Archive for: July 14, 2009

Before there was Google Voice, there was VoxOx. The free app and service, which offers all of the telephony tricks and more found in its more famous competitor, minus the voicemail transcription, though I'm not sure how many people want Google to keep text records of their voicemails, anyway.

VoxOx differs from Google Voice in that it comes from a CLEC, Telcentris, which provides telephony to businesses. This consumer offering goes beyond Google Voice, adding fax, IM, and videoconferenceing capabilities. Inbound calls are free, and users get 100 minutes of outbound calls a month free. PCMag readers can at least double that, and if they're one of the first 200 people to go to signup.voxox.com/pcmag2vox, they'll get an additional 1,200 minutes free.

Internet radio provider Pandora has finally come out the other side of a long fight over royalty prices. The site even managed to secure a good chunk of VC funds. Now it's focusing its attentions to another fight: making sure that radio stations pay up, too. After all, it's only fair.

Pandora CEO Tim Westergren sent an e-mail out calling the situation "fundamentally unfair both to Internet radio services like Pandora, which pay higher royalties than other forms of radio, and to musical artists, who receive no compensation at all when their music is played on AM/FM radio."

Radio providers claim that their medium promotes music. Fair enough, but if that is indeed enough to curtail size of royalty payments, shouldn't Internet radio stations be off the hook as well?

"We are close," wrote Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc yesterday, "but have not yet signed off on Windows 7." LeBlanc posted on the company's Windows Team Blog yesterday looking to curb rumors that a Release to Manufacturing version of the operating system is coming this week--or already here.

The version of the software is still expected for the second half of this month--which, for the record, begins tomorrow. There are still a number of steps that need to be taken before the final version of the software is really final added LeBlanc, "Windows 7 will be available in many languages from around the world. For us to consider RTM 'done,' it requires that all languages be completely finished. So there is a lot of work that needs to take place for us to finalize all languages of Windows 7. We also need to get to a point of 'global readiness' with our partners."

The retails version of the new OS is still set to ship on October 22nd.

After yesterday's announcement of the creatively titled LG Application Store, it would, perhaps be bigger news to find a mobile company not currently looking to launch its own storefront. That's a title, apparently, doesn't belong to Verizon. The wireless provider is reportedly getting ready for an event aimed at roping in developers for precisely that purpose.

The event, planned for July 28th in San Jose, is aimed at bringing in content from Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Android, and Palm app developers. The carrier is expected to launch its own storefront before year's end.

Says Giga Om,

[Verizon VP Ryan] Hughes says developers can build applications for whatever platform they want. If they want to tie those apps to Verizon's subscriber data for information about locations or to bill a customer, the developer needs to go through a quick approval process with Verizon and add an API to access the appropriate data.

If you're a blogger looking to record a quick screencast to post on your site, or if you're looking for an easy way to show a software developer how to reproduce the bug in their app that you've uncovered, a screencast is definitely the way to go. Screencasts, or short videos of what you're doing on your computer screen, can be used to show someone how to do use a cool app, show off a useful utility, or troubleshoot a problem.

Normally you need to install an application to record the screencast and then upload it to the Web, but Screenjelly makes taking screencasts and publishing them as easy as a single click. 
Screenjelly isn't the only Web service that takes instant screencasts, it's just one of the newest and it also supports audio. ScreenCastle, Screencast-o-Matic, and ScreenToaster are all similar Web apps that allow you to take screencasts through your browser. Each of them has their ups and downs, but Screenjelly is the first one I've noticed that allows you to log in using your Twitter credentials and instantly share your recording with friends on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, and more as soon as the recording is complete.

You don't have to give Screenjelly your Twitter credentials to take a screencast, you only have to log in through Twitter if you want the service to post a link to your recording on Twitter when you're finished. Alternatively you can get a link to your video, send ...

Are you an avowed vegetarian, yet are currently receiving tweets from @GrubSteak? What happens if you're a San Francisco Giants fan, but tweets from @LAD_Dodgers are arriving in your feed?

If so, you may be the victim of a "spurious tweet". This is a problem that can not be dealt with with ordinary fungal powder or even a specialized detergent. This requires action! And action only the Tweet Team can provide.

Sayeth the Twitter Blog:

We're working through a problem whereby some users are seeing tweets from users they do not follow. This is obviously a significant problem and one we are working hard to address.

We anticipate that it will take several days for us to completely resolve all of the symptoms of this issue. We will update as we make progress.

One wonders if injecting a little randomness into the system will help or hurt Twitter?

Mozilla's Jetpack API got another upgrade on Saturday.

Jetpack is an API launched in May that lets developers create add-ons using well-known technologies such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript, which can then be added without restarting the browser.

"There are now over 60,000 people who have the Jetpack platform extending their browsing experience," Mozilla wrote in a blog post.

Version 0.3 includes two new additions -- selections and clipboard. Selections lets you look up something on a page, like a selected word on Wikipedia. Previously, grabbing currently selected text or figuring out when a selection was made was a bit difficult, so Mozilla has simplified the process. Clipboard, meanwhile, lets you get and set text from the system clipboard.

Mozilla also added new features to slide bars, like the ability for a slide bar to notify the user of an update in a non-obtrusive way. Jetpack 0.3 also has more persistent storage and "prettier" status bars.

Users must have Firefox 3.5 before upgrading to Jetpack 0.3

Want to work firsthand with Jetpack. Mozilla said it is looking for a full-time product manager and software engineers to join Labs and work on Jetpack.

One of Google's top lawyers has reportedly jumped ship for Twitter.

Alexander Macgillivray, deputy general counsel for products and intellectual property at Google, is moving to serve as general counsel for the micro-blogging site, according to the New York Times.

Macgillivray has recently been working on the legal issues surrounding Google's electronic books deal.

Days after securing a deal for royalty rates, Internet radio station Pandora has also locked up venture capitalist funding rumored to be in the neighborhood of $35 million.

"Pandora recently closed a round of financing" with Greylock Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm, a Pandora spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail.

Pandora declined to comment on the amount of valuation of the deal, but it is reportedly about $35 million, according to PE Hub.

"We are honored that David Sze of Greylock Partners led the investment round and has joined Pandora's board," Pandora said. "Greylock joins existing investors Crosslink Capital, Walden Venture Capital, Labrador Ventures, King Street Capital, Hearst Corporation, DBL Investors, and Selby Ventures."

The new funds will be put toward the "continued growth and development of Pandora," the spokeswoman said. After two years of debate, Pandora last week announced that it had reached a deal with copyright holders over royalty rates. The royalties were still a bit steep, however, prompting Pandora to cap unlimited monthly usage at 40 hours, though users can pay $0.99 to continue listening until the end of the month.

Comcast will add content from HBO and Cinemax to its test of "On Demand Online," a program that lets Comcast subscribers watch TV online free of charge.

The 5,000 Comcast users included in the upcoming trial who also subscribe to the premium cable channels will be able to access content like HBO's "True Blood" and "Entourage" via Comcast.net and Fancast.com.

Comcast announced plans for On Demand Online last month, with Time Warner's TNT and TBS channels as its first partner. Last week, they added the Starz cable channel.

HBO and Cinemax will initially contribute 750 hour a month of programming, including episodes of "Sex and the City", "The Sopranos", and "Real Time with Bill Maher". The offering will also include newer movies like "Transformers" and "The Dark Knight", as well as older classics like "Jurassic Park" and "Rosemary's Baby". HBO will also contribute family programming like "Harold and the Purple Crayon".

"The broadband services are the latest in a line of digital offerings that have dramatically changed the viewing experience for our subscribers, providing them with more access, choice, and even greater value to their subscriptions," Eric Kessler, HBO co-president, said in a statement.

The Bing search engine has seen an 8 percent growth in unique users since its June 2009 launch, and the number of people likely to recommend the site has doubled, according to Microsoft.

"This is an important metric to us because we think it speaks to Bing's ability to meet your needs, be they for general purpose searching or for searches to help you make smarter decisions in one or more of our four focus areas of shopping, travel, health and local," Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the online audience business group at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

On the shopping front, Microsoft report a threefold increase in site visits to Bing Shopping and a 5.42 percent increase in transactions to Bing cashback since launch.

"Summer is typically not high season for online shopping, so this has been really nice to see," Mehdi wrote. Traffic to Bing Travel, meanwhile, has increased by 90 percent month over month since launch, he said.

Advertisers are also pleased with Bing's performance, according to Microsoft. Consumer electronics retailer TigerDirect has seen sales and order volume triple, while an unnamed wireless provider has reported 28 percent more clicks since Bing launched than in previous weeks, Medhi wrote.

As a result, expect to see more Bing-related TV ads, focused on the site's features.

The Bing API, meanwhile, has now attracted about 11,000 developers.

But how is Bing faring against Google and Yahoo?

When it debuted, there was much talk about Bing overtaking Yahoo's search engine marketshare in its first week. Indeed, the hype surrounding Bing helped it surpass Yahoo to become the number two search engine two days after ...

If Amazon is looking to bolster its video-on-demand service, the online mega-retailer could do a lot worse than picking up Netflix. Rumors to that effect drove shares in the video rental site to their highest point in 11 weeks.

"There's heavy call buying and the stock is up on renewed takeover talk, with Amazon being mentioned specifically," market analyst Fred Ruffy told Bloomberg. "It's pretty typical of speculative call buying."

Netflix refused to issue a comment on the matter.