blogged under the name Kareem Amer until being arrested one year ago today. Charged with 'contempt of religion' and ‘defaming the President of Egypt,' the young man was sentenced in February of this year to four years in prison. Supporters will hold rallies on Friday calling for his release in 14 major cities around the world, from London to Mexico City.The demonstrations are being organized, in part, by the Free Kareem Coalition. The group says it is an interfaith organization founded and primarily made up of Muslims who disagree with what Kareem wrote on his blog but will "defend with all our might his right to express such opinions."According to his supporters, Kareem was raised in a religious family and educated in Egyptian religious schools throughout his youth. He was expelled from college and referred to Egyptian authorities in 2005 after his authorship of the blog karam903.blogspot.comwas discovered. On that blog Kareem has criticized what he called Egyptian gender apartheid, he said that a religious riot he witnessed in Egypt showed the "barbarism and thievery and fanaticism" of Islam and on September 11th, 2006 he wrote a post titled "There Is No Deity but the Human Being." Supporters have translated his posts into English but have included repeated disclaimers that they do not agree with what he has written. They ask international supporters of free speech to support the campaign in a number of different ways.Below is an interview with Kareem performed after a college disciplinary board meeting, hosted on YouTube with translation overlayed using the service BubblePly. To learn more about the case and campaign, visit Freekareem.org.
Charles Knight from AltSearchEnginesis blogging up a storm at Defrag. Here are his latest posts from the conference:Disruptive Technologies &InnovationGoogle and OpenSocialNext-Level Discovery PanelEnterprise 2.0 (Andrew McAfee)Web 2.0 “Made of People” (Ross Mayfield)Customer Reach vs. Vendor Grasp (Doc Searls)Discussing Attention (Esther Dyson)Defragging Identity (Dick Hardt)There are more posts over on AltSearchEngines.
SpringNoteis a hosted Korean wiki service that's been in the works for some time but will make a public launch at the Web 2.0 Expo Tokyonext week. It's a strong product. The site offers a number of features that are worth a look, evidence too that there's still a lot of room for innovation in the world of wikis. There is also clear room for improvement in this particular offering.There's a lot of nice touches in SpringNote. Edits are autosaved and each page has an accompanying memo or notes page. RSS feeds are widely available throughout the site and each wiki can have feed publishing turned on or off. I'm not sure why you would want to turn feed publishing off, though, and it ought to be on by default. There's an API and plug-in development community. There's a bookmarklet for copying parts of any webpage into your SpringNote wiki, there's MSN chat integration and there's an offline version of the product. It's an impressive application.OpenIDThe company is promoting SpringNote heavily as an OpenID friendly service. It is, and the OpenID implementation is fairly well done - if you're already familiar with the concept. People who just happen to have AIM, Bloglines, WordPress or Orange accounts but don't know how to turn those into OpenID URLs aren't helped any by SpringNote. This is a common problem and a real loss for companies who want to make the account creation process as easy as possible.TemplatesSpringNote has a long list of wiki templates: from recipes to web site reviews to diets to group projects and to do lists. That's very helpful for new wiki users, far superior to a blank page for example, but the site could use more clarity concerning the editability of every field and title in the templates. Templates are a delicate matter but they are important to demonstrate the broad usefulness of any wiki platform. Every wiki company should consider embedding CommonCraft's short video explaining wikis, too (see on the right and compare to SpringWiki's video on the bottom of this post). It's not nearly as good as the same company's video explaining RSSbut it's still far better than nothing.File Import and ExportI was very happy to see how SpringNote handles file import and export. You can import Word Doc, OpenOffice, text and HTML files into your wikis. You can also export your wikis onto your desktop, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, the company requires a 24 hour wait time for document export. I can't see how to export just a single document, perhaps they would let me do that immediately. I hope so, it's my document - not theirs. None the less, these are great features.Language and UsabilityUnfortunately, the English version of the site also suffers from some real usability problems. I don't mean to be overly provincial, but the company ought to hire someone more conversant in the English language if they are going to offer an English interface and market to native English speakers. I want to see projects birthed far from Silicon Valley thrive, but a small investment in a copy editor who speaks your chosen interface language as their native language could make a big difference in product usability.The wiki world is far wider than just Wikipedia. Some say that editing a wiki is one of the first read/write experiences than many business users have online. As is the case with many related technologies, it's important for that reason as well to keep an eye on the consumer markets. That's where a lot of innovation comes from. SpringNote is a good example of that and a project well worth watching.To see a wide variety of wiki software options, check out WikiIndex.SpringNote editing demonstration
According to a New York Timesstory this morning, circulation across the US newspaper industry fell about 3 percent over the spring and summer compared with figures from the same period last year. The drop in paper sales is indicative of a change in the way people consume news content, shifting especially toward the Internet, where traffic to newspaper web sites has risen. Even paid online content is doing well, with the Wall Street Journal reporting over 1 million paid online subscribers, now accounting for about half of its paid circulation.Newspapers are not taking this shift in news consumption behavior lying down. The Chicago Tribune reportsthat five major US newspaper publishers are considering forming a joint online ad network. Gannett Co., Tribune Co., Hearst Corp., Media News Group and Cox Newspapers are in talks to form an ad sales consortium that would, according to a Tribune source, capture seven of the top ten US newspaper markets.The alliance would compete with the newspaper ad network that Yahoo! has been buildingsince last November. Yahoo!'s network includes both Hearst and Cox, and has a reach of over 400 newspapers. Though Yahoo! initially formed partnerships with newspapers to push their HotJobscareer classifieds service out to a broader audience, they have plans to expand to search advertising by the end of this year, and display ads sometime in 2008. Tribune and Gannett co-own chief HotJobs rival, CareerBuilder.Cox and Hearst say that talking to the Yahoo! rivals does not signal a rift with Yahoo!. An unnamed executive at one of the Yahoo! alliance papers seemed to indicate that while papers may be pleased with the Yahoo! partnership, they're not opposed change. "Fundamentally, there is a need to make it easier to buy ad space on our Internet sites," said the executive. "Yahoo still has the best technology platform. But why shouldn't the newspaper industry have its own [ad sales] firm? Don't you want to get out and tell your own story?"
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/microsoft/Microsoft_Enterprise_Search_To_Go_Free';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Microsoft announced todaythat it will give out a free version of its enterprise search product, dubbed Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, starting next year. This is the latest in a growing line of "Express" products, which Microsoft hopes will get people hooked on Microsoft software and eventually buy more expensive versions. Microsoft also put up a test release-candidate version of Search Server Express for download on its web site.Search Server Express shares nearly the same feature set as the company's more robust enterprise search products, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Search Server. Microsoft will also release a paid version of the product, which allows business users to search internal computer systems in addition to the web at large, that will basically be the same as the free edition but licensed to run on multiple servers."We really believe enterprise search is at a tipping point," Jared Spataro, group product manager for enterprise search, told CNET. "We really think people will look back on this time as the time when search went from just being a consumer tool to one that businesses can harness."Because Search Server Express delivers web results from Live.com, a popular free enterprise search product could have a positive effect on Microsoft's consumer web search strategy as well. According to Spataro, only 1 percent of 6 million business are doing enterprise search. Microsoft hopes that a free and easily deployed search application will remove any entry barriers that businesses may have to hopping on the enterprise search bandwagon. Competition is stiff, however, with competing products being offered by Google and IBM/Yahoo, as well as a number of smaller firms.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Social_Enterprise_What_Works_and_What_Doesn_t';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Last week in Reston, Virginia, the New New Internetconference took place, and the spotlight was on the adoptionof new social technologies in the enterprise. One morning panel was moderated byRyan Carsonand featured Brad Feld, the Managing Director at the Foundry Group,Hans Hwang, VP Advanced Services, Cisco, and myself. During the course of our discussion, Ryan brought up a set of interesting questions:Should enterprises embrace blogging?What is the impact of Google Docs on the enterprises?Do corporations need social networks?Can enterprises benefit from social bookmarking and wikis?The discussion eventually brought us to an even broader question:Why should enterprises go social, and what are the compelling reasons for adoption?On the surface there are immediate benefits, but from experience we know thatconsumer technologies do not directly map into the enterprise. In this post, we explorethe reasons for the social enterprise, look at what social technologies fit and raisevarious concerns related to adoption.The Need For Agile EnterpriseAs a rule, what is good for individuals is not good for companies and the other way around.This is because both are selfish and it is the tension between the two that drives capitalism.The same is true for technologies; consumer products have not traditionally been needed by companies,with the exception of communication tools. People want bells and whistles, companies need functional tools.Even from the venture perspective, the consumer Internet and enterprise software systems are twocompletely different markets where different strategies are needed for success.Lately however, with the increasing speed at which our society operates, we are seeing that companieshave had to become more agile in order to compete. The old hierarchical structures are unableto process information quickly enough to make day-to-day business decisions.Take the software vertical, for example.Because startups can build tools quickly and on the cheap, larger companies are pressured to move quickly too.The same is true with big pharma. Small, biotech startups are moving quickly putting pressure on the big companies.As Games Gleickput it in his book: everything is faster.Self-Organization in the EnterpriseSo how can companies become agile? The answer is from the bottom-up. The hierarchy needs to give way to self-organization.What this means is that instead of control and decisions coming from the top, individual teams need to be empoweredto execute. This does not mean chaos and anarchy. It does not mean complete lack of planning. It actually meanssetting goals globally but enabling the execution locally. Each team within the company needs to have the tools,the motivation, and the mandate to execute at its best.The main key to building successful companies is communication. Far too often, the corporate structurecreates boundaries that preclude people from getting things done. We are all way too familiar with a hierarchy where communicationoccurs through the management layer. This is the worst way to propagate information because important details get lost.The agile method simply uses managers to establish the need for direct communication and then enables people to talkto each other when necessary, using common sense.And here is an interesting thing - social web tools encourage and facilitate self-organization.User-generated content, openness and direct communication are all attributes of the recent social web revolution.Can they be applied to enterprises to make them more agile? Lets take a look then at how various socialinventions could work in the modern enterprise.Social Networking in the EnterpriseCorporations have had the precursor of social networks for ages. Corporate pages,common to nearly all large companies, contain information about every employee.The problem with these pages is that they are read-only. Passing the management of the pagesto the employees and making the pages writable would actually turn the whole system into a mini social network.Benefits: Openness, facilitation of contact information sharing and corporate communication.Social Bookmarking in the EnterpriseRegardless of whether it is a technical or business team, knowledge acquisition and sharing is a challenge.Often, employees within the same team and even more often across teams, rediscover the same information.What better way is there to share the valuable information found on the web than a social bookmarking system?Benefits: Knowledge discovery and sharing.Wikis in the EnterpriseWikis provide a very powerful way of documenting corporate know-how and sharing knowledge.Wikis replace corporate intranets, bringing fresh, read/write character and spirit. By enablingemployees to contribute to wikis, companies establish a self-checking, self-organizing method ofdocumenting processes and facts about the business. As an example, a typical problem in the enterpriseis the transfer of knowledge. When an old employee leaves, information is often lost to his or her replacement. Wikis aremuch less prone to errors than static Word documents, because they are out there in the open, and people can fix them.Benefits: Self-organizing documentation for business know-how.Agile Project Management in the EnterpriseTraditionally, enterprises have used Microsoft Project as their management tool. A lighter family of web-basedtools emerged recently, most notably Basecampfrom 37Signals. The main difference is that Basecamp takes core concepts found inall projects - People, Tasks, Milestones, etc. - and puts them in the spotlight. It is easy to use, but the question is really about which method of managing projectsis more effective in the enterprise?Basecamp takes a hands off approach, letting the user drive it and fill in the right stuff. It is light weight,so you can not do much wrong by it. However, at this point it does lack some features that would be a show stopper for enterprises -calendar and email integration are just a few. Yet, Basecamp would probably be more effective for most teams within large companiesthan Microsoft Project because of its refreshing simplicity. Playing along with the self-organization theme, Basecampsimply allows people to collaborate on the project in a distributed way.Benefits: Simplicity, agility, and a distributed, web-based setup.Web Office for the EnterpriseGoogle is making a major push into corporate environments with its online office apps. Why? Likely toeat more of Microsoft's lunch. By making tools that are agile, cheap, and functional, Google is starting to march into Microsoft's territory. But what really matters is utility. Are Google's tools and approach better? If you've spent time using Google tools youare likely to answer yes. Of course they are buggy, and still notas smooth, but they are simple, they focus on collaboration and they are web based.Benefits: Simple, cheap, focused on collaboration and web-based.Blogging for the EnterpriseA big question being asked around the enterprise right now is should corporations blog? The reason the question is hard toanswer is because it is vague. The better question asks when and who should blog for a company. Like any targeted marketing(and blogging for companies is marketing), it needs to be thought through, organized and delivered consistently.A variety of blog formats could be successful. For example, if we are talking about a product company, then theproduct managers can start a blog to engage the audience. Through this blog they can bounce ideas, pick up beta testers,get feedback and genuinely leverage their users to build a better product.Another example of corporate blogging is the executive blog. Such a blog could be successful if it explains the competitive landscape anddiscusses high-level plans and positioning. A third corporate blogging example is a blog used to share insights about running the company. By sharing what you learn and showing good will youare likely to create a good reputation and drive talent to your company.Benefits: Marketing, PR, product development, user feedback, image building, and recruiting.Wait, What About Security and Secrecy?Clearly there are benefits in taking social technologies to the enterprise, but there are also big challenges.The first one is security. Companies are obsessed with it, for better or worse. It might not make sense, it might be silly,but companies always want to know: What about security? Not everyone in the company should have access to all kinds of information.That is obvious as well, but how do you get this done?Speaking broadly, the social toolset needs to be overlayed with a layer of security.This layer needs to ensure that information is viewable by only those authorized to see it, across the entire suite of tools,across the whole enterprise.The second issue is secrecy. Apple, for instance, is known to be very secretive about its plans. Does it give thema competetive edge? Likely yes. How does the introduction of blogging and open social tools to the enterprise impact that?More leaks are likely to occur. Information has an amazing tendency to find its way forward through the human network.The challenge then, is to define a set of policies and rules that ensure that nothing classified gets out. This is not simple.ConclusionNew social tools can enable companies to be more agile and self-organizing. The have a chance to break down the wallsof complex, ineffective hierarchies and to empower employees to get things done. These tools are simple, fun, engaging, and inspirational. Bringing fresh winds of change to the stale corporate mentality is a good thing and should be welcomed.If you work for a large company, we would like to hear from you. What social tools are you discussing or using today?What benefits did you find? What are your concerns and challenges? Let us know in the comments below.
ReadWriteWeb is proud to be a partner of the first annual Crunchies, a competition and award ceremony for the best startups of the year. It is being run by TechCrunch, Read/WriteWeb, GigaOmand VentureBeat. As the name indicates, TechCrunch is the driving force behind the awards and event - but it is a collaborative effort between the 4 of us. I'm a personal fan of the 3 other blogs, so it's great that we're working together on this event.How will we be involved? Read/WriteWeb will be sponsoring some of the award categories that most align with our brand, and we will be involved in category selection and the ceremony. Nominations and voting will start soon at the Crunchies site. There will be a real-world award ceremony and party to announce the awards - date and venue tbc (it'll be in San Francisco though). Most of all, the awards and ceremony is about celebrating Web startups - all the hard work they put in and innovation they create. So we at Read/WriteWeb are thrilled to be working with TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat to bring you the Crunchies! Stay tuned for more details over the coming weeks.
Last week we told you about some upcoming Web Conferences. We also gave away a ticket to Defrag, which is on right now. The winner was Kevin Cawley, so hope he is having a good time :-) R/WW has a few people at Defrag - Sean, Alex and Charles Knight (of AltSearchEngines) are all there. The Web 2.0 Expois on this week too, in Berlin - give us a shout if you're attending, it'd be good to have some coverage of it on R/WW.We had some follow up messages about other events, so here is an update...The GigaOm Network is presenting a one day event called NewTeeVee Live, to be held in San Francisco on 14th of November. The event will showcase the online video industry. NewTeeVeeis a similar blog to last100(a Read/WriteWeb Network blog), so we will be closely following the action. R/WW readers can get a discount on NewTeeVee live tickets by clicking here.Note: if anyone would like to provide some live coverage of NewTeeVee Live for last100, please contact us. We may be able to get you a free press pass to the event.Blog World Expo, Nov 8 - 9 in Las VegasThis is where the Weblog Awards 2007 will be announced -- VOTE FOR READ/WRITEWEB!pleeease. Also our friend Allen Stern from CenterNetworkswill be present, apparently with a mini video camera attached to his head!Widgety GoodnessBritish startup Snipperoo is holding a conference about widgetson December 6, 2007, at Brighton. We have 2 free tickets to give away!To enter, simply leave a comment on this post, telling us what your all-time favorite widget is. Note the event is in the UK, so make sure you can attend if you enter. I'll pick the 2 winners by end of this week.Intelligence at the Interface, Nov 7, Palo AltoI really want someone to write up this event for us - so please yell out if you're going and you're up for doing a guest post on R/WW. Here's a description from an email I received:"SRI is demoing CALO (cognitive agent that learns and organizes), a rare glimpse. It’s use is military-only, and will never see the public (Radar did work on this project in its early days). XEROC PARC is demoing a social context-aware, mobile app. (going live only in Japan to start), that works like a tour guide, and Yahoo Berkeley Labs is demoing an application that uses social, spatial, and temporal context to support and enhance key user tasks (runs only on a special Nokia phone). Really, really cool stuff, all Web3.0, and the location-aware stuff is especially cool -- a lot like the “holy grail” of mobile networking that people keep talking about."I'm sure there are many more web conferences happening, but I will be here all night... so if you have an event on that you want R/WW readers to know about, let us know in the comments. Or you can enter it in our Events Board, hosted by EventBee. You can list your event there for as little as $75.
Joost, the desktop-based long-form video service that aims to take on the old TV model with a large pile of venture capital, is scrapping one of its defining features built in-house, inline chat, and replacing it with outside chat service meebo. Essentially, the announcement means that users will be able to chat with all their friends on MSN, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and GoogleTalk while watching the high-resolution, professional video content on Joost. It's a good combination.If you haven't checked out Joost lately, I can tell you that I looked at it for the first time in months tonight: it looks nicer, has far more content (and ads) than before and appears more stable on a Mac. It's free for anyone to download. The meebo integration was supposed to have gone live minutes ago, I'm not seeing it yet but I'm sure it will arrive soon.A web-based cross-platform chat client, meebo says more than 1 million people spend over two and a half hours each, daily, on its site. Joost, which has started by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström amongst others, has raised almost $50 million in venture funding and says it has had more than 1 million beta testers. It's a good distribution deal for meebo, but some cross promotion to meebo users wouldn't hurt Joost either. That will likely happen, at the very least, every time a meebo user chatting with their IM friends on MSN or Yahoo messenger through Joost is asked "what are you doing?"Meebo is a VC darling as well - this is the kind of deal that high-powered investors can help make happen, a great example of why people say it's as much about the connections as it is about the cash.Joost launched a developer platform for widgets at the end of this summer, though there's little evidence of widespread adoption of that platform yet. Meebo launched a platform of its own last week with selected partners offering everything from integrated audio to live streaming video. Complex features are all well and good, but tonight's announcement is likely to be one of the most significant features either of these companies can offer.
Gartnerrecently released a couple of reports on how web 2.0 technologies are being used in e-Government. The reports are entitled The E-Government Hype Cycle Meets Web 2.0and Government and Web 2.0: The Emerging Midoffice. Both are about how modern e-government efforts are moving away from the 'one stop shop' portal approach that characterized early efforts, and are turning more towards mashups and (to quote the first Gartner report) "a number of mostly adventurous initiatives with blogs, wikis or islands in Second Life." But it's the ecosystem of Web Services - and the reusability of content and services that Web Services enable - that really excites Gartner about web 2.0 in e-government.ControlThe 'Hype Cycle' Gartner report makes it plain that Gartner analysts do not consider all aspects of Web 2.0 to be useful in e-government. Wikis, Ajax, virtual worlds and blogs require "control" if used in an e-government context, according to this passage:"Actions such as jumping on the wiki bandwagon, leveraging technologies such as Ajax for richer user interfaces or diving into virtual worlds to entice the so-called "digital natives" will result in a sudden awakening for governments. We expect several governments in developed economies to establish virtual government strategies that define how to participate in a variety of virtual communities, ranging from internal ones that engage employees, to external ones where they will reach out to constituents.Such efforts will provide value only if they are very well-focused and conducted — at least initially — in the context of gated communities where governments can exercise some degree of control."Don't all IT projects require focus? Admittedly though, for government business it is important to have strict security, ID, accountability and compliance functionality in place. These things have presented challenges for quite some time in regards to wikis and blog. However, products like Atlassian - which recently partnered with Microsoftto integrate with SharePoint - have more than enough 'control' to satisfy most government departments.Gartner encourages e-government efforts to "experiment with innovative means to better serve and engage constituents", but it warns that "such pilots have to remain very well-focused and somewhat isolated from mainstream processes for at least the next two years."Note: this isn't an official government presence in SecondLife. Image by hackshavenWeb Services to the Rescue!Where Gartner sees the most potential for web 2.0 in e-government is "the shift from service-oriented to Web-oriented architectures (WOAs)", which Gartner states will "have a much greater potential effect on the ability to transform government than anything else in the Web 2.0 world." By WOA, they primarily mean Web Services and mashups. In particular, Gartner says that Web Services should be reusable. They encourage information to be designed "in a more-granular fashion", so that it can be mashed up and reused by others - which they call "(partially) unintended use". The report also points out that this information should be made available to non-government entities, where appropriate.In the other report, 'The Emerging Midoffice', Gartner discusses how mashups, REST and other Web Services technologies (bundled into the term "Midoffice") can be used in e-government initiatives. The reason, states Gartner, is that "in the future, government single points of contact will become even less relevant than they are today." This trend follows online consumer behavior and the popularity of web 2.0 technologies. R/WW readers will know that web 2.0 has been infiltrating the enterprise and other organizations for the past couple of years - a trend often termed 'the consumerization of the enterprise'. e-Government Portals Become Less ImportantThe second report mentions that more citizens are using [consumer] "information and service aggregators, as well as social networks", to get the government information or services that they need. The report states:"The first-stop shop for almost anything on the Internet is a search engine, a personal home page, or a preferred home page that matches the consumer's needs and interests. This type of home page is likely to be provided — not by a government organization, but by an Internet player (such as Google, Yahoo or MSN), a media company (such as CNN or The New York Times), a telecom operator (especially for mobile devices), an investment firm, a parent association or a golf club." These are all channels that consumers use to find Internet services and content nowadays - and Gartner suggests that consumers will expect to find e-government services through those channels too. So Gartner's conclusion is that governments "should make sure that their information, services and applications are accessible through a variety of different channels, some of which are not controlled or directly owned by government."ConclusionThese two Gartner reports suggest that there are opportunities for startups to provide information and services channels for e-government. We're already seeing it on a larger scale with Google, eBay, Facebook and others. But there are probably hundreds or thousands of niches opento startups to explore, to provide channels for e-government. For example job search engines and aggregators could hook into government Web Services for unemployment. It will be different for each country of course.There are challenges for startups too. On the question of accountability, the second report states that "in most cases, government remains accountable for what each of its more granular Web services is bound to provide, but service aggregators and intermediaries are liable for how they process and transfer information between those services." Privacy and security are two other issues - Gartner suggests a federated identity scheme is required for the latter. So working with e-government will require more complexity; and perhaps giving governments the "control" they need too.Overall, it is very encouraging to see web 2.0 technologies being used more in e-government initiatives these days. In the early part of this century I was very interested in e-government, but at that time the 'one stop shop' portal approach was king. In 2007 - in the era of search, aggregators, Web Services, social networks, etc - e-government is much more about 'small pieces loosely joined'. Or at least it promises to be, which will benefit citizens as well as startups looking to tap into this very large market.Thanks to Gartner for providing the above-mentioned reports to us. Top image by ClintJCL
National Public Radio, the US radio network too long lagging in the technology department, relaunched NPR Musiclate last night. The new site is a real joy to use. While the old NPR website ran all media through RealPlayer or Windows Media, the new site employs a slick Flash pop-up player that's easy to use. The site also integrates media from 12 leading local NPR affiliates. Say what you will about their politics - NPR does a great job on music.The new player works not just at NPR Music, but across all NPR properties. It lets you click a single link anywhere on the site to add an audio file you're reading about to your playlist. Playlists will run continuously and link back out to the articles they were derived from. In testing the site I was able to quickly assemble a playlist of both single songs and hour-long concert performances. Playback was very smooth in most circumstances though switching between multiple hour-long recordings sometimes took awhile to buffer.In addition to the ability to quickly put together your own playlists, the new NPR Music site highlights a wide variety of pre-built playlists: from Yo-Yo Ma's Top Five Faves to five of the best songs recently released in Africa, courtesy of the hosts of the show "All Songs Considered." In an increasingly unmanageable world, expert aggregation in any field is a top-notch value add.There's non-skippable interstitial ads, some recommended songs, shows and live concert recordings and hip celebrity music blogs (including one from my neighbor, Portland guitarist Carrie Brownstein, former member of Sleater-Kinney). NPR has truly joined the present age. Let's hope they can keep that development cycle up and not rely on the current site for the next ten years.See also our recent coverageof the excellant new NPR Mobile site.
After months if not years of speculation, Google announced todaythat they are not in fact developing a single phone, but rather an ostensibly open-source mobile operating system called Android. Google stock prices jumpedfrom $710 per share to $730 per share this morning on the news.For all the "wow" everyone was hoping for from a GPhone, this is probably a much smarter move. Just as all non-dominant players in the social networking market have to give some thought to teaming up under the Google-led OpenSocial, so too will all mobile manufacturers likely think hard about leveraging the Google-led Android in the face of the iPhone's threat to remake their industry. Google won't be able to match Apple's eye-candy, but they may be able to offer far more utility in a mobile OS that's still far more pleasing to use than almost anything else on the market today.Android was developed in co-ordination with the 30 members of the Open Handset Alliance. Participating vendors include Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile; but not AT&T and Verizon. Android will be available for any phone manufacturer to install and build on top of. It will allow for extensive use of Google applications, mashups based on those applications combined with third party apps and will in time live on portable devices other than phones, like car navigation systems.Google says that some of the partner companies are aiming for a late 2008 release of Android enabled phones. The developers' SDKwill be available in about a week. The OS is based on Linux and Java.The New York Times was briefed extensivelybefore today's announcement and the Official Google Blog's announcement is here.
IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet conglomerate that runs some of the web's most well-known brands, announced that it will be broken up into 5 companies. Current head of the company, Barry Diller, will run IAC -- which will remain a potpourri of Internet properties including Ask, Evite, InsiderPage, Match.com, Excite, CollegeHumor, and others, and will manage IAC's investments in sites like BrightCove, and MerchantCircle. The other four newly formed properties will be HSN (shopping), Ticketmaster (event tickets), Interval International (vacation/travel), and LendingTree (loans)."We've been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years," said Diller in a statement about the split. "And while we've created a lot of value, I've always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors." According to Diller, the spun off entities will retain strong inter-company relationships.IAC also announced a major advertising deal with Google, according to paidContent. The deal will put Google sponsored search ads on IAC properties and is worth at least $3.5 billion, said Diller in a press conference this morning.IACIwas up nearly 9% in early morning trading.
The world's largest social networking site today announcedthat it would be launching a new advertising program it calls "HyperTargeting," which uses profile data to target ads to users. MySpacerolled out the first phase of its HyperTargeting program to a select group of advertisers, including Microsoft, Ford, Toyota, Proctor &Gamble, and Universal Pictures, in July by dividing its users into 10 target groups (music, movies, personal finance, gaming, consumer electronics, sports, travel, auto, fashion, and fitness). The company claims that performance increases for early testers of the platform were as high as 300% over demographically tageted ads.The company has now expanded those 10 categories to over 100 more tightly defined groups. Right now the changes have only occured on the US-based site, but should roll out on the international versions of MySpace next year. The company hopes to eventually expand to over 1000 target categories."About a year ago we went out and recruited people away from Google, Microsoft and Ebay. We have 150 folks working on monetization technology and engineers focused on segmenting the audience, ad delivery and analytics," said Adam Bain, chief technology officer for Fox Interactive Media (which runs MySpace) to the Financial Times. Bain also said that the company plans to focus more on better targeting ads to the interests of its users and making them more "contextually relevant."MySpace also said it would be releasing a self-serve tool that will allow smaller advertisers to place ads on the site.
