Blog News Watch

At the end of 2006, there were some gossips that News Corp. the sole owner of Myspace might extend their network to China. Very little known about this plan, except from some Bloomberg articles. Anyway now things are getting clearer as word are out News Corp. is finalizing a deal with partners, including private equity heavyweight IDG, to launch a networking Web site venture in China within a few months. Financial and Chinese government sources confirm this last weekend.

But things will be quite different in Oriental Myspace, News Corp. will own only less than 50% of it, The IDG-Accel China Growth Fund, managed by venture firm International Data Group Technology Venture Investment, will also own a stake of it. There was no indication whether there will be any third or forth party will be involved in the venture.

Well as we all know, China isn’t an easy place for a foreign online service provider to get an Internet content license and other news licenses, News Corp. might be busy taking care of Beijing’s requirements. How much this venture is costing News corp.? Well they politely skip that part out. News Corp. biggest asset in this oriental venture will be Luo Chuan, a former head of Microsoft’s Windows Live unit in China who will be more likely the first Myspace China CEO.

So far in previous attempt News Corp. failed to team up with local television stations and newspaper publishers, as Beijing still tightly controls mass media. So what holds in the future for News Corp. in China, the world’s second-largest Internet market behind the United States, with about 137 million Web users? Something more than just chicken soup and chopstick for sure.

Source: CNN Money

MySpace, News Corp., China

Once again Pew Internet and American Life Project bring up some interesting stats of social networking/web 2.0 arena. According to published article of BBC, tagging or labeling online content gaining popularities as a whole new search tool.

As more and more people put their own content online, they are also being invited to tag it with descriptive keywords to help organise their data.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the trend in tagging is growing among US web users.

For users like us who uses social networking sites tagging is just an obvious tool to navigate around the sites we visit. But this tagging/ labeling is something more than just easy navigation tool. I am sure you heard about Semantic Web, in which information is machine processable (rather than being only human oriented), thus permitting browsers or other software agents to find, share and combine information. The Social tagging may not be the perfect Semantic Web component like RDF, but sort out data based on supplied keyword within a network. Some of the tagging like-technorati tagging can be even inter network wide. Anyway if we have to talk about future of semantic web and content labeling it will be a long session, so lets just focus on the social tagging.

In simple word, Tagging is a kind of content labeling which makes the content easily searchable and easier to organise information within a network/site. There are different forms of tagging in different network, like flicker got it’s picture tagging, technorati got it’s keyword tagging etc. Currently most of these tagging works only within the network’s data/content, for example with Flicker tagging you can’t expect to find YouTube video. Despite it’s limitation, tagging makes life a lot of easier. Tagging allows social groups to form around similarities of interests and points of view. People using same tag brings up peoples closer to each other who share some common test. No doubt tagging is getting quite a ground among US users, according to research over a quarter of online Americans - 28% - had tagged content such as a photo, news story or blog.

Consider tagging is the doorway to full content labeling.

Tagging, Content Labeling, Semantic Web

Remember Vodafone is supposed to launch a new open source community portal called Betavine, at 31st January. Well they didn’t miss the schedule, now its live and kicking. The portal looks cool, and definitely will get some attention of bedroom based open source developers. The portal contain seven cool downloadable application for developers to get started.

As a Vodafone Betavine developer you will be able to:

• Create your own projects and host applications
• Blog about your projects
• Interact with your users and the Betavine community

Paul Walsh of Segala have more details on this. Stephen Wolak, Web Technologies Manager at Vodafone Group. Stephen has revealed to Paul how this portal will encourage students to get involved and become a strong workforce.

We are planning a set of student competitions in order to engage academia in the creation of new mobile and internet communications concepts and applications.

We will update the Portal with an open source site to encourage the development of open source software in this space.

Segala may provide ongoing updates about the Portal and evaluations on applications as they’re uploaded, as Segala is a definite contributor in the portal itself.

Disclaimer: I work as a Web application developer in Segala.

We are living in the age where there is almost everything got beta, micro, 2.0 etc. in the butt or on the face. Well thanks to Bill gates “think week”, we might as well see micro payment processing in near future. Paypal considered as the first ever successful online payment system, soon after that so many popped up, even Google has it’s own version of paypal killer. But only handful of them really stand out against Paypal as a payment method or payment processor.

But guess what Microsoft’s mastermind Bill Gates announced at World Economic Forum,in DAVOS Switzerland that Microsoft Corp. is developing on an online payment system that will be cheaper than credit card transactions, making it possible for companies to charge small fees for Web-based content and services they now offer for free. This killer plan to enter the online payments business evolved during bill gates so called “think week,” a twice-yearly ritual where he usually isolates himself in a backwoods cabin to study new ideas. My oh my a week long thoughts to screw up eBay’s multi-billion dollar business!

Microsoft’s move into Internet payments might not only kick paypal’s butt but as well as could threaten credit card companies’ online profits. Gates noted that traditional credit card fees would need to be undercut, and severely. See, the credit industry makes money not only off interest, but they also scoop up 2.75% + $0.35 in fees for most transactions (on average). As you can see, this makes charging for inexpensive items quite unattractive; a $0.25 charge would be instantly doubled on account of fees. For people who have fantasies of selling web content by the page, this is unworkable. That is seriously true, someone selling a content worth of $0.50 cost nearly $1.25 in traditional online payment processing, a very good point why a lot of smaller content seller won’t even dare to adopt online payment processing.

Well Microsoft says their Micropayment system will cut out those all additional fees. Means only buyer/charged will be charged a small fees, no additional 3rd party transaction/processing costs. Question is how Microsoft will pull this off? As the details are yet unknown. Microsoft got wide verity of things they can do with this payment processing, they already have MSN money, Microsoft Wallet, passport- So the possibility is nearly infinite. Well you may ask why even people will use that? think again! Microsoft can start with receiving payment for each of their software, OS only through their new payment system. Walla! nothing you can do about it. When Microsoft comes up with this kind of idea, it will be not a matter of choice anymore. And i have a sick feeling that, sooner or later it’s coming.

Source: CNN Money

Bill Gates, Microsoft, Micro-Payment System

A rumors were flying all around blogosphere since weekend that Shiny Media secures VC funding. Well ending all speculation and rumor Shiny Media officially yesterday confirmed receiving $4.9m VC funding. Shiny Media, which is a London based startup (they started in 2003, can we still call them startup?) now attract almost three million readers each month to 22 blogs, employ over thirty bloggers (some full-time, some freelance). And all these achievement is just within few years(little more than 3 years) of launch. According to shiny, in this three years there wasn’t any type of funding or investment which is incredible comparing the achievement Shiny Media managed to acquire.

The funding came from a new VC firm called Bright Station Ventures. In exchange of this funding Bright Station Ventures will take a 50% stake in Shiny Media. Bright Station Ventures maybe very little known to us, but the man behind that, DAN WAGNER is very much popular guy in entrepreneur world. DAN WAGNER, the entrepreneur who ran the Maid online information business in the 1990s, once turned down an opportunity to invest $1m for 30% of the fledgling Ebay — a stake that would now be worth many billions. well he didn’t commit that same mistake again

Shiny Media, UK Blog Network, VC Funding

Last year Mobile application development and uses has went further than ever. Mobile web is just a bingeing of new era, where search engine giants aren’t in control of the contents. As Mobile Web is heading for it’s peak, not surprisingly network operators and manufacturers are concentrating on application development and community participations. It’s whole new race out there to beat each other. Vodafone is launching a new open source community portal called Betavine, the tentative schedule of launch is 31st January. It’s a research and development space run by Vodafone Group R&D. It aims to encourage collaboration in the area of mobile and internet communications. I guess that’s gives the indication of Vodafone adopting Mozilla style open source developers community.

This community might change the whole idea of Mobile application and browsing. As as a general user you will be able to download and test application as well as participate/feedback in the community for further development. And as for developers, they can create their own mobile projects & host applications, and off course participate in Betavine community. Now can you see the style of Mozilla! There will be two major element in this community, Testers and Developers. Vodafone hopes it will provide them with a testing ground for the latest Mobile Web concepts and technologies. Well Vodafone isn’t the first one, Nokia already have a head start with similar kind of program called “Maemo”, rumors around SonyErickson is also working on a similar project. It’s about damm time those mobile companies realizing the power of community.

This exciting news was uncovered by Paul Walsh, CEO of Segala, who was involved in the portal set-up. You can get more details on his post or by getting in touch with him. If you are interested he can also hook you up pre launch beta trial before January 31.

Disclaimer: I work as a Web Application Developer at Segala.

Vodafone, Segala, Paul walsh, Betavine

This interesting news was brought by BBC’s Tim Weber earlier today, that YouTuber will soon get their share of Ad revenue. Youtube’s co-founder Chad Hurley confirmed to the BBC that they are working on a advertising model, to reward the creativity of contributors in YouTube. So how this will work? Have you seen AOL site’s music video or WWE wrestling video footage, just like that YouTube will include short ad clips ahead of the actual video. The whole system will be implemented after few months but he various features would be rolled out one by one over the next few months. So it won’t be a big boom, just sequential added features, and revenue sharing will be only applicable to the contributors who own the full copyright of the videos that they are uploading to the YouTube website.

This so called “pre-roll” adverts might not be even mandatory, as details are yet fuzzy. YouTube might just present user an option like a add clip of three seconds length or none. Those who choose to add the adverts clip get into revenue sharing, others don’t. Well only time will say what will be the aftermath of this pre-roll adverts, in terms of YouTube’s popularity.

The audience of the YouTube website will not have to put up with overly long “pre-roll” adverts. Mr Hurley said a clip of three seconds length was one of the options, although the details had not been worked out yet.

Other video sharing sites such as Revver already split advertising revenues with users uploading original content, but only YouTube has managed to attract an audience measuring in the tens of millions.

YouTube, Pre-roll adverts

Many of you may not heard about blogjet, which is a desktop blogging application by Coding Robots. Though i use Windows live writer and Blogdesk as my desktop blog tools, but i guess now i have to give a thought of using Blogjet 2.0 too. Blogjet’s greatest feture that attract many bloggers is easy integration and on spot editing. in this Blogjet 2.0 there are some more goodies to amaze bloggers, and make their hard work a little more less.

The key features of blogjet 2.0:

Well that looks nice isn’t it? But one little problem, it isn’t free application like Windows Live Writer or Blogdesk. It cost arround US$39-US$69, depending on license type.

Blogdesk, Blogjet, Desktop blogging tools, Windows Live writer

Apple just went through their biggest setback in Europe, as on Wednesday Norway’s powerful consumer ombudsman ruled that its iTunes online music store was illegal because it did not allow downloaded songs to be played on rival technology companies’ devices. What could be worse than that? Apple still have a ongoing iPhone copyright issue, which might cost them a lot and now their biggest money earner iTune got banned in Norway. It might got far more worse as this could prompt other European countries to review the situation and concludes iTunes breaks its consumer protection laws.

The ombudsman has set a deadline of October 1 for the Apple to make its codes available to other technology companies so that it abides by Norwegian law. If it fails to do so, it will be taken to court, fined and eventually closed down.Sweden and Finland have already backed Norway’s stance, but have yet to take action, words out Germany & France has also joined in the bandwagon. So expect sooner not later half a dozen European countries consumer organizations taking on iTune.

The Ombudsman has now agreed, according to Torgeir Waterhouse, senior advisor at the Consumer Council.

…It doesn’t get any clearer than this. Fairplay is an illegal lock-in technology whose main purpose is to lock the consumers to the total package provided by Apple by blocking interoperability, …For all practical purposes this means that iTunes Music Store is trying to kill off one the most important building blocks in a well functioning digital society, interoperability, in order to boost its own profits….

Source: The Register.co.uk

Apple, Norway, iTunes, Europe, DRM

Is this cool or what! It isn’t new story Movers and shakers of industries tried to take advantage of blogging/bloggers to have a good PR. Apple, Wallmart, Sony you name it. But this time Microsoft went too far taking advantage of Web 2.0 influence. Microsoft today offered to pay an Australian blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced web encyclopedia site, and as you can see it went out loud. Honestly poor attempt!

It’s true that Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia is user generated content. But public relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else having a conflict of interest from posting bias or PR entries, isn’t allowed. So ultimately paying for wikipedia entry is a sinister attempt.

Well it couldn’t have gotten any worse, since Microsoft already acknowledged it had approached the writer “Rick Jelliffe”, who is chief technical officer of Sydney computing company Topologi, and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an ”open document format” and a rival put forward by Microsoft.Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written by people at IBM, which is a big supporter of the rival open-source standard. In simple word they think the articles in wikipedia was one sided, and decided to make it fare (hmm for them or for users?).

They could have approach wikipedia moderators, if there is really any anomaly in those documents, and wikipedia would have launch independent investigation. If every company started to consider the articles are needed to modify, and they do like Microsoft the result is simple Wikipedia=Company PR.

Damm Microsoft have some sense.

Source: TheAge.com.au

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