Welcome to Technology News

What Twitter brings to the party

Autor admin | 29.04.2008 | Category Internet News, Social networking, Web 2.0

To this point, I have avoided getting into the conversations weighing the value and future of Twitter, FriendFeed, and the latest generation of community communications services. They clearly represent an evolution of instant messaging and the triumph of the feed.

Twitter is an early adopter service (see Kara Swisher’s post) and hasn’t yet caught on with mainstream Web users. The Twitter population is a rounding error compared with Web mail or Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger

But Twitter adds a new dimension to instant messaging beyond its SMS-like 140-character constraint with the concepts of following and followers, enabling a kind of broadcast model.

In July 2007, Dave Winer described Twitter as “a network of users, with one kind of relationship: following.” He also called it a micro-blogging system with a “relatively open identity system.”

Steve Gillmor describes Twitter as creating a social graph of who you follow that intersects with the social graph of who follows you.

“The asynchronous nature of follows creates both a star system and an equal opportunity for anyone to get involved,” Gillmor said. “You can build your own sphere of influence. You can create a microcommunity that links up with other microcommunities that forms an expanding circle of influence. If I say something and Scoble replies, his complete orbit doesn’t follow but they see we are talking [Tweeting], so I get a bunch more follows. The net result is my sphere is increased by the addition of more strong followers.” The APIs have made Twitter more extensible and viral, such as flowing Twitter into Facebook status pages or FriendFeed.

Winer just posted some data, taking into account the number of followers and number of posts, and coming up with an indicator of what he dubbed the amount of noise or “spew” issued by a person using the Twitter transport.

It’s not exactly a measure of influence (more an indicator of overall reach), but it can be a huge number. In Winer’s calculation, Robert Scoble has the most followers on Twitter, with 21,310, and 10,713 Tweets, which multiplied together yields 228,294,030 potential impressions. (It would be less given the ramp up in followers and Tweets but still a big number.)

In this context, Twitter is a highly efficient way to share, discover, and market ideas. My journalist/blogger friends have taken to Twitter broadcasts of their posts, and on occasion I have Twittered live events, broadcasting my notes and observations to followers, who receive it in real time or for later consumption. You can also “Track” keywords to follow people or concepts without signing up to follow them. “It creates a public/private scenario where discoverability and special social interactions can happen,” Gillmor said.

Where is Twitter heading? First it has to get a more stable infrastructure. The company is taking on additional funding of $15 million to $20 million which should help in the scaling up department. With the new funding, Twitter will likely start adding new features. The danger is in messing with the simplicity of the service, but it seems inevitable if you look at how instant-messaging applications evolved. Below is a look at where Twitter came from and where it might end up in the next year or so.

Jeff Clavier (an investor in Seesmic which recently acquired the Twitter app Twhirl) views Twitter as a “quick return on the attention investment”:

This micro-chunking of the information - the arbitrary limitation to a few tens or hundreds of characters in a world of Gigabit networks - drops the time commitment barrier to a couple of minutes tops. Most people can’t commit large chunks of time to read/write/comment on blogs, but everyone has a couple minutes to spare a few times a day… not too far away from a phone or a computer. Offering broad access on the web, on the phone, one message at a time or through applications, in real time (even if you are not pushing it like Scoble does) or in batch mode, allows time (and CPA ?) challenged users to get a quick return on the attention investment they choose to make at any point during the day.

Twitter adds to the overflow of information, but if you find the right people to follow, or lead, it does offer a good ROI for the time spent consuming 140 characters at a time.

CNET News.com

Saudi blogger freed after 4 months jail: colleague

Autor admin | 27.04.2008 | Category Internet News

RIYADH - A Saudi blogger detained without charge for more than four months after expressing pro-reform opinions has been released, a colleague said on Saturday.

Fouad Farhan was detained in early December after running an online campaign over 10 men arrested since February 2007 on suspicion of financing militant groups, but whose supporters say they are being punished for pro-democracy activity.

“I spoke to him and he’s in good spirits. He said he was treated really well,” said Ahmed al-Omran, who published the news on his website (https://www.saudijeans.org).

“It was surprising. After blocking his website, I thought his detention would go on longer. It’s good news.”

Saudi authorities blocked Farhan’s website (https://www.alfarhan.org) earlier this month.

An Interior Ministry spokesman was unable to confirm Farhan’s release. The ministry had declined to say on what charges he was arrested, but said it was not security related.

Saud Arabia, a key U.S. ally, has no political parties or elected parliament, and many Web forums calling for reforms have been blocked by the government.

An Islamist preacher was detained for nearly two weeks in 2006 for an Internet article that criticized government ministers.

Reuters

PC makers find ways to extend XP’s life

Autor admin | 27.04.2008 | Category Microsoft, Windows

Facing a June 30 deadline to stop selling PCs with Windows XP, the world’s largest computer makers are getting creative.

Taking advantage of the “downgrade rights” offered as part of the Windows Vista license agreement, Hewlett-Packard and Dell both plan to offer machines loaded with XP well beyond June.

Technically, the computers will be Vista Business or Vista Ultimate machines that have been factory downgraded to XP at the customer’s request. In practice, they are more like XP machines that come with an already paid-for upgrade to Vista when and if the customer chooses to do so.

HP said it plans to continue selling the “pre-downgraded” desktops, notebooks, and workstations to its business customers until July 30, 2009. Dell is already pitching the same option on its Web site and promising the models will stick around long after it stops taking standard XP orders on June 18. Other computer makers tell CNET News.com they are still exploring what to do but also want to sell XP beyond June 30.

There are limits to the approach being taken by HP and Dell. Only the Business and Ultimate flavors of Vista come with downgrade rights, meaning consumer machines can’t be sold in a similar fashion.

While companies can offer pre-downgraded machines via their Web site, things get a little more complicated when it comes to buying a PC at retail stores. It may be possible for customers to buy such a machine, but just how this will work–and if stores will offer such an option–is not totally clear. The tricky issue is that, to stay within Microsoft’s terms, the customer has to somehow “request” the XP downgrade.

All of this prompts the real question: Why won’t Microsoft just extend the deadline? The company’s rationale that customers and computer makers aren’t demanding a longer life for XP seems to be increasingly implausible.

Kevin Kutz, a director in Microsoft’s Windows unit, said that the downgrade-rights option meets customer needs.

“While (computer makers) continue to see large numbers of customers making the transition to Windows Vista, there are some pockets–like small business–that need a little more time,” Kutz said in a statement. “And from what we’ve heard from our partners, the downgrade rights option fulfills that need.”

The pre-downgraded PC option is just the latest way that PC makers have responded to stronger-than-expected demand. After shifting largely to Vista after its January 2007 mainstream launch, Dell and others quickly began adding more XP options in response to customer requests.

For some time now, computer makers have been selling machines with an XP recovery disc as a downgrade option.

Lenovo, for example, plans to keep offering an XP recovery disc with some Vista models through January 2009, according to InformationWeek.

The latest twist is the machines, like the ones HP and Dell will sell beyond June 30, that have Vista rights but contain XP pre-installed.

As for whether a broader reprieve might yet come for XP, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has left the door open a crack.

“XP will hit an end-of-life,” Ballmer said in Belgium recently, according to Reuters. “We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments.”

CNET News.com

Yahoo kicks off re-wiring project

Autor admin | 26.04.2008 | Category Microsoft, Yahoo

Yahoo users will soon have one place where they can manage all the services they use on the popular website.

The company has begun a mammoth re-engineering project that will unify the disparate services Yahoo runs.

It hopes the project will transform the site into a vast social network where Yahoo users can quickly find and communicate with each other.

The project should also aims to make it easier for web developers to use Yahoo data and services for their own ends.

Monkey magic

“We are literally in the process of rewiring Yahoo from the inside out,” said Ari Balogh, chief technology officer at Yahoo in a speech at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

By re-engineering its internal workings it hopes to tear down the walls between its web sites and services so each user only has to visit one place to view and manage everything they do at Yahoo.

Yahoo has built up its online presence using both home-grown services and by acquisitions. Recently it has bought photo-sharing site Flickr, bookmarking site Del.icio.us and social calendar site Upcoming.

Mr Balogh said the changes would give users more control over how much information they share and make it much more straightforward to set up ad-hoc social networks with friends and family.

“We are not building another social network,” said Mr Balogh. “We are building social into everything we do.”

Charlene Li, vice president and senior analyst at Forrester, said: “My hat goes off to Yahoo that they have been able to execute this in a very difficult and stressful time for them on a strategy that I think is potentially very interesting.”

One of the first results of the unification project is Search Monkey which opens up Yahoo’s search technology to developers and users.

Yahoo is providing information so developers can call on the search engine and users can tune their sites to appear high up in keyword results.

The re-engineering project is part of a larger strategy, dubbed Y!OS (Yahoo Open Strategy) that is due to be unveiled in late 2008.

The announcement came two days before the expiration of a deadline set by Microsoft for Yahoo to agree to a merger. Microsoft has threatened to mount a hostile takeover if Yahoo refuses the offer or does not respond.

BBC

EBay sues Craigslist ad website

Autor admin | 23.04.2008 | Category COMPANIES, Internet News

The online auction giant eBay is suing the popular internet community ad site Craigslist to “safeguard its four-year financial investment”.

In a statement, eBay claimed that in January, Craigslist executives took actions that “unfairly diluted eBay’s economic interest by more than 10%”.

No details of those actions were given by eBay.

In its company blog, Craigslist said it was surprised and disappointed by eBay’s “unfounded allegations”.

The company said eBay’s legal action “came to us out of the blue”.

The case, which is sealed, has been filed in a court in Delaware, where Craigslist is registered.

In a press statement, eBay claims that Craigslist’s founder Craig Newmark and its chief executive Jim Buckmaster adopted unspecified measures in January that have disadvantaged eBay and its investment.

Preserve our investment

EBay’s general counsel Mike Jacobson said: “Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions.

He continues: “We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay’s stockholders and preserve our investment.”

Craigslist, the seventh most popular English-language page on the Web, hit back in a blog.

“We have always treated eBay fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development,” it said.

“EBay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened - unless a hostile takeover of Craigslist, or the sale of eBay’s stake in Craigslist to an unfriendly party, is their ultimate goal.”

Uneasy relationship

The relationship between Craigslist and eBay has not always been an easy one.

Online auction site eBay acquired a 28.4% stake when it bought shares from a former employee who had been given equity by Mr Newmark.

Mr Newmark and Mr Buckmaster give away for free most of the services that Craigslist provides.

They have always appeared to have little ambition to milk profits from the popular site, which offers everything from houses for rental to nannies for hire.

A year after the deal was completed, eBay, which had said it wanted to learn from Craigslist, started Kijiji.com, a rival international network of classified ad sites that now sells ads in all 50 US states.

BBC

Microsoft’s Tellme launches BlackBerry voice search

Autor admin | 23.04.2008 | Category Microsoft

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp.’s Tellme subsidiary launched an application for the BlackBerry on Tuesday that lets people speak commands into their smart phones to search for businesses, look up movie times, check traffic and make other queries.

Once users download the program, they can push on their phone’s green "talk" button and say either the name of a business, type of business, or the keywords "weather," "movies," "traffic," "map" or "driving directions."

Using GPS, the system figures out where the user is located and delivers nearby results from Microsoft’s Live Search engine to the smart phone’s screen, along with links to call, get directions, buy movie tickets and other related actions.

The program only works on some of Research in Motion Ltd.’s newer BlackBerry models. Tellme, which Microsoft acquired in 2007 for $800 million, said versions for Helio, Windows Mobile and Apple Inc.’s iPhone devices are in the works.

The Tellme program’s launch comes just weeks after Yahoo Inc. unveiled a new version of its mobile search system, oneSearch 2.0, which includes voice search and is also designed to work with certain BlackBerry models.

"People are getting more frustrated with the fact that these cell phones are getting smaller and smaller, but more and more function is getting crammed into them," Mike McCue, founder and general manager of Tellme, said in an interview. "To try to get anything done — navigate through all these menus — it takes time. To try to do that while driving, walking, on the go, is very challenging."

McCue said his team hopes to add sports scores, train schedules, voice dialing, text-message dictation and other functions to the service in the future.

He also said that while Tellme’s technology is separate from Microsoft’s Sync system, which lets drivers use their voice to control phones, music players and other devices in some Ford car models, the two experiences will become much more similar.

The application was launched on the BlackBerry first, instead of Microsoft’s own platform, because of BlackBerry’s support for the Java programming language, according to McCue.

The system is advertising-free for now, but eventually, ads will be incorporated, according to Dariusz Paczuski, a senior director at Tellme.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Tellme’s voice technology also powers AT&T and Verizon’s 411 directory services, as well as automated customer service systems used by companies including Domino’s Pizza and American Airlines.

On the Net:

http://www.tellme.com/

Yahoo sidesteps the big questions

Autor admin | 23.04.2008 | Category Yahoo

Yahoo reported solid earnings for its first quarter, but by completely sidestepping discussion of the big Microsoft acquisition issues, the company left more unresolved than resolved.

The company had solid revenue growth, expressed cautious optimism about weathering an economic downturn, and modestly beat analysts’ profit expectations. Chief Executive Jerry Yang issued lukewarm metaphors: "Our results this quarter demonstrate we are on the right track. We are pursing the right strategy, and it’s beginning to bear fruit."

And in after-hours trading, the company’s stock was essentially flat.

I’d say "Ho hum," but the stakes are too high right now. Unfortunately, Yahoo didn’t show any of its cards.

Yahoo’s financial results didn’t carry an implicit conclusion, either. They weren’t so bad that Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Yahoo for $31 a share looks generous or so great that Yahoo shareholders will laugh off their suitor.

"The results, being neither fish nor fowl, presented a pretty clear outcome," said Gartner analyst Allen Weiner. "I think they’re at that critical juncture where the best shareholder value they can give people is the $31 per share Microsoft has offered."

On a conference call to discuss the results, company executives stuck closely to a standard earnings script without advancing the discussion regarding the big issues:

• Selling to Microsoft. "Our board and management team continues to be open to any and all alternatives including a sale to Microsoft," Yang said, but, "We will not enter into any transaction that does not recognize the full value of this company."

• Partnerships such as one reported possibility to acquire AOL in exchange for an investment from Time Warner that could be used to repurchase Yahoo stock. The company is "expeditiously exploring a number of strategic alternatives," Yang said.

• A partnership to test Google’s search ads alongside Yahoo’s search results, a move that could increase the revenue per click that advertisers pay Yahoo. Yahoo gave passing mention to the test but said, in effect, "Stay tuned."

Given that Yang had no big news to announce, he had to walk a fine line on the conference call. He didn’t want to throw in the towel to Microsoft, and he couldn’t declare that Yahoo now has got Google running scared. And addressing touchy issues can open a can of worms during the question-and-answer period.

But just as there are consequences for saying something injudicious on the conference call, there are consequences to playing it too straight. If it wants to fend off Microsoft, Yahoo has to prove to its shareholders that its alternatives are real.

For example, sharing some preliminary results from the Google ad test could have helped advance the discussion about just how real some of the company’s alternatives are. Analyst estimates accord 9 cents to Google for each ad clicked to 4 cents at Yahoo, so a partnership could be financially important.

Yahoo lost an opportunity to seize the initiative by rebutting Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer’s latest take on the acquisition: "I wish Yahoo all the success with its results, but it doesn’t affect the value of Yahoo to Microsoft."

Instead, Yahoo merely reported earnings. For seizing the initiative, I guess we’ll have to wait for Ballmer.

News.com

Microsoft sues over brand in Dutch programme curbing kids on Internet

Autor admin | 21.04.2008 | Category Internet News, Microsoft

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Software company Microsoft said Monday it is suing a company run by a Dutch mother because it had started using a Microsoft domain title in computer programmes aimed at curbing children’s use of the Internet.

"Microsoft has filed suit against Unicaresoft Corporation for violation of intellectual property rights in using our MSN brand," said a spokesman for Microsoft’s Netherlands interests.

Unicaresoft Corporation is headed up by 46 year-old Carola Eppink, a mother keen to restrict her children’s use of the Internet.

"We filed suit to prevent the use of MSN in the name of the product and in the domain names on the Internet," the Microsoft spokesman said.

Unicaresoft Corporation began earlier this month marketing its software programme enabling parents to limit the time their children spend surfing and in chatrooms.

The programme also helps parents to check out Internet sites which their children have been visiting or to filter out groups of words received in email reception boxes.

Unicaresoft Corporation originally named their product MSNLock, but changed it to Benzoy. "We gave up the idea because Microsoft put pressure on us," said Gerard Ghazarian, a partner of Eppink.

"I don’t get it," Ghazarian told AFP. "There are thousands of Internet sites using MSN, for example pornographic or sex sites on webcam, and Microsoft is not suing them."

"We’re only trying to protect our children," he stressed. "We’re all Microsoft customers, one might expect them to have our interests in mind, but all they see are their business interests at stake, because (our programmes) will limit the amount of time spent by children on MSN."

An initial court civil hearing is set for Wednesday when a judge is expected to focus on domain names bought by Unicaresoft Corporation mentioning MSN in order to market Benzoy.

Yahoo

Facebook asks users to translate new versions for free

Autor admin | 19.04.2008 | Category Internet News

TOKYO - The three-year-old social networking phenomenon Facebook, worth more than $15 billion by many estimates, got a good deal on going global.

Its users around the world are translating Facebook’s visible framework into nearly two dozen languages — for free — aiding the company’s aggressive expansion to better serve the 60 percent of its 69 million users who live outside the United States.

The company says it’s using the wisdom of crowds to produce versions of site guidelines — especially terms specific to Facebook — that are in tune with local cultures.

"We thought it’d be cool," said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif. "Our goal would be to hopefully have one day everybody on the planet on Facebook."

Coolness aside, and many users are embracing the idea, other social networks aren’t "crowdsourcing" translation. The move is generating mounting criticism online, where some users question whether amateurs can produce good translations. Critics complain of sloppiness and skimping, even as Facebook says it is improving service in an innovative way.

The concept of collaborative translation is familiar in open-source programming communities. But Facebook’s effort — as it builds sites in Japanese, Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and Dutch to join versions in Spanish, French and German that launched this year — is among the highest-profile attempts to harness users’ energy to do work traditionally handled by professionals.

The Spanish-language version has taken a particular beating for grammatical, spelling and usage problems throughout.

Ana B. Torres, a 25-year-old professional translator in Madrid, Spain, called the translation "extremely poor," citing "outrageous spelling mistakes" such as "ase" instead of "hace" (for "makes" or "does") and usage of the word "lenguaje" for "language" rather than the correct "idioma."

Other critics say Facebook just wants free labor.

Valentin Macias, 29, a Californian who teaches English in Seoul, South Korea, has volunteered in the past to translate for the nonprofit Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia but said he won’t do it for Facebook.

"(Wikipedia is) an altruistic, charitable, information-sharing, donation-supported cause," Macias told The Associated Press in a Facebook message. "Facebook is not. Therefore, people should not be tricked into donating their time and energy to a multimillion-dollar company so that the company can make millions more — at least not without some type of compensation."

Facebook points out that it has spent considerable resources building the translation program. Olivan said it’s not soaking users but including them in the growth of the network — and possibly attracting new ones.

"If the goal is to save money, we’re doing the wrong thing, because we are basically spending our most valuable asset, which is engineering time," he said.

He said that Facebook relishes being different from competitors and that users are helping the company produce versions in numerous languages as quickly as possible.

Just one-fifth of the world’s Internet population actively manages profiles on a social network, said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster Inc., which has recently shifted its focus to capitalize on its strength in Southeast Asia.

"It’s still a bit of a land grab," he said. "So there’s plenty of growth to be had in the world, and we’re focused on that, and certainly other social networks I’m sure are as well."

Friendster recently launched a beta version in Vietnamese, adding to its lineup of versions in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian. It plans to keep introducing a new language every month or two.

Setting the pace, however, is industry leader MySpace. The News Corp. subsidiary has 200 million registered users worldwide and 29 country-specific and regional sites and more on the way.

Its global push, which began in early 2006, appears to be paying off. Between June 2006 and June 2007, its number visitors worldwide age 15 and older jumped 72 percent to 114.1 million, according to Internet research firm comScore Inc.

In the same period, however, Facebook’s global traffic surged 270 percent to 52.2 million users, according to comScore — even though it had yet to launch its first foreign-language site.

As it enters each market, MySpace hires a dedicated team, said Travis Katz, international managing director. Contractors perform the initial translation, which the local MySpace team tweaks to ensure it fits the market, he said.

"The translation in and of itself is not very expensive," Katz said. "The thing that’s challenging is getting the cultural aspects right and making sure that the site is culturally relevant and doesn’t feel like an invader from Silicon Valley landed."

Friendster’s Jones said his company also uses third-party translators.

"As interesting as it might be to get your users to chip in and help out on that, we could do it faster ourselves and very consistently, quite frankly, across the language, across the entire site," Jones said.

More than 100,000 users have installed Facebook’s translation application. Nearly 10,000 helped translate the French, Spanish and German sites — the Spanish version in less than four weeks and the German one in two weeks.

The process involves translating a glossary of basic Facebook terms, translating text strings throughout the site, voting on each translation and then "testing and verification."

Some users, like Murat Odabasi of London, are spending hours each day translating Facebook. Responsible for 14,910 winning words and 1,938 winning phrases, Odabasi held the No. 2 spot among 391 translators on the Turkish leaderboard as of Wednesday.

Odabasi, 24, a software developer and native Turkish speaker, said the volunteer arrangement is good for users as well as Facebook.

"We come up with the words and phrases that will … eventually become a part of the Turkish language itself," he said in an e-mail in English. "It feels good to be creating something that will in time be seen and used by millions of people."

Collaborative translation is an increasingly important tool for businesses, said Renato Beninatto with the Massachusetts consulting firm Common Sense Advisory. But he said companies may need professional services to finalize translations.

"The traditional wisdom is that if you have fewer translators, you generate a better product," said Beninatto, also a spokesman for the Globalization & Localization Association.

If managed well, however, crowdsourcing can result in a good translation, he said.

Among the hottest debates so far has been over "poke" — Facebook’s term for giving someone a playful nudge. In Spanish, it became "dar un toque." In French, "faire un signe." And in German, "anstupsen."

Japanese translators couldn’t find an equivalent so they decided to go with the original English.

Yahoo

Paypal to block unsafe browsers

Autor admin | 18.04.2008 | Category Internet News

Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block "unsafe browsers" from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts.

Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.

Paypal said it was "an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4".

Phishing attacks trick users into handing over sensitive data.

Paypal said some users were still using Internet Explorer 3 , released more than 10 years ago. It lacks many of the security and safety features needed to protect users from phishing and other online attacks.

Legitimate sites

Paypal said it supported the use of Extended Validation SSL Certificates. Browsers which support the technology highlight the address bar in green when users are on a site that has been deemed legitimate.

The latest version of Internet Explorer support EV SSL certificates, while Firefox 2 supports it with an add-on but Apple’s Safari browser for Mac and PCs does not.

"By displaying the green glow and company name, these newer browsers make it much easier for users to determine whether or not they’re on the site that they thought they were visiting," said Paypal.

The steps were outlined in a white paper on managing phishing, written by the firm’s chief information security officer Michael Barrett and Dan Levy, director of risk management.

In it, they said: "In our view letting users view the PayPal site on [an unsafe] browser is equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seatbelts."

Paypal described the battle against phishing as a "fast-moving chess match with the criminal community".

BBC