May 12, 2008
This is a follow up to our post last month that listed some of the top tech bloggers according to TechMeme. The goal was to be able to take a look at the individual bloggers who were writing headlines, not just the blogs they wrote for.
As promised, the team (Mark McGranaghan and Henry Work) has put together much more detailed statistics on the blogs and bloggers that publish tech news headlines and has published it over at CrunchBase.
The top 100 blogs are listed here along with the top three authors by publication. The default view is “all time,” which is back to March 2006, but can be toggled to the last 90 days, last month, or last seven days. The image below shows the top ten publications by all time.
The data can also be viewed by author here with the same time toggles.
This data goes back much further than the TechMeme Leaderboard, and it also calculates things differently. The leaderboard looks at the last 30 days and calculates top sites based on share of headline space, meaning how long a headline stays up affects rankings. Our calculations look only at the raw number of headlines, nothing more.
More data is coming soon. And check out StatBot, a new site that is also doing some great work slicing up data from TechMeme and other sites.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
May 12, 2008 08:59 AM
New Indie film site The Auteurs, which is in private beta, is trying to make a big splash around the Cannes Film Festival later this week with a competition. And they’ve lined up some big sponsors to help them.
The competition is sponsored by HP, Facebook and Flip. Users pick up one of 250 free Flip cameras at the festival and shoot a three minute short film. The winner, as judged by a jury, gets a $10,000 cash prize (funded by Facebook) and a HP Workstation with a 30-inch monitor. Everyone gets to keep those Flip cameras, too, which you can sell on eBay for $20 or more.
These movies are going to be awful. The Flip video camera is dead simple to use (unless you are on a Mac, and then it’s exactly the opposite of dead simple to use), but the quality of the video is about as bad as you can get. Given that, I think they should give out awards for the worst movies as well. In fact, I think they should drop the jury idea and post all the videos online and let users vote. That would make for great content.
Anyway, even though the site is invite only at this point, you can get in through a back door - their Facebook application. Just add the application and you’ll have an account on the main site, too.
Putting the competition stunt aside, The Auteurs does have some good indie films on the site already. There is a lot of competition in this space (Jaman, Netflix, others), though. Indie films are in high demand.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
May 12, 2008 08:00 AM
A website and online magazine built around users' personal columns. Members publish thoughts, opinions, reviews, photos and your "it" things related to fashion, trends, style and more. URL: MyItThings.
May 12, 2008 07:28 AM
I’m going to assume that the fact that some Yahoo search results that point to Google with a malware warning are a sign that their new partnership with McAfee just needs a little tuning. The alternatives are either (1) Google is serving Malware, or (2) Yahoo or McAfee are playing a little joke.
Most results that point to Google don’t have this “feature,” and given the recent love fest between the two companies, the joke angle is probably out. Keep an eye out on this query though. I wouldn’t be surprised to see flags popping up all over the place on that page.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
May 12, 2008 06:48 AM
The spring conference season is in full swing at the moment and we’re seeing a lot of conference sessions and tracks focused on web APIs, platforms and mashups. Here’s a rundown of these events happening this month and next.
- O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference is this week in Burlingame, CA (tutorials are today, general sessions begin tomorrow). As you can see on the agenda, lots of API and mashup-related sessions. ProgrammableWeb readers can save 15% off registration via discount code whr08pgw.
- Later this week, on Thursday the 15th, over at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale is the SearchMonkey Launch Party. As one of the first components of the Yahoo Operating System, SearchMonkey looks very promising. Party starts at 5:30pm. Be among the first ten ProgrammableWeb readers who RSVP to searchmonkeyevent@yahoo-inc.com can get a $50 iTunes gift certificate.
- In just over two weeks, on May 28-29th in San Francisco is Google I/O. As we covered last month there are 70+ sessions on dozens of Google API and mashup-related topics.
- For lots more on social APIs from OpenSocial to Facebook, there’s next month’s Graphing Social Patterns (GSP) East, June 9-11th in Washington, DC. Speakers come from all the major players and sessions range from tutorials to advanced programming and monetization strategies. Our sponsor O’Reilly Media is offering 15% off registration by using code gspe08pgw.
- Coming-up on 16-17th of June in New York City will be WidgetWebExpo. Two tracks will cover both the commercial and technical perspectives on widgets. Early bird pricing is in effect until the end of this week.
- Also that same week is eBay’s Developer Conference, June 16-18th in Chicago. Tracks include sessions on programming and best practices using the eBay, PayPal and Shopping.com APIs.
And for more 2008 tech events, see good round-ups from Mashable and Frank Gruber.
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May 12, 2008 06:05 AM
Just last week we heard that Aniboom (the YouTube for animated content) would be greatly expanding its distribution channels by partnering with various mobile and web video networks. Now the animation network is teaming up with Oberon Media’s publishing division, I-play, for the creation and distribution of animated serial content across all of its platforms within its gaming network.
First up is Turbo Subs, which is one of I-play’s more popular games. Aniboom will be using aspects of the game, such as characters and the game story, to create a series. It’s kind of like making an action film based off a popular comic book super hero. Kind of.
Nevertheless, Aniboom is getting a pretty good deal out of this, as it’s partnering with established brands for the creation of new and original content. This is already aligned with the major objectives that Aniboom already had for its creative process, but in doing more with existing brands’ characters, plot lines, etc., Aniboom is able to really leverage an already present audience while hopefully maintaining credibility with its own audience.
What we’re left with is not only greater distribution for both Aniboom and its content partners, but a potential for extended advertising possibilities as well (should Aniboom decide to go this route). Either way, it’s great that Aniboom is finding creative ways in which to extend its distribution across a wide array of audiences, while finding ways to add fresh content as well.
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May 12, 2008 04:01 AM
Today marks another milestone for San Francisco based contextual search engine Powerset. They’ve launched a showcase for their user search experience - effectively the search engine minus the web crawl. For now, Powerset queries only Wikipedia and augments results with data from Freebase. The product launch comes just a day after reports that the company is being shopped to potential buyers by investment bank Allen & Co.
I have been able to test Powerset via their labs site for the last few weeks. I wrote about it last month, and the version that just launched is very similar.
There is no way to look at Powerset today and determine if it can be as disruptive to search as Google was when it launched almost a decade ago. That’s because it only queries Wikipedia, and so there is little need for proper ranking algorithms to sort the good from the bad results.
But what user can see is how effective a way it is to gather information quickly. For someone doing research, Powerset effectively removes a number of steps towards getting to the final information. It is particularly effective when the information needed is on many different web pages.
For example, a query on Powerset of “when did earthquakes hit tokyo” yields stunning results. Try this query at Google or even wikipedia to compare - instead of just picking out keywords that are in your query and on a web page, Powerset is actually making some sense of the content included in the wikipedia pages:
The way that Powerset returns queries means that answers are often found in the result snips, as above. They are also structuring a lot of the Wikipedia and (and already structured Freebase) data and inserting it into results. So a search for “Bill Clinton” shows results, but also shows Freebase structured data along with additional query refinements to get to more information. The important thing below isn’t the structured data in the results, its the fact that you can click on the action words and drill down into very specific queries (to find, for example, what bills he signed, or which Supreme Court justices he nominated, or who he slept with).
Powerset is indexing web pages much differently than normal search engines, which generally just record content to match against keyword queries. Instead, Powerset is trying to understand the content on the page so that it can be matched meaningfully to queries later. Even queries that don’t use matching words.
Indexing the web is expensive, though, and Powerset’s way of doing it requires even more time and computing power dedicated to a web page. That’s why they say they aren’t indexing the entire web yet - the company has raised just $12.5 million (plus another $8 million or so in bridge loans from investors). To index the web will require a new round of financing (see the first paragraph above about their sale/financing efforts).
Powerset is has taken a lot of criticism for their goal of trying to redefine how people search the web (including from us). But their lofty goals are what makes Silicon Valley so great - succeed or fail, Powerset is trying to do something pretty spectacular.
The company has also created a demo overview video - see below.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
May 12, 2008 03:59 AM
We mentioned Desktop Nexus nearly a year ago, as a Flickr-like image sharing site for desktop backgrounds. Desktop Nexus has been working on a few improvements to the site, and is now relaunching as more of a community site than a simple place to upload and download images for your computer background.
With a deeper focus on community, Desktop Nexus is in fact looking to provide users with more control over the images they upload. That means that users can now moderate comments left on their images, add titles and descriptions, as well as edit their uploads at a later point in time.
The thing about building out its community is that Desktop Nexus also needs to improve its search capabilities. Desktop Nexus has begun to do so, with the inclusion of Related Wallpapers and tag for a more circular browsing experience. There’s some more work that can be done on this end but I think Desktop Nexus is moving in the right direction, doing something different in creating a community-focused sharing site with recommendations for such a niche image-sharing audience.
Admittedly, the relaunched Desktop Nexus is much friendlier and has more of a media-sharing feel to it. But this relaunch does remind us that a lot of services out there feel the need to launch social networks. At this point, there’s a difference between launching a social network for a particular service, and layering in integrated social capabilities that are also tied in with existing social networks.
For Desktop Nexus, I think the revived focus on building a community around image-sharing that is specific for use on computer screens (and even Twitter backgrounds) is a smart move. With the recent changes, Desktop Nexus is also rendering itself a better target for advertising, perhaps something along the lines of what Google is looking to do with image search graphic display ads, or even a particular segment of images to be used for skins on various branded items.
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May 12, 2008 02:43 AM
Facebook has been filling out its management team with experienced execs over the past year, including ex-Googlers Gideon Yu as CFO and the recently appointed Sheryl Sandberg as COO. Other than the CEO slot, which is still occupied by founder Mark Zuckerberg, most of the other positions on Facebook’s management team are no longer occupied by the class of circa-2004.
Tonight, word from VentureBeat, who has confirmed the news with Facebook, that one of Zuckerberg’s last remaining peers and a high school classmate – Adam D’Angelo, the company’s CTO, is leaving. Kara Swisher has also confirmed the news and writes that “according to sources close to the company, D’Angelo felt his responsibilities no longer fit well with his skills and interests.”
According to D’Angelo’s LinkedIn profile, he has been with the company since June 2004, though he does not share the Founder status of Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz.
No word yet on where D’Angelo is headed or who his replacement might be. The news follows word on Friday that Facebook has raised $100 million in debt to expand its technology infrastructure.
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© Adam Ostrow for Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog, 2008. |
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May 12, 2008 01:39 AM
May 11, 2008
It wasn’t very long ago that MySpace launched what are being dubbed the company’s South Korean and Indian “chapters.” So before MySpace gets entirely familiar with the region, the company’s chief operating officer, Amit Kapur, spent a moment explaining the company’s plans for South and Southeast Asian growth.
Kapur talked with Priyanka Joshi of India’s Business Standard, a partner of FT.com, and revealed some rather peculiar information that, if true, may cause an irregular markets to form upon News Corp’s primary social Web property.
As we reported last month, MySpace intends for there to be original television content broadcast via MySpace India as well as the promotion of an open platform for third-party developers. Yet Kapur has laid bare the company’s intention not to “mirror what it offers in international markets,” as Joshi shaped the question, but instead will “offer a host of third-party widgets created by Indian developers.”
Now, on its face, that seems like a sensible path to take. Indian developers know the Indian market, one would logically argue. Yet it seems almost completely antithetical to the idea of global competition that MySpace would segment developers focused on its main US-based operations to remain largely disconnected from foreign affiliates. If it is indeed the will of the worldwide market for competition to stretch across the seas in the sectors of manufacturing and some portions of the IT support and development structures of Western companies, would it not be appropriate to fully allow Western developers, some of whom are quite well connected with the trends and movements of Asian markets, to offer services to MySpace users wherever they may be located - China, South Korean, India, and elsewhere?
Of course, MySpace may not be intimating that it will provide a platform open only to Indian developers. But what Kapur may perhaps be suggesting is that the company’s Indian division will favor national engineering. That is troubling. Ideally, should not the competitive street be a two-way arena? I would imagine so.
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© Paul Glazowski for Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog, 2008. |
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May 11, 2008 11:32 PM
Earlier this week, TalkShoe CEO Dave Nelson did a pretty decent (and refreshing) post on reasons to still love audio podcasts. Of course Mashable Conversations listeners (and most Mashable readers) are pretty familiar with our love for the audio format, but there’s still a fair amount of naysayers out there who Internet video is killing the radio star.
It isn’t that we think one form is superior to the other - in fact, we’re pretty in love with both forms of Internet media entertainment. That’s why we’ve been working on a plan for putting together a number of consistent video podcast series here at Mashable. We’re not yet on a consistent release cycle, but we wanted to put a new feed in front of you so that you knew where to tune your podcast clients and DVRs over to once we flip the switch on it.
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
If you tune into the feed now, you’ll presently be directed to Pete’s interview with Chamillionaire (embedded below). Keep it indexed in your readers, though, because more video interviews are in the pipe from Pete, Kristen, myself and Adam Ostrow. For those of you still in love with audio, don’t worry, that version of the show won’t be going anywhere, and will still contain a lot of unique content not found on the video feed.
Why are you in love with audio, though? Maybe you share some of Dave Nelson’s thoughts on the topic:
1) Voice is a much richer form of communication. Text does a poor job of conveying emotions, even with smiley faces. I want to actually hear that you’re enthusiastic, or sad, or sarcastic, or whatever. Hey, our DNA has been wired to TALK across 100,000 years, whereas text is a newfangled tool we haven’t yet fully mastered.
2) Voice is immediate and CAUSES new ideas. How many times have you been talking with a group of people and had totally new ideas emerge — ideas that were not from any ONE person? It’s the wisdom of crowds, to cite a great book.
3) It’s easier to talk than type. No explanation necessary, or at least I don’t have the time to write one out here.
4) (This is the most IMPORTANT one) There’s a big difference between our eyes and ears. When we read text or watch video, we can’t do much else, at least not competently. But when we listen, we can still do almost anything else.
For all my various criticisms of what goes on in podcasting, these are just a few of the reasons I keep at it. A couple more reasons? When I get great interviews like I did earlier this week.
Keith Richman, the CEO of Break.com, last week and speak frankly about the state of the business and where things are headed. This is a very valuable chat to listen to, no matter which side of the online video production business you aim to be on. While the business of online video remains very lucrative for a lucky few producers and a wonderfully successful place to put your advertising dollars, for the vast majority of producers and advertisers, it remains a very difficult minefield to navigate.
Keith and I talked not only about the goals and aim of the ROI council, but the state of the indie producers, and when we’ll start to see that boom for them that bloggers see today. For some, that boom is now, with some of the top paid producers on Break earning several thousand a month.
The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.
In one of the more popular podcasts in recent memory, I had a chance to speak to founder and CEO of New Relic, Lew Cirne, a bit about his organization and exactly where these rumors of unscalability for the Ruby on Rails platform come from.
Rails is known for it’s succinct programming style, where one line of code can be very powerful, and perform very complex tasks. It’s this simplicity that can also be a trap for developers who accidentally can trigger enormous processing tasks with what look like very efficient lines of code.
New Relic’s software as a service offering can analyze these code bits and give exact and graphed out details about what sort of computing time-sinks may exist within the code, and offer suggestions of more efficient ways of executing that same statement.
All in all, it’s a very interesting proposition - if you’re a developer in the Rails environment (or anyone curious about how Rails applications work behind the scenes), you definitely want to catch this episode, as Lew drops some very interesting knowlege on the topic.
The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.
Another great conversation was one that I had with Canaan Ventures partner Izhar Shay. I was contacted excitedly by the PR folks over there about a company they’d just invested in, something called Prime Sense. This precocious company seems intent on bringing into existence that technology seen most prevalently in Minority Report - that gesture based stuff.
The way it was described to me was that their intention was to make interfacing with entertainment consoles and personal computers as seamless and natural as interfacing with other human beings (think Minority Report, without the goofy Nintendo Power Glove).
I’ve seen a number of attempts at gesture based interaction, though, and most of them fall flat. The problem, generally, is in the object recognition. To fix this, Prime Sense has done a lot of work in what is essentially compositing and green screen technology. During the development process, they’ve as a side-effect of their work created what Shay described as professional level green-screen technology that will be made available for consumer level prices.
This has the net effect of putting in the hands of independent video producers the technology that has generally been only available to folks with the budget for a $10,000 lighting set-up and a $5,000 Tri-Caster. This is definitely one company to keep an eye on, and definitely one you want to hear more about.
The embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.
Twing is a relatively new forum search tool that launched back in mid-March. Kristen recently reviewed them, and came to a lot of the same conclusions I did this week, as I sat down with Scott Germaise on an episode of Mashable Conversations this week and gave it a good once over:
As I said at the beginning of our conversation, too, I’m not typically excited or enthralled with vertical search offerings in general, but just sitting down and playing with some ego searches and some brand searches for Mashable, I was able to find a wealth of conversation that previously had been undiscovered by any of my present brand-management feeds I have set up.
Interestingly enough, through their category selection process and the natural self-policing nature of forums, they’ve also a remarkably spam free set of results.
Scott explained a bit of why that is, and gave me an in-depth tour of the features and history of the website, which you can hear in the embed is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating).
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May 11, 2008 10:00 PM
The cyclone which hit Myanmar (Burma) last weekend caused an indescribable amount of damage to the nation’s people; the ill effects of the storm have been vast extended by the ruling military junta’s resistance to both substantive and logistical aid from outside sources.
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And while Google has spend the past few days offering its users quick access to two financial drop-boxes established for a duo of international relief organizations, UNICEF and Direct Relief International (to which Mountain View has pledges a $1m donation, presumably to be made through it’s philanthropic arm, Google.org), the company has gathered a collection of Google Earth layers through its Outreach program to help any and all interested to observe visual data of the region in the aftermath of the disaster.
The information comes by way of organizations that Google purports to work with, including ReliefWeb. They’ve chosen to publish their materials in the Google Earth-friendly KML format, to be easily distributed to as many people as may choose to run the software program. While Google has made available any data it has garnered through affiliate sources, it has already collected a number of revealing layers, which include:
- Myanmar Ministry of Health Facilities
- Satellite imagery from a selection of providers
- Satellite flood analysis from MODIS
- Satellite flood maps from ZKI/DLR
- An animated storm track with category designation and wind speed
- Animated storm clouds
While some may understandably feel that observing the results of Cyclone Nargis dealt upon the people of Myanmar from afar is disturbingly voyeuristic, the fact of the matter is this: the more knowledgeable and aware the world is of what has happened and will happen henceforth, the better. No option in this case is good, but one can certainly make out the differences between bad and worse.
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© Paul Glazowski for Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog, 2008. |
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May 11, 2008 09:41 PM
Honoring mother’s day, we thought it would be nice to do another round up. This time, we have some of the most popular social networking sites for women. This is not a definitive list, but rather our choice of what’s good out there; feel free to add your favorites in the comments.
Also don’t forget 20+ tools for the best Mother’s Day ever.
(...)
Read the rest of Top 10 Social Networking Sites for Women (778 words)
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May 11, 2008 09:05 PM
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May 11, 2008 08:42 PM
The Apple online store has stopped selling iPhones completely, stating they are currently unavailable. What does it mean? In some way I’m inclined to say “not much.” Apple rarely telegraphs its moves this far in advance. However, since O2 in the UK has stopped selling iPhones and a number of folks have had trouble buying them in stores, we might be seeing a next-gen iPhone in the next few days. Here’s hoping.
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May 11, 2008 08:27 PM
We’ve seen the IFPI, or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, make numerous headlines as of late. There are have been a multitude of stories concerning copyright infringement suits and allegations. There are the seemingly routine efforts to stifle or halt BitTorrent traffic, regardless of its technological legitimacy. And recently reported was the effort by the group, in conjunction with the youth-minded charity Childnet, to promote legal music downloads through the release of a brief education guide which delineates what’s okay and what’s not okay as far as audio consumption.
We mentioned as much in a recent post, but what we didn’t do is pry open the list of recommended download sites. Today, Ernesto of TorrentFreak, delved in. And what he found was quite surprising. In short, he discovered that the initial set of half a dozen links for his place of residence, the Netherlands, to be little more than vapid domains with little legal substance and maybe even a some slices of adult content thrown in. In error, we presume.
The obvious problem that offered Ernesto such a foul experience? Bad organization. Links run from A to Z. Which can perhaps be good news for US consumers, given the availability of Amazon MP3. 
But the browsing process could certainly turn sour depending on alphabetics in foreign lands.
Be that as it may, there’s really no sensible excuse for the IFPI or Childnet to deliver anything less than a reliable directory. They both wish to promote good digital manners (we joke, of course) and offer children ways in which to cut into their parents’ or guardians’ paychecks. (We joke again.) Why not go the extra mile and prove to consumers that they care about making money as much as they wish consumers to care about the fortunes of those that truly matter (artists/musicians) in the music industry? This discovery seems nothing more than a continuation of the negligence exemplified by big business forces for the past several years, which, as with many past instances, will ultimately lead to those companies’ ill effect.
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May 11, 2008 08:06 PM
MyItThings.com, a so-called “leading publisher of user-generated content” with a focus on fashion, has announced the Monday debut of a portfolio feature to offer aspiring designers the option to display their creations in an active, social venue. The site, which our own Kristen Nicole mentioned briefly last autumn, considers itself as playing host to a growing community of trendsetters and tastemakers, all connected via the Web.
The launch of the new feature coincides with the start of a contest, scheduled to conclude in October, that will choose among all participants a trio of finalists who will then be featured on a runway show in NYC. All submissions for the contest will be judged partly by the MyItThings community, and partly by a panel of five critics: Malan Breton of “Project Runway” fame; Sheryl Berk, editor-in-chief of Life & Style Weekly; Nathan Cooper, executive editor of C Magazine; designer Keith Lissner, and Yuli Ziv, editor-in-chief of MyItThings.com. The influence of voters and panelists will purportedly be an equal 50/50.
The rules for anyone interested in the contest, which will be documented to great extent on MyItThings through a mixture of blog posts, videos, and photos for full promotional effect, are quite simple:
Entrants are invited to show off their pieces online for a chance to win the grand prize. Entries can be submitted today through July 15. Each designer is asked to submit five previously created looks. Site users will vote for their top 10 favorite designers. Then, the three finalists will be awarded $1,500 to work on their looks for a Spring 2009 collection.
Given the heightened attention devoted by the public to the fashion industry as a result of the emergence of contest-based television programs like “Project Runway” and “America’s Next Top Model,” it is likely safe to assume that MyItThing’s efforts in establishing a gateway for relatively unknown designers by which to reach a heightened level of fame and recognition will prove somewhat fruitful. All really depends on whether the network can successfully orchestrate the contest to be a legitimate outlet for new faces and undiscovered talent.
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May 11, 2008 07:06 PM
How would you like your emails, tweets, and Web searches delivered? Slowly? Really slowly? If the latest sign of the next-generation iPhone is to be believed, you’ll have a choice.
According to a discovery by Chronic Productions, published earlier this weekend, and relayed by MacRumors, Engadget Mobile, et al., prospective users of the next iteration of Apple’s most ambitious mobile device will be given the option to browse the Internet via 3G broadband or by way of the now-standard 2.5G/EDGE connection. All you’ll have to do is flip a software-based switch, similar to how iPhone users currently transfer between EDGE and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Good deal? Perhaps. Ideally, sure. Of course, it’s well known that 3G chipsets routinely consume more battery power than their EDGE-based equivalents. Therefore, presenting users with an either-or option would make sense.
Now it is important to note that most iPhone users several months from now will continue to be required to subsist on less-than-3G speeds for their Web data demands, regardless of whether they own a first- or second-generation device. AT&T’s mobile broadband network simply has not achieved the ubiquity that the company has managed to accomplish with its EDGE network, thus it will still be some time before the mobile technology
typically found only in major metropolitan areas in the US makes its way to all four corners of the nation, as it were, and thus entice large quantities of consumers seduced by Cupertino to splurge.
What’s more, it may be unlikely that subscribers of 3G services for the iPhone will be treated to a discounted payment plan, as they are today through a special arrangement made between Apple and AT&T. Currently, iPhone users are required to pay roughly $20 per month on top of standard voice and SMS rates. Yet 3G subscribers must often pay $39+ for unhindered Web data access on any compatible devices. So there may logically be fewer 3G iPhone subscriptions registered upon delivery of the new handset. (Which is widely expected to occur sometime next month.)
As an iPhone owner subscribed to the most inexpensive corresponding voice/SMS/data plan available ($60), I personally find the EDGE data access to suffice for most tasks. Email, Twitter, the occasional request for news stories through Safari, Google Maps searches, and the everyday stock and weather checks come through relatively easily. Some pages take 15-30 second to pull through, but the iPhone is a mobile machine, so I usually find myself willing to “walk and wait.” In short, 3G may hasten those data transfers somewhat, but my impression is that the advent of 3G iPhone services won’t be enough for most present subscribers to willingly relinquish another $20 per month for the privilege of faster speeds.
My sense is that the iPhone’s browsing capabilities - which are clearly very appealing to many users - matched with a popular flat-rate $20 data plan is what has enabled Apple to achieve the sales it has so far secured. And since there is likely to be less incentive for AT&T to follow iPhone’s current data rate special with an equally attractive 3G pricing structure, considering the relative youth of its wireless broadband network, I dare say Apple would be smart to maintain an option for a potential customer to purchase the 3G-capable iPhone sans a premium 3G subscription.
(Image sources: Flickr user juliegomoll; Macrumors)
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May 11, 2008 06:31 PM
RSSmeme, a project that has been described by our own Mark Hopkins as a “less colorful competitor” to the recently re-launched ReadBurner (a service which, we should note, was also purchased in March 2008 by Mashable editor-in-chief Adam Ostrow), just last month introduced an update in the form of language filter, meant to aid users in seeking links to stories whose contextual languages they can understand and which are aggregated as shared items in Google Reader. And today we hear from the creator of RSSmeme, Benjamin Golub, that the service has received yet more backend attention in the past few days.
According to Golub, the framework of RSSmeme has been “completely overhauled,” a process which has resulted in the creation of an API. What does the API do? In Golub’s words, it offers the ability to “get feeds for any type of filter. A basic example of this is something as simple as an English-only feed. Or more specifically, users can sift RSSmeme for stories that, say, are published by Mashable and associated with stories pertaining to Google in one way or another. The API is also promised to allow bloggers to “pull notes out of RSSmeme and put them back on their blog(s).” Golub explains that one need only write a plugin to accomplish that task, as all necessary data can be easily accessed through the API.
Already Golub has created something of a starter example of the API’s external utility in the form of a “most shared stories” widget for one’s blog. You can see the widget employed on his personal site.
Furthermore, he has established a mobile version of RSSmeme, for users interested in browsing shared stories on the go. It is quite elementary in nature, having purportedly been created with some 50 lines of code. It can be accessed at: ‘http://m.rssmeme.com.’ Of course, ReadBurner has offered a website designed exclusively for mobile-access for about a month now. It too is openly accessible. Simply direct your phone’s browser to: ‘http://m.readburner.com.’
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May 11, 2008 04:57 PM
