Shutterborg, a New Online Word Processor February 5, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentNow that we have online office suites like Google Docs, Zoho, and even Adobe’s Acrobat.com, you may not have much desire to go and check out yet another would-be Microsoft Office killer. However, Shutterborg, a new online word processor does one thing really well which makes it a unique tool in this space: it lets you open any URL on the internet and edit it like an Office document.
When you first visit Shutterborg, available online at http://shutterb.org, you’re presented with three options: New Document, Open from Disk (coming soon), and Open from Web. The first option – starting a new document – will take you right into Shutterborg, where you can then begin to type.
The word processor itself is rather rudimentary. There are some basic options for formatting your text, aligning it, highlighting it, etc. You can also choose to insert photos and links from the “Insert” menu or create bulleted and numbered lists. Beyond that, the tool doesn’t do much in terms of word processing. Also, at the moment, the files you create can only be saved in .HTML format. Other formats like .TXT, .ODT, and .DOC will arrive in later, says the company.
Read The Rest—>Shutterborg, a New Online Word Processor
Eight Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009, 2010 January 29, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentAnalyst firm Gartner has just released a report that highlights eight up-and-coming mobile technologies which they predict will impact the mobile industry over the course of the next two years. According to Nick Jones, vice president and analyst at the firm, the technologies they’ve identified will evolve quickly and will likely pose issues that will have to be addressed by short term strategies.
The eight technologies identified include the following:Read The Rest—>Eight Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009, 2010
Pirates Rejoice: RIAA Drops Lawsuits, Makes Deal with ISPs December 19, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentAccording to a report in the Wall Street Journal this morning, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has finally realized the folly of its anti-piracy strategy and decided to abandon its mass lawsuits against those who share files over P2P networks. This strategy will now be replaces by a three-strikes rule, where ISPs will be notified of infringements by the RIAA. A number of ISPs have agreed to “reduce the service” of these file sharers if they continue to distribute files after receiving a first warning. After a third or fourth warning, the Internet service might be cut off completely. It is not clear which specific ISPs have entered into this arrangement with the RIAA.
One good aspect of this deal is that the ISPs will not have to report the identity of the alleged copyright infringers to the RIAA. This doesn’t mean that the RIAA is planning to completely stop its lawsuits, however. According a report by CNET, the RIAA will still sue those who download “5,000 or 6,000 songs a month” (of course, it is important to point out that nobody has ever been sued for downloading files, only for sharing them).
This arrangement was brokered by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and, at its core, resembles the RIAA’s deal with a number of colleges.
Read The rest–>Pirates Rejoice: RIAA Drops Lawsuits, Makes Deal with ISPs
Man Writes Software, Blogs About it, Makes $100k in 5 Months November 14, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentWe love this story. Back in July we wrote about the inspiring experience of Peldi Guilizzoni, a lone software developer who’d built a web design mock-up tool called Balsamiq and who was opening up his financial records on his blog to show everyone how things were going. We’d been following his progress since before he launched, but just 6 weeks after Balsamiq hit the market at roughly $79 per license, we wrote that Peldi had already made $10k in revenue.
That was a cute story, but now it’s been just 5 months and today Peldi reports that he’s just cleared $100,000 in sales of the four variations of his product. Talk about a simple tool coming along at just the write time! It’s cool software, too.
In addition to selling Mockups for Desktop, Peldi also sells Mockups for Confluence, Jira and XWiki. Desktop sales have dominated, as any designer can use that software, but wildly popular enterprise wiki service Confluence has a big ecosystem of developers interested in mockups as well.
Read The Rest —>Man Writes Software, Blogs About it, Makes $100k in 5 Months
Google Launches Video and Voice Chat for Gmail November 11, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentGoogle today announced a major update for Gmail: video and voice chat. To make this work, users only have to install a small browser plugin. Google will start enabling these new features for all Gmail and Google Apps users at 12pm PST today. As is typical for new releases in Gmail, Google will roll this feature out to all users over the “next day or so.”
The new chat functionality will work on PCs with Windows XP or Vista, as well as on Macs with OS X 10.4 or later. The plugin will work with all the major browsers, including Google’s own Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.
From what we have seen so far, the videos integrate directly with the standard chat function in Google. To get started, you have to first enable this new functionality from the ‘Options’ menu at the bottom of a Gmail chat window. After that, all you have to do is select the contact you want to speak with and click on ‘Video & more’ in the lower-left part of the chat window. From there, you can then start a voice or video chat.
Read The Rest—> Read Write Web Google Launches Video and Voice Chat for Gmail
LinkedIn Launches Powerful Events Feature – ReadWriteWeb November 7, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentWhat hot events should I attend in my industry? That’s a frequently asked question in many professional conversations. LinkedIn today offers a great way to answer that question with the launch of its new Events feature.
LinkedIn Events offers not just event search, but recommendations based on the contents of your profile, sophisticated information about attendees and updates about the events in your LinkedIn update feed. Eight thousand events are already listed and event organizers can ad more.
Read The Rest—>LinkedIn Launches Powerful Events feature – ReadWriteWeb
Finally! Google to Offer RSS Feeds for Web Search Results – ReadWriteWeb October 8, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentA rumor that’s been floating around the web lately is that Google will offer RSS feeds for new results in basic web search. Today Search Engine Land confirmed that Google will “soon” offer this functionality. Why is this big news? Because there’s no better way to keep track of new mentions of a company, person or concept online than through RSS.
Read the rest here Finally! Google to Offer RSS Feeds for Web Search Results – ReadWriteWeb
Yahoo Music Does The Right Thing: Issues Refunds to Customers July 30, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment
Last Thursday, we reported that Yahoo Music was going to shut down its store and DRM licensing servers on September 30, which was basically going to leave anybody who ever bought music from the Yahoo Music Store without a license to play their music. Now, however, Yahoo has announced that it will issue a refund to its customers for the full value of their purchases. According to a report on CNet, Yahoo is also looking at making copies of the music its customers bought available to them as MP3s without any DRM.
Users who were using Yahoo’s subscription service will be transferred over to Real’s Rhapsody subscription service. Rhapsody also offers DRM free MP3s for sale.
Just Burn a CD
As we reported last week, Yahoo was already advising its customers to circumvent its own DRM system by just burning copies of their songs onto audio CDs and then ripping them back onto their computers as DRM-free MP3s. Apparently, though, not all customers were satisfied with this solution, though given the new solution, enterprising customers could also, of course, now burn their songs to CDs and still ask for their money back from Yahoo.
Costly Precedent
Yahoo is setting a (costly) precedent here for other music services than run into similar problems. When MSN Music shut down, it was originally going to take its licensing servers offline within a year, but because of customer complaints, it is keeping them online until the end of 2011. MSN Music is not planning on returning any money to its customers, though.
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New Facebook Ad Network Takes a Page from Beacon April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentReadWriteWeb
has a great story on the New Facebook Ad Network which seems to resemble the doomed Beacon program in THIS ARTICLE HERE
Identified Hits is a new Facebook ad network that is taking a page from the Beacon play book. Beacon, you’ll remember, is Facebook’s endorsement-based ad service that uses user actions on outside sites to endorse products and services in the News Feed. Identified Hits is utilizing the same concept to push Facebook applications with a concept it calls App Endorsements.
Like Beacon, App Endorsements take a user action — installing and using an application — and turn it into an advertisement built around an endorsement from the user. Unlike Beacon, these ads don’t run in the News Feed, and they’re completely opt-in from the start.
An App Endorsement (see the sample below) is more effective at driving traffic to an app, according to Identified Hits founder Nathan Blecharczyk, because they are personal. That’s the same argument Zuckerberg and company made for Beacon. Blecharczyk, wisely looking to avoid the sort of conflict that was caused by Beacon when it was rolled out last fall, was quick to highlight differences between the two services. “These ads differ from Beacon because they are strictly opt-in and do not broadcast actions from outside of Facebook,” he told us. “[Also] every one of our ads allows the viewer to opt out of receiving future ads from any particular advertiser.”
Identified Hits ads are sold on a CPM basis and are shown on the landing pages of publisher apps in its network. Because ads are only sent to friends of users of the advertisers, and only sent to publisher apps that those friends have installed, Identified Hits will need to build a fairly large publisher network before they have any kind of usable inventory. In other words, in order for App A to get an ad shown on App B, users of App A need to have friends who use App B.
The company says that they’re showing ads on app canvas pages rather than the News Feed because the News Feed messages are easily overlooked. More likely it is because ads of this nature are not possible in the News Feed except via official channels, and because if they were they would likely violate Facebook’s terms of service.
Another wrinkle is that these ads are completely opt-in. Users are asked to explicitly grant permission for their likeness to be used in an advertisement before any are shown on canvas pages of their friend’s apps. We’re skeptical of how many users would actually do that, but Identified Hits says that it has seen “yes” rates are high as 70%.
This article sourced via Social Networking Watch
