Ajax Girl

Rupert Murdoch and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe announced some of their plans around the MySpace Platform (rumored since last week) this evening at the Web 2.0 conference during a Q&A with John Battelle.

The platform is clearly a response to, and will eventually largely mirror, the Facebook Platform, which launched in May and has led to the creation of thousands of third party applications on Facebook. MySpace is taking a staged approach to the launch, however, which may help them avoid some of the growing pains that Facebook has had to deal with over the summer.

New privacy controls were also discussed this evening. More details on each below.

MySpace Platform

Key facts on the MySpace Platform:

• In the next couple of weeks MySpace will release a directory of existing third party widgets to help users find good content to add to their MySpace page.
• In the next month or two, MySpace will launch a proper platform. As we mentioned in our previous post, will essentially be a set of APIs and a new markup language that will allow third party developers to create applications that run within MySpace. Developers will be able to include Flash applets, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets in their applications, and access most of the core MySpace resources (profile information, friend list, activity history, etc.). Unlike existing widgets on MySpace, developers will be able to access deep profile and other information about users and bake it into the applications.
• Advertising can be included on the application pages (called control pages) and developers will keep 100% of the revenue. Ads may not be placed within widgets that appear on MySpace pages, however.
• Platform applications will not be available to all MySpace users right away. They’ll have a beta period that includes just 1-2 million MySpace users who’ll be able to access the applications. After a beta period applications will be available to all MySpace users.

New Friends Options and Privacy Controls

Like Facebook, MySpace will soon allow the notion of different types of friends (family, friends, business contacts, etc). When accepting someone as a friend, you can also set the friend type. When that person visits your MySpace profile, the information they see will be based on the type of friend you are - resume type stuff for business contacts, drunken frat party antics for your college friends, etc.

Photo credit: Dan Farber

Update: In response to a question, Murdoch said News Corp. should generate $5 billion or so in ebitda next year “if the economy half holds up. He then said MySpace should contribute “$200-$300 million” of that.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171409440/

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Akismet, has acquired blog avatar provider Gravatar.

Gravatar offers a “globally recognized avatar,” a 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows users from weblog to weblog, appearing beside their name when they comment on gravatar enabled sites.

Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg wrote on the Gravatar blog that Gravatar was facing “classic problems of scale” that Automattic was capable of handling. Effective immediately all Gravatar premium features are now free, and refunds are available to anyone who purchased a premium package in the last 60 days. Gravatar support will now be available to WordPress.com users and will be integrated into all WordPress.com templates.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171399959/

Hewlett-Packard wants you to print as many digital photos and other content from the Web as possible. To that end, it bought Boston-based startup Tabblo last spring because of the software it developed to ingest any Web content on one end and spit it out in printable form on the other. Today, Tabblo announced a bunch of deals it’s been working on since it was acquired, including partnerships with Disney, Flickr, Windows Live Space, and the Graffiti Application for Facebook.

With Flickr, for instance, you can use Tabblo to create albums, posters, or photo cubes. (Flickr has a similar deal with Blurb around photo books). Facebook artists proficient at Graffiti, can now print out their creations as posters as well. And 13-year-old fans of Disney pop star Hannah Montana will be able to create concert memento books combining glam shots with their own photos. Tabblo splits the revenues from the $30 books or other printed products with its partners. If you print it yourself, it’s free (but HP still wins if you use an HP printer).

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171388637/

Ben and I are sitting in a Sun briefing where Ken Russell of Sun is announcing that they have ground up rewritten the Java plugin in the browser. The features of the rewrite are:

• Improved scripting support (java/javascript integration is better)
• Improved reliability
• Supports more powerful applets (applets can ask for more memory)
• Better windows vista support (signed applets)
• Enterprise features (run one applet in a particular JRE version)

This will be released via a Java 6 update beta and they will have the new plugin turned off by default, and you will be able to turn it on via a switch in the Java control panel. It has been tested in IE 6, 7, Firefox 3 alpha, and they are hoping that Mozilla back ports the fixes to Firefox 2.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/171380493/sun-has-rewritten-the-browser-java-plugin

Telephone directory service has gone through a massive upheaval over the past year. Jingle Networks was able to take about 6% of the market and a patent with their Free 411 service. However, what started with Jingle Networks has exploded to a wider field of competition including heavyweights like Google and AT&T. But now, rather unceremoniously, Microsoft has finally gotten into the mix by launching their own free directory service, Live Search 411, this week. The announcement was mixed in with a few other notes about visual enhancements across their maps services. In contrast, Google has been visibly promoting their effort.

The free 411 service, Live Search 411, is a mobile service developed in partnership with recently acquired TellMe. You can get the service on any phone by dialing 1-800-CALL-411 (1-800-225-5411).

Like GOOG 411 users can get local directory service. All you have to do is say the city and state, then ask for the business or category to hear a list of options. However, the two services differ in their details. Live Search 411 also offer other services, such as movie times, weather, and traffic info. Like Google, internet enabled phones can have the results text messaged to them with a link to a map, but no directions. For those of you with realllly old phone, Dial Directions is a service that can write up these directions and send them over SMS.

They also differ in some smaller ways as well. Live Search prompts the user for input more often than GOOG 411, which assumes a lot of responses unless the user says otherwise. Live 411 lets you search by city district as well, which is useful if you want to find a restaurant around where you live. I found the voice recognition on both services to be equal, with both failing for names of some Italian restaurants I searched.

The fight between these well financed services will likely be a long one, and no one’s making any money yet.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171401503/

Nokia officially announced its latest pocket computer, the N810. It’s got a full slide-out keyboard, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, the works, and is due out next month for $479. Nokia has more like this coming. It now thinks of the phone as a computer, and its goal is to sell it not just to geeks and early adopters but to the mass audience as well. The N810 is its latest step in that direction. Crunchgear has more photos.

The real news, though, is around Nokia’s efforts to build its Ovi platform. Ovi is a set of APIs that Nokia is using to create mobile Web services for its phones, including the N810. And it wants other developers to do the same. So it is supporting Ovi in its developer tools that 3.5 million mobile-phone programmers are already using today. The race for the mobile 2.0 development platform is on.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171355696/

We are sponsoring an event hosted by VideoEgg called App-Camp 2007 that will take place this Saturday in San Francisco.

The event is not a conference but a more casual gathering like BarCamp where attendees will have the opportunity to discuss the impact of open platforms like Facebook on consumer behavior. Developers, media, and marketers will also discuss the business opportunities created by open platforms and will focus on four areas: driving traffic, monetization, understanding user behavior, and developing applications for advertising and marketing.

App-Camp is free but space is extremely limited, so you’ll need to put your name down on a waiting list soon if you want to attend. Find more information about the event from VideoEgg press release or the event’s blog.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171362729/

There’s been a lot of speculation over the future of the music industry and the conversation has begun to shift from “Can they sell DRMed music” to “Can they sell music at all”. Last week Radiohead ran one of the biggest tests of legally distributed free music by letting users name their price for “In Rainbows”, their latest album.

However, free doesn’t seem cheap enough. Despite the potentially free download, over 240,000 users got the album from peer to peer BitTorrent networks on the first day of release, according to Forbes. Since then, the album was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day, totaling more than 500,000. By comparison, Radiohead pushed 1.2 million sales of the album through their site, including pre-orders. File sharing networks are expected to surpass legal downloads in the coming days.

While the numbers may seem drastic, it’s really more a tale of how late to the game the music industry has been. Piracy networks have been growing over the past couple of years, despite the industry’s declared “war” on illegal file sharing. The networks have grown into easy-to-use distribution methods for digital music — even easier than what Radiohead offered. Users could easily grab “In Rainbows” while downloading music from other artists. Radiohead couldn’t be as compelling by only offering their own music and requiring users to take the time to set up an account.

But Radiohead doesn’t have that much to be sad about. The band gets to keep all the proceeds of their digital experiment and has distributed about six times more albums than their last release, which sold 300,000. That seemed to be enough to get EMI thinking harder about changing. Forbes obtained a email form EMI’s chairman saying “The industry, rather than embracing digitalization and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, has stuck its head in the sand. Radiohead’s actions are a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy.” So it seems there’s still hope yet that those legal war chests will be put to use on some innovations.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171348913/

We’ve heard that Shasta Ventures put $3.5 million into LinkedIn competitor Doostang, adding to the million or so that they raised previously in an angel round.

The service, which we first covered over two years ago, is a job site and social network where new users have to be invited by someone currently on the site. That keeps growth small, but the site has been known for having very high end jobs and job candidates.

So far, Doostang has no revenue model - everything is free. But that’s changing from what we hear. No details yet, but I’d expect users to be able to generate fees from recommending friends for jobs (an activity that is already encouraged on the site).

Currently Doostang has just over 300,000 registered members and 4,633 jobs listed. Get your invitation to Doostang from InviteShare here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171344520/

I’m at the Web 2.0 conference for the next few days. First up to the stage today was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He neither confirmed nor denied any of the recent rumors about Facebook taking a big investment stake. He was just coy. Here are some highlights from the Q&A:

Q: “How’s the financing going?”

Zuckerberg: “It’s going well. We’re almost wrapped up.”

Q: “Are you selling yourself short at $15 billion?”

Zuckerberg: “We’ll see.”

Q: How’s the [advertising] deal with Microsoft going?

M: “I think we’re both happy.”

Q: “Do you want to build an advertising platform for Facebook, as well as a syndicated version of that?”

Zuckerberg: “You know, we are just getting started. In three months will be a better time to talk about that.”

Q: “In this culture it is said when you take money, at some point you’ve got to bring in a grown-up to run the company. Can you comment on that?”

Zuckerberg: “There is nothing to comment on. . . . The way we have thought about that is just developing a really good team.”

Zuckerberg has already mastered the technique of saying nothing, while still hinting at the endless possibilities before him.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/171340075/