7 August 2009

7 August 2009

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

WEB NEWS

We have reason to believe this is largely or completely accurate based on information it contains that we independently obtained from a separate source and have not previously published.

This Is Quite Possibly The Spotify Cap Table [TechCrunch]

Shareholders in Spotify on 10/7 2009 Bolag Andel Rosello (Lorentzon) 28,6% Instructus (Ek) 23,3% Northzone Ventures 11,9% Enzymix Systems (F. Hagnö) 5,8% Sony BMG 5,8% Universal Music 4,8% Warner Music 3,8% Wellington IV Tech 3,8% Creandum II LP 3,5% Swiftic (Strigéus) 2,6% Creandum II KB 2,4% EMI 1,9% Merlin 1,0% SBH Capital (B. Hagnö) 0,8%

AUG 07, 2009 05:17A.M.

df Riskkapitalbolagens investeringar Northzone 8 miljoner euro Creandum 4 miljoner euro Wellington 6,5 miljoner euro Li Ka-shing 20 miljoner euro* Hot European music startup Spotify is back in the news today. On August 4 we broke the news that the big music labels have secretly been shareholders in the company since 2008, and that they paid roughly the same price for their preferred stock as venture capital investors Northzone Ventures and Creandum paid last year.

* enligt Financial Times How much the labels paid for their shares. Sony BMG - 2 935 euro för 6 procent av aktierna. Universal Music - 2 446 euro för 5 procent av aktierna. Warner Music - 1 957 euro för 4 procent av aktierna. EMI - 980 euro för 2 procent av aktierna. Merlin* - 490 euro 1 procent av aktierna.

Now, though, Swedish news site ComputerSweden is reporting that those music labels actually got their stock for free. “Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Merlin…bought at the time in to Spotify - for a pittance. They received 18 percent of the shares in Spotify barely 100 000 kronor,” says the report.

This cap table shows founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon with 23.3% and 28.6% of the stock, respectively, for a total of 51.9% of the fully diluted stock of the company. The four big labels plus indie aggregator Merlin own a total of 17.3%, and paid an aggregate of €7.8 million for that stock.

We don’t believe that report is correct based on our sources that say that the labels paid roughly the same price as the venture investors for that stock.

This cap table matches all previous information that we’ve received about the company from sources. First, that they paid roughly the same price for the stock as venture investors, and second that the total amount raised to date, before any investments from Wellington Partners and Li Ka-Shing, is roughly €20 million.

And we have now obtained an unverified capitalization table showing the various ownership positions of the major Spotify shareholders, including the prices paid for the stock.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

7 August 2009

If the labels didn’t pay for the stock, all those previously sourced numbers are incorrect, which we think is highly unlikely.

went down hard, Facebook stayed mostly online but was clearly under strain. CNET reports that a single individual’s accounts on the services may have been the primary target.

The new round, to be funded by Li Ka-Shing and Wellington Partners (Spotify may have already closed on the Wellington portion of that deal) is $50 million or so, at valuation of $250 million (yes, I know I’m mixing currencies, but the numbers are all roughly working out).

Now, nearly 24 hours later, Facebook and LiveJournal appear to be performing normally. But Twitter is down completely and has been for the last few hours.

The key takeaway from this is that the founders have done an excellent job of raising a big bucket of money while retaining control of the company, and they are one of the very few music startups to actually get real cash from the labels.

As of 4 pm Twitter was saying things were looking better: “Site latency has continued to improve.” But for most users, all third party services have been completely unusable for the last 20 hours or so (Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Power Twitter, etc..), bringing down the entire Twitter ecosystem. The Twitter.com site itself hasn’t been reliable either.

My esteemed colleagues see some big holes in the Spotify story, but there is clearly a lot going right with this company, too. The real hurdle is making the model work, meaning they have to generate real advertising and premium revenues to offset big royalty streaming payments to the labels.

The Twitter status blog has been silent since that 4:14 update. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

WEB NEWS

Twitter and Facebook DDoS Attacks Targeted One Man [Mashable]

WEB NEWS

Twitter Outage Moves Into Day 2 [TechCrunch]

AUG 07, 2009 03:19A.M.

AUG 07, 2009 04:15A.M.

Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal spent yesterday battling a DDOS attack that started around 6 am California time. Twitter and LiveJournal

Did Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube, Google Sites and Google’s

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

7 August 2009

Blogger all get attacked yesterday to silence one man? According to the testimony of a Facebook executive, they did.

Meltdown. –Twitter Down: Twitter Doesn’t Know Why

A blogger in the Republic of Georgia with the username Cyxymu was the victim, according to Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly. The claims cement earlier reports that social networking sites have been dragged into the Georgia-Russia crisis, leading to the first simultaneous attack on the largest social media sites. Kelly told CNet:: “It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard. We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.” Google is quoted as saying: Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, blogger “We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by a DOS attack this morning, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack. Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services.” WEB NEWS As part of the attack, spam was sent to LiveJournal users that appeared to come from cyxymu.

Xbox Live Down Today, Too [Mashable]

Political Motives

AUG 07, 2009 02:07A.M. The claims back up earlier reports in the New York Times that Thursday’s attack was sparked by the conflict between Russia and Georgia. The aim was to take down Cyxymu’s accounts, particularly the LiveJournal blog where he posted about the crisis. While Google’s sites held up to the barrage, Twitter and LiveJournal proved less robust. While DDoS attacks are notoriously hard to defend against, it’s clear that Twitter was far less equipped to cope with such an attack: no doubt they’ll be taking a closer look at how such issues could be handled in the future. Full Coverage of the Social Media DDoS –Is Cyber Warfare to Blame for Twitter Meltdown? –Denial of Service Attacks Being Investigated by Google, Twitter, Facebook It’s really not a good week for social services. We’ve had Twitter down, Facebook down, LiveJournal too…and tonight Xbox Live, the multiplayer gaming platform for Xbox users, was also down. Gaming was once again a solitary experience.

–Facebook Problems Also the Result of DDoS Attack –Twitter Outage Explained: What’s a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS)?

Twitter users are have been reporting a return to uptime within the last hour or so, and the Xbox Live Twitter feed is claiming things are back on track.

–Twitter Down Due to Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) –Facebook Down. Twitter Down. Social Media

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

7 August 2009

Were you caught up in the Xbox Live downtime today? Let us know in the comments.

Practice Fusion currently has “over 18,000 users,” which would appear to be a big increase on the 1,300 medical professionals they had one year ago. The product originally launched in November of 2007, so it’s nearly two years old now.

Reviews: Twitter

Is Cloud Computing Suitable for Healthcare? WEB NEWS

A post on the Practice Fusion blog today asks the question: is “cloud computing” right for health IT? We reported earlier this week that cloud computing is infiltrating virtually every corner of technology right now, but it still has dangers. We noted the recent hacking of Google Docs to steal internal Twitter documents, as one recent high profile example (high profile because the stolen documents were subsequently emailed to some news outlets, some of whom published the ‘hot’ docs).

Practice Fusion Partners With Salesforce - But Is Cloud Computing Suitable For Healthcare? [Read Write Web]

However despite these risks Practice Fusion claims that the cost benefits of cloud computing in healthcare are significant, particularly in its EMR niche:

AUG 07, 2009 02:00A.M.

“Cost and poor usability have been cited as the biggest obstacles to adoption of health IT - especially Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems - and has resulted in problematically-low EHR adoption rates. Eliminating this cost, and the IT maintenance burdens that are often beyond the reach of small medical practices, clearly removes these significant roadblocks to EHR adoption.”

One year ago we reviewed a new health app called Practice Fusion, a free, web-based EMR (electronic medical record) system for physicians. This week Practice Fusion announced an investment, amount not disclosed, by salesforce.com. They also announced the upcoming launch of their patient health record (PHR) application on Force.com, salesforce.com’s cloud computing platform. With these announcements, now seems an appropriate time for a check-up of Practice Fusion. How is its own health and what are the implications of partnering with salesforce.com?

Security and safety is of course the big potentially negative issue with cloud computing. But Practice Fusion points to several use cases where it says that cloud computing has advantages over desktop apps: disasterrecovery, hacks (because “SaaS providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford”), and privacy. All of those points come down to the premise that a cloud computing / SaaS specialist, such as Practice Fusion, has more expertise, more resources, and is generally better able to deliver those safety and security requirements.

Sponsor

One year after our initial review, the company is still going strong. The product was being promoted in August 2008 as a ‘Google Apps for doctors’, providing patient management, scheduling, secure email and more. However, as we pointed out in our article last year, Practice Fusion is not a competitor to Google Health. Practice Fusion is a physiciancentered tool, whereas Google Health and the other bigco services are patient-centered.

That all sounds great in theory, however every case like the Twitter stolen documents one serves to undermine that argument. And there are just too many such cases right now.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

7 August 2009

Nevertheless, we’re sure that over time cloud computing will become ever more secure. It’s clear that Practice Fusion is a young company that is growing well. With Salesforce.com on its side too now, the future looks secure for them.

give it a try. All of these are a given. They are what got you to this stage. But now you are at the stage of 99.9% perspiration and 0.1% inspiration. This is the grind-it-out phase. Everything has to be done right. The details really, really matter. And there are all kinds of details, many of which you find it hard to be interested in.

Discuss

Back to Basics At this point it might be worth taking another look at these chapters: WEB NEWS

• How to be an effective CEO

Maintain Focus, Health, and Passion During the Grind-ItOut Phase [Read Write Web]

• How to hire an A-Team • How to fire non-performers • How to hit your numbers

AUG 06, 2009 11:46P.M. • How to build age-appropriate processes Five Tips If you have these bases covered, the rest is all about you. Ever heard the expression “It’s lonely at the top”? Now you’ll see how true that is. Here are five tips to help: 1. Have a good board. You’ll need advice from people whom you trust and who know the business. 2. Take time to exercise. Schedule it like anything else you do. Exercise gives you more energy and helps you deal with stress. 3. Delegate (or fire yourself and find a better CEO). This is not the phase of entrepreneurial startup heroics, when you have to do everything yourself. Re-read what are the only three things a CEO has to do, and do only those things.

This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here. When you first start out, you will find it amazing that anyone will even listen attentively to your idea. Then, someone actually investing money at all in your venture seems extraordinary. When your first revenue comes in, the validation is wonderful. What happens after that? A quick exit and off to have some fun? Perhaps, but many entrepreneurs go through a grind-it-out phase. How you approach this phase will depend on how much you enjoy it and how effective you are at it.

4. Seek other forms of intellectual stimulation. During the grind-itout phase, the three golden rules are focus, focus, and focus. But you have a restless intellectual energy: that is why you became an entrepreneur. Don’t invent a diversification to satisfy your intellectual curiosity. Learn Sanskrit or hieroglyphics instead. The brain exercise will do you good.

Sponsor 5. Re-connect with the people whose pain you are trying to solve. There was a reason you were passionate about this when you got started. Re-connect with that passion. Oh, you were just faking that passion, were you? Then good luck with that!

Grinding Out the Numbers Re-read our chapter on how to hit your numbers.

Discuss You should still have your magic sauce with you: the amazing code, the user interface that blows people away, the big secular wave that you are riding, the value proposition that convinces even the deepest cynic to

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

7 August 2009

WEB NEWS

Blame FriendFeed II [TechCrunch]

In today’s blog post by Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser, Digg announced that it will be rolling out its beta ad program later this week. In addition to the community’s existing banner ads, the company is launching an initial set of ads to appear in rotation with regular content. From here, users will interact with the ads in the same way they interact with articles - by digging, burying and commenting on them. Advertising with a high number of Diggs will fetch lower ad revenue and buried advertisers will be charged more.

AUG 06, 2009 11:32P.M.

Sponsor

ReadWriteWeb covered Kevin Rose’s suggestion for this advertising system in April. The program will be launched this week for testing to a select few users before making a public release. Says Maser to the community, “The success of this system depends on your participation and feedback, as it will help advertisers to create the best possible experience for the Digg community. Our goal with Digg Ads is to encourage advertisers to create content as compelling as organic Digg stories, and to give you more control over which ads you see on Digg.

With Twitter down this morning and reports of failure all over the social Web, I figured FriendFeed would be up, if denuded by the Twitter outage. Well, sorta. In fact, FriendFeed searches are down. How the hell does a denial of service attack plague reach into the coolest service noone will ever use, as former user Mike Arrington once put it. Is the realtime Web screeching to a halt on purpose, did rssCloud have something to do with making things too really simple, or what? For now, I’ll Blame FriendFeed. As long as FriendFeed keeps rolling out updates to realtime, FriendFeediots like myself are smug in our uber view that no matter what happens to the rest of the Web, regardless of whether Google buys a patent-safe video codec for HTML 5, not caring whether Apple and AT&T collude to keep Google Voice out of the carrier business, not worried about whether the Sun/Oracle deal is held up for months, etc. — no matter what, FriendFeed will solve all of my social media problems before anybody else does.

WEB NEWS It will be interesting to see which advertisers will attempt to game the system by digging their own ads, and how fast these ads will be buried. The official June announcement of the Digg ad program received more than 400 comments within the community, and surprisingly many of them are very positive. While critics argue that the ads will simply be buried and advertisers will stop paying for placement, others called this “marketing democracy”. A few commenters pointed to the fact that they already use Adblock - a Firefox extension that allows users to filter out advertising content. Nevertheless, others chastise Adblock usage as a lack of support for the community that they enjoy. In a community as opinionated as Digg, it will be interesting to see how the first users react

Digg-able Ad Program to Launch This Week [Read Write Web] AUG 06, 2009 11:16P.M.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

7 August 2009

to this new play for revenue.

WEB NEWS

PicTreat: Get Perfect Skin in One Click [Mashable]

Discuss

AUG 06, 2009 10:58P.M.

WEB NEWS

Murder Plot Gone Wrong Captured in YouTube Video [Mashable] AUG 06, 2009 10:59P.M.

As much as we’d love to look picture perfect in every photo, most of us, myself included, need a little retouching from time to time. Sure there’s those that just let it all hang out, blemishes and all, but for the rest of us there’s Photoshop or online photo editing tools. PicTreat, one such brand new online photo editor, is catering to our vainer side by promising fully automated online facial retouching in just one click. The web-based application is primarily for enhancing beauty shots of human faces by removing blemishes, red-eye, and performing color-correction.

The video seems like something out of a TV crime show. And, as it turns out, that’s because it’s a serious acting job. Dalia Dippolito of Boyton Beach, Florida thought she had a foolproof plot for killing her husband. Unfortunately for her, the hitman she hired was actually an undercover police officer.

PicTreat incorporates the social functionality we’ve come to expect from online photo editors, so you can log in using Facebook Connect, and even grab existing photos stored on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, or Photobucket. Of course you can also upload photos or use their URLs for editing.

In turn, the Boyton Beach police setup a fake crime scene, where they informed Dippolito that her husband was dead (he wasn’t). Her reaction was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube – video that will ultimately serve as evidence when Dippolito stands trial for solicitation to commit first degree murder. The full details of the bizarre story are available on the Boyton Beach PD website (PDF link), but here’s the video that will earn Dippolito her 15 minutes of fame, and most likely, 15+ years of jail time: Reviews: YouTube Tags: Dalia Dippolito, youtube

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

7 August 2009

Once you determine the photo you want to correct, PicTreat will provide with a few photo treating options, and once you click okay, it will automatically and quickly correct the photo. The final result is a treated photo, with the original still accessible for comparison. Should you be happy with the results you can save it to your computer, share the image URL, grab the embed code, crop it as a profile pic for Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, or MySpace, or post to a myriad of different social sites.

Twitter and other social media sites earlier today, yet another wave of spam is invading the microblogging service. Thousands of tweets are currently being spread around the network pointing to a website promoting a dubious money making scheme: ThursdayProfit.org. It appears that this is the exact same scam as yesterday, where links to the same style of site with a different domain name flooded Twitter. This is at least the third time this week that this scam has surfaced, though at the moment, it remains unclear if it’s the result of a compromised thirdparty app, a phishing scam, or perhaps related to today’s DDoS attacks.

PicTreat is a simple app that works wonders on close ups (I didn’t know I could look so good), and there’s absolutely no learning curve. Now if only they could create a way so that we could auto-correct all of those terrible photos that we’re tagged in on Facebook too. More Image Editing Tools from Mashable - 20 Great Online Image Editors - 7 Great Online Image Editing Apps - 50+ iPhone Apps to Enhance Your Photo and Video Experience - 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources

Speaking of today’s DDoS attacks, the latest news is that they may have indeed been related to the Russia-Georgia conflict, with CNET reporting that a single pro-Georgian blogger and his identities across social media sites may have been the target of today’s attacks. Who might be responsible for them, however, remains a mystery for the moment.

Reviews: Delicious, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Twitter Tags: beauty shot, blemishes, image editor, photo editing, pictreat

Tags: ddos, twitter WEB NEWS

As DDoS Attacks Cool, Yet Another Twitter Spam Invasion Underway [Mashable]

WEB NEWS

LA Police Department Considers “Going Google” [Read Write Web]

AUG 06, 2009 10:36P.M.

AUG 06, 2009 10:31P.M.

In a recent Los Angeles Police Protective League blog post, President Paul M. Weber raised some concerns about the boys in blue switching to Google-hosted services. The group received their latest computer system after donations from the Michael Jackson memorial service at Staples As we learn more about the Denial of Service Attacks that took down

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7 August 2009

Center crashed the department website and took out their old system for most of the day. As the second-largest city in the US, they knew they needed to modernize; however, Weber raises legitimate concerns over the department’s consideration of a $7.25 million contract with Google to replace the city’s email and records retention system.

WEB NEWS

NSFW Web Series Inks TV Deal [Mashable] AUG 06, 2009 09:54P.M.

Sponsor

Said Weber, “This is a complex technological issue that demands careful study and planning by the city. Before the city introduces an outside entity into the chain of custody, sufficient safeguards need to be in place to secure confidential information. We will be closely monitoring this issue for the security of both our members and the sensitive information they access on a daily basis.”

As covered by ReadWriteWeb, Twittergate is one example of how Google may be left open to security breaches. The documents stolen from Twitter were Google Docs and because they were not hosted behind a firewall, Twitter’s business plan was more easily obtained. In this case, as with most cases, human error and insecure passwords are to blame. In order to use Google services, the LAPD would have to be particularly cautious to backup their records and follow password protocol.

Web TV is the underdog in the entertainment world. Often times great talent is forced to find a home and an audience online, sometimes after being rejected by more mainstream outlets. The best a web series can typically hope for is the success that The Guild has seen over the past year. Very rarely, however, does a web series get to break the mold and make it on your small screen (remember Quarterlife on NBC?). It’s incredibly remarkable, then, that Pure Pwnage, the NSFW long-running characterdriven web series, is announcing that they’ve inked an eight episode deal with Canadian TV’s Showcase.

Google’s “Going Google” campaign recently launched to encourage businesses to switch to Google Apps in the workplace. 1.75 million businesses, schools and organizations are currently using Google Apps in the office including Motorola, University of Notre Dame and the Mercy Corps. For many businesses considering the service, security still remains the biggest question.

Pure Pwnage’s 8 episode stint on Showcase will air in 2010, and the immature duo — main characters Jeremy and Kyle — have made a video short announcing the deal. The online series originally debuted back in 2004 and follows the fictional professional gamer, Jeremy, his brother, and their gamer friends. The show reportedly pulls in over 200,000 monthly viewers, and has a cult online following of dedicated fans.

Thanks to Eric for the tip! Discuss

Showcase is a part of CW Media, and though unknown in the states, it’s a channel that airs popular television series like The Office and Weeds. According to web TV blog, Tubefilter, the Pure Pwange fan base stateside will eventually be able find the episodes in iTunes. The site interviewed Geoff Lapaire, Pure Pwnage director and co-star, who also noted that, “We are hoping that there will be enough interest in the US to convince someone to pick up the show there.”

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Interestingly enough, Lapaire attributed the studio’s interest in their show to a live screening, saying “A studio executive came to one of our live screenings at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto and was completely blown away … About 600 fans showed up to watch that particular episode, and the energy at our live screenings is always mind blowing.”

and tweeting throughout the week too. Going forward, followers of the TwitCause account will be able to nominate other nonprofits and causes that they want want to see supported by the service. Armstrong’s Livestrong is currently leading the pack for the next cause. TwitCause is also hoping that businesses and brands will want to get involved to sponsor causes as well, matching tweets with dollar amounts in support.

We’re pretty impressed by the deal, which will hopefully pave the way for more made-for-the-web content to find a home in front of mainstream audiences. Hopefully Pure Pwnage will fair better than the web to TV flop, Quarterlife.

As I said, the viral nature of the retweet seems to lend itself well to something like this. Plenty of other sites and services have used Twitter to help raise money or awareness for good causes, such as Blame Drew’s Cancer, which we covered a couple months ago. They are now also working with Livestrong and have seen over 20,000 tweets blame things on Drew’s cancer in support of the cause.

Tags: pure pwnage, tv, Web TV

WEB NEWS

TwitCause Is Yes, A Causes For Twitter [TechCrunch] AUG 06, 2009 09:13P.M.

Since the early days of the Facebook Platform, Causes has been one of the most popular apps. It’s also big on MySpace, and the company behind it recently announced that they had raised some $10,000,000 for various causes in two years. It makes sense; it’s using the social aspect of these platforms to spread the word on good initiatives. A new venture, TwitCause, from Experience Project, wants to extend that idea to Twitter.

CrunchBase Information TwitCause

And it’s possible that this idea could work even better on Twitter, given the built-in viral nature of the service. Basically, each week on Thursday, TwitCause has a new cause they support. They ask that you follow the TwitCause Twitter account and then retweet the cause to show your support for it. These tweets contain a link to go back to the site where you can find a place to donate money if you choose to, using PayPal. The number of retweets and the money raised so far are all shown in realtime on the page, as are the most recently tweets about the cause.

Twitter Blame Drew’s Cancer Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

The service launched today with the The V Foundation as its launch partner. The V Foundation is a hugely successful cancer research organization named after the late, great basketball coach Jim Valvano. With his foundation attached, TwitCause has already seen tweets go out from several official accounts of NBA and WNBA teams. The hope is to get other high profile athletes like Shaq and Lance Armstrong involved

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Team Apart is offering is EtherPad. The big drawback for EtherPad is that doesn’t have video and audio, so it’s for collaboration rather than meetings.

WEB NEWS

Team Apart: Real-time, Browser-based Collaboration & Meetings [Read Write Web]

Combing a simple trio of video, text, and drawing is solid choice for Team Apart. For distributed teams seeking dead simple and fairly comprehensive meeting tools, we’d file away Team Apart as something to explore in the future.

AUG 06, 2009 08:34P.M.

Discuss

WEB NEWS

Best Video Player? [Hive Five Call For Contenders] [LIfehacker[Hive Five Call For Contenders]]

Team Apart is an online meeting space and collaboration tool launched in private beta today. The software includes a browser-based video/audio conference, a text notepad, and a whiteboard for drawing. All of these options are updated in real-time for conference attendees, and the conference space can persist over time. Obvious competitors for Team Apart are the larger Web conferencing solutions like WebEx and GoToMeeting. But considering the document side of Team Apart and the fact that its work spaces stick around, the startup most similar is AppJet’s EtherPad.

AUG 06, 2009 08:00P.M.

Sponsor

Collaboration Trifecta As best we can tell, Team Apart looks like it has the right balance of simplicity and features necessary to enable real collaboration among small teams. There might be some cross-pollination between a whiteboard focused on free-form drawing and the notepad, but both are useful tools for augmenting an online meeting. The real potential for snafus in Team Apart is on the video and audio side. Since all aspects of the software are focused on being real-time, delays and poor quality in that arena could seriously curtail the platform’s usefulness.

While some people never venture beyond the default media player on their operating system, the Lifehacker crowd tends to be of a more adventurous sort. This week we want to hear about your favorite video player.

How It Compares If we were running a small distributed team (wait, we are, aren’t we?) we’d choose something browser-based like Team Apart over WebEx or GoToMeeting. It’s not that these solutions don’t work for business needs, but they are often slow to load even on fast connections. Their reliability makes them great for presentations and client meetings, but for incompany collaboration, being lightweight is also important.

Photo by Daniel Leininger. Media playback is a central function for many computers these days as less and less people get their media fix in front of their televisions. This week we want to hear all about your favorite tool for video playback. What application do you use for watching your stash of TV shows, DVDs, and more? What makes your tool of choice the best? Great DVD playback? Huge codec library? Tell us all about it in the comments.

If you’re making a decision today however, you’re out of luck unless you can get your hands on a beta invite. Right now the closest thing to what

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Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Video Player. Please don’t include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don’t follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you’ve made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

A typical Koobface attack – like the one that surfaced on Twitter last month – comes via a link that purports to be an interesting video (i.e. – someone tweets “my home video” with a link to what looks like a YouTube page). Those videos then tell you that you need to upgrade your Flash player – which, many legitimate videos often do too. Upon “upgrading,” however, the user is infected with the virus. Recently, Twitter has started cracking down on known malicious links, but now, those intent on spreading the virus have added a few twists that will make Koobface more challenging to protect against.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: “Which tool is the best?” Once a week we’ll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we’ll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week’s Five Best PDF Readers.

WEB NEWS

For starters, instead of the same short URL showing up over and over again, which would be easy for Twitter to diffuse quickly, the virus is randomizing the short link. Additionally, the links now appear to be directed to a well-designed Facebook lookalike page. On top of that, the message directing people to the video is being randomized, making it a bit less obvious that its malicious.

Koobface Virus Gets Smarter; Targets Twitter and Facebook Users [Alert] [Mashable[Alert]] AUG 06, 2009 07:57P.M.

While this does indeed make it a bit trickier for Twitter to automatically block malicious links, for users, the best advice is to check the actual URL in the address bar before viewing a video after following a link. If it’s not Facebook.com, YouTube.com, or another popular video site, odds are it’s Koobface. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Talaj Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphoto Tags: facebook, koobface, security, twitter, virus

Koobface, a virus that targets computers via social networking sites, is apparently back and with added sophistication.

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WEB NEWS

Job2.0

Realtime Blabfest With Andrew Keen, John Borthwick, and Kevin Marks [TechCrunch] AUG 06, 2009 07:53P.M.

WEB NEWS

Microsoft Releases Windows 7 Upgrade Chart [Windows 7] [LIfehacker[Windows 7]] AUG 06, 2009 07:30P.M.

Earlier today I had a debate about the Realtime Web with author Andrew Keen on a Blogtalk Radio podcast hosted by Supernova’s Howard Greenstein. (It is embedded below if you have an extra hour to spare). Andrew thinks that real time streams such as Twitter are overwhelming and not very helpful for normal people yet. He pulled out the old canard that real time media will never replace traditional media or trusted Websites. I countered that kind of misses the point. The stream—be it Twiter, Facebook, or what have you—is simply a vehicle for directing attention elsewhere via short links and commenting on what is happening now. Those short links usually take you back to regular Websites or news articles, or even documents from years ago which all of a sudden are relevant once again. In that way, even events that happened long ago can be brought into the real time stream. It is like pulling an experience from deep memory and reliving it. The argument veered into the philosophical (Keen challenged me to explain the difference between consciousness and memory), but fortunately we didn’t get too far down that path before wiser minds stepped in. Before I knew it investor John Borthwick from betaworks and Kevin Marks (who just joined BT from Google) were on the line schooling both Keen and me.

Today Microsoft made Windows 7 available to their MSDN and TechNet service subscribers, and to help prepare you for the impending release, the company has also produced an official upgrade chart. (Click the image above for a closer look.)

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According to ZDNet, “the blue boxes are for custom (clean) installs; the green boxes mean you can do an in-place upgrade.” Granted, a chart’s better than nothing, but folks (like ZDNet’s Ed Boot) are also calling it out for being altogether confusing; in fact, Boot created a simplified version (click through to ZDNet to see it) that cuts out whole rows and gets straight to the point. Take a look at one or both for a closer look at what your upgrade path will entail.

For example, using the service’s newer historical data feature, you can see before and after pictures of the region. The results are pretty stunning. This feature is available on some 200 of these sites in the region. All of this data is available in the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth. And Google is urging people to visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum Memorial website to find out more about what you can do to take action about the atrocities in Darfur.

Microsoft Blunders with a Confusing Windows 7 Upgrade Chart [ZDNet via Gizmodo]

While talk has seemed to die down in recently months about Darfur after the election cycle made it a hot-button issue, it remains a very serious situation. And it’s good that Google is using its long reach to keep the spotlight on it. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. WEB NEWS

Google Steps Up Its Darfur Genocide Coverage In Google Earth [TechCrunch] AUG 06, 2009 07:07P.M. WEB NEWS

Office.com: Microsoft Gets a Killer Domain Name [Mashable] AUG 06, 2009 07:06P.M.

As an online entity, Google is constantly evolving and improving its products. Some updates are silly, but some are far more serious and meant for good. Its update today to Google Earth to expand its Darfur coverage, is the latter. Using data from the U.S. State Departments Humanitarian Information Unit and working with the United States Holocaust Museum Memorial, Google now shows more than 3,300 villages (yes, entire villages) that have been decimated during the genocide. Google notes that while the numbers have been known for some time, actually seeing the decimation in more detail than ever before provides a clearer understanding of the devastation.

As we reported last month, Microsoft Office is set to move to the Web in 2010, offering users browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. However, it hasn’t been exactly clear where that software might live in the vast world of Microsoft websites. Currently, office.microsoft.com is used to promote the company’s desktop Office software, while officelive.com is where Office Live (Microsoft’s desktop-to-web sync tool) users go to sign-in and access

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their documents online. Now, however, it looks like Microsoft has landed a killer domain name for their full online office suite: Office.com.

• Software Pricing: Are We Doing It Wrong? • Techie Jeff Atwood suggests that the App Store’s relatively low software prices might be pointing us in a new, more profitable direction for pricing our software. [Coding Horror]

According to the blog istartedsomething.com, the domain name for Office.com was transferred to Microsoft on August 4th – just two days ago – from a European company called ContactOffice group. Sure enough, WHOIS records now indicate the domain name belongs to Microsoft, and the current Office.com site alerts ContactOffice customers that the company is in the process of moving to ContactOffice.com. No official word yet from Microsoft that they plan to use the domain name for the web-based version of Office 2010, but it would seem like a safe bet (though the company does have a tendency to come up with bizarre and confusing product names).

WEB NEWS

Digg Ads To Begin Testing This Week [TechCrunch]

Tags: microsoft, microsoft office, office.com

AUG 06, 2009 06:50P.M.

WEB NEWS

Remains of the Day: The Bing Jingle Edition [For What It’s Worth] [LIfehacker[For What It’s Worth]] Digg has just announced that it’s going to begin rolling out Digg Ads, the site’s innovative and experimental advertising product that invites users to vote on which ads they like best, over the next week. Digg first announced the new advertising product in June, and they were briefly spotted in the wild in July, though Digg claimed at the time that the ads were limited to an internal test. Digg plans to roll the product out gradually over the next few days to a small subset of users, with plans for a larger deployment over several months.

AUG 06, 2009 07:00P.M. Kevin talks all about lists with radio station WNYC, coffee shops get impatient with Wi-Fi-loving loiterers, and Bing gets an absurd new jingle. • The Bing Jingle Winner is… • Bing ran a contest soliciting users to submit their own Bing jingles, and the winner is... the insane video above. [Bing Blog]

Here’s how it works: the more upvotes an ad gets, the less advertisers have to pay, giving them an incentive to produce content that will appeal to the Digg userbase. At this point it’s too early to tell how the ads will fare (there’s a chance Digg users will just launch a bury brigade whenever they see one), but if the screenshot below is any indication they stand a fair chance at being a hit — I’m sure plenty of Digg users would jump at the chance to get a cheap Three Keyboard Cat Moon shirt, and there are plenty of other memes that sites like Threadless could capitalize on. Likewise, I’d imagine electronics companies could see good traffic by promoting discounted video games and equipment.

• Life Hacking 101 • Kevin talks all about lists with the folks at WNYC. [WNYC] • No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users • Are your local coffee shops cracking down on your Wi-Fi mooching habits? [WSJ] • Opera Working On Full Android Browser • Opera Mini is all right, but a full-on version of the browser is eventually coming to Android. [Phandroid] • Who’s to blame for MacBook’s poor battery life under Windows? • Windows 7 on your MacBook doesn’t look like it’ll be any less of a battery drain on your laptop battery. [Computerworld]

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something to behold: not only does it carry basic virtual meeting features such as demo support and video chat, but it has an array of features that make it a useful virtual workspace. At first, Team Apart feels like your standard virtual meeting tool. The key feature is the ability to have coworkers or business partners in your room via webcam, audio, or chat. There’s also of course a screencast feature (essential for demos) hidden behind the premium pay features of the service. But then Team Apart starts to differentiate itself. The tool comes loaded with workspace features. For example, the notebook feature allows team members to collaboratively add notes in real-time, ones everyone can see as they are built. This is great for brainstorming, transcribing a meeting, or outlining. Another useful feature is the whiteboard, which allows teams to collaboratively draw and sketch. Chat features also permeate the Team Apart program, and that only touches on the major features. They’ve produced a video which highlights some of the others:

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It still has limits though. Right now, it only supports 4 people in video chat. It’s also still new, so scalability may be an issue. Regardless, holding conferences and team meetings without installing software? We like. WEB NEWS

Invites: Team Apart is launching in beta as it tests its scalability. But for the first 100 people to sign up through this link, they will have beta access to the Team Apart application.

Team Apart Makes the Virtual Meeting Social [Invites] [Mashable[Invites]]

Tags: teamApart, y combinator

AUG 06, 2009 06:31P.M.

WEB NEWS

Me Vs. Cookie Bottom: I Win. [TechCrunch] AUG 06, 2009 06:04P.M.

There is a lot of software out there for conducting virtual conferences and performing demos: GoToMeeting, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, WebEx, and AdobeAcrobat Connect immediately come to mind. Most of these programs though require software to be installed and are meant for conference meetings rather than team collaboration. They’re not virtual workspaces. Enter Team Apart (formerly Meetcast), a Y Combinator-funded startup that is now launching its free, web-based workspace application. And it is

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WEB NEWS

How Do You End Your Emails? [Reader Poll] [LIfehacker[Reader Poll]] AUG 06, 2009 06:00P.M.

As many of you have seen, the Internet entity known as “Cookie Bottom” took exception to my ripping apart of his Bing jingle last night. In response, he made a video attacking me, while at the same time proving just how right I was. As I told him, that video was much better than the Bing one, and maybe he should have submitted that. Still, it was war. And I’m happy to announce that I have won.

We’ve been told that “Best” is a brushoff and highlighted a few other “inappropriate” email signoffs, but apart from what various people say we should use, we’re curious: How exactly do you end your emails?

Cookie Bottom’s Twitter account has been suspended for what I can only assume is a complete and utter lack of taste. In music, in clothing, in humor — take your pick. Anways, I guess I don’t even need to do a response jingle. I win.

We got a lot of feedback in the comments of our recent post on the subject, but to make things a little more measurable, we want to put the question to you poll-style. So:

[Just to be clear, I actually have no idea why Twitter has suspended his account. Maybe he was behind the DDoS attack today...I kid, I kid.]

What’s Your Most Common Email Signoff?(answers)

Update: And it looks like my nemesis makes a stunning recovery. I have never seen a suspended account reinstated that fast. I smell a conspiracy.

I realize there are a lot of different forms of each of the valedictions listed above, so pick the closest approximation to what you use if it’s available. (That is, if you close with “Thank you,” “Thanks so much,” etc., choose the “Thanks” option.) If your closing isn’t listed, then hit “Other” and enter in what you do use. If you’ve got more to say on the subject, let’s hear it in the comments.

Update 2: Actually, it looks like someone hacked his account. Hope that wasn’t our fault — sorry Cookie Bottom. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hacked. [thanks for the tip tanacea] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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WEB NEWS

Digg Ads Are Here: Will Users Bury Them Into Oblivion? [Mashable] AUG 06, 2009 05:49P.M.

Prepare for the Digg Ad revolution … or revolt. Will Digg’s userbase embrace their favorite website’s attempt to monetize? Or will this plan get buried like a bad Twitter story? We’re about to find out. Be sure to let us know if you see them in the wild. Two months ago, Digg announced a lynchpin in its revenue strategy: Digg Ads. The program, an attempt to fix the company’s inability to turn a profit, allows users to vote on specific ads within the homepage feed. The more diggs, the less the ad costs to the advertisers. But if Digg users hate the ad, then their downvotes increase the ad price.

Reviews: Digg, Twitter Tags: digg, digg ads

It’s a system to made ads relevant to the user while giving them prime placement. Until now, however, it’s been under construction. That changes soon though, as we we’ve learned that Digg Ads are rolling out this week.

WEB NEWS

TechStars Incubator Hatches 10 New Companies [TechCrunch]

In a short announcement to the Digg community, the social news site stated that it’s implementing a limited rollout of the new advertising system in order to test and tweak the platform. Here’s what Mike Maser, Digg’s Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer, said:

AUG 06, 2009 05:22P.M. Editor’s note: The following report comes from Don Dodge, who blogs at Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing and is a business development executive for Microsoft. TechStarsis a startup incubator that selects 10 teams and provides funding of $18,000 per team, as well as free office space, operational support, and mentoring from investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders.

“Over the next few days, some of you will see Digg Ads appear in rotation in various placements throughout Digg. The ads will look and feel similar to the Digg content you see everyday – stories, video trailers, independent product reviews – but will be clearly marked as sponsored.”

TechStars has now been operating for three years. Three of the original ten companies from 2007 have already been acquired (SocialThing by AOL, Intense Debate by Automattic, and Brightkite by Limbo). Today, TechStars debuted ten new startups from their 2009 class in Boulder, Colorado. The teams presented today to about 150 VCs and Angel investors for the first time. These companies are about three months old and have two or three founder employees. Here are Don’s notes on each of the ten startups to present at TechStars today. (He also did this for us last year).

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similar to Wordpress. They have vanillaforums.org for open source, free download/use, and vanillaforums.com as a hosted service, but with upsells for things like domain name mapping, removal of ads, and single sign-on integrations. They should get a good bump in initial sales from the 300,000 installed base of free users, some of whom will be happy to pay for the additional services.

Next Big Sound – Measures the growth and popularity of music groups across major web properties like MySpace,Twitter, Last.fm, and others. Next Big Sound measures things like number of fans, number of plays, and comments. It’s best understood as a sort of Compete.com for bands. The company hopes to be the de facto standard for understanding band related metrics on the web. They currently track about 500,000 bands. They use the “Freemium model” with free basic accounts, and charge for premium services like more advanced reports, social media impact analyses, and other services. Current customers include Jason Mraz and about 30 other bands.

SendGrid - SendGrid is an email service that solves the problems faced by companies sending transactional outbound email (emails delivered by software applications such as sign up confirmations, shipping alerts, friend requests, and notifications). By using SendGrid instead of their current outbound email servers, companies can improve the delivery rates and solve scalability problems. SendGrid also solves many of the common problems faced by companies sending transactional email, such as CAN-SPAM compliance, link tracking, open rate reporting, and more. The company already has nearly 100 paying customers and has delivered over 100 million emails on their behalf.

Everlater - This company enters the crowded but very lucrative online travel space with a site that allows users to richly document their travel experiences. Users can upload stories, experiences, photos, and more directly to Everlater or the site can pull items in from external services such as Flickr. There is also an iPhone app that enables offline recording of travel experiences which can be synchronized and shared later. Each user and trip has a unique URL like this one that can easily be shared with friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Everlater also allows users to share their travel experiences offline by generating and sending postcards, printing scrapbooks, and photo albums.

Take Comics - Provides online digital versions of comic books. The company has relationships with comic book publishers and has technology which converts the print format into pixel-perfect digital formats optimized for desktop and mobile experiences. The comics themselves are visually stunning both on the desktop and on devices such as the iPhone. Comics can be purchased directly through the iTunes style application which also includes a variety of social features and content discovery mechanisms.

Rezora - An email marketing service specifically designed for the real estate market. It’s similar to Constant Contact, Vertical Response and many other similar services but it adds many real estate specific capabilities such as MLS integration and local real estate news feeds. The software is sold to agencies for use by their realtors and can track clicks to help realtors understand what properties, areas, and price ranges their clients are interested in. The company has already signed a major client with 1,100 agents.

Vanilla Forums - Vanilla is a popular open-source application that already powers over 300,000 discussion forums on the web. It’s been around for many years. Today, the company announced that it has released a greatly enhanced Version 2.0 of Vanilla both as open source and for the first time as a hosted solution . Vanilla has a business model

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communication patterns, then exposing that only to your most frequent and trusted connections. In theory this dynamic, current, and accurate social graph will expose the most efficient path to needed, trusted connections. The business model is likely to be something like LinkedIn, meaning advertising, and up-sells for premium services.

Retel Technologies - Provides video surveillance analysis for stores and restaurants. It uses security camera feeds to deliver interesting metrics and analyses such as table cleanliness, service times, and employee activities. Many companies have tried to use sophisticated techniques to process daily video streams from security cameras with varying success. What’s interesting here is that Retel has re-thought the process and delivers human tested results using paid micro-tasks on services like Mechanical Turk. This enables the company to deliver sophisticated reports that include data points such as male vs female ratios, instances of theft by employees, and other actions that only humans can get right. The company charges a flat monthly fee per camera for these services. Retel already has some national chains as early customers and is reporting that $550K of a planned $750K raise is already committed.

Spry - Spry provides insight into software development projects by monitoring all the tools and services used by a project team. Spry analyzes the data in real-time, generates progress reports, and enables clear and consistent communication throughout the team. This helps managers and developers make better decisions throughout the process thereby reducing the likelihood of failure and delay. What Spry is doing is analogous to the activity stream on Facebook, but based on the activity of the development tools and services used on a project. Spry is similar to 6th Sense Analytics which was acquired by Rally Software earlier this year. Spry will use the classic 3 tier (free, pro, enterprise) revenue model, with more features as you move up the scale. TechStars will also unveil nine additional new companies in Boston (this is the first year for the Boston version of TechStars) coming up on September 10th.

TimZon - Pronounced “Team Zone”, this service is billed as “the easiest way to share visual feedback” and is targeted at virtual teams and customer service organizations. The service allows you to record a visual message that can include screen images, audio, video, and whiteboarding /annotation., then easily share it as a URL. Because it requires no software to be installed in advance, this is an easy way for organizations to exchange complex visual feedback. The basic service is free to use, but TimZon provides paid packages for companies that want to systematically collect and organize visual feedback.

CrunchBase Information TechStars Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Mailana - Helps you share what really matters with the people who really matter. It analyzes your communication patterns from email, Twitter, and social networks to determine your inner circle. It then allows you to share your inner circle with the inner circles of your close connections. The idea here is that existing social graphs are too inclusive to be used to efficiently discover connections and expertise. Mailana aims to simplify this by implicitly generating only your “inner circle” based on actual

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