Yahoo Cozies up to Bloggers
Yahoo announced a new feature for its My Web 2.0 “social search engine” on Friday that’s meant to appeal to bloggers and Web site publishers.
The new trait is further evidence that Internet search engines are embracing blogs, which are online diaries on any number of topics with links directing visitors to the operators favorite Internet locales. There are an estimated 20 million blogs.
With its new feature, Yahoo is exposing blogs to its My Web 2.0 community of users, the size of which a Yahoo does not divulge.
My Web 2.0 sets-up people with their own Web sites to store and organize favorite Internet findings. Yahoo calls My Web 2.0 a social search engine because users get to contribute their listings to a communal database that’s searchable by others in the My Web universe. The benefit is “access to Web content that’s ranked by search technology,” Yahoo says.
The new attribute announced Friday is a “Save to My Web” button that’s displayed on Web sites or blogs. The feature lets My Web 2.0 users instantly add the site to their collection during their Web wanderings, rather than a more cumbersome alternative involving a visit to their My Web 2.0 Web page. Bloggers and Web site operators must first add the element onto their sites.
Music P2P goes legit
Since the RIAA’s long legal fight against peer-to-peer file-trading networks began, the P2P companies have touted legal applications in their ultimately doomed legal defense. Now that the MGM v. Grokster decision is a few months old, iMesh is poised to prove whether or not consumers will embrace P2P for legal downloads, with more RIAA-approved P2P networks to follow.
From a distance, iMesh looks like another subscription service à la Yahoo Music. You pay your US$6.99 per month and are able to access all the legal music on the iMesh network. Like the other subscription services, the music is tied to the PC on which iMesh is installed. Unlike NapsterToGo and Yahoo Music, there’s no option to copy the music to your digital music player; a future update will include that functionality. Naturally, if you want to keep the music, you still have to buy it.
iMesh will still search Gnutella and other P2P networks for files, but users will not be able to download them. That’s due to a filtering function that will keep users from downloading “illegitimate” files found on other PCs on the network. Some free downloads will be allowed, such as those in the public domain or by artists who release the songs themselves. Videos less than 15 minutes long or 50MB in size can also be downloaded, which rules out most of the stuff file-sharers would be looking for (e.g., tv shows, movies).
Regardless of whether or not it will play in Peoria, music executives dig the new service. Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s CEO said that the labels are “excited” about iMesh and hope “that P2P becomes a legitimate part of the distribution of music.” Whether it will remains to be seen. iMesh and other P2P music-commerce networks that come online will have to deal with expectations on the part of file-traders that music should be free. It’s essentially the same situation that the labels faced a few years ago when the iTunes Music Store came online. The iTMS model—adopted by other music download services—of about a buck per song with “reasonable” DRM restrictions proved to be an attractive alternative to P2P networks.
iMesh’s offering, on the other hand, doesn’t look as compelling. For one, it’s a music subscription service that’s trying to avoid bandwidth bills. As is the case with other subscription services, you’re only renting the music for as long as you subscribe. And while the quality and integrity of the files you download over their network will be guaranteed, you’re reliant on the connection speeds of other users to get your tracks. iMesh also has some social networking features that allow subscribers to find and interact with other users of similar ages, musical tastes, etc., and browse their music collections. Instant messaging functionality is planned for the near future. However, when you strip all the features away, you’re left with a paid-access P2P network that ties the songs you acquire to your PC. What’s the point?
Computers learn a new language
COMPUTER scientists have developed a program that can teach itself new languages. Feed it a piece of text, in any language, and the program analyses its structure and can then produce new, meaningful sentences.
Conventional translation software programs have all the rules of grammar coded into them. But the ADIOS (automatic distillation of structure) program, developed by researchers at Cornell University in New York and Tel Aviv University in Israel, infers the building blocks of a language using statistical and algebraic processes. The software learns the grammar of a new language by searching text for patterns. The researchers think the program will be useful in cognitive science and bioinformatics, as well as in applications such as voice recognition.
Google initiates second email phase
IT SEEMS that Google’s email service is getting into the final phase of preparations to loose the “beta” moniker and become a fully fledged service.
We have begun seeing ads for Gmail distributed via Google Ad Network, so expect to see those on every student visited site in the near future. Google invites college students, and people with a valid .edu e-mail address, to become a part of Gmail.
Besides logging in via a web-page, you can also now get an invitation code if you give the number of your mobile phone and write a provided code onto the box – you will receive a text message containing the invitation code for Gmail.
This is an excellent ad for Google Mobile Services, a future sub-division of Google. That service will feature secure password recovery and SMS alerts.
Currently, invites work for students and mobile phone owners in the US of A, but it is surely only a matter of time before Google goes international with these services.
Additional Links:
Yahoo fixes Web mail security flaw!
Yahoo has fixed a security flaw in its free Web-based e-mail service that opened the door to phishing scams, account hijacks and other attacks.
The flaw, known as a cross-site scripting vulnerability, existed because Yahoo’s Web site did not detect certain script tags in combination with certain special characters, according to SEC Consult, which issued an advisory on the flaw Friday.
Cross-site scripting flaws are found regularly, including recently in Google’s Web site and earlier this year in Microsoft’s Xbox 360 site.
Flaws have also been found on Yahoo’s site. An attacker could exploit this type of flaw to hijack user accounts, launch information-stealing phishing scams or even download malicious code onto users’ computers, experts have said.
A Yahoo representative said it fixed the most recent flaws in the “last few weeks” and that its users are protected.
“Yahoo recently learned of an issue in Yahoo Mail and worked immediately to begin rollout of a server-side fix which does not require users to take any action,” said Karen Mahon, a Yahoo spokeswoman. “We are unaware of any users who were impacted by this issue.”
Nintendo Revolution Price
While on my constant search for new Nintendo Revolution information, I came across some articles speculating the European release date and price tag for Nintendo’s next generation gaming console. Of course, this is only a “rumor,” and I have not confirmed the date, or the price in any official capacity.
Amazon France has slipped a page with the European release date and price for Nintendo’s monumental new game console, the Nintendo Revolution.
The tentative release date is listed as June 15, 2006. The total cost after conversion to US dollars, would be approximately $365. European game console prices tend to be a bit priced a higher than in North America, but this still sounds a bit overpriced given the Xbox’s $299-$399 price tag. From what we know so far the Nintendo Revolution will be less technologically advanced than the xbox 360 or Playstation 3.
Based on the GameCube’s 2001 launch cycle–it arrived in Europe six months after it debuted in North America. This leak gives credence to rumors that the Revolution could see a surprise 2005 launch in Canada and the US.
Of course, when more “official” information is available for both the release date and price, http://www.nintendorevolution.ca will let you know.
For more great gaming information, check out this great Xbox News site or check out this great Nintendo Revolution resources http://www.nintendorevolution.ca
Flock, the “social” browser, is released for preview
The second annual Web 2.0 Conference was recently held in San Francisco, “taking Web 2.0 further, focusing not just on declaring the platform, but showing where the innovation is happening and what we might expect in the coming year.” For those who don’t know or care, Web 2.0 is all about “social” software.
We are social beings. The need to connect and communicate is inherent to our human nature. Social Software is simply technologies that enable interaction and communication. Social Software is a large construct of Web 2.0 business. The social software convergence is the combining of existing mediums with technology enablers.
Honestly, does anybody else get the feeling that Web 2.0 is largely being promoted by people fired when Web 1.0 went bust? It makes one immediately skeptical of a browser like Flock, which is a shame because while Flock is hardly revolutionary, it is interesting.
Bart Decrem, leader of the Flock flock, once tried to make Linux friendly to the average user, a quixotic task that closed the doors of his startup, Eazel, in 2001. This time it’s all about making friends and sharing experiences. The 0.5 preview version of Flock is FireFox based and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Flock is very much like a Web 1.0 browser with a few twists. Online favorites is a bookmarking system stored with del.icio.us, allowing users to share websites with others. An open-source search engine, Clucene, is built-in, providing the ability to index and store your search history. RSS feeds that allow users to aggregate content without having to visit each site is a nice feature.
Then there is blogging. Flock does an excellent job of integrating blogging into the web browsing experience for those that swing that way. The blog editor works with WordPress, Movable Type, and Typepad, with Live Journal and Blogger to follow. The editing window is pretty WYSIWYG and drop-and-drag friendly. You can easily grab images from the Flickr “topbar,” a scrolling image gallery that appears between the toolbar and web content, as well as clippings from the Shelf. The Shelf is a neat little tool that lets you copy and store text and images you see on a web page. When you drop the clipping into a blog entry it is automatically formatted and cited. Very cool.
Flock is interesting in and of itself, without the Web 2.0 hyperbole, but there are questions. Do people really want to share their web browsing experience so intimately? Further, a lot of people browse, but what percentage really care about blogging? Finally, Flock is free. Since this is not 1999, how does one make money off that? Bart Decrem makes some interesting comments regarding search engine advertising.
The Mozilla Foundation has alluded to search related business arrangements and has created a for-profit subsidiary. In sum, we’re quite comfortable that, if enough users choose our browser, we can keep the lights on here at Flock without violating users’ privacy or compromising the user experience.
Well, that sounds good on paper, but then that’s been said before too.
