Ajax Girl

Recommendation Ventures, the company behind social music and video recommendations service Scouta has signed a new deal with EPG provider IceTV to provide intuitive content recommendations to IceTV users.

The new service, IceTV Recommendations will be provided to IceTV users as part of the IceTV EPG service. The service allows users to receive personalized suggestions and an opportunity to discover and record new TV shows. Suggested TV shows are displayed as an IceTV Recommendation using a separate icon within the IceTV electronic program guide, allowing IceTV users to easily locate and then select them for more information. From there users can set the recommended TV show to remotely record onto their compatible digital
recording device at home within a few clicks.

We mentioned Scouta’s move into white label recommendation provision back in March. The company has had some success with its core Scouta TV offering, but now sees its core business opportunities going forward as a backend recommendation engine provider for other sites.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/281868498/

eFORCE Global Inc. has acquired gBox, the music store that allows users to create embeddable “Wish Lists” and buy songs as gifts for friends.

eFORCE is a provider of professional eBusiness services with a focus on RoI. Under new ownership, gBox will continue to offer its music store and wishlist widgets, which we covered last year. gBox will also begin to offer a whitelabel version of the widget that will allow major online brands to label and sponsor these wishlists.

The details of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but it is reported to have been a cash and equity deal (more equity than cash). gBox lauched in 2007, and is headed by Tammy Artim, Rajen Bose, Elmar Jakoby, and Saji Johnson.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/281808467/

Big sport has comes out against Google’s WiFi 2.0 plan by arguing that use of white space spectrum will cripple sporting events by interfering with wireless headphones.

The Sport Technology Alliance, representing the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the PGA Tour, and ESPN is calling on the FCC to require that technology companies wanting to sell wireless whitespaces devices to prove that their devices don’t interfere with wireless headphones (wireless headphones already operate in white spaces). Ken Kerschbaumer, executive director of the Sports Video Group made the following colorful argument:

We are deeply troubled by the crippling disruption and harm that portable devices will cause to live sports events. These devices could knock out wireless communications systems like headsets used by coaches and officials, microphones used by referees to announce penalties and calls, and microphones used by journalists to conduct interviews with athletes and coaches...Any interference caused by wireless white spaces devices would seriously impair US sports event programming, affecting hundreds of millions of sports fans – denying them full enjoyment of these events. Without a doubt, sports fans will be the real losers here if the FCC fails to protect wireless microphones.

The group specifically targeted Google’s proposal, arguing that it is flawed as the plan would place the burden on existing wireless microphone users, requiring them to purchase and install “beacons” which would jam white space device transmissions.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/281791657/

Free music equals serious web traffic, at least that’s what Coldplay have found with the free release of “Violet Hill” on their website April 29.

According to figures release by Hitwise, the Coldplay website shot to the top of the rankings in the Bands and Artists category, with 52% of visits to the site coming via an email sent to registered fans. Exclaim News reports the single was download 600,000 times in the first 24 hours.

One song doesn’t make a revolution, and we’ve already seen experiments from other bands including Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead (the latter being a poorly executed publicity stunt). This sort of traffic does demonstrate some sort of tangible benefit for Coldplay, and therefore in favor of offering music for free. In Coldplay’s case they also insisted that those wanting the free single had to provide an email address, post/ zip code and country of origin; given just shy of 50% of those visiting the site for the free music weren’t registered fans, that’s around 300,000 new Coldplay fans now registered at the site (and still growing), 300,000 people Coldplay can now market albums, concerts and merchandise to.

See some of Michael’s posts here and here on the death of the paid music industry.

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/~3/281771917/

Rollyo founder Dave Pell is taking another stab at the search engine space with his just-launched news/media aggregator Addictomatic.

The site can act as both an RSS search engine for user-submitted queries, or a constantly updated newsfeed for pre-defined topics including politics, gossip, and music. Addictomatic pulls headlines and images from a number of RSS feeds and presents them in small boxes similar to those found on iGoogle and Netvibes. Stories are drawn from a number of big-name blogs, news, and media sites, but there is currently no option to add your own favorite site to the list (though there are plans to add this feature).

Addictomatic sports a very clean and manageable layout - a necessity given the amount of information it throws at you. Users can add, remove, and rearrange the location of each headline feed, and layouts can be saved by simply creating a bookmark. The site is also offering plugins to integrate Addictomatic into browser search fields.

My biggest issue with the site is the apparent lack of any kind of relevance algorithm. Everything comes straight from RSS feeds based on your search query, without any kind of filter to weed out bogus results. This means that a search for “James Bond” yields stories on investing and Pac-10 sports (though to be fair, the majority of the headlines usually have at least partial relevance). That said, Addictomatic does a remarkably good job at presenting vast amounts of information without becoming overwhelming.

At this point, Addictomatic provides a great way to get a quick overview of a topic. The inclusion of topical pages also makes Addictomatic something of a destination site, particularly for users who prefer not to manage their own RSS feeds to keep up on current events.

Competitors to Addictomatic include popurls and Alltop. Dave Pell’s last project, Rollyo, is a custom search engine that lets users specify which sites should be included during a search.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/281771918/

A Federal Court found today that AOL, Real Networks and Yahoo owe $100million to songwriters and composers as back payment for streaming music online.

The court ruled on a request from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to establish reasonable compensation for the playing of their works. Notably ASCAP represents writers and composers and not the record industry, so the request for money is on top of any existing licensing agreements with the RIAA and its constituent members.

The court found that “reasonable license fees” are owing from AOL, RealNetworks, and Yahoo for the music streamed and distributed from their sites, retrospective to 2002, at a cost ASCAP counts at $100 million.

Unsurprisingly, ASCAP was happy with the decision:

“The Court’s finding represents a major step toward proper valuation of the music contributions of songwriters, composers and publishers to these types of online businesses - many of which have built much of their success on the foundation of the creative works of others,” said ASCAP President and Chairman and Academy Award-winning lyricist, Marilyn Bergman. “It is critical that these organizations share a reasonable portion of their sizable revenues with those of us whose content attracts audiences and, ultimately, helps to make their businesses viable. This decision will go a long way toward protecting the ability of songwriters and composers to be compensated fairly as the use of musical works online continues to grow.”

The Digital Media Association, a trade organization representing online streaming and music providers, said that the are not opposed to compensating composers and writers, but object to the model imposed by the court, with demands companies hand over 2.5% in part of all revenue as compensation, not just revenue from the music services themselves.

(in part via CNet)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/281764654/

The DataPortability Project has gained another adherent in Digg, which announced on its blog today that it has implemented three under-the-hood enhancements.

These include implementation and improved support for XFN and hCard, which help other sites access information about your friends on Digg. The site has also added RDF to make its pages more semantic web friendly.

Digg joins Facebook, Google, Plaxo, Six Apart, LinkedIn, and Microsoft in its welcome decision to support DataPortability. But one has to wonder where its enthusiasm for the related OpenID movement has gone.

In February 2007, Kevin Rose said that Digg would begin adopting OpenID by the end of that year, but we haven’t seen any action on that front. Let’s just hope Digg doesn’t remain in the wrong camp for much longer.

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/~3/281759136/

Khris Loux, the CEO of startup JS-Kit, thinks he’s finally come up with the killer widget. JS-Kit has all sorts of widgets used by blogs and other sites for ratings, reviews, polls, and comments. But the latest one he just launched is not just gee-whiz cute. It’s gee-whiz disruptive.

It is called the JS-Kit Advisor. And it will bring ratings and reviews from trusted sources such as Experian and JD Power to businesses and product listings across the Web. The first data partner to go live is Experian, which is known for its consumer credit scores. But Experian also keeps financial and other background-check information on 22 million local businesses across the country. For instance, Experian powers ContractorCheck.com, its own Website where consumers can buy $10 background-check reports on local general contractors. But now Experian is taking some of that same key information and giving it away for free in JS-Kit’s widget.

A local listings site could install the widget and then anytime someone looked up a contractor, the widget would pop up and show them if the contractor’s license is expired, how much they are bonded for, and whether they have any liens or judgments against them, as well as their credit and bankruptcy history. “In other words,” says Loux, “all of the information that a bank uses to judge you, the consumer—the consumer can now use to judge a business, prior to clicking through.”

A green check means the contractor can be trusted, a red X means keep looking. The widget does not give the full details of a report, but enough for a consumer to know whether to steer clear of a certain contractor. Loux explains the concept:

I want to make sure the guy is not a dirt bag. This will bring more data around the point of the transaction. If a guy has a green check mark, he can grab it and show it off. The guy with the red check will hide the fact that he is a dirt bag and try to do marketing and SEO stuff. Those who are winners will win more and those who are scumbags will die faster.

It’s good marketing for Experian, and maybe it will end up selling the more in-depth reports to banks or those contractors with a red X next to their name who want to see how it got there.

But isn’t all that marketing and “SEO stuff” how directories and local search engines make money, by selling ads to those guys? “Web publishers will start competing using the truth,” responds Loux, always the idealist. Yet business directory sites like MojoPages and Spoke are already working to integrate the background-check widgets into their listings. If bigger sites like Yelp or CitySearch ever followed suit, unscrupulous contractors would have nowhere left to hide.

You can try it here by clicking on each contractor’s name in the simplified listings at left. The top one has a green check, the bottom one has a red check. When the widget pops up, click on the different tabs for more information.

The idea behind this widget goes way beyond exposing Experian’s data, although that is pretty awesome in and of itself. The widget can have many tabs, each with a different source of data. Loux has also struck a deal with JD Power to provide product review summaries, and with FamilyWatchDog to incorporate its health records for restaurants, product-recall information, sex offender listings. He has hopes for convincing more companies to add their data for job listings and other categories.

At this point, Loux’s widget is disruptive only in its potential. But if he can get it adopted by both enough data and listings providers, he argues that it could start to impact everything from search to banner ads.

Everyone wanders around on the Web in a dog pattern. You start at Google, look around, and go back. And every time you go back to Google they go, “Ka-ching!” This is the promise of Web 2.0 that has not been delivered yet—these fine connections. It is a big threat to PageRank and the inefficiency of Internet advertising, because everything you want is at you fingertips.

PageRank will no doubt survive the onslaught of Khris Loux and his widgeteers. But he does raise a compelling point about the power of widgets to distribute information to people where they need it. And the idea of spreading information from trusted sources across the Web to counter the (mis)messaging of marketers and vocal users who might happen to be wrong is also something that more Websites should think about doing.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/281752131/

Online backup site Mozy is giving away 50 free year-long accounts to commemorate the official release of their Mac backup client.

To get yours, send a message to techcrunch@mozy.com that answers the question, “Why do you deserve free backup service for your Mac?” Data-loss horror stories are encouraged. The Mozy team will select the fifty best responses and will email the winners instructions to claim their free accounts.

Mozy is a cloud-based alternative to Apple’s Time Machine, which works very well but doesn’t have the added security of off-site data backup. And at $4.99 a month for unlimited storage, the price is couldn’t be much lower.

We covered Mozy’s Mac version last April when it was introduced as beta. The final version of the software has introduced support for Apple Mail and Leopard, along with a host of technical features like bandwidth throttling and compatibility for programs with resource forks.

In addition to local backup solutions like Time Machine, Mozy faces competition from online storage sites such as Apple’s .Mac, Sugarsync, and recently-released Syncplicity. Carbonite, one of the leaders in this space, works on Windows machines but has yet to release a Mac version.

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/~3/281745520/

I love reading about little changes that make a big difference. The airline industry seems to be a great example.

This article talks about how American Airlines made some small changes to save a lot of fuel:

For instance, pilots were instructed to taxi around the airport with only one engine turned on, a measure that would save about $4 million a year…

And today I saw an article about how airlines are starting to fly slower to save fuel. JetBlue has been flying slower for two years (JetBlue adds an average of just under two minutes to each flight, and saves about $13.6 million a year in jet fuel). Southwest and Northwest are experimenting with it now:

Southwest Airlines started flying slower about two months ago, and projects it will save $42 million in fuel this year by extending each flight by one to three minutes… On one Northwest Airlines flight from Paris to Minneapolis earlier this week alone, flying slower saved 162 gallons of fuel, saving the airline $535. It added eight minutes to the flight, extending it to eight hours, 58 minutes.

It’s a good reminder that while big changes can have a big impact (like American Airlines grounding some of their Super 80 gas guzzlers), sometimes little tweaks (like flying slower) can have a big impact too. Always keep an eye out for the little things. There’s usually a lot of low hanging fruit.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1008-little-tweaks-huge-impact