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Archive for October, 2008

fbf thumb FacebookFund hands out cash to 25 Facebook DevelopersDevelopers received cash grants from Facebook as it announced the 25 winners. The cash grants will be paid from the fbFund, which the developers are getting for creating some of the most promising apps on Facebook. The fbFund was announced an year ago, by Facebook, Accel Partners and the Founders Fund, and has an accumulated $10 million.

The list below has all of the 25 winners, which were selected from a total of 600 applicants. Each recepient received $25,000 and will be eligible for top cash prizes of $225,000.

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thepiratebay thumb The Pirate Bay axes hoax trackers; The reason???

The Pirate Bay which is the largest BitTorrent tracker, has started axing the hoax trackers from their hosted torrents. This step will certainly lessen the load on the tracker and will also bring improvements in its performance. Keeping extra load on the tracker requires storage devices which costs a lot of money.

The BitTorrent tracker has already started removing the duplicate trackers from the torrent files. This will keep redundant connections between BitTorrent clients and the tracker to the least.

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image thumb86 Yahoo: ………. Somethings are better unsaidYahoo must have been a giant once in the Web-Sphere and its homepage may attract the largest traffic but one thing is for sure, Yahoo is kicking empty cans to create noise. Launching services to boost business or perhaps to show investors that Yahoo is still living, just hasn’t ticked off. The idealistic optimism of Jerry Yang might have sounded good earlier when the Yahoo/Google deal was in full sway, while trouble between Icahn, Yang, Yahoo and Microsoft kept increasing; at last every one has realized that it’s just beyond all limits and that Yahoo needs a miracle, double quick.

We here have tried to help Yahoo, by being hopeful about the company and giving Yang every bit of trust, even going far enough to saying that Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo may very well end what Yahoo is, but what have we got? Falling stock rates, axing staff and ever growing discontent amongst the individuals who make up Yahoo. Where is the plan? What is the plan to be more precise?

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image130 FlickrIn: Flicker your site with Flickr photosEver felt like finding a way to place a countless pictures from your Flickr account over at your website? Or extracting images that match a certain tag from those at Flickr to enhance the visual presence of your site? The idea of copy/cut/paste might be great for a couple of pictures but what if you need a dozen or more photographs about, let’s say cyclones?

The traditional method is way too tiring and not to forget impossible for every increase in the number. How convenient it would be if one could embed them all with just a simple html or java code! You must be looking around to get your hands at such a wand and a team has just the right tool for it; FlickrIn.

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image128 AskAboutCollege answers all your college questionsStudents looking out for the right college find it a daunting task to gather related information, what offers the best and how the life is on and off campus. The best way to interact is visiting a college site directly and corresponding with college representatives. But does that help? There thousands of colleges and hundreds of them must be offering what you are looking for. Students feel the brunt of not having a proper collaboration tool that lets them interact with the those who can offer proper advice.

That may be right but two students who must have gone through the same, have come out with AskAboutCollege online collaboration platform for prospective students to learn about colleges. Users can simply select the category under which their query falls and decide whether it be sent to all the colleges (that are included in the site’s directory) or choose one.

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espncameraman logo ESPN joins iPhone’s App Store with CameramanIf you have a decent product and you want to market it; the best you can do is to target areas which are already popular such as iPhone. This increases the possibility of success and provides an easy way to gain popularity. This is exactly what ESPN has done by releasing the app Cameraman for the iPhone.

If you are a sports lover then you must have known the game Cameraman. ESPN collaborated with EpicTilt, the game developer. The app uses photos from different popular sports events such as Olympics, National Football League, Major League Baseball, soccer and a lot of more.

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image thumb84 Google rolls out one more YouTube Series: PoptubCashing in on Seth MacFarlane’s successful video campaign called the Calvacade of Comedy, it appears Google is set to flood out more content on its Content Network by name of PopTub. The new feature, unlike the episodic Calvacade would be Entertainment Tonight for the YouTube. I guess the plans are to turn YouTube into a web based TV-channel or to give it a new name WV-Channel (WebVision).

In a statement, Alexandra Levy, director of branded entertainment at Google said:

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MySpace launches MySpace Karaoke

myspace logo MySpace launches MySpace KaraokeWorld’s leading social network, MySpace has today announced the launch of the new MySpace Karaoke which is a total redesign of the online Karaoke channel. MySpace Karaoke is considered to be one of the largest user generated music service. The features in the refurbished service include streamlined navigation, improved recording’s sharing, specific upload manager and recording of the video. With the induction of these improved features, the Senior VP and GM of MySpace Karaoke, Nimrod Lev, expects the reach of the social network to be more wide.

There are over 500,000 recordings present on MySpace Karaoke and more than four million users have visited it within six months of its launch. The service is currently available in Canada and the United States, support for other countries will be added soon.

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image thumb81 Polling comes (in)to WordPress; Automattic grabs PolldaddyWho doesn’t love polls? The easier they are to grab and put up in your blog the better it is and the same reason must be behind Automattic’s acquisition of Polldaddy. The famous polling start-up has been acquired for an undisclosed sum and would bring the polling concept directly into the ever loved WordPress.

Polldaddy currently works as an extended plugin and appears more to be a random start-up found here and there. Its integration with WordPress would firstly make it available for everyone and more importantly in an easy way. So is this acquisition a signal that Polldaddy would only offer its polling service for WordPress publishers alone?

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image thumb82 Twitter to have Search anytime soon!

There has been a lot of speculation as to what would Twitter do after it acquired Summize and brought forward Twitter Search. We haven’t seen the feature out in the open ever since we first heard of it. However cnet reports about encountering something odd about the layout of the Twitter page; inclusion of a search box.

image thumb83 Twitter to have Search anytime soon!The new feature would enable users to perform key word searches across the micro-blogging platform. The feature appeared temporarily and it looks that it was there for a test, as officials haven’t come out with any confirmation or hint regarding the feature.

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