Viddler, the online video hosting service, has announced that they will be the ‘New Media Expo’ conference’s official video sharing site. The conference which is being held in Las Vegas, will be starting later this week. The event will also see the launch of Viddler’s new customizable player.
The new player will contain a lot of customisation options like swapping Viddler logo with your own logo, linking the video to your own site instead of Viddler video page, integration of iTunes.
Taking inspiration from popular Tech gadgets such as the iPod, libraries in the USA are finally coming to terms with the age of the iPod. Bringing the readers back to Libraries may be a task on it’s own, but this technique may draw interest among the masses.
Some libraries offering free access and download (from their patrons) of digital books, music, and movies can regularize the daily traffic. This, in turn is going to be popular as websites offering downloads usually charge certain amounts, such as Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com.
Microsoft has proposed to buy back its own shares that sum to a net spending of around $20 billion for the cause in the coming three months as reported by Todd Bishop. This is largely due to Microsoft’s failure to acquire Yahoo. The present action could very well be to put to use all the money it had gathered to sum $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo.
Microsoft’s stock rose to $28.13 after the report made its way out, giving it an 11% rise from the previous low of $26; the result of which had been the fail deal with Yahoo, a low turn out (that had been expected) in the quarterly earnings. The main reason behind this buyback could very well be to boost the financial measure of per share earning; which points at Microsoft eyeing to increase share price, something that doesn’t have a high probability of not happening.
Google has been facing quite a lot of pressure (for which it is least bothered) regarding being termed a content company, given how easily it is overshadowing its competitors in the Web-sphere with its services. The latest hit is taken by Knol that was launched last month (as a competitor of Wikipedia?). The immediate issues coined with its launch were that Google’s search results displayed the findings from Knol rank way higher that those from the older horses in the race as the New York Times reports.
Now I was baffled too, I tried out searching for ‘buttermilk pancake’; as had been told in NY Times and I get to see the result from Knol at number 1, followed by sites that are dedicated to recipes and have been there for much long. Google, generating results that rank its own service higher, isn’t that a poor act of self publicity? Wenda Harris Millard, Co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia remarked:
Much awaited Beijing Olympics 2008 have started. All exhilarated sports fans are eagerly carving ways to get hooked with it. In this regard Google has genuinely contributed by aggregating all its services to fix the Summer games for its audience. Whether it would be a pre-Event coverage or post-event highlights Google always strives to keep itself abreast with the latest happenings. Here is a collection of Google’s updated maps, gadgets, videos, sites, searches, 3D images and some Google powered Chinese sites that are purely dedicated to serve Olympics.
Facebook has sort of jumped into a limbo of problems, from getting accused to accusing one of stealing the design and issuing advices they find hard to follow themselves. The present one; called the Ad Rating System is nothing less than a way to know that a vast majority of your social network barely even thinks about clicking on these ads.
What could make them think to come out with this plan? Now I haven’t the most regular of Facebook users in the last couple of months and Erick reports that this has been out for about two months. The use of this seems to be nothing more than trying to assist users in directing ads to them that match their taste (how very helpful, I get more irritated by such an ‘oddly innovative methods).
T-Mobile (USA) has taken it upon itself to launch an open development platform to challenge the iPhone. It aims to take on that task through upcoming phone platforms such as Android, Java, Sidekick and Windows Mobile.
Starting end of this year, T-Mobile USA will make a gear shift by brushing off its traditional deck on the phone and replacing it with a platform that’s friendly to almost any developer.
The Pirate Bay has been blocked in Italy after an urgent decree from a deputy public prosecutor. As of this date Pirate Bay’s IPs and the domain name are inaccessible, as it is blocked by ISPs around the country. The effectiveness of this blockade is in doubt as Pirate Bay has decided to fight back, and fight back hard by announcing several counter measures.
TorrentFreak learned from an insider working at an Internet provider in Italy, that all the concerned ISPs in Italy have complied with the orders to block Pirate Bay. Italy is currently on a roll against torrent sites and shut down Columbo-BT, Italy’s largest torrent site, two weeks back. Both The Pirate Bay and Columbo-BT have been taken down by the same prosecutor who has been assisted by IFPI, the infamous anti-piracy organization.
TubeMogul, a video upload and analytics service, has published an interesting report about the state of web video monetization. According to the report only half of TubeMogul’s users are actually monetizing their videos and the ones who are doing so are generating an average CPM of $12.39.
TubeMogul’s report has been a response to Alley Insider’s query as to how many of TubeMogul’s 12,000 users who have been publishing videos on multiple platforms are actually making a buck or a dime out of it.
Google has now released Google Translate for iPhone, to enable you to get translations on-the-go. This would enable you to translate words and phrases from German into English while sitting in a coffee bar in Bavaria on your next trip to Europe.
Google Translate for the iPhone has been specially optimized for speed so you don’t have to wait a long time on uncertain wireless connectivity in front of the waiter who speaks nothing else but German. In addition to the speed Google Translate also supports all existing language pairs that are supported on the web based version of the translator, and uses a client-side data store to store past translations on your iPhone. This enable you to have the previous words and phrases on your device to access them inside a Metro tunnel with limited connectivity to the outside world.
