http://news.softpedia.com Softpedia News - Internet Life Softpedia News en-us 2001 - 2009 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:35:13 GMT Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:35:13 GMT News http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 10 http://www.softpedia.com/base_img/softpedia_logo.gif http://news.softpedia.com/ http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Test-Hints-at-a-Greater-Emphasis-on-Search-128323.shtml It may be its mortal enemy, but Facebook doesn't mind borrowing a couple of tricks from Google's playbook once in a while. Google is well known for the tests it rolls out for even the smallest features before integrating them with the proper product. It's not the only company doing this, but Google has taken the practice to the extreme. Apparently, Facebook thinks that it's a good idea and has adopted the practice to test out new design features and tweaks which we've been seeing a lot of lately.

The latest test to roll out for a handful of people involves a couple of changes mostly previewed about a month back. TechCrunch has managed to get its hands on several screenshots of the new design and, for the most part, they confirm the direction Facebook has said it would take. There are a couple new things, though, like the bigger search bar which now takes a more central position.

This time around the changes are pretty insignificant, nothing like the news feed / live feed thing which got most people all worked up. Undoubtedly, a lot of people will still hate them but they'll get over it like they always do. The top bar gets all the attention and things get shuffled around hopefully for the better. The 'Home,” “Profile,” and all the other sections, which are now on the left side, get pushed to the other corner, while the things that requir... (read more)]]> Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:31:02 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Test-Hints-at-a-Greater-Emphasis-on-Search-128323.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Test-Hints-at-a-Greater-Emphasis-on-Search-128323.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Law-FIrm-Goes-After-15-000-Pirates-in-the-UK-128332.shtml Online illegal file-sharing is always a hot topic and the big media companies are doing their best to keep it in the spotlight. But for all their talk of protecting their business and the artists' rights, their anti-piracy fight boils down to what can only be described as a form of extortion. And after the practice proved rather profitable in the US, if not actually making a noticeable dent in illegal file-sharing, it was time to conquer new markets so they're moving to the UK.

Some 15,000 'pirates' are about to be sent letters informing them of the legal consequences of their alleged wrong-doing. Hard times await the recipients of these letters with lengthy lawsuits and hefty fines. Fortunately the media companies have a softer side and are offering a simple solution to all of the problems, just pay a few hundred pounds and the whole issue is resolved. Unsurprisingly, most people choose to settle rather than go through the whole painful process.

The BBC has a lengthy piece on the subject and does a good job at explaining how the whole system works. In this particular case two German companies DigiProtect and MediaCat, which represent various copyright holders including adult content publishers, hired ACS: Law to make sure illegal file sharers get what's coming to them. The law firm won a major victory rec... (read more)]]> Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:56:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Law-FIrm-Goes-After-15-000-Pirates-in-the-UK-128332.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Law-FIrm-Goes-After-15-000-Pirates-in-the-UK-128332.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-iPlayer-Online-Video-Service-Proves-a-Great-Success-for-the-BBC-128270.shtml There is a great need for TV content online. The sheer amount of illegal ways of getting to it is evidence enough, but in recent years, companies are starting to realize that rather than just spend millions on trying to prevent piracy it would be much easier and more profitable to meet the needs of the consumer. In the US, Hulu has been a huge success and is now the second biggest video in the country. In the UK, there's the BBC's iPlayer which has seen, arguably, the same level of success though there are some major differences between the two services.

UK business news site, CXO met with BBC's CTO John Linwood, a former Yahoo exec, to get some details on the project and has also provided some interesting stats wrapped up in a very stylish and overwhelmingly pink chart graph. The chart is full of big numbers like 12.5 gigabytes of data transferred every second adding up to seven petabytes every month. In total over 400 hours of content are encoded every week either from taped shows or live events.

But, there are also some relevant stats in there as well. For example, the player served 70 million streams in October, 53.2 million of which were for TV programming. Radio is very popular in the UK but the big number of radio programming streams, 26.1 million, comes from the fact that usi... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:31:02 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-iPlayer-Online-Video-Service-Proves-a-Great-Success-for-the-BBC-128270.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-iPlayer-Online-Video-Service-Proves-a-Great-Success-for-the-BBC-128270.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Virgin-Media-to-Introduce-File-Sharing-Monitoring-in-the-UK-128257.shtml The battle against “illegal file-sharing” is heating up, especially in Europe where it looks like the media lobbyists are well worth their fees. Several countries are planning or debating whether to introduce a 'three-strikes' system for file sharers, and recently, the UK has been the hotbed of activity. With talks of making the system mandatory by law, some ISPs are making some compromises in the hopes it will deter lawmakers. Virgin Media, one of the biggest ISPs in the country, has announced it will test a system to monitor file-sharing on its network. The trial will affect some 40 percent of its subscribers and will use technology from Detica, a technology company which builds specialized networking solutions.

"Understanding how consumer behaviour is changing will be an important requirement of Virgin Media's upcoming music offering and, should they become law, the Government's legislative proposals will also require measurement of the level of copyright infringement on ISPs’ networks. Detica's CView technology potentially offers a non-intrusive solution which enhances our understanding of aggregate customer behaviour without identifying or storing individual customers' data," Jon James, executive director of Broadband at Virgin Media, said.

The company claims t... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:21:01 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Virgin-Media-to-Introduce-File-Sharing-Monitoring-in-the-UK-128257.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Virgin-Media-to-Introduce-File-Sharing-Monitoring-in-the-UK-128257.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-to-Launch-Paid-Subscriptions-in-Japan-128249.shtml Everyone knows that Twitter has been reluctant in seeking revenue streams too aggressively and has just recently moved in this direction, signing deals with partners like Microsoft and Google and announcing some sort for Twitter ads come next year. What most people don't know is that the Japanese version of the service not only has ads, and for quite a while now, but it's also close to launching a form of premium accounts, perhaps as early as January 2010. But, they're not the premium accounts we've been hearing of for the better part of this year, rather they offer the users an option to get paid for their tweets by charging subscriptions for their streams.

DG Mobile, a subsidiary of the local company which partnered with Twitter to offer the service in Japan, Digital Garage, has announced that it will roll out subscription services for Twitter users. Those running services like breaking news or which post mostly original content on the microblogging platform can now monetize by charging for their tweets.

There will be several options for the subscribers, they can pay a monthly fee to get full access or they can buy a prepaid ticket which they can use how they see fit. The can also pay for access on a tweet-by-tweet basis. The pricing will vary depending on what the content provider deems fair, but is ex... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:41:01 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-to-Launch-Paid-Subscriptions-in-Japan-128249.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-to-Launch-Paid-Subscriptions-in-Japan-128249.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Singles-Out-Untrusted-Ad-Networks-128239.shtml Facebook is taking a harder stance on what third-party app developers can do to make money, more specifically, what ad-networks they can and can't use, with emphasis on the latter. In light of all the recent scandals and controversy over some practices developers employed to monetize their apps, especially the so called 'offer-ads', it's no surprise that the social network, which was also criticized for its lax approach in enforcing its own policies, has finally taken a clearer stance. Facebook has issued a list of “monetization providers” which are banned from the site and says that any app doing business with them is liable to be banned as well.

“In an effort to keep you informed on the best ways to adhere to our policies and principles, while continuing to grow your business on Facebook Platform, we've created a list of monetization providers that are no longer permitted to operate on Facebook Platform or Facebook.com. These providers have violated our policies and/or principles,” Nick Gianos, from Facebook's Platform team, wrote.

Facebook says that the list can change at any time, so the developers should regularly check to see if their ad network hasn't been added to it to avoid any problems. At the moment, four providers have been singled out, Gambit, Social Hour, Social... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:51:02 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Singles-Out-Untrusted-Ad-Networks-128239.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Singles-Out-Untrusted-Ad-Networks-128239.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-3-6-Beta-4-Introduces-Local-File-Handling-128231.shtml The latest beta version of Mozilla's extremely popular browser Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 was recently pushed to testers and eager users worldwide. It's mostly a bug fixing release, unsurprising at this stage in the development process when the focus is on rounding out the rough edges. Still, there are a couple of new features geared more at developers, but which will potentially improve the user experience significantly, like the brand new support for the HTML 5 File API.

Mozilla says a total of 100 bugs have been fixed from the previous beta version and it looks like Firefox 3.6 is now very close to a final state. Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 should be the final beta release, and a release candidate version and also the final build are expected to come by the year's end. The new release focuses on add-on compatibility as 3.6 is considered a major release so add-ons have to be upgraded to support it.

There was talk of labeling 3.6 as a minor update, which would have meant developers wouldn't have had to update their add-ons, but it looks like those plans were dropped after several developers complained it would create confusion about the versioning system. Still, Mozilla claims that about 70 percent of the add-ons available in the online gallery have now been updated, and it is urging users to help the developers by i... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:01:01 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-3-6-Beta-4-Introduces-Local-File-Handling-128231.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-3-6-Beta-4-Introduces-Local-File-Handling-128231.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Russia-com-Fetches-1-5-Million-128222.shtml More often than not, the right domain name can make or break a business. Having the best domain won't help a horrible service too much and a good one will do alright even with a less-than-inspired domain but, on the whole, it can be a great boon to a websites success. This is why domain names sometimes fetch huge amounts of money and why the ones paying them still profit in the long run. The latest big transaction in the industry was the sale of the Russia.com domain name for a hefty $1.5 million, as the Quitura blog reports.

Apparently the domain name was sold through Sedo, a marketplace for these kind of transactions, to an anonymous buyer. It's one of the biggest sales of the year but hardly a record breaker. Insure.com was sold last month for a very solid $16 million, one of biggest transactions in history. Other notable sales this year include Toys.com, sold for $5.1 million to the toy maker Toys 'R' Us, and Candy.com which sold for $3 million. Korea.com was sold earlier this year for $5 million, setting a high bar for country domain names.

Russia.com was owned by NewMedia Holdings Inc., which licensed it to Paley Media, a group which operates several sites having to do with country names. The site itself was launched in 1995 and since 2004 has been offering generic travel information for the country similar to the ... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:11:01 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Russia-com-Fetches-1-5-Million-128222.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Russia-com-Fetches-1-5-Million-128222.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wikipedia-Isn-t-Dying-the-Foundation-Says-128203.shtml More and more people are quick to seal the fate of Wikipedia and a couple of studies in the past year are being used as clear evidence that the site is headed for disaster if not in the short term future. Recently, a study by Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega, which found that 49,000 volunteer editors left the site in just three months, has spread after a story in the WSJ. Now Wikimedia, the organization behind the popular website, has responded to set the record straight and put some perspective on the numbers.

Erik Moeller, deputy director and Erik Zachte, data analyst at the Wikimedia Foundation, start off by pointing out that the organization's definition of an editor differs from that of the researcher. In the study, anyone who has made an edit is considered an editor, leading to a total number of over three million editors across all language versions of the site. Wikimedia, however, counts only those who have made at least five edits leading to a smaller number of just one million editors. This way, the number of volunteers who are leaving or the overall trend is unlikely to be the same. There are some other issues with the numbers and the blog post details several of them.

The two go on and share their own data regarding monthly active users, in line with data from a previous study, which they admit ha... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:47:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wikipedia-Isn-t-Dying-the-Foundation-Says-128203.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wikipedia-Isn-t-Dying-the-Foundation-Says-128203.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/MOG-All-Access-Music-Streaming-Service-to-Launch-on-December-5-128185.shtml Music-streaming services aren't exactly anything new, but it's taken a few years to get to the point where they could really change the game. Despite not making too much money and even some services shutting down, there seems to be an endless stream of new products to take their places. One that has been generating some amount of hype lately is MOG All Access coming from the MOG music blogging network. The service is now set to launch on December 2 and it looks like it may be a worthy competitor for Spotify, which is yet to launch in the US.

The service has been shaping up for the past couple of months and, by the looks of it, will be one of the top streaming services out there. It has all the best features from other services, but it also has several interesting, new tools. The player is web-based and allows users to play any song in the catalogue, which looks to be extensive, as it has support from all the major labels, add them to their library, playlists, and so on, all the usual things.

It also has an interesting radio feature, not exactly something completely new, but with a couple of twists. It starts out as a radio station that plays songs just from the artist the users select. The users can jump to any song in the queue but, if they want a little diversity, they can start up s... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:44:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/MOG-All-Access-Music-Streaming-Service-to-Launch-on-December-5-128185.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/MOG-All-Access-Music-Streaming-Service-to-Launch-on-December-5-128185.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-May-Make-Its-Virtual-Currency-Mandatory-for-Third-Party-Apps-128178.shtml Virtual currency is moving serious amounts of money these days and some of the most lucrative businesses, social gaming companies, have taken advantage of the huge potential audience social networks provide and the number of possible ways to promote their products to gain huge user numbers. Facebook, the preferred platform for these companies, has been offering its own virtual currency, Credits, for a while now, but most have shunned this option in favor of implementing their own currencies, a much more lucrative alternative. This, though, may be coming to an end if rumors coming from InsideFacebook, that Facebook is considering making Credits mandatory for third-party developers, turn out to be true.

This move makes a lot of sense for Facebook, the social network is currently in track to make north of $500 million this year, while companies making money from the apps on the site easily generate well beyond that in revenue. It's understandable that Facebook wants a piece of that as it currently makes the majority of its revenue from advertising. Its own Gift Shop, which currently uses Credits, is expected to only bring in about $75 million this year.

The real interesting part isn't necessarily the fact that it will impose the use of Credits, but the cut the social networks takes fr... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:53:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-May-Make-Its-Virtual-Currency-Mandatory-for-Third-Party-Apps-128178.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-May-Make-Its-Virtual-Currency-Mandatory-for-Third-Party-Apps-128178.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mininova-Removes-All-Infringing-Torrents-128165.shtml The largest BitTorrent indexer in the world, Mininova, decided to remove all torrents from the sites, except for those uploaded through its Content Distribution platform. The decision comes after a court decision which forced the site to remove all infringing torrents. In the face of legal consequences and with no practical way of determining which torrents were infringing and which weren't, the site made the move to remove all torrents except those from the verified uploaders.

“Unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the Content Distribution service. According to the verdict (Dutch link) we have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles,” Mininova announced on its blog today.

“We’ve been testing some filtering systems the last couple of months, but we found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, we decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. We are still considering an appeal at this moment,” the post also read.

This is a serious blow for BitTorrent users worldwide, but, as is usually the case, this will be only a tempor... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:53:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mininova-Removes-All-Infringing-Torrents-128165.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mininova-Removes-All-Infringing-Torrents-128165.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Is-Becoming-a-Major-Player-in-Online-Video-128156.shtml Online video has had a great month in October in the US. Viewers are up across the board, but there aren't any surprises at the top, and Facebook is sitting at a more modest ninth spot rather than the third place other reports had put it at. YouTube once again played in a league of its own, with 12 times more videos streamed than its closest competitor Hulu, which has had a very good month.

Google streamed 10.5 billion videos in October in the US, making up 37.7 of the total number of videos watched this month. 99 percent of those were on YouTube, of course. Hulu followed with 855 million videos a 46 percent jump from the previous month. Microsoft rounds up the top three with 451 million videos watched across its online proprieties.

When it comes to actual viewers, things were mostly static. YouTube rules with 125.3 million unique visitors in October, basically the same as last month. Hulu saw some growth, from 38.7 million to 42.4 million viewers last month, but nothing like the jump it saw in videos watched, meaning that most users just watched a lot more videos.

The rising star, though, is Facebook which saw its audience jump from 31.1 million viewers in September to 41.1 million last month. Of course, with close to 100 million users in the US, the social networks has a lot of growth p... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:11:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Is-Becoming-a-Major-Player-in-Online-Video-128156.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Facebook-Is-Becoming-a-Major-Player-in-Online-Video-128156.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Subscribe-by-Email-to-WordPress-com-Blogs-128139.shtml Emails look awfully outdated today when things like Twitter, Google Wave, and Facebook grab the headlines. Still, email-killers have come and gone and the communications service is alive and kicking with no signs of slowing down. WordPress decided to acknowledge this, albeit a tad late, with a new feature it's launching for blogs using WordPress.com – email subscriptions.

“This is a very simple way for your readers to subscribe to your blog and receive updates by email. Anyone can subscribe, whether they have a WordPress.com account or not. All you need to do is add the Blog Subscription widget to your blog and then you and your readers are ready to go,” Auttomatic, the company behind WordPress.com and the open-source blogging platform, announced. “If a visitor is logged in to WordPress they need only press the Subscribe Me! button, otherwise they can enter their email address.”

All you need to do to get the feature on your blog on WordPress.com is to install the Blog Subscription widget Auttomatic just released. After this, any visitor to your blog will be able to subscribe by email, regardless if they're using WordPress or not. The emails are formatted with HTLM so that the post keeps its structure, photos, videos, and the likes. There is also the option to receive a text-only em... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:11:01 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Subscribe-by-Email-to-WordPress-com-Blogs-128139.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Subscribe-by-Email-to-WordPress-com-Blogs-128139.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Oracle-to-Meet-with-EU-Regulators-on-December-10-over-Sun-Acquisition-128118.shtml The Sun Oracle deal is dragging on with no end in sight. Oracle is sticking to its guns, while the EU is not letting go of its objections. The software giant has now asked EU regulators for a hearing set for December 10 to argue its case for buying Sun, according to Reuters citing people close to the matter. This comes after Oracle asked for more time to prepare.

While the fate of the deal isn't any clearer, things are moving towards some sort of closure. Oracle announced its intention to buy Sun Microsystems, which had been struggling for the last couple of years, for $7.4 billion in spring. The deal was approved by Sun's shareholders and later on by the US Department of Justice after a prolonged investigation. Things didn't go so smoothly in Europe, where the EU's Competition Comission extended its investigation of the deal with concerns over the open-source MySQL database system.

MySQL had become a big competitor for some of Oracle's own database offerings especially on the lower end and the EU is worried that competition in the market would diminish if the deal were to go through. Oracle has expressed its support for MySQL and complained on several occasions about the investigation which was initially scheduled to last until January 19, 2010. Oracle claimed that the investigati... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:51:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Oracle-to-Meet-with-EU-Regulators-on-December-10-over-Sun-Acquisition-128118.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Oracle-to-Meet-with-EU-Regulators-on-December-10-over-Sun-Acquisition-128118.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mockups-of-the-Future-Identity-Management-Features-in-Firefox-128051.shtml The web is shaping up more and more as an extension of our identity. Social networks, wikis, even the search engines, know a lot more about ourselves than we realize and everything is becoming more catered and more integrated. It's no surprise then that there's a battle brewing for our online identities and two players are standing out, Google and Facebook. There's definitely a need for a standard and unified online identity, but should this fall into the hands of one company, any company? Mozilla doesn't think so and wants to tackle the issue at the browser level.

Mozilla's user experience head Aza Raskin has some thoughts on the issue and has released some mockups of a possible way to handle logins and everything that has to do with identity inside the browser. He proposes that the entire login and signup process should be done by the browser, providing a unified and consistent experience across any number of services and sites.

“Most current solutions involve lots of redirects or iframes, which leads to a confusing and phishable experience. Besides the poor user experience, we are seeing market-moving effects of the identity/log in problem. Facebook Connect and Google’s Friend Connect both let you use your pre-existing identity and social graph to super-power other websites. ... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:59:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mockups-of-the-Future-Identity-Management-Features-in-Firefox-128051.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mockups-of-the-Future-Identity-Management-Features-in-Firefox-128051.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Last-fm-Gets-1-Million-New-Subscribers-in-One-Week-128039.shtml Music streaming services have been seeing a lot of interest lately but most of the focus has been on either newcomers or the failing ones. Last.fm, one of the oldest and still one of the most popular music services, has been staying quiet for the most part, but things are definitely moving forward behind the scenes. While others are still trying to get their business off the ground, Last.fm has made a very, very interesting deal with Microsoft to get its service on the company's popular game console the Xbox 360.

The deal was announced half a year ago, but things tend to move slower in the gaming world than in social media, so the Last.fm integration only came to fruition last week. And, the results are already beginning to show, the music streaming service managed to get almost one million new subscribers from the Xbox Live users which signed up for Last.fm. The CBS-owned company says that it was the biggest growth the site has seen since launch and that it broke the record for most users registered in a 24-hour period.

They're not just signing up, the new users are making the most out of the service and already 120 million minutes of music have been streamed from the consoles. It's clear by now that the new social media features on the Xbox 360 are a hit and Last.fm should be more than delighted. Of... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:01:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Last-fm-Gets-1-Million-New-Subscribers-in-One-Week-128039.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Last-fm-Gets-1-Million-New-Subscribers-in-One-Week-128039.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mozilla-Labs-Weave-Sync-Beta-2-for-Firefox-Released-128017.shtml Things are moving as fast as usual at Mozilla Labs and, hardly a week after the previous release, the developers have released a new beta for Mozilla's bookmark and settings sync project for Firefox and Fennec, the organization's mobile version of the web browser. Weave Sync 1.0 Beta 2 fixes several bugs which affected the previous beta and is another step towards the final release which should come soon enough.

The new beta also brings several of updates and improvements of the existing features. Users should find it easier to recover their passwords or secret phrases in this new release and Mozilla says this should come in handy for those setting up the add-on on a second machine, as it looks like many were having trouble remembering their credentials at this point.

The new Weave Sync beta also improved the way it handles same-name folders which have different bookmarks on different computers. On occasions, Weave Sync would place the bookmarks in the wrong folder, but this issue should now be fixed. The add-on now syncs history deletion as well, so removing a website from the browser history on one machine will now remove it in all of the synced browsers. The functionality had been available only for bookmarks until now.

Lastly, Weave Sync now automatically labels tabs which were opened... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:06:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mozilla-Labs-Weave-Sync-Beta-2-for-Firefox-Released-128017.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mozilla-Labs-Weave-Sync-Beta-2-for-Firefox-Released-128017.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/IKEA-Conquers-Facebook-with-Innovative-Campaign-128007.shtml Social media has grown tremendously this year pushed forward by the likes of Facebook and, to a lesser degree, Twitter. But despite having been around for years, businesses are still trying to get the hang of this new opportunity to bring in customers and, at the end of the day, make more money. One company which seems to get it, at least in this case, is Ikea which has put together a hugely successful campaign to promote a new store and did so at a significantly lower cost than if it had used traditional marketing methods.

The idea was simple enough but it didn't need to be any more complicated. IKEA made a Facebook profile for Gordon Gustavsson, the manager of the new store in Malmo, Sweden, and then uploaded several images from the Ikea showroom over the course of two weeks. Nothing groundbreaking so far, but the interesting part was that the first Facebook user to tag his or her name on one of the products in the picture won it.

As you could expect, people got really into it and soon enough the story spread throughout Facebook from profile to profile as the people added Gustavsson as a friend or tagged one of the photos. Not only did the campaign got a lot of people to visit the profile and, more importantly, the actual showrooms most users lauded the company for the innovative approach.

read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:33:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/IKEA-Conquers-Facebook-with-Innovative-Campaign-128007.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/IKEA-Conquers-Facebook-with-Innovative-Campaign-128007.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-and-Facebook-Are-Increasingly-Influential-127993.shtml There are a lot of metrics for website traffic, unique visitors, user numbers, and the likes. Measuring a website's “influence” is a harder proposition though, it's not exactly something you can count. Some people beg to differ though and ://URLFAN aims to do just this, measure a website's influence by counting the number of mentions it gets on blogs. It's not the most objective metric out there, but it's probably as good as it gets and it's an interesting perspective.

The ReadWriteWeb blog put together a list of the top sites on the service and their standings a year ago. At this moment, despite the growing number of people predicting its demise, Wikipedia sits at the top as the most influential site on the planet. It's not much of a surprise this one, the crowd-sourced encyclopedia holds huge amounts of content and information which comes in handy when you're trying to put something in perspective or provide more background information.

Wikipedia is followed by YouTube and then Flickr, which have switched places since last year. Their presence is entirely expected, one being the most popular video site on the planet and the other being the most popular photo sharing site among bloggers, even if it's not the biggest in its category. Things only get interesting on fourth place where Twitter... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:47:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-and-Facebook-Are-Increasingly-Influential-127993.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-and-Facebook-Are-Increasingly-Influential-127993.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hulu-Sees-Its-Biggest-Month-Yet-in-October-127967.shtml Watching online video may seem a very different experience to watching TV but, at least with some content, the trends are very similar. Hulu, the US online video outfit centered on TV content, saw a massive jump in viewership and audience in October in tune with the new TV season and the addition of ABC shows. AdAge, citing comScore numbers, reports that Hulu traffic jumped 47 percent from the previous month, the biggest rise this year.

The online video joint-venture between News Corp., NBC Universal, and Disney has seen its best month yet with people viewing 856 million video in October up from 583 million the previous month. That's still way below YouTube's almost seven billion streams, though this number comes from Nielsen which only counted 632 million streams for Hulu in October. ComScore gets direct data from Hulu so its numbers are more accurate.

In terms of unique visitors, Hulu is also doing much better growing by 10 percent to about 42.5 million viewers in the US. The audience numbers don't follow the jump in streams. but this means that people were also watching more videos, something backed up by the numbers which show that the average user viewed 132 minutes worth of videos up from just 92 minutes in September.

While the numbers bode well for the video site, they're not directly rela... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:20:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hulu-Sees-Its-Biggest-Month-Yet-in-October-127967.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hulu-Sees-Its-Biggest-Month-Yet-in-October-127967.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Feedly-Launches-Google-Chrome-Extension-127929.shtml Google hasn't even launched the extensions gallery for Chrome and the excitement is already building. Extensions have been supported to some extent by the browser for several months now, but only recently has Google gotten close to launching the feature to a wider audience. The company is now weeks, maybe days, away from introducing extensions to the Chrome beta channel and launching the online gallery, so developers are gearing up to get in early. Feedly, a feed reader - social networking aggregator hybrid, isn't wasting any time and has just launched support for Chrome.

Feedly is a service which aims to change the way you read and explore your feeds. It's not a dedicated feed reader in its own rights, it uses the feeds you already have in Google Reader, but, then again, it doesn't have to be. The interesting part comes from the way it presents the items in a magazine-style interface, making it actually feasible to read the entries inside the reader in a way that is also visually appealing.

Every action is synced back to Google Reader and almost all of the options available from Google are available in Feedly as well. It isn't a complete replacement for hardcore feed users, but for everyone else it makes an interesting option. It also integrates with other services like Twitter and FriendFeed allowing you t... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:37:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Feedly-Launches-Google-Chrome-Extension-127929.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Feedly-Launches-Google-Chrome-Extension-127929.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-and-TiVo-Sign-TV-Advertising-Deal-127892.shtml Google is all about advertising when it comes to making money but it's still very dependent on search ads. It's doing more than OK with those, but that's no reason not to expand. One area where Google hopes to capture market share, by providing a fresh approach and better tools to measure the impact of the ads, is TV ads. Google has now partnered with the DVR company TiVo to get access to detailed user data which it can then offer its AdWords TV Ads customers.

"Google TV Ads is focused on enabling advertisers to target and measure television advertising more effectively," Mike Steib, director of emerging platforms at Google, said. "This deal with TiVo will give advertisers access to even more anonymized viewership data, making Google's data set one of the best in the industry. Advertisers can use this data to understand which audiences and ads are most effective, which we think will ultimately lead to more relevant ads for viewers."

The deal makes it possible for Google to offer some pretty powerful tools to advertisers, but to make it even more interesting, the company is promising that the advertisers will only have to pay for the ads that are actually viewed, something that traditional TV networks can't offer through their ad networks.

Traditionally, TV ads are bought based on the ratings the sho... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:08:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-and-TiVo-Sign-TV-Advertising-Deal-127892.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-and-TiVo-Sign-TV-Advertising-Deal-127892.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/LinkedIn-Opens-Up-the-Platform-to-Outside-Developers-127879.shtml It's hard to make any progress in social networking without opening up the service to outside developers. Even Facebook, arguably the most closed off social network, knows this and has made the most of its Facebook Connect offering. Now LinkedIn is looking to do the same with the announcement that it has finally opened up the site with the launch of a series of APIs aimed at third-party developers and services.

“Starting today, developers worldwide can integrate LinkedIn into their business applications and Web sites. Developer.linkedin.com is now live and open for business,” Adam Nash, LinkedIn VP of search and platform products, wrote. “This is the beginning of a new set of opportunities for the LinkedIn platform, and we look forward to seeing the integrations that developers will launch in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned for additional enhancements over during the coming months as we learn and grow this platform together.”

The APIs have been a long time coming, having been announced more than two years ago. And this was made worse by the fact that the platform has been greatly anticipated by many developers. There are plenty of social networks out there and plenty of them have interesting API offerings for developers, but none of them has the data th... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:22:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/LinkedIn-Opens-Up-the-Platform-to-Outside-Developers-127879.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/LinkedIn-Opens-Up-the-Platform-to-Outside-Developers-127879.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-May-Be-Headed-for-an-IPO-Definitely-Not-Selling-127860.shtml With Twitter getting back in shape in the past few weeks, even though visitor numbers are still down, it's time to play one of Silicon Valley's most popular games again. No, it's not 'how is Twitter going to make money' but 'when will Twitter be sold'. In the past, there have been plenty of interested parties and plenty of rumors, but cofounder Biz Stone assures us, again, that the company is not for sale and won't be for the foreseeable future. It may, however, be headed for an IPO if it has to, an option which is preferred to selling the company.

"The point is, we want to build our own company that will last for a long time. If an IPO's the way to do that, then sure. We don't have it checked off on the calendar yet," Stone told Reuters at an entrepreneurship event in the UK. "We are definitely not interested in selling the company," he added. "If an IPO's the only thing, then sure. But if there is some other way then that would be great too. Maybe some other new way will emerge."

Twitter has always denied that it has any plans to sell, especially now that the product has taken off, growing more than 10 times year over year. But now that the business side of the service is showing signs that it may be picking up, with search deals with Microsoft and Google, premium accounts by the end of the yea... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:27:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-May-Be-Headed-for-an-IPO-Definitely-Not-Selling-127860.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-May-Be-Headed-for-an-IPO-Definitely-Not-Selling-127860.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Pixazza-Expands-Its-Ads-in-Photos-Offering-127837.shtml The web is build around advertising but, as a medium, it's still relatively new and rapidly evolving at the same time. This creates a need and an opportunity to come up with new models and ad technologies which are better suited for the environment besides the established search and contextual ads, either in text or display form. One startup that aims to create a new niche is Pixazza, which can turn any blog photo into a product ad of sorts. The company, backed by Google's venture capital fund, is now opening up its services and expanding its offerings by giving websites the possibility to set up a customized storefront for products featured on the site.

With Pixazza, any website or blog can insert ads with the photos they normally serve on their sites. Pixazza uses an army of people to tag the photos depending on the products featured in them and then serves links to shopping sites where readers can purchase the same or similar products. The idea is simple enough and could actually prove useful for the readers as long as it doesn't get in the way of enjoying the actual content.

The technology has been tested on several celebrity gossip sites, but now the company is expanding its offering, making it available to any publisher. Pixazza is also launching the new Shopdot program which allows sites not only to s... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:16:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Pixazza-Expands-Its-Ads-in-Photos-Offering-127837.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Pixazza-Expands-Its-Ads-in-Photos-Offering-127837.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Zynga-Valued-at-1-Billion-by-Analysts-127823.shtml If there was any doubt that social gaming has hit the big time, it was dispelled recently when gaming giant EA acquired Playfish, one of the top players in the market, for $400 million, taking some people by surprise. It may turn out to have been a bargain for EA as the biggest name in social gaming, Zynga, is getting valuation estimations at the $1 billion mark and may be headed for an IPO next year, though the company dismisses any talks about going public for the foreseeable future.

The sum had previously surfaced with talks of a possible acquisition from EA. The gaming company eventually decided to go with the cheaper version buying Playfish for about three to four times its yearly revenue. Now Bloomberg cites several analysts who believe that the social gaming company may well be worth $1 billion and may hit that mark if it aims for an IPO mid-2010. This would make it the third-biggest video gaming company in the US, not bad for a company founded just a couple of years ago.

Zynga is the biggest social games publisher by a fair margin and has just announced reaching $100 million unique monthly users. It also gets about $200 million monthly active users across all the social networks it operates. That's a massive number considering that the largest social network in the world, Facebook, is at about 325 million... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:38:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Zynga-Valued-at-1-Billion-by-Analysts-127823.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Zynga-Valued-at-1-Billion-by-Analysts-127823.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/1-Million-Streams-on-Spotify-Earn-You-167-127714.shtml There's a lot of hype over music services lately, especially music streaming services. The interesting thing is that the hype isn't necessarily over the services themselves, but over the fact that this time some may actually succeed. Spotify is the prime example and the European free music streaming service has been heralded as the savior of the market and the way forward. There's just one problem, it may save, or rather create a market for free streaming services, it may even save the music industry but the artists still aren't getting paid.

Torrentfreak has an interesting story on how much do the actual artists make from streaming services more precisely from Spotify. Lady Gaga, one of the most popular artists on Spotify at the moment, made a whooping $167 (SEK 1150) by having her songs on the service. The sum came from the Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM) as royalties for over one million streams of her hit song “Poker Face.”

Without knowing the exact details of her contract or the deals that the music labels have with Spotify, it can't be used as a general example. Still, it's safe to assume that most artists aren't making that much more. The labels would jump at the chance to claim that this is clear proof that free streaming services aren't working and that people need to pay subscrip... (read more)]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:21:02 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/1-Million-Streams-on-Spotify-Earn-You-167-127714.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/1-Million-Streams-on-Spotify-Earn-You-167-127714.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wikipedia-Volunteers-Quiting-in-Increasing-Numbers-127782.shtml News about Wikipedia's impending demise have come and gone, but the world's largest encyclopedia seems to be enduring. This won't last for long, according to a researcher from Spain who points at the dwindling number of volunteer editors as a clear sign that the site is headed to the dust bin. The study shows that, in the first three months of the year, the site has lost 49,000 editors.

This, compared with the same period last year, when only 4,900 left. Of course, Wikipedia still has about three million active contributors across all of the languages supported, so the well may not be drying out any time soon. But the study would seem to imply that this is part of a larger trend, one that, if continued, will lead to big problems for the site, which relies heavily on the volunteers to not only provide the content, but also settle disputes and maintain the quality of the articles.

A previous study, focusing on the English version of the site, released in summer has shown an equally worrying trend, the number of new articles being added to the site has leveled off for the past couple of years and is now actually beginning to decline. The same is true for the number of edits. However, that study found that the number of active editors had been constant at about 750,000 per month for the past couple of... (read more)]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:58:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wikipedia-Volunteers-Quiting-in-Increasing-Numbers-127782.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wikipedia-Volunteers-Quiting-in-Increasing-Numbers-127782.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Acrobat-com-Gets-a-Through-Revamp-127723.shtml The new Acrobat.com is now live. Having been revealed last week, Adobe's office and online collaboration suite gets a major refresh with a couple of products leaving the beta tag behind and also a significantly improved file management system, courtesy of a completely new back-end. For the users it means that things should go smoother and finding and organizing their files should be a lot easier.

“Acrobat.com, up until now, has been a collection of different applications running on different architectures, and file organizers. So, we retooled and created a new back-end that is the collaboration engine that will power everything we do going forward. It's been a tremendous amount of work, but it's work that we believe will pay off well for the future of Adobe's online applications,” Adobe wrote.

The biggest new feature, from the users' perspective, is the new unified file organizer. Previously, file management was left to the individual products available on Acrobat.com each with their own methods of uploading and handling the files. This wasn't exactly ideal and the problem was made worse by the increasing number of files users had to manage.

So, Adobe got to work and came up with a brand new file management system on the back-end which translates to a single file organizer for the users. All t... (read more)]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:57:00 GMT Softpedia News - Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Acrobat-com-Gets-a-Through-Revamp-127723.shtml Internet Life http://news.softpedia.com/news/Acrobat-com-Gets-a-Through-Revamp-127723.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni)