Presuming you've seen the news that Microsoft has moved to buy Yahoo! for $44 billion, the next logical question to ask concerns what this means for users and lovers of technology.

If its business analysis you're looking for, go read Paul Kedrosky. Here at ReadWriteWeb we focus more on the cultural impact of innovation in technology. On that front, I think this acquisition could be very good news.

It's going to validate a lot of innovation at Yahoo! Many people, including Microsoft on the conference call early this morning about the news, are focusing on what this means for advertising and for search. Since when is Yahoo! particularly good at either of those things, though? Yahoo! has created a web presence with more traffic than almost anyone else on earth. That's what they are good at and the issue is that they haven't been able to make money off of it.

Yahoo! is great at content and online innovation, though. That's what Microsoft needs right now. Google is posing a threat to Microsoft not just because it is winning in advertising, where Microsoft is a relative beginner, but because Google is shifting the software world to online.

Microsoft is serious about innovation, they just haven't been doing much of it in house for awhile. The Live.com work and the Microsoft acquisitions in the health space indicate to me the company really is trying to do more than just catch up in search and advertising.

I think that this acquisition is going to mean a whole lot more energy put behind services like Flickr and Del.icio.us and innovative content sites like Yahoo! Sports and Finance. All of that will be good for Microsoft and it will be good for those of us who find those sites and services inspiring.

It's hard to know what the impact of layoffs will be, or if the Death Star culture of Microsoft will quash a lot of the Yahoo! spirit, but it's going to be a huge company and I'm hoping we will see some very cool things come out of it.

Earlier this week, we released another round of improvements for Bloglines Beta:

It's Faster

Most people have commented on how fast the Bloglines Beta is, much faster than the classic site. However, a web site can never be too fast! Will, Bjorn and Ben have been reviewing the front-end code looking for ways to shave time off common actions. Hold onto your seats, you'll definitely feel the speed improvements especially in QuickView and 3-Pane View. We hope you relish the time saved not waiting to download. We are.

Back-button Support

Because sometimes in life, you do need to go backwards to go forwards. Now you can use the browser's back button like on standard web sites. Hitting the back button will take you to the previously loaded screen.

Expandable Start Page Modules

Some feeds just demand more space on your start page. Now you can change the size of the start page modules with a simple drag-and-expand of the lower right-hand corner of the module.

Better Support for Smaller Screens

We've noticed a number of Blogliners complaining that they were not able to see the "Mark All Read" and "Edit" buttons in the feed header. We've modified the header to better support smaller screen sizes and those who use a narrower browser window.

Enjoy!

- Eric Engleman & The Bloglines Team

Hilton Cocoa Beach Oceanfront - 3 Star Hotel - Air + Hotel 3 nights from $786 pp. Price shown departs from Fort Lauderdale. See website for additional details.
Source: travelb.priceline.com

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When is a social network NOT a social network?  When its part of Ning’s 200,000 social networks!  Give me a break Gina and Marc!  STOP bragging about how many people have clicked and created a network.  How come you have NEVER posted anything on:  how many networks have 5 or more people in them?  How ’bout 50 people in them?  Or 500 people?  Bragging about200,000 networks with one person in it - is absurd.  And I don’t even care if they’re porno networks or not!  But they’re NOT networks if they’re less than what? 5?  10? 25 in them?  You’re obviously pimping yourself up for a sale.  Give us all a break - please!

Steve Gillmor has a new blog. He’s rapping about Twitter. 

Structure 08 seems like a coolio conference 

This Spyhunter homage takes me back to when I created the soundtrack for the FIRST licensed music for videogame - ever.  Henry Mancini had to personally approve of my bits.  6800 assembly language programmed.

Speaking of my past - Bob Ostertag and I went to Oberlin together and built Serge Synthesizers together.  Along with Frank Eaton.

Even more past comes back - Mark Stephen Pierce - co-founder of MacroMind and now CEO of SuperHappyFunFun - announced ‘The Return of Dark Castle’ 

Health is the new black

So where’s the 250 list - Paul?  Don’t be talking shit without backing it up!

Its kind of funny for me to watch investment bankers, VCs and so-called money guys - watch their entire system crumble in front of their face.  But don’t worry ’bout none of those guys - they all got nest eggs stashed away.

What!  You mean the Jimmy Wales furor won’t go away and that he’s not all that he’s cracked up to be?  My own experience in wikipedia tells me - that there’s more than meets the eye - there.

Its coolio that alpha geek bloggers like Anil Dash are thinking about embedding things in blog posts. 

Are MySpace photos fair game that anyone can copy and use?

I guess the Second Life hype bandwagon got outted.  How many of those publicized marketing promotions inside Second Life were successful?  How many re-upped for a second year?

Offering lots of CASH always helps a viral campaign. 

Four technologies for portability between social networks - apparently there was a good panel on this at SXSW
FriendFeed feedback

Patents suck 

Transclusions and Xanadu are back

Roo,  Y! Buzz, RetailMeNot, Helium,

Posted by Eric Enge

One great way to get lots of links is to launch a massive media campaign. This works particularly well if you are a large brand. What if you aren't? Well then, you are at a disadvantage. Massive media campaigns are great ways to get lots of links, and major brands launch these things without even blinking an eye.

Assuming that this is not an option for you, let's explore the kinds of things that you can do instead and win, anyway. It's one of the great things about the web today. While having a massive marketing budget is a significant advantage, if you are smart and fast, success can still be yours. In fact, you can create a brand in all types of novel new ways on the Internet.

This post will focus on deciding what methods you should consider for developing high value, authoritative links. Successful execution of high value link strategies almost always requires compelling content or tools, so know that going in. If you are not willing to make that kind of investment, move onto the next post, because this one is not for you.

You can't afford to waste a lot of time on strategies that are not going to pan out for you. In fact, if you start on a strategy that is not the right one, the best you thing you can do is fail fast. Why? Because then you can move onto the next strategy without a long delay.

It is critical that you analyze the best strategies to use with your business up front. There are many, many types of marketing opportunities that you can pursue, and each business has unique aspects to it. Let's start by exploring some of the major methodologies for link building (buying links will not be included in this list; for more information on that, see my recent post, I Don't Buy Links).

1. Social News Sites:  Digg, Reddit, Propeller, and other sites like them. Success on these sites can produce hundreds, or even thousands of links. The big things to consider when examining this strategy are:

• What is the demographic of the social news site, and what content will appeal to them?
• Can you produce content that would appeal to that audience?
• Will the resulting links have a chance of being relevant to your business?

2. Online Media Sites: These start with high value sites like the New York Times, Boston.com, and About.com. However, these are very difficult to get on, and most will need to aim a bit lower.

The key question to ask here is what media sites provide coverage relevant to your business? If you offer a product related to diabetes, you might want to appear in Diabetes Health, Diabetes Digest, or Diabetes News.

The key question here is what can you do to earn a place in these magazines? One great thing to try and do is to write an article that they would be interested in publishing. Be aware though, the content needs to be really good, and it needs to contain something new. Rehashes of old topics have a much lower success rate.

Are there online media sites like these for your business? Can you produce content of a high enough quality to get into them? If yes to both of those questions, you may want to consider this type of strategy for your biz.

3. Widgets

• Develop a free and unrestricted application that is designed to go viral. The key here is to develop something that will cause users to want to tell other people about it - let them do the marketing for you. These can be applications that work better with multiple participants, or things that the user wants to show off.
  
  Note that this is a bit indirect. Your application is not going to go viral if you require users to link to you to use it. But, have a widget go viral for you, and the links will follow. One of our clients, ProTrade had a great deal of success on Facebook using this approach.
• Use widgets as a syndication strategy. To do this, embed valuable content that others will want to put on their web sites. Then use a market outreach program to tell people who can use that information about your widget. Since this is a bit more of a manual effort, you can require that you get one or more links in return for providing the content. One client, whom I can't name, has gotten links from over 2,000 relevant sites using this technique.

4. Good Old Fashioned PR: OK, so you can't afford a multi-million dollar campaign, but you can still do this. You can find PR firms that will do pretty good work for a few thousand dollars per month. Using these types of resources is a way of accelerating your online media strategy, and can be quite effective.

Nearly all PR firms will start off their work for you with a whole host of ideas regarding how to promote their business. They also have the tools, the contacts, and the experience to do some things more effectively then you can do those things yourself.

Just be careful to stay engaged with your PR firm. The more active you are in setting direction, the more value you will get. Have some ideas at the beginning of the engagement, and continue to feed them ideas throughout your engagement with them. You know your business better than they do, and they know media better than you do. Focus on leveraging both of those strengths together.

5. University Sites:  This is an oldie but goodie. I am not talking about spamming forums on university sites and stuffing them with links. There are lots of places on university sites where it is possible to get an honest to goodness endorsement for your quality web site, provided that there is a reason for them to link to it.

For example, job sites can approach the career center department of schools and seek to get listed there. There are sites that have accumulated hundreds of such links. If this is a match for you, then this is a great strategy to pursue.

Note that there is no automatic match with getting a link from an ".edu" domain. EDU links end up being good for two major reasons:

• Many colleges and universities have powerful, and potentially authoritative, web sites. This is because of the links they have, not because the domain is an EDU.
• If you have a legitimate match to the needs of their students, these types of sites are usually pretty apporachable.

6. Government Sites:  Another oldie but goodie. The story here is very similar to that of university sites. Determine if you have a match in terms of content to the audience that the government site is trying to reach with a particular web page. Then figure out who to contact.

Note that many government web sites have a published Linking Policy. Make sure you read the policy for the given web site before contacting any one at the site. Otherwise, you might accidentally commit a faux pas, and put the opportunity with that site at risk.

As an example of this, one of our clients, VisualDXHealth was able to get a number of links from the National Library of Medicine. This was part of a larger web site marketing campaign that has moved traffic from about 1600 per day in May 2007 to nearly 20,000 as of March 2008.

7. The Blogosphere:  This really is a sub-segment of the online media campaign. However, I like to talk about it separately, because it has a lot of different dynamics. With a traditional online media person, you want to solve a problem for them. With bloggers, you want to start a conversation.

Here you start by identifying the influential bloggers in your space. There are lots of ways to go about doing this. I know the folks at SEO-PR like to use a tool called Buzz Logic, and that this has worked very well for them. One way to do that is to get your PR firm to do this for you.

The other way to do it is to do some research using tools like Dane Carlson's How Much is My Blog Worth widget (another example of a great widget success story!). You can also use your feedreader (e.g., Bloglines or Google Reader, etc.), to tell you how many people subscribe to that blog with that reader. Better still, use more than one reader so you can get multiple data points.

Focus on the more influential bloggers, because you will get far more mileage there. Other bloggers will follow their lead. Just remember, this starts by building a relationship, and you don't start a relationship by asking them to give you a link, or stuffing comments filled with links back to your stuff on their posts.

Above I outlined 8 methods to use in hunting for really high value links. These are the types of links you just can't buy. But there are more strategies than one company can reasonably pursue at one time. Even if you could pursue them all at once, they don't all fit any given business. For example, some businesses may be reluctant to develop the type of content necessary to score well on Digg.

So, you must choose. The way to go about this is to review all of your opportunities and brainstorm them. You actually start by doing the research on all the different approaches up front. For example, when you are looking at the blogosphere, you would make sure you knew who the most influential bloggers are in your space (you should know who they are, anyway), and assess whether or not you could develop a relationship with them, and assess the impact.

Very similarly, when you look at online media, you go find the major media that covers your space on the web, and determine whether or not you have a shot at earning a link from them. With universities, you might want to look at the universities and colleges that offer education on topics directly related to your space.

Put all of this research together and determine your chances of success with a link marketing strategy, the amount of effort required to succeed, and the scope of the benefit when you succeed. Then pick the one, or a few, that offer you the best chances of success.

Let's face it. Any form of link building is hard work. The good stuff is not cheap or easy. For many people, it pays to set your sights high. Not so high that you can't be successful, but push yourself to get the highest quality links you can reasonably expect to be successful in obtaining. Then, once you get your first win, use that one as a reference in pursuing your next few links.

Then, push closer and closer to the top, as quickly as you can. Extremely high value links beget more links. When you get cited by leaders in your space, others notice. Get cited by enough leaders, and more people notice. Some of the people who go to that authoritative site may be linkers themselves. Now you can start to get links without any manual effort on your part. Man oh man, that's linking nirvana, because you'll be off to the races at that point.

Ultimately, you want to consider all available strategies that you can reasonably execute. Then you want to choose a small number of strategies (possibly one) to focus on, and then be very focused in your execution of that strategy (or those strategies). Remember to push hard enough that you fail fast if you are going to fail with one particular strategy, so you can go onto the next strategy quickly.

Match your content to the target and you will have a much greater chance of success. Then start knocking down those power links and watch your traffic soar.

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Essentially, Leasing is just an alternative way to finance a new vehicle. We know that when purchasing a new vehicle the down payment, sales tax and license fees are required to be paid up front. However when leasing a new vehicle you are required to pay only the first monthly payment, a security deposit (usually same as monthly payment), and the license fees. The sales tax (which is based on the capitalized value of the vehicle) is actually amortized over the term of the lease in most states. In other words, the taxes are included in the monthly payments.

Capitalized Cost

Essentially the capitalized cost of a new vehicle is the actual price you have agreed to pay for the vehicle.

Gross Capitalized Cost

The gross capitalized cost of a new vehicle includes the selling price of the vehicle (which is the capitalized cost plus acquisition fees, extended warranty, accident & health insurance, dealer title fee, payoff on your trade-in, credit life insurance, gap insurance and any other fees the dealer decides to charge you). Buyer beware; that most people really don't ever know what their capitalized cost is because it is buried within the gross capitalized cost and the dealer doesn't actually reveal this number unless he has to. Most car deals made at auto dealerships are negotiated on the basis of payment rather than price. This applies to both leasing and purchasing. Don't get caught in this trap! Make the dealer reveal the selling price for every payment offer he makes you!

Adjusted Capitalized Cost

The adjusted capitalized cost of a new vehicle is the gross capitalized cost minus (-) your down payment, net trade-in amount, rebates, license fees and taxes along with any other deductions given.

Depreciation/Residual

When purchasing a new vehicle your payments are based on the full value or selling price, plus extended warranty, tax & license, minus (-) rebate, down payment and net trade-in value. However, when you lease a vehicle your payments are based only on the "depreciation or your use" of the vehicle during the entire term of the lease. The depreciation is actually only a portion of the capitalized cost of the vehicle and is determined by the term of the lease, number of miles driven and condition of the vehicle at the end of the lease. The payments on a lease are based on the deprecation money factor (which is a form of interest rate) and the amortized taxes. Therefore, you can actually drive a more expensive vehicle with a lower payment if you lease. Please note that the depreciation is actually estimated and set at the inception of the lease.

The residual is the portion or balance of the adjusted capitalized cost after the deprecation has been deducted. The residual is just put aside in limbo until the end of the lease. The higher the residual - the lower your monthly payment. At the end of the lease you have two options. You can either turn the vehicle back into the bank or leasing company, or you can buy the vehicle outright for the residual balance. You can even refinance the residual. But keep in mind if you turn in the vehicle with more mileage than allowed on your contract, you will be charged any where from .12¢ to .25¢ for each extra mile. In an auto lease you are limited to a specific number of miles in your lease contact. The average would be from 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year. You may drive any number of miles in any given year but you cannot exceed the number of allotted miles or you will be penalized. If you purchase the vehicle the charge for the extra mileage will normally be waved. Most banks and finance companies will allow you to add an extra 15,000 to 20,000 miles to your lease contract depending on the term of the lease. However, the cost of the extra miles will be added to your gross capitalization cost and your monthly payment will be increased accordingly.

Ownership

When you have entered into a lease contract you cannot terminate the lease or turn-in your vehicle prior to the ending date of the contract. If you do this the bank will report this as a voluntary repossession on your credit record. On an auto lease the vehicle is actually registered and titled to the bank or leasing company. Therefore you do not own the vehicle, the bank does. You get to use the vehicle and are legally responsible for the upkeep and maintenance. Please note, if you don't maintain the vehicle during the lease you will be penalized for all excessive wear-and-tear when you turn it in. Also, if you really needed to get out of your lease you can buy out of the lease if you can get the financing or you can get someone to take over your lease. Of course, they will have to qualify.

Vehicle Warranties

The average new car warranty is 36 months or 36000 miles, which ever comes first. It is not recommended that you enter into a 4, 5 or 6 year lease contract because they are not economical. Even with a four-year lease it is common for the residual to be higher than the actual value of the vehicle at the end of the lease which makes it very hard to refinance. If you are like a lot of people you can lease a new vehicle every 2 to 3 years and never have to buy an extended warranty. The only time it would be beneficial to buy an extended warranty is if you knew you were going to buy the vehicle outright at the end of the lease.

Gap Insurance

Gap Insurance is basically insurance coverage on the difference between the actual value of your vehicle and the balance you owe on the lease including the residual. This kind of protection is needed in case your vehicle is involved in an accident and is declared a total loss. Gap Insurance is important especially for people who lease vehicles. The lease on a vehicle is actually designed for the balance owed to be upside-down in relation to the actual value of the vehicle until approximately the end date of the lease term. At this time the residual should fall in line or be equal to the vehicle's actual value. Gap Insurance is good for purchase financing as well. The gap is not as large as in leasing, but you still stand the chance of having to put out a great deal of money.

Final Advice

Remember, there are two main factors you must consider when you are thinking about leasing an automobile. The first is how long you intend to keep the vehicle and the second is how many miles you travel annually. If you intend to keep the vehicle a maximum of three years and you only average 15,000 miles a year, then you should definitely consider leasing. If you want to keep the new vehicle for more than three years, you should consider purchasing.

When you lease a vehicle, you very rarely have to put any money down, so lease a new vehicle every two to three years and you won't owe any money on the old vehicle, plus you'll never have to buy an extended warranty. Also, you will have spent a ton of money less for each vehicle than if you had purchased them. If you want to keep a vehicle longer just buy it at the end of the lease.

Remember, don't let the dealer try to sell you on the basis of payments. Negotiate on the price only and when you have agreed on the price then tell them you have a trade-in. When you have agreed to your trade-in value then tell them you want to lease the new vehicle. Now you know what to do from here. Also, dealerships have a tendency to quote lease payments without the monthly tax. This makes a big difference in the monthly payments. If you don't control this you will be sadly surprised when you go into the finance manager to sign the paperwork. One more thing - when you are signing the lease contract, be sure to verify that the trade-in value you have agreed upon is actually deducted from the capitalized cost. Otherwise the dealer could wind up purchasing your trade for pennies and you would never know.

Visit My site http://www.autopurchasesecrets.com for more free information on the secrets the dealerships don't want you to know.

About the Author

Brad spent thirteen years in the Automobile business, specifically auto sales and worked for several Dealerships. He held positions from Retail Salesman up through New Car Manager and Fleet Manager. During this period Brad received an excellent education on what goes on inside the Automobile Dealerships. You can visit and communicate with Brad at his website http://www.autopurchasese

The degree of online business success you experience will be directly determined by the amount of effort you put into your business. While many online businesses promote themselves as being the best and fastest way to achieving wealth online, not everyone will become rich operating an online internet business.

It makes no difference the type of online business you operate, there are still basic truths to turning it into a success. Compare your internet business to a small business on the side of a road that very few cars pass on a daily basis. You have a decent looking building, but it looks much the same as other buildings in the immediate area with nothing to distinguish it from dozens of others.

There is nothing on the outside of the building declaring what is inside and no indication that the products you sell, or service that you offer, is the best and least expensive. Add to that the fact you have no advertising in the paper, magazines or the internet. Basically, not a soul knows you exist. Undoubtedly you will be closing your business in a short period of time.

That could be your internet business on the side of the electronic super-highway, with the difference being instead of car slowly driving by, potential visitors are whizzing past your site at the speed of lighting, having no idea you are there. At least by the side of the slow road there is always the chance of someone stumbling into your parking lot. On the internet if your address is kept a secret, there is no chance anyone will find it.

This is where internet marketing and network marketing techniques can help put your site in front of the millions of daily internet visitors. Most people looking for a product or service on the internet start with a search for a specific word or phrase. Unless your website is set up to attract search engine spiders, you will be ignored. Think about when you are searching for something and how many times you went past the second or third page of search results before clicking on a link. You may seem satisfied that your site is showing up in the top 100 search engine results, but your potential customers still will not be able to find you.

How well you optimize your website to be found on search engines is up the knowledge and experience of the person building your website as well as the text content your site offers visitors to satisfy search engine requirements. Additionally, you may have the best optimized web site on the internet, showing up as number one or two on the first page of search results, but if your site does not reflect the quality of the product or service you are offering, your visitor numbers will fall, right along with your search engine ranking. Online Internet Business Success Depends On Your Dedication

The degree of online business success you experience will be directly determined by the amount of effort you put into your business. While many online businesses promote themselves as being the best and fastest way to achieving wealth online, not everyone will become rich operating an online internet business.

It makes no difference the type of online business you operate, there are still basic truths to turning it into a success. Compare your internet business to a small business on the side of a road that very few cars pass on a daily basis. You have a decent looking building, but it looks much the same as other buildings in the immediate area with nothing to distinguish it from dozens of others.

There is nothing on the outside of the building declaring what is inside and no indication that the products you sell, or service that you offer, is the best and least expensive. Add to that the fact you have no advertising in the paper, magazines or the internet. Basically, not a soul knows you exist. Undoubtedly you will be closing your business in a short period of time.

That could be your internet business on the side of the electronic super-highway, with the difference being instead of car slowly driving by, potential visitors are whizzing past your site at the speed of lighting, having no idea you are there. At least by the side of the slow road there is always the chance of someone stumbling into your parking lot. On the internet if your address is kept a secret, there is no chance anyone will find it.

This is where internet marketing and network marketing techniques can help put your site in front of the millions of daily internet visitors. Most people looking for a product or service on the internet start with a search for a specific word or phrase. Unless your website is set up to attract search engine spiders, you will be ignored. Think about when you are searching for something and how many times you went past the second or third page of search results before clicking on a link. You may seem satisfied that your site is showing up in the top 100 search engine results, but your potential customers still will not be able to find you.

How well you optimize your website to be found on search engines is up the knowledge and experience of the person building your website as well as the text content your site offers visitors to satisfy search engine requirements. Additionally, you may have the best optimized web site on the internet, showing up as number one or two on the first page of search results, but if your site does not reflect the quality of the product or service you are offering, your visitor numbers will fall, right along with your search engine ranking.

About the Author

http://forever-aloevera.myflpbiz.com

http://tatiana.successuniversity.com

http://tatiana.buildreferrals.com

http://1105934.profitmatic.com

To get more information or download your own copy of the Resource Report for free visit: http://www.the-resource-report.com/?newest_version=28845

info@tatianaivanova.ws

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It is with pardonable pride that Fronteers announces its second yearly conference: Fronteers 2008.

About one week ago I wrote a post with a similar title on my Italian blog. It was to announce the “beta” of Filo, a small service (well, more like a weekend project) that I developed a while ago, and that turned out to be a good testbed for experimenting a bit with design ideas and development practices.

What I’m giving you here is an introduction to the project and an overview of its features, I’ll update my dev blog with more in-depth articles about the techie stuff.

What is Filo?

Filo is a website that allows you to keep track of what you want to read (and don’t have the time to do it right now). It was heavily inspired by Instapaper, a web service by Marco Arment (one of Tumblr’s developer) and basically started as an exercise to bend Instapaper’s behaviour to my needs.

Wasn’t del.icio.us / ma.gnolia / $othersocialbookmarkingsite enough?

Yes and no. Other existing services are mainly aimed at people who want to share their bookmarks with somebody else or who want to tag / archive with their own tags.
This is awesome, but requires that you actually know where to put that document!
Filo instead provides you a simple, strictly first-in-last-out list of items you want to remember.

How does it work?

Items to read in Filo are called knots (that’s a little linguistic joke, as filo means line in Italian). You can create Knots either manually (using a form accessible from everywhere on the site) or using a bookmarklet that you can drag in your browser’s bookmark bar.

Using the bookmarklet is very easy: you just browse to a page you want to “remember” and click the bookmarklet. It will contact Filo in the background and create the new knot automatically.

Once a knot is created it will be available from the website and in your personalized RSS feed.

Once a knot is accessed (either clicking on it on the website or clicking it’s title on the feed), it will be marked as read and archived. It is possible to mark archived knots as “to be read again”, as it is possible to trash knots entirely. At the moment, there is no way of bringing items back from the trash (but it will be possible in the future).

How to access the service

The procedure to sign up and sign in have been reduced to a bare minimum: when accessing the site, you’ll be prompted for an email, just type in yours; if it’s recognized as an existing user’s, you’ll be asked for your password, otherwise a new user will be instantly created so you’ll be able to start generating knots!
You’ll also receive an email to confirm your address. You’ll need to click on the link provided in it to fully activate the account (and be able to log in again in the future).

Note, the über-simplified registration process was first presented as an idea by Davide Casali at the recent ExperienceCamp.

Localization

As of today, Filo supports English and Italian.

Mobile version

Filo is already designed to be used from mobile devices (well, actually the CSS still needs a bit of love). Moreover, there’s an iPhone/iPodTouch version available at http://filo.m.bzaar.net/ (well, you can go there with any browser, but with the iPhone is cooler ;) ).

Reading from a feedreader

Filo creates a personal RSS feed for each user. This feed may be imported in any feedreader. Every time you access a knot form your feed reader, it gets automatically archived in Filo (and will disappear from the unread feed at the next refresh).

Boring Technical Details

Filo is written in Ruby, builds on the Ruby on Rails framework, and stores its data in a couple of MySQL tables.
Front end logic is powered by jQuery and the whole thing should degrade gracefully. The iPhone version uses the iui library.

Potential Troubles

. Filo is hosted on DreamHost. Now, don’t get me wrong, DH is great and considered what I pay for the hosting, the service I get is just awesome. BUT it’s not really inteneded for hosting Rails applications: we’re running on Apache + FastCGI and, well, the whole thing tends to “feel” quite slow.
The good site of it is that I put some decent effort in optimizing the code, so when eventually Filo will move to a more rails friendly service it will possibly scream (well, maybe just whistle :) ).
. The whole thing (and especially the integrated login + registration) is not thoroughly tested on a number of different environments (e.g. IE and javascript-less)
. CSS needs some love, and the same is true for the user settings page.

Where next?

Some ideas for the future:
. OpenID support
. “social” stuff, as being able to read and comment your friends knots.
. suggested reads
. offline storage of long articles

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If you go to any of the major sports sites on the Web—ESPN.com, Yahoo Sports,, Sports Illustrated—you’ll find pretty much the same thing: a picture of Michael Phelps, Olympics coverage, and maybe some fantasy baseball. David Katz, a former Yahoo executive who used to run Yahoo Sports, is trying something different with SportsFanLive, which has just launched in beta.

Rather than being organized around the big sports headlines of the day, SportsFanLive is organized around the fans themselves and the obsessions. Instead seeing the same general sports information that everyone else sees on the homepage and taking thre or four clicks to get to the page about your team, SportsFanLive lets you put the information you want up front. You tell it what teams you follow, and whatever is happening with those teams is front and center when you visit the site. As he was creating the site, Katz asked himself:

What do sports fans want to do? Consume content about their favorite teams and players, connect with like-minded (or non-like-minded) fans, and compete.

SportsFanLive looks a little bit like a green Netvibes, with different widgets arranged on the page: a fun poll up top, a feed of major sports story headlines, another feed of top headlines from the teams you are following, and a Facebook-like FanFeed that lets you keep up with all of the sports news and events your friends are watching. There is also a FanFinder that shows you local sports bars where tonight’s game is being watched (organized by team loyalty).

The site is designed to recreate the chest-thumping bravado of a sports bar. Bragging rights are key, which is why the site also includes virtual betting. Says Katz:

Every sports fan thinks they know everything about sports, but they all know something different.

With SportsFanLive, Katz is trying to create a friendlier gathering place for sports fans than the faceless major sports sites. But he still has a lot of work to do. A Facebook or MySpace app would be nice for starters, so that fans don’t have to recreate their social networks. There are also simple things he could do, like letting fans take their team headline widget and embed it anywhere on the Web. Also, mobile and Twitter integration are key if Katz wants fans at the game to be able to interact with their friends and other fans online.

The company that operates SportsFanLive is called Sports Media Ventures, and is based in Los Angeles. It faces competition from all the big sports sites, as well as social sports sites such as Citizen Sports, Screaming Sports,, and SportsTwit. All you sports fans out there, chime in. Would you use it?

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

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This beachfront hotel is located on the famous Waikiki Beach, approximately 10 miles from Honolulu International Airport.

The hotel’s pool area features a large pool, three whirlpool spas, and a sundeck that accommodates 300 chaise lounges. Three restaurants serve everything from fresh local seafood to tropical fruits. There are also three bars on site. The hotel’s lobby is home to many services and specialty shops for art, fine apparel, jewelry, liquors, photo developing, full men’s and women’s day spa, exercise room, and Cowabunga Kids Club. Parking is available for a fee.

All rooms include air-conditioning, cable TV, direct-dial telephones, alarm-clock radios, refrigerators, safes, hairdryers, irons and ironing boards, and coffeemakers. More Hotel Info

Along with the rapid growth of video APIs, the marketplace of photo-related APIs continues to expand rapidly. Since we looked at 36 Photo APIs earlier this year, we’ve added nearly a dozen new ones, and there are now 47 APIs tagged “photo” in our web service directory.

The best known and most used photo API continues to be the Flickr API, now with 365 Flickr mashups listed here. Second in terms of mashups listed is the Imageloop API with 24 ImageLoop mashups listed. Then third and fourth are both Google properties: the Picasa API with and Panoramio API with 9 Panoramio mashups (a mashup-centric service that Google acquired last year).

Recent additions include the Zooomer API, the MediaSock API, the MOO API and the World Bank API.

On the photo mashup front, there’s the recently added entry for Pikter, a simple service that enables you to share photos on Twitter and-or Jaiku.

For reference, here’s the full list of photo-related APIs in the ProgrammableWeb directory:

• 23 API: Photo sharing service
• Alexa Site Thumbnail API: Thumbnail images of web site home pages
• AOL Pictures API: Online photo management
• Buzznet API: Photo sharing
• Cellblock API: Real-time Multimedia File Sharing
• Dipity API: Interactive timeline creation services
• earthmine Flash Viewer API: Street-level imagery services
• Faces.com API: Photo and media sharing service
• Flickr API: Photo sharing service
• Flixya API: Video, photo, and blog sharing platform
• FotoFlexer API: Online image editor
• Fotolia API: Royalty free stock photos
• Geograph API: British Isles photo service
• GetMapping API: Aerial photography and mapping service
• Google Picasa API: Photo management and sharing service
• imageLoop API: Animated slideshow service
• Ipernity API: Media sharing service
• iStockphoto API: Royalty free stock photos
• MediaSock API: Photo management and sharing service
• MOO API: Web based printing service
• Mugr API: Face recognition service
• Myplaylist API: Photo slideshow for music services
• Nirvanix API: Internet storage service
• Orange Personal Photos API: Mobile photo sharing
• Orb API: Digital media remote access and management
• Pando API: File delivery and management services
• Panoramio API: photo upload site with organizer and geolocation
• Phanfare API: Photo and video sharing service
• Photobucket API: Online photo sharing service
• Picnik API: Online photo editing service
• Pikeo API: Picture sharing service
• Pixagogo API: Online photo services
• Pixenate API: Online photo editing
• Riya API: Photo search
• ShutterPoint API: Stock photography service
• SimpleAPI API: Web site thumbnail image creation
• Smugmug API: Photo sharing service
• Snipshot API: Online photo editing service
• Twitxr API: Mobile photo sharing
• WebShots API: Photo sharing service
• Windows Live Spaces Photo API: Photo management services
• Windows Live Spaces Photo Control API: Programmable widget for blog photos
• World Bank API: Worldwide indicators, business, and photo databases
• XmgImage API: Photo sharing and editing
• Yahoo Image Search API: Image search services
• Zooomr API: Photo and text message sharing service
• Zoto API: Photo sharing service

Use our photo mashup and API dashboard to keep track of photo APIs, mashups and news.

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The beaches alone are larger than the state of Rhode Island, so pack up the kids and head to the land of white sand, barefoot bankers, and historic Southern architecture.

South Carolina’s Grand Strand is 60 miles of breathtaking shoreline so laid back, even the bankers go barefoot! Think Prince of Tides meets Blues Clues in this beach town that caters to children’s short attention spans and parents’ desire to relax.

Break from the beach for a walk amidst historic Southern inns and a famed boutiques district where scouring for antiques is more of a sport than a hobby.

Go face to face with alligators at Alligator Adventure, an eco-friendly gator farm, then wrap up the day with front row seats to the sunset while dining seaside-or heck, inquire about the hotel’s babysitting services and dance the night away at a 1950s shag club!

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Microsoft's "green" initiatives have generated quite a bit of buzz lately. What does this mean for Microsoft employees? Francois Ajenstat, Director of Environmental Sustainability here at Microsoft, stopped by JobsBlog to answer a few of my questions.  Who are the Greenies?  And what's with those new compostable forks and green cups in the Microsoft kitchens?  

If you have more questions for Francois, leave them in the comments!

JobsBlog: Hi Francois!  Thanks for stopping by JobsBlog!  You're on the Environmental Sustainability team. What does your team do?

Francois: Hi everyone – our team is focused on looking at broad Environmental Challenges and how Microsoft can help address them. The big area of focus these days is obviously Climate Change and reducing greenhouse gases but we’re also looking at broader issues such as smart transportation, deforestation, and water issues. People around the office called us the “Green Team” or “Greenies”. :)  We’re looking at how technology can be applied for positive impact; driving partnerships for global impact; and of course driving sustainable practices within our own operations.

JobsBlog:  So you're green geeks. :) The “Greenies” partner with other teams at Microsoft to help us reduce our impact and positively affect the environment … like partnering with research teams to advance science and with product teams to produce more efficient code. 

Francois: The issue of environmental sustainability is something that many different teams at Microsoft are focused on – from the product groups to research to our own facilities and operations. For example, the Windows group is focused on efficiency and power management. The Unified Communications team is promoting telework and remote meetings to reduce travel. Groups within Microsoft Research are looking at complex climate change models to predict various environmental issues. Our data center team is focused on bringing “Moore’s Law” to Energy Efficiency in data centers – doubling output while keeping energy demands constant or lower. Real Estate & Facilities is looking at our own operations to reduce waste on campus, provide travel alternatives such as the Connector, and “greening” our events. As you can tell, this is an area that spans all facets of the company.

JobsBlog: On the topic of greening our own workplace, I heard that – due to your team’s partnership with Real Estate & Facilities – Microsoft is on track to reduce solid waste by 50% and the Redmond campus’ cafeterias and kitchens recently became the first in the US to be earn Certified Green Restaurant status.  Plus, employees can’t get enough of the Connector!  Any other green workplace initiatives you can share with us?

Francois: We actually drove a 50% reduction in solid waste in the first month. Our goal is to become zero waste. That’s ambitious but achievable if everyone does their part. There are quite a few other activities that we’re doing from a workplace standpoint. All of our new buildings are being built to LEED standards and consume over 20 percent less energy than traditional buildings. In our Mountain View, CA campus we’ve installed 2,288 solar panels covering more than 31,000 square feet of rooftop which generates 480 kilowatts of power. We’ve built our data center facility in Quincy, WA site to use 100% renewable hydropower from the Columbia River Basin. 

And of course, our employees are our key assets in making a difference in our workplace.  We have an employee community group called MSGreen which drive discussion, education, awareness and engagement in environmental activities around the world.  MSGreen has over 1000 members worldwide.  Also, through the annual Employee Giving Campaign employees are encouraged to partner with Microsoft to promote the causes and organizations that for which they are inspired, and Microsoft will match any donations through the campaign.

JobsBlog: On a personal front, you’ve worked at Microsoft since 2000, and most recently, you were the Director of Product Management for SQL Server.  What motivated you to make the switch from SQL Server to the “greener” pastures :) of Environmental Sustainability?  

Francois:  One of the great things about Microsoft is the fact that we are working on so many different areas that it provides employees with a ton of personal and career development opportunities. There were many reasons that led me to the Environmental Sustainability team. First, I have a personal passion on the topic so it’s great to be able to combine those two worlds.

Second, it’s about the people. Everyone on the team is deeply passionate about the environment and want to make a difference. It’s invigorating to be surrounded by people who want to change the world.

Next is that when I look at this market there is so much opportunity for growth. So many new solutions being developed and I love being on the ground floor of such a big market shift.

And then finally, a major reason for the shift is that I truly believe that Microsoft has a very unique opportunity to have a huge positive impact here on the planet and on people and businesses around the world. With all of that, it became a no brainer for me and an opportunity that I couldn’t resist.

JobsBlog: Thanks for stopping by!  Any closing thoughts?

Francois: Environmental Sustainability is something that everyone at Microsoft can take part in. Whether in how we act as employees or looking at reducing the environmental impact of our products. Although our team is “tasked” with bringing together the strategy, people and groups across Microsoft are a critical part of the solution.

By Harold Goldberg

When 3DO bit the dust, Trip Hawkins took a little time to take stock of where he wanted to go in the area of games. He didn’t wait long at all to create Digital Chocolate, which has a new way of looking at and making cell phone games. While cell phone games haven’t been embraced by users in the mass way that has been predicted, Hawkins is trying to buck the trend and change things by adding a distinct social element to his offerings. As usual, he’s doing things his way.

HG: How did it become clear that the next big step for you was in mobile games?

TH: In the summer of 2003, when it’s clear that 3DO is selling off its assets, I bought the DNA [atents because they had to do with social games. During that summer, I kind of had some time to come up for air and try new things. Mobile caught my eye. As I looked at mobile, I realized the mobile phone was turning into a social computer.

HG: Not to be general or pessimistic, but games on mobile phones haven’t been all that.

TH: It obviously had platform constraints that forced the gameplay design to either be like a retro classic arcade game or something far more casual. Yet I started to see the potential to marry casual games with social applications. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a great premise.

HG: How do you mean?

TH: See, everybody used to live in a small village. And they had a perfect social life. You know, you’d see the same intimate friends every day. You’d spend the whole day with your family members. That model of human existence had great social value. That evolved over time and no one’s really all that conscious of that evolution.

HG: Hanging with friends is different now, though, with our fast-paced lives.

TH: Right. Over the last 100 years, we’ve managed to obliterate it somewhat unconsciously, the same way we’re causing global warming somewhat unconsciously. This has been chronicled somewhat recently in books like Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. Before I read his work, I kind of felt it in my bones. You see it in modern life, particularly in urban life: people don’t know their neighbors. When they go out in public, they’re surrounded by strangers. They spend too much time in their cars commuting by themselves or watching television by themselves. You can see that people are not as socially nourished as they need to be.

HG: So what does this have to do with mobile phone games?

TH: First of all, we’re an increasingly mobile society. We’re now moving toward the time when there’ll be three billion people using mobile phones. And every one of those mobile phones is now a computer that’s on a network -- all these people have this amazing technology and people use it as their mission-critical, go-to device. They’re getting more and more powerful all the time just as the networks are.

If people do have these social needs, and if there are ways to help social capital and social value in a casual way, then it’s a perfect fit for the mobile phone. Why? It’s a platform you always have with you. So take instant messaging. It was invented on the PC, but it makes more sense for a mobile device because with your mobile device, you’re always there to get the message. That’s not always the case with your PC.

HG: Everywhere you look these days, someone is coming up with a new casual game. Sometimes I think there are too many clones of games. But what’s clear is that casual is changing the very landscape of games.

TH: Over the last five years or so, we’ve seen this revolution in casual games. This is another case where I’ve been ahead of my time. While I’ve had some product failures, when I look at a game like M.U.L.E., it’s still one of my all time favorites. It was an Atari 800 game initially, a four-player game that we started building back in 1982. I have these multiple cases where I was in market with a game that had social capabilities and casual capabilities before the market for casual gamers was really developed. So clearly it’s a passion of mine and it’s been a passion of mine for quite a long time. So it’s been exciting to see the blossoming of casual games on the Web and even on the iPhd, and we have the more recently example of the Wii outselling the PlayStation 3.

HG: Why do you think the Wii hit so big so quickly?

TH: Take a look at the theory of Disruptive Products in a book by Clayton Christensen called Innovator’s Dilemma. His central thesis is, you have an established market in which there’s a primary performance requirement. Something comes along that proves to be disruptive and the way it’s disruptive is that it reaches an entirely different audience. It doesn’t care about the normal performance requirement, and instead, it’s adopting this new product, even though it’s underpowered. People adopt it for reasons of simplicity and convenience.

This pattern repeats itself again and again, even as it relates to the Wii. It’s less powerful than the PlayStation 3, but it’s a more social machine. It’s equally true, I think, about mobile phones and mobile phone games in particular. This is the first time in history where, if you look at the hardware in the retail stores, where, if you look at the six platforms that are selling at retail, they’re selling in the inverse order of 3D graphics power. It starts with the Nintendo DS, because what’s simpler and more portable than the DS? And the one that’s at the bottom is the PS3.

HG: The change to casual has had its victims. And it’s had traditional companies scrambling to get with the program.

TH: Ken Kutargi (the top executive from Sony) got fired. And there’s been a CEO change at Electronic Arts where EA created a whole new division called Casual Games. Companies like Activision missed the boat, so they said, Oops, we’re going to do more products for the Nintendo Wii. So it’s a big change toward social and casual.

HG: So you created Digital Chocolate to be a social games provider within the mobile phone space.

TH: One of the things we’ve done that’s really big and profound is the Café Series. The big idea there is doing something that fits into the existing infrastructure of mobile. That means you can go to the carrier deck that’s on your handset and find Café Solitaire, purchase it and play. But what’s so special about it is that it has a whole lot of Web 2.0 going on. One aspect of that is the themed community where you can create your own café that brings the look and feel of something like Habbo Hotel to your phone.

It gives you not just a buddy list, but a themed environment for your buddy list. Then, there are gameplay elements that you can share and user generated content that you can share along with personalization and other community features. Plus, there are the benefits of viral spread. On the Web, you don’t alway have to do marketing in order to have the public discover a new product. You have viral discovery and free trial. So you find out about, say, YouTube, because one of your friends sent you a link. That hasn’t happened in mobile. It’s a wide open frontier where new things can and should be tried. You can’t just take existing games and shoehorn them onto a mobile phone. That’s why I believe in this social aspect and the Café Series.

Next: When will mobile games catch on?

http://www.digitalchocolate.com/