Archive for: November 10, 2009

LinkedIn and Twitter this week announced a deal that that lets users update both services by publishing a status update to either site. The new features will be rolled out on the sites over the next few days.

The question, naturally, is whether you really want potential employers to be tuned in to the manner of things you're posting on Twitter--though, unless your account is locked, that information is out there for all to see anyway, and most companies are savvy enough to perform a simple Google search.

LinkedIn announced the feature in a blog post yesterday, saying that the two companies are like peanut butter and chocolate. LinkedIn, naturally, is chocolate in this scenario. After all, when you chose the analogy, you also get to pick the flavor.

Memopal has unveiled a free version of its online backup service. It offers 3GB of space for anyone to store documents and photos, with no transfer limits.

The service protects and secures files and folders with a single click, and is intended for use as an alternative to e-mail and FTP. It works with PCs, Macs, and Linux machines; iPhones can also access Memopal files using a free app, while other mobile devices can hook in with a WAP browser.

To get a free 3GB online account, hit www.memopal.com, download the free client, and enter a valid e-mail address; no credit card is required.

Navigon has added the optional Traffic Live service to its MobileNavigator iPhone GPS app. Traffic Live offers users real-time traffic reports to calculate faster routes and avoid congestion.

Users see on-screen alerts for accidents, construction, and other road incidents, along with degree of severity and the speed of traffic flow. The reports leverage real-time speed data from over 1.3 million drivers including other app users who opt in to participate, plus commercial fleets and regular drivers with GPS systems.

Currently, the reports work in the U.S. but not in Canada. Navigon Traffic Live costs $19.99, and works as an in-app purchase from within MobileNavigator; no monthly fees are leveraged after the fact. After the first four weeks, Navigon intends to increase the price to $24.99. MobileNavigator itself costs $89.99.

Looks like people are actually using those newfangled smartphones. A new report from Novarra, the mobile Web browser company, found that Web traffic shot up on "game days" compared with off days during the World Series.

The highest traffic was during Game 6, when page views almost tripled off-day levels, according to the company. That was when the Yankees defeated the Phillies and MVP Matsui drove in six RBIs.

The graph (pictured) says it all. The company said that the latest data highlights how people are increasingly turning to the mobile Web for entertainment.

Novarra powers the HTML browser that comes with some recent feature phones like the LG enV Touch.

Google on Monday announced that it has acquired mobile display advertising firm AdMob for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the $750 million range.

"Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages," Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management, and Vic Gundotra, vice president of Engineering at Google, wrote in a blog post. "We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That's what has us excited about this deal."

Wojcicki and Gundotra said the deal will produce better products and tools and more effective monetization for publishers of mobile Web sites and applications. It will also bring better, more relevant ads on a grander scale for advertisers focused on the mobile space, they said.

Consumers, meanwhile, will benefit from more "mobile ads that deliver useful information," they concluded.

Meanwhile, Google will reportedly also acquire VoIP startup Gizmo5 for about $30 million. The purchase could allow Google Voice users to make and receive calls to Google Voice phone numbers from a computer.

Get the rest of this story on pcmag.com.

Research in Motion ramped up its API offerings for BlackBerry Monday with the announcement of new advertising and payment services, general availability of content and alert push to apps, and three new location-based services.

RIM also announced OpenGL ES support for 3D gaming and graphics.

"Our worldview is that everything is moving towards smartphones and connect[ed] services. There's no debate about this," RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said during Monday's annual BlackBerry developer conference. "The key, however is deep, rich application integration, not just application development."

BlackBerry Advertising Service will allow developers to integrate ads into their apps.

"You can simply insert advertisements into your application without negotiating," Balsillie said.

Developers will have access to ads from networks like Jumptap, Lat49, Millennial Media, Navteq, 1020 Placecast, Quattro Wireless, and Sympatico.ca. Possible applications of this functionality include the ability to initiate a call, add a calendar entry or contact entry, or directly link to an application in BlackBerry App World - all from an advertisement.

The Advertising Service and its SDK are expected to be available in the first half of 2010, as will the BlackBerry Payment Service, which will allow developers to sell digital content like monthly or annual subscriptions, premium content, or additional levels and upgrades for games.

RIM also plans to make its Push Service, which was released to Alliance Program members earlier this year, generally available in 2010.

On the location front, RIM will add three new location-aware applications to the platform's existing GPS capability.

Get the rest of this story on pcmag.com.

News Corp. will likely pull all of its newspaper content from Google News once its switches from an ad-supported to a subscription-based model, according to Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch on Friday sat down with Sky News, of which News Corp. is a partial owner, to discuss the impact of the Internet on news, among other things.

The Australian media tycoon has been critical of the Google News aggregation model, as well as similar offerings from Microsoft and Ask.com, which he says is tantamount to stealing. When asked why he has not pulled News Corp.-owned material from Google News, Murdoch said that it will likely happen down the road.

"I think we will," Murdoch said. "But that's going to be when we start charging. We do it already with the Wall Street Journal."

Google has argued that its news aggregator simply points users to content online and actually helps drive traffic to news sites. Murdoch was not impressed by Internet traffic and said he was more interested in finding loyal readers.

"What's the point of having someone ... who likes a headline they see in Google, come to us?" he asked. "The fact is, there's not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the Web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web site but paying."

Get the rest of this story on pcmag.com.

Electronic Arts on Monday announced that it has acquired social network gaming company Playfish for $300 million.

The move is intended to broaden EA's focus on digital and social gaming. Playfish will become part of EA Interactive, a division focused on Web-based and wireless games.

EA will pay $275 million in cash and $25 million in equity retention arrangements.

"Social gaming, with its emphasis on friends and community, is seeing tremendous growth and this is the right time to invest to strengthen our participation in this space," Barry Cottle, senior vice president and general manager of EA Interactive, said in a statement.

Get the rest of this story on pcmag.com.

The Author's Guild and Google have delayed the submission of a revised settlement regarding Google Books until Friday, an attorney for the Guild told a New York district judge Monday.

"I write to advise the court that [the Guild] expect to file their motion seeking preliminary approval of the amended settlement by no later than Friday, November 13, 2009," attorney Michael Boni wrote to Judge Denny Chin.

The judge approved the request.

In late September, the Department of Justice urged the court to reject the search engine giant's $125 million class-action settlement in its current form. The agency was concerned that Google had no financial incentive to track down rights holders for its book repository and questioned whether the court was the proper venue to settle the matter.

About a week after the DOJ issued its report, the two sides were scheduled to appear at a hearing on the matter, but Judge Chin delayed that meeting after the parties asked for extra time in order to address the DOJ's concerns. He then set a deadline of Nov. 9.

"The parties have been working diligently on completing and filing the amended settlement agreement," Boni wrote. "The parties have been in discussions with the Department of Justice both prior to and since the October 7 status conference."

The debate dates back to 2004, when Google partnered with major university libraries to scan their collections and make them available on the Internet. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Author's Guild sued Google for copyright infringement in 2005. In October 2008, the two sides announced a $125 million agreement that would create a registry of online books, and allow U.S. consumers and institutions to purchase access to that material.

In ...

We just got a heads up from our Yahoo contact that the company will be enabling all those tourists from Dubuque, Europe, and wherever, to sit around in Mayor Bloomberg's new folding chairs in the new pedestrian zones and browse the web. The search and portal provider will start up the free service on November 10. It's "the latest literal expression of Yahoo!'s promise to be at the center of people's online lives" according to our contact. Just think, you'll be able to Skype or update your blog right from the center of the universe! [photo by atomische]

Firefox celebrated a milestone birthday Monday: Five years ago today, Mozilla shipped version 1.0 of the open-source browser.

Firefox was unveiled "with belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all," Mozilla's Melissa Shapiro wrote in a blog post.

Mozilla logged one million downloads in the first four days of Firefox 1.0. On July 31 of this year, the company hit its one billionth download worldwide.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 in June 2008, and the browser garnered 8 million downloads in 24 hours. Firefox 3.5 hit the Web in June.

Christopher Blizzard, an open-source evangelist with Mozilla, pointed to several trends that have changed the face of the browser over the last five years, including the rise of a modern browser built for the future of Web apps, the movement of standards to the forefront of development, the ability to customize your Web experience with add-ons, RSS and data, video, the user as the creator, and mobile.

But what's next for Firefox and the browser?

Blizzard said that Mozilla and Firefox have paved the way for other browsers like Safari and Google's Chrome.

"We've managed to keep Microsoft honest and forced them to release newer versions of their browsers," he wrote. "Firefox's presence was a large factor in Apple being able to ship a browser to its user base as the Mac came back to the market. We've made it possible for third party browser vendors like Google to enter the market."

Blizzard predicted that, in the next five years, issues around data, privacy, and identity will feature prominently. Users should also ...

Google recently announced the launch of Google Dashboard, a central location where users of Google services can see which Google services they use, change how they use them, and find out what information Google collects about their usage habits. Google said that the benefit of having a central dashboard with all your Google services on it in one place is not only that it gives you insight into the amount of data Google collects about you, but it also gives you a central access point to all of the Google services that you use, whether you know they're Google services or not.

When you visit the Google Dashboard, each Google service you have an account with is listed, along with information about your last login, recent items, and links to read the service's privacy policy, change your settings or customize your account, or go to your account so you can see what information you have stored in that service.  To get to the Google Dashboard, simply visit Google.com and click the down-arrow next to the "settings" link. Select "Google account settings and you'll be instantly taken to the Google Dashboard. In its current state it's not terribly fancy; it's simply a scrolling list of all the Google services that you use and that the Dashboard currently supports. At the bottom of the list you'll see that there are some Google services, such as AdSense, Analytics, Notebook, App Engine, and more; you may be an avid user of those, but the Dashboard doesn't them support yet.

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