Softpedia News - Webmaster

YouTube to Add Support for IPv6

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:18:00 GMT

The underlying technology powering the Internet is going through a major overhaul as IPv6 is slowly replacing the aging IPv4, the most widely used networking protocol. The adoption rate has been slow but more and more companies are implementing the new protocol. Google is already one of the biggest adopters and is now working on introducing support to its hugely popular video site YouTube.

Implementing the new protocol isn't a big technical hurdle, Google says, but YouTube is one of the biggest and most heavily trafficked websites, so the company isn't setting any hard deadlines for the moment. "YouTube is the IPv6 team's number one priority right now," Erik Kline, IPv6 software engineer at Google, told NetworkWorld. "We haven't said anything about the timeframe for that yet."

Google's IPv6 team has already implemented the protocol for many of the company's online proprieties like its search engine, Alerts, Docs, Finance, Gmail, Health, iGoogle, News, Reader, Picasa, Maps and Wave. However, it's still pretty much a provisionary measure for now as few people access the sites through IPv6 at the moment largely due to the fact that the feature has been implemented by only a small number of ISPs.

"It's somewhere on the order of the 0.2% range of Google users have IPv6 access," Lorenzo Colitti, network engineer a... (read more)

Facebook Sued for Scamming Users via Game Ads

Softpedia News (Giorgiana Bursuc) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:01:00 GMT

Recently, yet another suit hit Facebook, and this time it is caused by various game advertisements that scammed numerous users. The second defendant in this federal class-action lawsuit is Zynga, and the two companies are requested to pay more than $5 million to the social network users who had been scammed through the displayed game ads.

This action was predicted by several voices over the web, since the representatives of a law firm from Sacramento, Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, announced that they were searching for people who had been scammed by the same ads while playing Mafia Wars or Farmville. They were trying to gather enough data to file a class-action suit, and when they found the appropriate information, they went to the federal district court.

In all fairness, it is worth mentioning that neither of the two defendants is the real originator of the advertisements in question. The situation appeared because third-party companies place ads within the Zynga games listed on Facebook, thus generating great revenue for the two companies. The scams are conducted by encouraging users to sign up for unauthorized cell phone charges, as well as highly priced mail order products (such as CDs), which are presented as “free,” “free trials,” or parts of “online quizzes.”
read more)

USocial Stops Selling Facebook Friends after Cease and Desist Letter

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:18:00 GMT

With Facebook counting over 325 million users, it's little wonder that many are trying to profit from the social network and not always with the nicest of methods. One company that was selling fans and friends to customers wanting to boost their counts, USocial, was sent a Cease and Desist letter by Facebook for violating its Terms of Service with the methods it employs to get its customers more followers.

Facebook didn't make it clear whether it had an issue with USocial's business, selling followers, and only said that the company “violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.” The social network threatened legal actions unless USocial stopped the activities it had issues with. Facebook doesn't allow users to profit from their profiles, for example getting paid to friend someone, but it hasn't taken a stance on service getting Facebook users without offering them money.

USocial has decided to comply with the request and said it would stop offering to sell friends but would not shut down the service completely. The company stated it would delete the login information it had gathered up and also put a notice on its site, buried at the bottom, saying it isn't a... (read more)

Download Google Chrome 4.0.249.4

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:29:00 GMT

Google has pushed a new build to the Chrome dev channel with the usual number of small fixes and tweaks. It's only a minor update but if you want to be on the bleeding edge, you should grab the latest build, Google Chrome 4.0.249.4, from the download link below. The updated version fixes a number of issues across all platforms but the extensions gallery hinted at lately still isn't here.

Anthony Laforge, Google Chrome Program Manager, listed the bug fixes that apply to all platforms, “Some extensions crash after installing 4.0.249.0. Reload on crash infobar causes more crashes.” On Windows, the update “[f]ixed top windows crasher. Fixed a crashing race condition in bookmark synchronization. Make the character encoding indicator visible again on Windows.”

Mac users finally get Silverlight support and some bookmark bar improvements and “[p]asting some text into the Omnibox should no longer crash Google Chrome” on both Mac and Linux. With a big extensions announcement likely coming soon, the dev team is putting some finishing touches ahead of the broader launch like fixing the tab traversal in popups on Windows and several other bugs.

Finally, Google wanted to make sure users realize the fact that the new extension links in the fresh tab page that don't work are not a bug and... (read more)

Twitter to Get 'Really Cool' Ads

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:54:00 GMT

People in the tech industry love speculating about two things, what Facebook is really worth and how Twitter will make money. The jury is still out on the first one but Twitter is adding more fuel to the fire by changing its tune and now saying that ads are in fact coming to the site. To add to the hype, Twitter isn't actually saying how and when but, not one for thinking small, the company claims it will be "fascinating," "non-traditional" and "really cool.”

Ads on a website is not exactly a revolutionary business model and not usually something to get excited about. The reason why everyone is aflutter about Twitter ads is because the company has been saying for a while now that ads were the last option when it came to generating revenue. Time and time again Twitter talked about “alternative” revenue streams and more innovative ways of making money.

So, why the sudden change of heart? Well, it's not exactly sudden and not a change of heart either. While the company said it wasn't planning on putting ads on the site, it didn't completely rule out the idea. In fact, a relatively recent change in Twitter's Terms of Service made provisions for advertising to be integrated with the service.

The new direction was revealed by the company's COO Dick Costolo at the Realtime CrunchUp conference. He di... (read more)

YouTube Cuts Off 'Popcorn Hour' Set-Top Boxes

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:56:00 GMT

People love online video these days. In some cases, it has even begun to replace old-fashioned TV watching as users connect their PCs or web-enabled set-top boxes to their TV sets and get the best of both worlds. But it's a tough world to make a living in for video sites, not only are they struggling to bring in revenue, they also have to keep content creators, aka TV networks, happy. Put all of these things together and you get another case where a video site cuts off access to a device and, surprisingly, this time it isn't Hulu, it's YouTube.

Starting with next month, users of a line of set-top boxes going by the name of Popcorn Hour are left without access to everyone's favorite chat-video site in what the manufacturer, Syabas Technology, believes to be a somewhat arbitrary move. The company says that it had an agreement with YouTube to access the content through the API the video site offers and the devices have had YouTube videos for more than a year now. Syabas claims that YouTube has changed its Terms of Service (ToS), which it was in its rights to do, so that third-party manufacturers like itself are being blocked from accessing the videos, if they don't pay up anyway.

YouTube wouldn't comment on this particular case but has issued a statement that applies to it, “Since July of 2008, YouTube's ... (read more)

Get Ready for a New Acrobat.com

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:07:00 GMT

The future is looking bright for web apps with more and more players interested in the space and Google going all out with a dedicated operating system that will rely exclusively on web applications. Huge desktop software companies should start worrying or better yet start preparing for the paradigm shift like Adobe is doing with its suite of office apps over at Acrobat.com. Adobe says the site has been pretty successful so far but the company is preparing to launch a hugely revamped version of it any time now.

Adobe hasn't made the big official announcement yet but it has confirmed that the changes will begin to be implemented later today: “The team will be taking down Buzzword, Presentations and Tables at 6:00 PM Eastern time today (Friday, 11/20/09.) Share and CreatePDF will go offline at 8:00 PM Eastern time. ConnectNow will be up and running throughout the update window. All of the services will be up and running again by 11:00 PM Eastern time and open for business. The new look and changes in Acrobat.com are starting to get some good reviews. We invite you to come and check it out later today.”

The new version comes with a lot of new features but one of the biggest is the new file organizer, which enables users to manage all of their files in one place regardless of their type. This has been one of the ... (read more)

Facebook Worth at Least $9.5 Billion

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:33:00 GMT

Facebook is one of the biggest things in Silicon Valley at the moment and the social media giant is showing no signs of slowing down. It is being valued at several billion dollars, over 10, by previous transactions but since it's a private company, no one can really tell what it’s worth. However, despite the fact that Facebook isn't listed on any stock exchange, some shares end up on places like SecondMarket and SharesPost, which allow people who own Facebook common stock, mostly employees or former employees, to trade it. And prices for those shares have been going up over the past months to the point where Facebook's common stock is now worth around $9.5 billion.

That figure may be a bit misleading but it gives a rough estimate of what most people think the social network is worth. The $9.5 billion number is based on the price of shares currently being traded on SecondMarket, which has reached $21. The price has shot up 42 percent in the past four months, according to Bloomberg. This is just for the common stock though, as a chunk of the company is tied up in preferred stock, which is usually owned by venture capital investors so by this metric, Facebook may be worth more than $10 billion at the moment.

The valuation does seem very high but it's not the highest the social network has got; in fact, a couple o... (read more)

Google Search to Get a Thorough Redesign in Early 2010

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:23:00 GMT

Google Chrome OS may be getting all of the attention today, but such a huge company doesn't revolve around just one product. And it's still very much a search company so it can't afford to get too distracted from its main bread winner. In fact it's anything but, Google will be launching a rather significant refresh of its search engine's design later today for limited set of users. The changes go pretty deep and are meant to make the whole experience more consistent.

Google is well known for constantly tweaking and updating its products and its search engine has seen its fair share over the years. Most of the time, those changes are subtle and unnoticeable, but little by little they have contributed to a lot of inconsistencies in the features. Marissa Mayer, Google VP of search and user experience, has had enough and is looking to give the search engine a complete do-over.

“I don’t like jazz, because you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mayer told Search Engine Land comparing the issues with the search engine to the musical style. “I’ve been calling this problem ‘user interface jazz.’ This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down.”

So Google got to wor... (read more)

Mozilla Brought in 79 Million in 2008

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:20:00 GMT

For a non-profit organization, the Mozilla Foundation is doing pretty well financially, better than many for-profit web companies are doing these days. The organization has released some financial details for 2008, saying that revenue has reached $79 million percent in the last year, up five percent from the previous one. It's not exactly clear why it would release the numbers in November 2009, but what is clear is that revenue growth is slowing down after revenue increased by 12 percent from 2006 to 2007.

“Our revenue and expenses are consistent with 2007, showing steady growth. Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenues (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2008 were $78.6 million, up approximately 5% from 2007 reported revenues of $75.1 million. The majority of this revenue is generated from the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and others,” Mozilla Foundation chairwoman Mitchell Baker said in her annual “state of Mozilla” letter.

Firefox has had a good year in 2008, so this isn't the reason for the slow down, rather the organization has seen some pretty heavy losses at its investment portfolio. The Mozilla Foundation lost about $7.8 million on long-term investments, about 25 percent of the portfolio's worth. Exclud... (read more)

Skype $1.9-Billion Sale Finalized

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:40:00 GMT

Skype has had its most tumultuous year yet, but all the problems are finally behind it and the company can focus on growth and revenue as opposed to lawsuits. eBay has announced that it has finalized the sale it first revealed several months ago and that Skype is now a separate private company, although eBay still retains a 30 percent stake in it.

“eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) announced today that it has successfully completed the previously announced sale of its Skype communications unit in a deal valuing the business at $2.75 billion. The buyer, who will control an approximately 70 percent stake, is an investor group led by Silver Lake and includes Joltid Limited and certain affiliated parties, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz,” the company said in a statement.

Almost all of the details of the deal had been known and it is actually very close to the one initially announced except for the change in the investor lineup. Skype was valued at $2.75 billion, well above what anyone estimated a few months back when eBay announced its plans to spin off the VoIP company in an IPO. eBay will get $1.9 billion in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. It also gets to keep about 30 percent of the company and about $50 million in debt.

The investors... (read more)

Twitter Launches Geolocation API

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:20:00 GMT

Location services are becoming increasingly popular and, with the right devices and tools to take advantage of, they're also becoming more useful. Twitter has been working on location features for a couple of months now and the microblogging service has finally enabled them, but for now, only for third-party developers, meaning there are no changes to Twitter.com.

“In August we announced that we were working on a new API that would provide developers with the ability to geotag tweets. Today, the Geotagging API is officially available,” Twitter Platform Director Ryan Sarver wrote.

“This release is unique in that it's API-only which means you won't see any changes on twitter.com, yet. Instead, Twitter applications like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and others are already supporting this new functionality (go try them out now!) in interesting ways that include geotagging your tweets and displaying the location from where a tweet was posted,” he added.

With geolocation, Twitter can attach location information to any tweet, information which could be used in any number of ways, like searching for tweets which are nearby or focusing on the information coming from an event location. The limit is really what the developers can come up with and already a... (read more)

Google Chrome OS: The User Interface

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:50:00 GMT

Google has just revealed its most ambitious undertaking to date, Chrome OS, a new operating system which intends to push the concept in a new direction by moving everything to the cloud. While this game-changing approach is very exciting and raises a lot of questions about the future of operating systems, the web and convergence of the two, the fact is that the first thing most people wanted to know is what it looks like and how has Google tackled the challenge of just having a browser and no other native app.

When the company first announced the project it claimed that everything would be done inside the browser. This was such a radical approach, to have a complete desktop environment inside the Chrome browser, that most people didn't think it was possible. Now that Google has shown the world what's been working on we can safely say that it made true on its promise.

The first actual footage and screenshots of the new operating system were actually a bit disappointing. Chrome is Chrome OS so the new operating system looks just like the browser that some 50 million people are now using monthly as their main browser. Aside from a few subtle cues, Chrome OS looks just like a maximized Chrome window, so if you have been using the Google browser you're not missing out on much.

This was a conscious decision b... (read more)

YouTube Introduces Automatic Transcriptions for Videos

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:44:00 GMT

YouTube has introduced some pretty interesting technologies which enable users to add automatic text captions to the videos. The feature is only available in several channels for now, as the speech recognition technology it uses isn't exactly perfect but Google says it should improve in time. The video site had enabled users to upload their own captions for about a year now, but the process is time consuming and only a few users have taken advantage of the feature until now.

“Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands,” Ken Harrenstien, a Google software engineer working on the features, wrote.

“However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale...To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short,” he added.

There are several related features being introduced at the same time, but the most interesting, albeit the most underdeveloped, is the automatic captions technology. For the videos on which the feature has been made available, users can use the rig... (read more)

Move Over Microsoft, Google Chrome OS Is Here

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:08:00 GMT

Google has just unveiled its hugely anticipated, web-based operating system, Google Chrome OS. As expected, Google hasn't actually launched the operating system, but it has released the source code in its current state for developers to have a chance to start working on it. From now on, the code will remain open for third-party developers to build and modify. Google wants the actual operating system and the accompanying hardware to be ready for launch in time for the holiday season next year.

As Google stated when it first revealed that it was working on its very own OS, Chrome OS will be completely web-based. There will be no native apps for it, even the tools that will be built by Google and bundled with the OS will be web apps. In a simplified view, Chrome OS is just a specialized version of its browser Chrome running on top of an optimized Linux kernel.

There have been a number of modifications done to Chrome in order to make it function as a full-blown operating system. One of the things Google has introduced consists of persistent application tabs, which will always be available to the user and are fully customizable. Apps can also be run in a "panel" that is a persistent light-weight window, which sits on top of the browser designed for apps like instant messengers. One example of use is a notepad tool that comes with the operating system and that... (read more)

Gmail Chat Gets Custom Icons for Contacts Using Android Phones

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:41:01 GMT

Google doesn't really like big product and feature launches. It's about to have one very, very soon as it unleashes Google Chrome OS into the world, but for the most part its products and services evolve slowly with small but regular updates. Sometimes though, these small features may be a lot more important than they would appear at first glance. Take today's announcement of a very small feature available now in Gmail labs notifying users that their chat buddies are currently connected using Android-powered devices.

“Gmail chat status (those green, orange, and red bubbles) indicates if your friends are online or not. But sometimes my buddies appear green when they're not really "online online" — they just have chat open on their Android phones. Turn on Green Robot, a new experiment in Gmail Labs, and you'll see a robot icon next to people who are currently using Android phones,” Chad Yoshikawa, a Google software engineer, wrote.

Moreover, Google has a perfectly legitimate example of why the feature is useful: “when you know the guy on the other end is using his Android phone, you may decide to send shorter, more concise chat messages.” The idea makes perfect sense, typing on most mobile devices is not exactly fun and the small feature can make a lot of d... (read more)

Music Labels Pressure Spotify into Dropping the Free Version in the US

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:54:00 GMT

The online music business has proven a tough nut to crack again and again. Pioneering free service iMeem is more or less dead in its current form and in the process of being acquired by MySpace. Countless others have failed to provide a free music streaming service that actually generates revenue and it looks like Europe's music streaming darling Spotify won't be able to deliver on the promise in the US either.

This has been known for a while, as the service has pushed back plans to launch in the US after concerns that it won't be able to offer a free music streaming service like it does in Europe. And now the major music labels are “concerned” that the free model just doesn't work and it would be unwise for Spotify to launch the same service in the US, as the Financial Times reports (subscription required).

They are right to be worried too, free music streaming services in the US have failed over and over again and the last bastions are closing down too. iMeem is about to be sold with its future uncertain and MySpace Music may stop offering free streaming not too far in the future.

There's just one small glitch in the labels' rhetoric though. While it's true that free services have failed, the reason they have failed has entirely to do with the ridiculous ... (read more)

2,500 'Volunteers' Needed in AOL Layoff Program

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:01:03 GMT

There are a lot of things happening at AOL as the once mighty Internet giant is going through some pretty tough restructuring. It's about to get separated from Time Warner as an independent company listed in the stock market. It's also trying to get rid off any business not crucial to its operation. And now it's moving forward with the cost cutting plans, aka “massive firings,” which have been looming for months.

“Project Everest,” as the program has been cunningly named, involves getting rid of thousands of employees to help the company get back on track. The first sign came last week when about 100 employees were let go, but the company said it was only a matter of time until the second phase would begin. This second step would involve “voluntary” layoffs, a suggestion CEO Tim Armstrong got from the company's employees during his mythical 100 days of corporate “soul searching” when he went to visit all of the company's businesses and properties.

The suggestion seemed like a good idea so AOL is trying this first, asking for up to 2,500 employees to step down on their own accounts. The move was revealed in a regulatory SEC filing. The program will begin on December 4, just five days before spinning off from Time Warner and six days before the new AOL st... (read more)

MySpace to Get iMeem for Just $1 Million in Cash

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:30:00 GMT

The rumors that MySpace is acquiring music streaming service iMeem for a bargain-basement price have gotten some more weight behind them and a deal looks pretty much certain at this point. The deal doesn't paint a pretty picture for the music streaming business and it remains to be seen if MySpace has better luck with the teams of talented people it has been amassing lately. In any case, it now looks like MySpace will pay just $1 million in cash, though on the whole, the deal is worth at about $8 million plus considerable earnouts for the employees that stay with MySpace.

There still isn't anything official from any of the companies, but multiple sources confirm that the two sides have reached an agreement and that the negotiations are over for now. It isn't exactly a done deal yet, but it's very close to it. MySpace won't completely assimilate iMeem - the company - but the social network turned media hub will get its hands on most of iMeem's assets.

Some assets along with the good chunk of the money involved in the deal will be used to pay off some of iMeem's debt which amounts to as much as $10 million. MySpace will also lose the licensing deals iMeem has signed with music labels as they become void as soon as the company changes hands. What the social network will be getting, though, is the service i... (read more)

Personas for Firefox Gets 10 Million Users

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:41:00 GMT

Mozilla seems to have hit a sweet spot with Personas, the theme engine add-on for Firefox and Thunderbird. While the browser had customization options before and themes support from the early stages, most people weren't using them, either because they found it complicated or found the selection of themes was rather lacking. In just several months though, 10 million people have customized their browsers with Personas and the number of available designs is staggering.

“Since Personas was launched earlier this year, over 10 million people around the globe have chosen to personalize their Firefox by downloading Personas. Nearly 35,000 designs were contributed from artists at all levels of experience from all parts of the world (over 1,000 designs / week). Nearly 40 affinity brands, including Harry Potter, Bob Marley, Lady Gaga, and Greenpeace have added their content to the gallery. Localization community has diligently translated the add-on into over 25 languages; Personas website will be localized by the end of the year,” Mozilla's Suneel Gupta and Myk Melez listed some of the team's achievements.

The Mozilla Labs team just released the latest version of the popular add-on, Personas 1.4 which brought several updates and enhancements mostly related to the user experience. With so many designs it's g... (read more)

AOL to Put ICQ on Sale for About $300 Million

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:51:02 GMT

AOL is already looking ahead of the upcoming split from Time Warner and is making plans to spin-off some non-essential proprieties to allow it to focus more on its new direction, moving away from services and more towards content. The rumor now is that it's looking to shed its ICQ instant messaging service and has put a price tag of about $300 million on the property.

According to sources close to the matter, cited by BoomTown, AOL has put investment bankers Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co. to work on preparing the IM unit for sale and managing the perspective talks. It looks like AOL didn't have any immediate plans to sell ICQ, but interest from a couple of companies outside of the US, which probably sensed an opportunity, determined it to put things in motion.

ICQ has about 50 million unique monthly users and is the most popular IM services in several countries, though mostly in smaller markets. In the US, it is virtually unheard of, while the company's other IM service, AIM, is among the top three services along with Microsoft Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. The ICQ unit is profitable, although not exactly a big revenue earner, enough to raise the attention of several players with interest in the countries where the service is more popular.

AOL is about to become an independent company and... (read more)

Facebook's New Photo Uploader Is Faster, Doesn't Crash

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:01:00 GMT

Facebook has just announced that it’s launching a new photo uploader, which should greatly improve stability but also the performance of the tool. The new tool is being released for testing purposes for the time being and is available in Facebook Prototypes, the social network's testing grounds. The “New Photo Uploader” should be faster and lighter, but the biggest change the users will mostly enjoy is the the fact that they can navigate the site while the photos are being uploaded.

“At Facebook, we're always looking for ways to make sharing more efficient. Today we're announcing a significant upgrade to our Photos product: a new and improved photo uploader that’s available for testing as a Facebook Prototype,” Facebook's Chris Putnam announced.

“Since Photos launched in 2005, the photo-uploading experience on Facebook has relied on the use of a third-party ActiveX control (and its sister Java applet),” he went on explaining the reasoning behind the new tool. “Over the years we have seen a growing number of complaints with this old uploader. In a recent poll, we discovered a significant percentage of users were unable to upload photos due to technical issues. Many more found it functional, but only just.”

It's actually surprisi... (read more)

Microsoft and Yahoo to Finalize Deal by the End of the Week

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:42:00 GMT

Microsoft and Yahoo have been engaged in a strange relationship for years now, but it is finally getting close to becoming official. The two Internet giants reached an agreement last summer, in which Yahoo practically handed over its search engine to Microsoft, but they haven't been able to actually sign it until now. The deal was originally supposed to be finalized on October 27, but the companies said they needed more time. Now though, they're ready and the deal will be signed by the end of the week, BoomTown reports.

Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft have confirmed this, but if everything goes according to plan, which it didn't the last time, we should see a definitive agreement this week. The reason for the delays is simple enough, it's a massive deal and the intricacies of getting the two search engines work together while keeping their separate identities took longer than the people at Microsoft and Yahoo had anticipated.

The two companies announced a huge but not totally unexpected deal in July. In it, Yahoo will hand over the technical side of its search engine to Microsoft and Bing will provide all of the results on any Yahoo property. Yahoo will keep its custom interface and can do what ever it wants with the actual data coming from Bing. The advertising on both search engines will be se... (read more)

Google Earth 5.1 Sheds the Beta Label

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:10:00 GMT

Google Maps is great for mapping out a trip, getting directions, or finding a Chinese restaurant near you, but Google Earth manages to make maps actually fun. The latest version of Google's 3D mapping software just shed its beta tag after getting rid of most of the lingering bugs. With Google Earth 5.1 the focus is on speed, a recurring theme at the company.

“Two months ago, we released the beta version of Google Earth 5.1. The 5.1 release focused on one of our most important features: performance. The power of Google Earth is the seamless, immersive 3D fly-throughs that give you a sense of being "there," so we made a lot of adjustments under the hood to make flying around the globe faster and smoother. Today, after a few more tweaks and bug fixes, we're proud to say that we're ready to remove the beta tag,” Peter Birch, Google Earth product manager, wrote.

The latest version is just an incremental update so most users won't notice any change. The work has been done under the hood ironing out the kinks and making sure that the plug-in is stable enough. Of course, at Google the beta tag doesn't really mean anything, Gmail was labeled as beta for five years, but it does meant that Google Earth users get a more polished experience.

The focus in Google Earth 5.1 as a whole was on the underlyin... (read more)

Facebook Is Now the Third Biggest Video Site in the US

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:19:00 GMT

Online video means YouTube at the moment. There's a huge number of other video sites and Hulu is coming up strong, but the Google site is on a completely different level. And, while no one is going to threaten its dominance any time soon, eventually there may be someone who could and its name shouldn't really surprise any one. It's Facebook of course, the social networking giant has now become the third biggest video site in the US.

Facebook has managed to get 217 million streams in October, almost double from the previous month according to Nielsen numbers. The social network had just entered the top ten most popular venues for video, in terms of the number of videos streamed last month, at number 10. A month later, it shut up passing many established players reaching the third spot only behind Hulu and YouTube. In total 31 million people watched at least one video on Facebook in the previous month.

At number two, professional content video site Hulu strengthened its position with 632 million streams up from 437 million in September. The number of unique visitors stayed flat. Hulu is seeing some very solid growth, but Facebook is storming up its rear at this point and, despite having three times less streams, if it manages to keep up the pace, the social network may soon overtake Hulu as the sec... (read more)

Shakira's Ustream Video Was a Success

Softpedia News (Giorgiana Bursuc) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:57:00 GMT

Last week, Shakira announced that she had decided to launch her latest video using Ustream and Facebook called 'Give It Up To Me,' probably in an attempt to gain more fans on the social network and to part with the tradition of having used MTV for several whole years. It seems that the move was as innovative as it was inspired, since more than 95,000 visitors watched the new video when it was initially broadcast, while the following 24 hours brought around 500,000 viewers. In other words, Shakira's fans all over the world have definitely appreciated her initiative, so they are likely to see more videos or singles released this way.

Ustream is gradually gaining more and more popularity as a live streaming website, and the audience is also increasing. This could also be due to the fact that the service broadcasts more than just recent music videos, including the memorial service for Michael Jackson, which gained about 4.6 million views, but also the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of United States, which was seen by 3.8 million users. On the other hand, these videos have lasted for hours, as opposed to Shakira's 'Give It Up To Me' that has a length of only ten minutes.

Regarding Shakira's choice to integrate Ustream into her Facebook page, it is probably motivated by the fact... (read more)

Only 46 Percent of Twitter Users Visit the Site

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:11:02 GMT

One of the main reasons for Twitter's success has been the openness towards third-party developers. While the core service has stayed mostly true to its minimalistic approach, users can get most of the features they need from all of the services and apps that cater to Twitter. In fact, these apps are so popular, that less than half of the Twitter users actually visit the site to keep up or send out a tweet according to new data from Sysomos.

“So, how do you use Twitter? That’s the question we wanted to answer with our latest report focused on the applications to use Twitter. We analyzed a sample of more than 500 million tweets collected over the past five months to determine the most popular applications to use Twitter,” the social media analytics firm wrote.

The study found that Twitter.com was, by far, the most popular way of posting a tweet, with 46 percent of the users preferring it. TweetDeck comes in a distant second place, with just 8.48 percent, followed by the popular iPhone apps Tweetie and Twitterific, with 2.83 percent and 1.63 percent, respectively. Seesmic, which has just launched a native Windows client, came in fifth, with 1.11 percent.

In Sysomos' last report, Twitter.com was employed by 45.7 percent of the users, so the website managed to keep its mark... (read more)

Seesmic Releases a Native Twitter Client for Windows

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:51:02 GMT

Twitter owes much of its popularity to the ecosystem of third-party apps and services that has sprung up around it. In fact, a big chunk of Twitter's userbase doesn't visit the site itself, but connects to the service via third-party desktop or mobile clients. On the desktop front, two players are battling it out for the title and, interestingly, both clients are built on top of the Adobe AIR platform. Now, though, Seesmic wants to get ahead by launching a dedicated Windows client, which offers several advantages over the AIR version like drag and drop and the possibility for a plug-in platform.

“[W]e are extremely proud to announce that our most popular twitter client is now available as a feature-rich native application for Windows,” Seesmic announced on its blog. “Partnered with Microsoft, engineered for Windows and optimized for Windows 7, this preview version of Seesmic for Windows combines the best features from of our ever-popular social application and provides it to you in a native Windows environment.”

Seesmic already builds a very popular client and the fact that it used AIR to do it didn't seem to hinder its growth so far. Add to this the fact that the app works on Windows, Mac and Linux without having to write separate code for each platform and there doesn't ... (read more)

The Pirate Bay Logo Gets Trademarked by a Private Company

Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:31:02 GMT

The Pirate Bay may not be the world's largest BitTorrent site, but it's definitely the best known. So much so that even people who never visited the site itself are familiar with its logo. But, in keeping with their anti-IP stance, the logo wasn't copyrighted or trademark by the owners, something that a Swedish online retailer saw as an opportunity to make some cash, so it officially registered a slightly altered logo with the PRV, Sweden’s Patent and Registration Office, stirring quite an uproar.

The issue has been resolved fairly quickly, with Sandryds backing down on the claims that the company already pretty much admitted were bogus. A while back, after noticing that the logo had no copyright protection whatsoever, something that the Pirate Bay actually takes pride in, Sandryds decided to register the logo for itself. It submitted its own version to the PRV in a slightly modified color and with the words Pirate Bay written as “Pirate bay.” Seeing that the logo hadn't been registered by anyone else, the PRV actually awarded the company the trademark.

“The idea is to sell USB drives using this brand,” a company spokesman told a Swedish news outlet. “We saw that it was not already allocated to someone else. It was not registere... (read more)

IBM, VMware and NSEC Agree on Partnership for Office Tools

Softpedia News (Catalin Cimpanu) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:27:00 GMT

The IBM-native Lotus Symphony line of office apps will be offered in its portable version on NSEC products, such as the successful Keepod, the slimmest USB device in the world. IBM, VMWare and NSEC made this announcement on Tuesday, November 19, 2009, through an official press release by IBM.

This means that users will be able to buy portable USB devices from NSEC with IBM's Lotus Symphony office tools already installed using VMWare software, like ThinApp (application virtualization software that enables the portable version of Lotus Symphony to work properly).

The combined solution will be more secure because every time a user will want to access a document on the USB device, Lotus Symphony will open it for them without installing any permanent or temporary files on the host computer. By keeping all the data on the portable stick, user privacy will not be put into any jeopardy of data theft risks. For now, NSEC's prime product Keepod will benefit from the new partnership.

“With this Keepod offering, we are able to extend Symphony benefits to many new users,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president, Messaging and Collaboration, IBM Lotus. “Our goal with Lotus Symphony software is to provide a fully capable alternative to Microsoft Office, giving business and consumers al... (read more)