Ajax Girl

LinkedIn is now offering RSS feeds for network updates.

The feature allows users to track updates and connections across their LinkedIn network via their favorite RSS Reader. For example the feed shows when people in your network connect with other people, make recommendations or update their LinkedIn status.

As Ben Barren points out, it’s a handy way of keeping up to date for those who live in their feed readers “because if its not in my google reader it doesnt exist to me, so now I’ll see what people are doing.”

Access to set up the feed on LinkedIn here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/260034840/

Figures released by the Newspaper Association of America show that the decline of newspapers is more rapid than previously thought, with total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunging 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006, the biggest drop in revenue since 1950, the year they started tracking annual revenue.

Online provides some solace for the dead-tree business, with internet ad revenue growing 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006, but a rate significantly lower than the 31.4% growth the year before, and not even close to replacing the loses from print. Online revenue now represents 7.5% of total newspaper ad revenues.

Newspapers do have a future, but as I wrote in November, we are yet to see a major consolidation of print in the United States. Declining revenues will ultimately force consolidation across print media in the United States, and many of those that fail to embrace change will be on borrowed time.

(via E&P)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/260010171/

Google is currently hosting controversial film about Islam Fitma.

The film has made tech headlines after Network Solutions suspended the site the film was to debut on, then Live Leak was forced to pull it following serious threats against the company from Muslims unhappy with the film. Live Leak’s explanation video above.

The film, ripped from Live Leak, is now available on Google Video here in full, and can also be found on YouTube. Warning on the film: there are graphic scenes in it.

What Google does now will be an interesting test for a company that claims “do no evil” as its company mantra. The video is hosted in the US, and we presume with part or full support of the creators of the film negating any copyright considerations, so ultimately it will be up to Google to decide between free speech and global jihad.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/259995873/

Scottish game developer Realtime Worlds has raised $50 million in a third round of financing led by Maverick Capital, says a source with knowledge of the deal.

The company previously raised nearly $33 million in capital from CIM Fund and NEA. We’ve also heard that Montgomery & Co. were advisors on the deal.

Realtime Worlds is behind a number of game titles on a variety of platforms, including Mobile Forces, Crackdown and the upcoming All Points Bulletin.

Montgomery & Co. is an extremely busy dealmaker these days. They are also reported to be working with Meebo on a big new round of financing, as well as doing mergers and acquisitions work for a number of well known startups. They also represented Club Penguin in their $700 million sale to Disney in August 2007.

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/~3/259926856/

The ten millionth article has been written on Wikipedia - a Hungarian biography of of 16th century painter Nicholas Hilliard (English version here).

Those ten million articles have been written across 250 different languages, Wikipedia says. English is still the most popular language on Wikipedia, with 2.3 million articles (they reached 2 million English articles in September 2007). After English, the next most popular languages are German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

See here for an article count by language.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/259897261/

As European startups prepare to march en masse to The Next Web conference in Amsterdam next week, the European tech scene is still feeling buoyant, whatever the global economic outlook. Certainly that was the feeling at Plugg in Brussels last week, a conference I chaired, and where the startups presenting were all now showing an increasing quality, in contrast with perhaps a few years ago. According to new data, 2007 was a bumper year for tech company exits - but reality has bitten in 2008, and there remains a debate amongst VCs about whether we are in a slump or a market correction.

TechCrunch people are starting to make a habit of chairing conferences in fact, as our own Eric Schonfeld will be doing just that at Next Web. To give him and you a heads-up, I’ve prepped a short outline about the companies presenting. And if you’re going, be sure to say hi to Eric and I. In the meantime, here’s a roundup of news from this side of the pond:

• Last.fm expanded in Germany and plans to “scrobble” video/TV as well as music… more

• XING, the European business social network competing with LinkedIn hit revenues of $30.98 million and the member base increased to nearly 5 million … more

• 100 Euro Tech startups were picked out for the Red Herring’s annual European competition… more

• The Guardian newspaper hired Matt McAlister, currently the director of Yahoo’s developer network to begin building a development platform… more

• Zemanta launched its alpha for blogging on acid… more

• Facebook’s UK figures bounced back after the holiday period… more

• 3i re-terated that it was exiting from early stage in Europe… more

• IBM started a Cloud Computing Centre in Dublin… more

• We reviewed Intruders.TV, Europe’s answer to FastCompany.tv… more

• Video startup BlinkBox inked a deal with FreemantleMedia… more

• France’s Wikio RSS news aggregator launched in the UK… more

• EU startups competed at the Plugg conference… more

• Myrl launched a Web-based virtual world… more

• Spinvox raised $100m (as story we broke) … more

• Isango raised $8 million for its ‘travel experiences’… more

• WAYN.com looked like it was on the block again… more

• CloudMade raised €2.4m to supercharge open source maps… more

• WeLoveLocal sold a majority stake to a local radio group… more

• Pointlessly, EU taxpayers were forced to fund a $306m Google rival… more

• We reviewed Forkd - a social network for recipes… more

• 20 UK startups are to visit Silicon Valley in April - come meet them… more

• The Russian government to buy YouTube clone for $15m… more

• Scott Rafer joined Polldaddy… more

• Google had strong European growth… more

Elsewhere:

• Online video viewing stats tripled in the UK… more

• UK real estate startup Zoopla! got off to a cracking start… more

• European mobile Internet users will triple, reaching 125 million by 2013… more

• Russiona search player Yandex questioned Google’s claim to dominance in Russia… more

• UK startup Reevoo received funding from a French VC firm… more

• The EU officially endorsed DVB-H for handset TV video… more

• Apple appears to be waiting for 3G iPhones before launching in Spain and Italy… more

• Behavioural targeting firm Phorm has been branded ‘illegal’ by a policy group amid further criticism of the company’s plans to track users via their ISP… more

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/259851385/

One of the great flameouts of the 1990s tech boom was Kozmo, which started in Manhattan, and let you order a pint of Ben & Jerry’s online and a Kozmo bike messenger would deliver it to your door. After burning through $280 million in capital, they closed shop. Well, now New Yorkers have Wakozi. It just launched and only covers Manhattan wine shops, liquor stores, and delis. But they’ve learned from the failure of Kozmo. They don’t actually deliver anything themselves. Instead, they only list inventories of shops that make their own deliveries. Founder Rob Rizzo explains the concept:

Through our site, you can order virtually anything that you would find in a bodega, deli or wine shop and get it delivered to you in less than an hour. So if you want a bottle of Chardonnay or a six-pack late at night or if you’re partying with friends and need another bottle of Belvedere, you can now get it without leaving your apartment. We don’t hire delivery guys or stock any of our own inventory—instead we work with the stores in your neighborhood who already have all the stuff you want and can get it to you the fastest. Right now we’ve got stores in every neighborhood in Manhattan and we’ve initially knocked out what we think everyone cares about most: booze

So this is really a lead generation site for local businesses. (For another approach to tryingto reinvent the Kozmo model, see our coverage of LicketyShip). Wakozi’s site is built entirely on Adobe Flex and lets you drill down into the inventory of your local wine shop. Once it loads, the user interface is fast enough, but the developers chose a faded look for the Website that is hard to read (or is that just Flash?). And the initial loading time is pretty slow. You have to wait again when you click through to an individual store as it loads up what it has in stock. Also, the only information presented is the inventory on the shelves and the price. For wines, you can sort by region or type in search terms. But there is no other information that would help you make a purchase of a wine you’ve never heard about before, such as tasting notes. If you know what you want, this is fine. If you want to try something new, you are better off walking to your local wine store and asking for advice.

A search near my office in downtown Manhattan yielded nine participating stores. I just ordered a bottle of Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin from Gramercy Wine & Spirits about an hour ago. Let’s see if it can get here before I leave my office.

Update: My wine has arrived, exactly an hour and a half after I ordered it. I am a very happy customer, although I’d be happier if they could get the time down to under an hour. Now, I’ve got some more important research to do. (Where’s that corkscrew?)

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/259851386/

We learned yesterday that Warner Music, the third largest music label, is gunning for a $5/month music tax on U.S. residents.

Some of the details were in the article: they’ve hired industry veteran Jim Griffin to create a new entity around the project, presumably to get other labels involved. Griffin threw out the idea of a $5/month tax (which would be added to people’s ISP bill), generating $20 billion/year in revenues. The tax won’t be mandatory, he implies. And he also said that it isn’t really a “tax”: “we have no such interest in government running this or having any part of it.” Griffin also talked about advertising subsidies for partners who don’t want to pay the fee.

Users who are paying the tax will be able to download music from the Internet legally, through all the normal channels (BitTorrent, other P2P networks, etc.).

Nothing he said is strictly untrue. But a source with knowledge of the project clarified a number of points for. Those details, combined with the vague outline provided by Griffin, show a scheme that is very similar to classic criminal protection rackets. We threw out that term to describe the scheme in our post yesterday as well - today, with these additional details, it seems to fit like a glove.

Here’s What They’re Really Planning: Pay Us Not To Sue You

The tax will not, in fact, be mandatory. But that is misleading - it won’t be mandatory for ISPs who provide Internet access to actual users. But if ISPs join the scheme, it will apply to all of their customers and be added to their bill as a surcharge.

Why will ISP’s agree to this? Mainly to avoid liability. The core of the plan is a covenant not to sue anyone who pays the fee. Griffin touched on this in the article, saying ISPs will want to “discharge their risk” around file sharing that occurs over their networks.

The rollout plan will hit colleges and universities first, who will simply add the fee to tuition bills so they won’t have to worry about getting dragged into lawsuits. Then Griffin will approach consumer ISPs. If an ISP joins, their users will not have the option of not paying, even if they don’t download music from the Internet. So, basically, the tax is only voluntary if you define avoiding it as not going to college, or using the Internet.

The advertising-supported option is likely a red herring to satisfy critics, and would be dumped before the project launches. It just isn’t feasibly to try to aim advertising at users who are downloading music from BitTorrent and putting it on their iPod. There’s no touch point to force advertising down their throat.

So the plan essentially comes down to telling ISPs that they can avoid any copyright infringement liability if they pay the fee on behalf of customers. And while the government wouldn’t be directly involved, the willingness of law enforcement agencies and the judicial system to enforce civil and criminal copyright infringement laws is the stick by which Griffin will convince ISPs to jump on board. It’s government endorsed extortion, nothing more and nothing less.

The effects on innovation in music would be disastrous if such a scheme were ever to become reality. It’s clearly good for the music labels, who are facing their imminent extinction. For everyone else, though, this is the worst possible thing that could happen.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/259738496/

The record labels love to sue Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com (sold to Vivendi in 2001 for $372 million) who now incubates a number of Web startups. One of them is MP3Tunes, which is billed as a music storage locker. But the record labels still don’t like it. EMI is suing MP3Tunes for copyright infringement and demanded that the service turn over the more than 100 million music files stored in all 125,000 MP3Tunes accounts. (The argument is that even if there is no sharing between lockers, users are transferring music to MP3Tunes, which is the same as distributing the music—a right only EMI has). A court in New York has denied that request, Robertson writes on his blog. Excerpt:

All access to a music Locker requires a unique username and password, and there is absolutely no sharing between Lockers. . . . MP3tunes strongly objected to EMI’s request, because it was both an invasion of user’s personal storage, and because it would create a huge technical and financial burden, with more than 300 terabytes of files in personal Lockers. Files are not MP3tunes’ possessions any more than the contents of a safety deposit box are owned by the bank that houses them.

No corporation should have the right to demand the content of tens of thousands of personal accounts be turned over to them. There’s no reason to suggest that the users are doing anything but listening to their own music collections in a modern manner. There are millions of Gmail accounts that have MP3 files stored in them � same with Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft’s email and hosting services. If EMI can gain unfettered access to wantonly look through personal accounts on MP3tunes those services will be next.

EMI is trying to eliminate online storage and take people back to a prehistoric time before Internet services existed.

It is a small victory that could be overturned by a higher court. But this court made the right decision. EMI shouldn’t be allowed to go on a fishing expedition. It needs to be a little more specific in its requests for data. After all, those 100 million songs are not just EMI songs. And this whole theory that transferring music from your computer to a personal online storage service is the same as redistributing that music completely ignores modern reality. But that is not surprising. The record companies are living in their own reality distortion field. After all, these are the same people who want to tax all Internet users for copyright infringement, even if you’ve never done any file-sharing in your life.

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/~3/259714427/

Very short stories

“We’ll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words (‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’) and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.”

“How I Blew My Google Interview”

“Another form of web literature is emerging: stories of job applicants rejected by Google (GOOG). Google makes all applicants sign NDAs, of course — can’t have future applicants boning up! — but unlike the standard Googleplex NDAs, these apparently don’t bar tales of office furnishings, candy banquets, and interrogators who look like Chewbacca.”

Revisiting “Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering”

“Simply reciting the various facts and fallacies feels like a zen koan to software engineering. Even without any of the background discussion and explanation in the book, it’s therapeutic to ponder the brief one sentence summaries presented in the table of contents.”

Ron Paul’s grassroots graphics movement

“What is intriguing about this fervent grassroots response is how graphic styles designed to appeal to a youthful constituency have been built around Representative Paul’s grandfatherly appearance. Even some of the stylized poster portraits look more like those found on souvenir T-shirts commemorating someone’s retirement, or ‘the world’s best dad,’ than a political icon. Nonetheless the passion behind such an outpouring of good, bad and kitschy art and design cannot be ignored. So I tracked down a few of the artists and asked them to explain their work.”

Visualizing Fitts’s Law

“I thought it would be nice to go over Fitts’s Law, a staple in the HCI diet, with a few visuals to explain both the concept and why it’s ideas are a bit more complicated than most would have you believe…The challenge of software application design is so complex and filled with so many variables, that blanket solutions derived from Fitts’s Law should be used cautiously.”

Faces in Places

A photographic collection of faces found in everyday places.

Thingology wonders why Getting Real and other Lulu books aren’t found in libraries

“Lulu’s most popular book, something about ecommerce, is held by NO library in WorldCat. The second, How to Become an Alpha Male, is held by just two. Let’s be clear, Lulu publishes a lot of crap! But it’s not all crap. And even if it were, publishers like Lulu represent a significant event in the history of publishing — an event libraries should be trying to capture. Lulu isn’t some obscure novelty — it already gets twice the web traffic of HarperCollins.”

Tactile keys for the iPhone

“My Touch Keys is a plastic shield that attaches to the front of your iPhone using static cling. The iPhone’s touch screen QWERTY keyboard keys are then outlined in plastic ‘dimples’ – allowing you to feel exactly where your fingers should be.”

Any creative art is all about ruthless editing

“Discerning what works from what doesn’t in the context of your own project is a tricky task. It’s one thing to say ‘if you don’t need it, get rid of it’ and quite another to realize what it means for your finished project to need or not need something, let alone having the balls to cut up your work.”

Top floor extended on Eiffel Tower

“In celebration of the 120th birthday of the Eiffel Tower, the top floor is being extended by bolting a new temporary structure onto it that will allow the top floor to accomodate a larger number of visitors.”

Adobe Photoshop Express

Adobe launches free online photo editor.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/937-sunspots-the-faces-edition