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Footnote has taken the initiative to digitize all 58,000 names inscribed into the Vietnam War Memorial. It has also correlated them with military personnel records from the National Archives and made this information searchable from within an interactive Flash application.

The project started by hiring a National Geographic photographer to take over 2,000 high quality photos of the wall. The company then stitched them together, indexed the names, and pulled out information about each person from two major national databases: one for casualties and one for personnel. The whole process took about four months to complete and the end result is being provided for free.

If you want to find a particular name, you can run a simple keyword search. You’ll be shown key facts such as the person’s rank, grade, specialty, and casualty date. You can also search for names that conform to certain criteria such as enlistment type, race, hometown, casualty date, squadron, and much more.

The main intention of Footnote, which launched in January 2007, is to digitize original source content in its original form. Most of the content comes from the National Archives and therefore remains in the public domain, but the company charges a subscription fee for access to most of it.

CEO Russ Wilding says he also wants the service to become the “world’s shoebox” where people upload their own historical materials, and then annotate, manage and share them with others.

Expect Footnote to digitize other memorials from around the globe such as the ones at Ellis Island and Pearl Harbor.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/258106370/

As we reported yesterday, Peerflix is to close its core DVD sharing/ swapping business April 23. Since then we’ve heard reports from users who are having problems cashing out their Peeflix accounts. Here’s what one reader received:

The Peersafe Protection Program will also be terminating effective April 23, 2008 meaning that you will no longer be able to make any Peersafe claims starting April 23, 2008. So, if you have DVDs that you have been holding on to but were planning to send at some point, now?s the time! If your Trade Cash account balance is greater than $10 and you would like to cash out your remaining Trade Cash balance, you must do so before April 30, 2008. To request a cash out of your Trade Cash, please log in to Peerflix.com and click My Account in the upper right corner, then click the My Cash tab and then click on the Request Cashout button and follow the indicated steps. As of April 30, 2008 you will no longer be able to request any Trade Cash payments from Peerflix and your Trade Cash will immediately expire and be forfeited. All cash out requests remain subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Peerflix Service Policies and will be charged a $10 processing fee.

Closing a service and charging users $10 to cash out is a little rough, but not only that they’ll have to wait as well. After following the process, they received this message:

Please note that requested amount is not removed from your cash account until the request processed. Cashout requests are processed and paid approximately 45 days after the end of the month in which you made the request. You will receive a confirmation notice when your request is processed and your payment is on the way. If you do not have the necessary funds in your account at the time payment is made, you will receive the remaining balance, but under no circumstances will we issue disbursement for less than $10.

45 days from the end of the month would place the transaction due date as mid May, 3-4 weeks after Peerflix is due to cease trading. As the reader commented, it “doesn’t sound good.”

For a company wishing to continue (in another form) as an ad network, leaving your existing customers empty handed isn’t going to create a lot of goodwill going forward. Peerflix burnt through $10 million in funding received over two rounds from 3i Group, Battery Ventures and BV Capital.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/258106369/

Political campaign season is upon us and that means one thing: really bad political ads on TV. There are 50,000 public elections every year in the United States. And an estimated $3 billion will be spent on political TV ads alone in 2008. Spot Runner wants to get in on the action, and maybe even raise the quality of the ads a little, by turning its self-serve TV advertising platform over to politicians. Today it is launching a political section of its site, where both national and local political campaigns can create TV ads for as little as $500 and run them in highly targeted cities and even neighborhoods. It has also assembled a high-powered political advisory board that includes former Senator Bill Bradley and political strategists Mike Murphy, Dan Schnur and Bob Shrum.

Spot Runner so far has focused mostly on making it easy for local businesses and national franchises to buy TV ads on both cable and network TV. To keep costs down, the company shoots different ads which can be modified by each customer, and lets them target the ads by neighborhood. The ad selection and media planning is all self-serve and automated over the Internet. Now the company wants to help level the playing field in political campaigns, especially local ones that may not have as much money for TV ads. CEO Nick Grouf tells me:

One reason we started Spot Runner was during the 2004 campaign we found out you can do better targeting using TV than the Internet. The two big barriers were the cost of creating an ad, and challenges around the fundamental media buying and planning that need to occur.

He believes Spot Runner has begun to solve those challenges. To start with, Spot Runner has created 22 generic ad templates that can be further modified, which cover issues ranging from taxes and education to immigration and leadership. Campaigns add video images of the candidate and tweak the script any way they like. Spot Runner will record the voiceovers. And if new footage needs to be shot of the candidate on the campaign trail or working hard in Congress, Spot Runner can supply the camera crew (in January it purchased GlobeShooters, a network of about 1,500 video professionals).

And then when it comes time to pick where to show the ads, Spot Runner has developed a sophisticated media map of the U.S. that lets campaigns target ads by age, gender, income levels, voter affiliations, and even history of campaign contributions. A campaign manager can choose to run the seniors ad in older neighborhoods and the education reform ads in neighborhoods with a lot of young families. Spot Runner also lets campaigns create fund raising ads that can be e-mailed to supporters.

To get a sense of what these ads look like, here is an ad for Peter Tesei, a Republican in Greenwich, Connecticut who won a recent local election for Selectman:

Here is the generic ad before it was customized:

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/258079807/

A local search engine just launched on Facebook. It is called Loladex and you can’t do searches on its Website, only on Facebook. That is because it taps into your friends’ recommendations to rank results.

The underlying search engine is based on 16 million local business listings, and is licensed from Localeze. It also brings in restaurant information from OpenTable. Loladex adds a voting and notification layer on top of that, allowing you and your social network to vote results up and down or ask each other for advice.

Founder and CEO Laurence Hooper, an AOL refugee who worked in the Yellow Pages, search, and digital city group there, explains how Loladex works when you search for a local business:

If your friends have been there before, you will see recommendations they have made. If they have not, you can request recommendations from your friends. It sends a notification via Facebook. Then that recommendation will be available to all their friends.

In this way, Loladex hopes to create a customized search engine for just you and your friends. For each result, it tells you if your friends have rated it up or down, if anyone two degrees away from you have rated it (friends of friends, aka “My Other Sources”) , or if anyone in Loladex at all has rated it (aka, “Other Loladex Sources”). Anytime someone rates something, they can also leave a comment. It is a more refined Yelp, in that people you know have more influence on results than people you don’t.

Like all Facebook apps, Loladex will only become useful once a lot of people adopt it and start rating things. It only works the way it is intended if all your friends add the application (otherwise it just gives the default Localeze results). Given all the other local search engines and rating sites out there, it is going to be an uphill battle. But if social search is going to work, it has a better chance as an app inside an already existing social network where people’s friends are already hanging out. (Loladex will release apps for more social networks besides Facebook in the summer).

Loladex has two employees: Hooper and another ex-AOLer, Dan Goodman. It is funded with $350,000 of Hooper’s own money.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/258036102/

Google has recommended a no vote against two shareholder proposals to be put to their annual general meeting May 8 that relate to free speech and human rights.

Proposal 4 comes from the The Office of the Comptroller of New York City and St. Scholastica Monastery. The Office of the Comptroller of New York City is the custodian and trustee of the Retirement System of NYC Teachers, Police, Fire Deparment and Education System. It reads:

Internet Censorship

Whereas, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights, and free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”, and

Whereas, the rapid provision of full and uncensored information through the Internet has become a major industry in the United States, and one of its major exports, and

Whereas, political censorship of the Internet degrades the quality of that service and ultimately threatens the integrity and viability of the industry itself, both in the United States and abroad, and

Whereas, some authoritarian foreign governments such as the Governments of Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens attempt to obtain, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States such as Google, that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States have failed to develop adequate standards by which they can conduct business with authoritarian governments while protecting human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression,

Therefore, be it resolved, that shareholders request that management institute policies to help protect freedom of access to the Internet which would include the following minimum standards:

1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.

2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.

3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures.

4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.

5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.

6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

Resolution 5 comes from Harrington Investments and calls for a Google Board Committee on Human Rights:

4.7 COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

RESOLVED: To amend the Bylaws, by inserting the following after section 4.6:

Section 4.7. Board Committee on Human Rights. There is established a Board Committee on Human Rights, which is created and authorized to review the implications of company policies, above and beyond matters of legal compliance, for the human rights of individuals in the US and worldwide.

The Board of Directors is authorized in its discretion consistent with these Bylaws, the Articles of Incorporation and applicable law to (1) select the members of the Board Committee on Human Rights, (2) provide said committee with funds for operating expenses, (3) adopt regulations or guidelines to govern said Committee’s operations, (4) empower said Committee to solicit public input and to issue periodic reports to shareholders and the public, at reasonable expense and excluding confidential information, including but not limited to an annual report on the implications of company policies, above and beyond matters of legal compliance, for the human rights of individuals in the US and worldwide, and (5) any other measures within the Board’s discretion consistent with these Bylaws and applicable law.

Nothing herein shall restrict the power of the Board of Directors to manage the business and affairs of the company. The Board Committee on Human Rights shall not incur any costs to the company except as authorized by the Board of Directors.

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

The proposed Bylaw would establish a Board Committee on Human Rights which would review and make policy recommendations regarding human rights issues raised by the company’s activities and policies. We believe the proposed Board Committee on Human Rights could be an effective mechanism for addressing the human rights implications of the company’s activities and policies as they emerge anywhere in the world. In defining “human rights,” proponents suggest that the committee could use the US Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as nonbinding benchmark or reference documents.

Google, Yahoo and other US companies operating in China have come under heavy attack over the last 12 months for operating within the boundaries of local law where those laws are not aligned with Western ideals. Google’s stance against proposals such as these will not win the Mountain View search giant many fans in the human rights movement.

(in part via Barrons)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/257968400/

Facebook Senior Platform Manager Dave Morin gave the afternoon keynote talk today at the Snap Summit in San Francisco.

He revealed (or in some cased confirmed speculation around) a number of interesting tidbits about the Facebook business and upcoming products:

1. Morin said Facebook Chat will launch next week. When the chat product was confirmed on March 18, Facebook would only say it would be launched “in the coming weeks.” Morin would not give a more specific launch date, so until we hear otherwise, the outside date is Saturday, April 5. See a video demo of chat here.
2. Morin answered a question about whether Facebook would continue to give preferential treatment and bend rules designed to improve the user experience to revenue partners, as they did with the CBS March Madness application. Despite heavy user and developer backlash, Morin’s answer was “I can’t say it won’t happen again.”
3. Morin said that the $10 million fbFund, set up by Facebook, Accel and Founders Fund, has now gone through two rounds of reviews with application developers and has made some investments (he wouldn’t say how many). He said that investments were between $25,000 and $250,000, with the average at $200,000.
4. Someone asked if Facebook has any intention of supporting the OpenSocial standard for developers. He said they might in the future “if it becomes interesting.”
5. Morin confirmed rumors that Facebook would be rolling out a payment system to allow developers to collect payments directly from users, sometime in the next 90 days. No additional details were given.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/257928772/

Citigroup has raised its Yahoo price target to $34/ share based on their belief that Microsoft will revise its takeover offer.

Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney said in a research note that “We believe that a Yahoo sale to Microsoft — at a price higher than the initial $31 bid is the most likely outcome” and that the limited combined market share of the combined companies would raise no significant issues with Government regulators.

Infoworld on Mahoney:

Mahaney said Microsoft is unlikely to walk away from the deal because it has yet to make significant inroads in the area of online advertising, especially against market leader Google, despite efforts to do so for the past three to four years. The only way Microsoft could compete with Google would be to acquire Yahoo, the analyst said.

Yahoo shares closed at $28.73 Tuesday, up 4.4%.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/257928774/

Man… I just adore simple solutions like Muxtape. Here’s a sample muxtape for reference.

Dead simple, absolutely clear, quenches a common thirst (sharing a collection of songs with a friend), can’t-mess-up easy (username, email, password then upload MP3s). For a tiny touch of personality you can change the color of the strip at the top of the screen.

I imagine this could get shut down, but I love the exercise in simple execution. There are so many ways this could have been complicated. Muxtape’s elegance demonstrates the power of sticking to the point.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/933-muxtape-beautifully-simple

Here’s a video match made for the Web. Revision3, the video playground of Digg founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, is teaming up with Blip.tv to syndicate all of its shows. That includes Diggnation (shown above with hosts Alex Albrecht and Rose), the GigaOm Show, Web Drifter, and Tekzilla. Some of these shows are already popular, especially Diggnation. And they are distributed in many ways—through Revision3″s Website, through iTunes, as embedded videos. By signing this deal, Revsion3 expands its reach to Blip.tv’s audience.

Blip.tv has done a good job of finding and highlighting the best original Web video shows, including Wallstrip, Alive in Baghdad, Rocketboom, and (back in the day) The Show with Ze Frank. So Revison3 will be in good company. Blip.tv sells advertising against the videos and splits the revenues with the producers, so it is incremental revenue for Revsion3.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/257868671/

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Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/257868672/