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RealNetworks Lets You Copy DVDs to Your Hard Drive — And Keep the DRM
Date Published:
Description: RealDVD As anyone with a lick of tech knowledge knows, ripping a DVD onto your hard drive is, well, frowned upon by the "Powers that be" in the motion picture industry. Realizing that, RealNetworks has launched a new solution called RealDVD, which lets users copy DVDs onto their hard drives without facing legal troubles. Even better, it only takes about 20 minutes to do so. Sounds great, right? There's only one catch: it keeps the DRM. After copying the DVD onto your hard drive, you can't transfer the movie to a friend's computer, so you'll be stuck using your own. Much like iTunes, though, RealDVD lets you authorize five computers to play the movies on the hard drive.
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Parascale Promises Data Center Heaven: Private Cloud Storage At About $1 A Gig
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Description: Web applications require a lot of data storage. All the videos uploaded to YouTube, for example, are estimated to take up more than 500 terabytes of storage. Google’s servers overall process one petabyte of data every hour or so. Google had to create its own Web-scale file system to handle all the data that it processes and stores. As Web-scale computing and the needs of plain-old enterprise storage grow, many more companies are wishing they had a file system like Google’s. Monday, a startup called ParaScale is launching a private beta of a commercial-grade storage software that uses a similar approach to Google’s own in-house system. (ParaScale nearly made it into TechCrunch50 this year, but was just shy of making the cut, largely because it was no longer in stealth mode). It offers a file system that can run on a cluster of any off-the-shelf Linux servers. Companies can keep adding as many servers as they need, with each one acting as a redundant node. The software runs on the cluster as whole, treating it as one giant file system. This creates private cloud storage that companies can host themselves inside their own firewalls. ParaScale CEO Sajai Krishnan says customers can expect to pay about $1 per gigabyte, depending on their server costs.
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CollectiveX Groupsites 2.0 Makes Group Organization Sexy
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Description: CollectiveX, a bootstrapped startup located in Maryland, will roll out version 2 of it's year old social network collaboration platform today. Full disclosure: the company is a TechCrunch50 Exhibitor (which is a sponsor). In a nutshell, think of CollectiveX as a sort of LinkedIn-type professional social network, with collaboration tools for groups (companies, boards of directors, whatever). Calendaring, blogging, file sharing, photos, etc. Robert Scoble calls them "social websites." Groups create shared websites for members. In this new version pages are customizable and modularized (think Netvibes). users can also take any module on a page and embed it on a third party site, or pull any third party widgets or code into their CollectiveX site. There's a free option for groups, or they can buy things like a more white label experience (see top image above), extra storage, etc. for a monthly fee.
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Is Search Really 90% Solved?
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Description: Jessica Guynn has an excellent interview with Google's Marissa Mayer today about Google's first ten years (today is arguably Google's tenth birthday). Good stuff in there - Marissa talks about Google's accomplishments in search and advertising, and looks forward to a future where cloud computing becomes pervasive. Marissa also says she hopes to still be at the company in another ten years. But one thing caught my eye. Marissa says search is "90 to 95%" solved:

Search is an unsolved problem. We have a good 90 to 95% of the solution, but there is a lot to go in the remaining 10%. How do we monetize new forms of content as they come online such as video, maps and books. How do we help content providers transition their businesses online and build healthy businesses.

Here's the thing. I don't think search is even close to being solved yet. In a May 25 post I talked about how early I think we are in search, and why a competitive search market is so important to make sure innovation keeps happening:
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No ChaChing For ChaCha Guides
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Description: ChaCha used to be a ridiculous human powered web based search engine that's best use appeared to be for killing time when bored. They raised a boatload of money from Jeff Bezos and others and eventually switched to an all-mobile interface. They also began offering their platform to third party marketers. But now there are indications that the company is having cash flow issues, even after a recent pay cut to guides. As before, the information is coming from their poorly-paid and poorly-treated human guides.
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Crunchnotes

ETA Bombs Spanish Newspaper
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Description: The ETA may or may not have a legitimate goal in demanding Basque independence, but bombing a building full of journalists is no way to win karma points or influence people.
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Sarah Lacy Book Tour - I’m In
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Description: Sarah Lacy, the author of the book “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good,” is thinking of doing a book tour. Start things off here in Atherton, Sarah. I’ll do the first one at my house. See my interview with Sarah on the new book here.
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We Don’t Do Reprints
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Description:
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I’m going with what Mathew Said
Date Published:
Description: I already picked one blog fight today. So on the other issue, I’m going with what Mathew Ingram said.
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Dare Obasanjo Quits Blogging
Date Published:
Description: As much as it pissed me off when Microsoft’s Dare Obasanjo defaced my wikipedia page to prove some point (what he was really doing was hitting me back for criticizing Microsoft the day before), I’m sad to see him leave blogging. When he wasn’t being a total asshole he had some smart things to say. [...]
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Mashable

Social Networking My Way through the Entourage Season 5 Premiere Party
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As Entourage fans most likely know, Season 5 of the hit HBO show debuts this evening. Last Thursday, I attended the first ever “in-flight” television premiere, a co-promotion between HBO and Virgin America, who was using the opportunity to launch the maiden voyage of its New York to Las Vegas route. While the event was choc-full-o free drink, party schwag, celebrity sightings, and an advanced look at the new season of my favorite TV show, it was also a chance to use some of the tools we talk about incessantly on Mashable for some real world social networking.

I actually got the ball rolling on the experience earlier in the week, when I posted an article from Variety and note about the event to Facebook. Of course, this automatically was sent to my mini-feed and in turn my friend’s news feeds, letting them know what I’d posted. While primarily I was simply looking to share the experience and maybe make a few friends from high school jealous, within a couple hours someone I knew from Mashable events had commented on the item, letting me know that they were also going to be in Vegas. Considering I was going on the trip solo, it was nice to know that I’d know at least one person once I got to town.

Moving on, once Thursday rolled around and things were getting started at a private hangar at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, my weapons of choice for keeping people updated on my whereabouts and activities were Twitter and the Facebook for Blackberry application, which allowed me to upload photos to my profile immediately after taking them. This proved especially useful later on, as my Blackberry decided to have memory issues that required me to continuously delete pictures to make room for new ones.

After a couple hours of partying and mingling in the hangar, the event got started when the cast of Entourage (minus Jeremy Piven aka Ari Gold) and Sir Richard Branson himself emerged from the plane for their photo opp. While this part of the story admittedly doesn’t have much of anything to do with social networking tools, it does provide an opportunity to insert some cool photos, which you can see after the jump

Getting back to the story, as you may know, one of the more interesting features of Virgin America’s entertainment system is its chat capabilities, which allow you to converse with other people on the flight. This was tightly integrated into the in-flight Entourage experience, as the crew asked everyone to login to the chat room and mention their most memorable moment from the previous four seasons of the show for a chance to win a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne. Of course, the chat also provided an opportunity to get to know some of the other travelers and discuss the premiere after it was showed over the entertainment system.

Once on the ground, the party moved over to The Palms, where my camera phone captured some of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen (if city sky lines are your thing), which were immediately uploaded to Facebook. From there, the real world social networking began, with the usual furious exchange of business cards leading to the mandatory social profile connecting the next day.

While putting in an honest day’s work on Friday from my hotel room, I set my sights on the evening’s activities. After running a few disappointing Google searches that were dominated heavily by annoying SEO-gauged content, I moved onto Yelp for reviews of places to go. What’s great about reading user reviews versus the generic ones provided by the many of the sites atop the search listings for terms like “Vegas nightlife” are that just about every review provides value of some sort, as one person’s negatives (“it was too crowded!”) are another’s positives.

After reading reviews of dozen’s of places, my indecisiveness was ultimately cured by some new Facebook friends who were heading over to Tao, a nightclub at the Venetian. From there, my Twitter timeline documents much of the night, including talk of a Michael Phelps sighting from the night before and even a celebrity encounter of my own – or so I thought. Of course, there comes a point in any good night out in Vegas where your Twittering *should* come to an end, and I certainly made sure to disconnect once that point was reached

As for the moral of the story, for me, not only was the trip a ridiculously good time, but also a reminder that some of these tools that many take for granted and others often question the value of really do have a purpose. When used properly, they can do an excellent job of making your travel experiences more fun and social – especially when going it alone. As for the season premiere, I think Entourage fans will definitely enjoy it, but I’ll leave the TV reviews for another day and a different blog (feel free to leave comments about the show though after watching the premiere!).

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400 Advertisers Tell U.S. Justice Dept They Feel Bad About Google-Yahoo Play
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Lots and lots of advertising companies are taking the opportunity given by the recent Google-Yahoo search advertising trial and the subsequent autumn revelation made by the Google CEO last month to let the U.S. Department of Justice know they’re not so comfortable with the recent dealings between the two largest search giants on the Web. The ANA, or the Association of National Advertisers, a group that collectively manages north of $100 billion in business, decided to issue a letter today to the assistant attorney general of the antitrust arm of the DOJ.

According to Dawn Kawamoto of CNET News, the ANA, which “includes a range of Fortune 500 companies such as the Kellogg Co. and The Proctor & Gamble Co. to Johnson & Johnson and The Walt Disney Co.,” the delivery was preceded by “a comprehensive and independent analysis of its members” as well as “in-person discussions with (Google and Yahoo).”

As has been mentioned by many a news and analysis source, Google last week celebrated it’s 10th year in operation, and in light of the milestone its VP of search products and user experience, Marissa Miller, spoke with the LA Times about the company’s presence in advertising following its DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 (made official in March 2008). If trends continue, the company’s numbers are only growing larger. In fact, the ANA foresees that “a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 percent of search advertising inventory” which will in turn “likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search and advertising.”

All things considered, this news only adds further to the fairly compressed period of trouble for the last several months have been for Google. Yahoo as well. Google is now being hit with increased privacy concerns from European reaches, the US Government, consumer advocates, city and town residents, and various other parties big and small. Yahoo, meanwhile, is coming off an attempt by Microsoft to purchase its business, an effort which Redmond abandoned, only to see activist investor Carl Icahn net three Yahoo Board seats for himself and two other individuals, a story which seems far from complete. Where will this go? Perhaps not the way Google and Yahoo originally intended for. The extra level of attention given by the ANA that regulators parsing the deal between both companies cannot weight kindly. Keep in mind, it is only weeks until the “grace period” given to inspectors by Google and Yahoo is through.

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GoToMyCamera Takes Surveillance to the Cloud on the Cheap
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Description:

UPDATED: It’s no cheap exercise to implement a surveillance system to record what goes on at home or at one’s place of business. And as for the hardware, it can still be a pricey endeavor. As with most anything else, much depends on engineering and utility. But there’s a name that seeks to extend such artificial eyes into what it calls Web 2.0 video storage, and do so very inexpensively. GoToMyCamera, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates with the aid of Amazon’s S3 cloudware and enables remote access to video (”surveillance-as-a-service”) at a rate that many will financially regard to be very manageable.

Let’s get right into the numbers. According to GoToMyCamera, part of Eptascape Inc (no affiliation to Citrix, the maker of GoToMyPC), there exist three plans operating on a month-to-month contract. While sign-up costs $5 across the board, a Solo account, allowing for 1 camera, 1 user, and 100 MB of included storage space ($0.25 for extra 100 allotments), will cost just $5. Basic will run you $10 per month, enabling 4 cameras, 1 user, and 200 MB included. And despite what the website may describe, it is $0.50 for each additional 200MB of space.

Higher still is GoToMyCamera’s Business plan, costing $30/month for service with a 10-camera allowance, 10 users, 500 MB included cloud storage. For each additional 500MB, it is $1.50.

There’s a bit of a disparity in the extra storage allotments offered among the Solo, Basic, and Business plans. If storage should be proportional, 500MB would be $1.25 rather than the published $1.50. We’ve contacted the folks behind GoToMyCamera about this. We’ll let you know of their response.

Yet, even with these adjustments, the cost/service ratio is intriguing. Once you have one, two, four, ten network cameras (only Axis Network cameras supported at present), and connect them as required, material pushed to the Web is easily accessed. Vacation on the mind? Perhaps you’re just across town and want to maintain a connection. This is one way to do that - and keep lots of dollars in your pocket.

Update: Marco Graziano of GoToMyCamera wrote back to us about the matter over storage pricing. Here is his reply in full:

I have tried intentionally to keep only storage for additional fees over the monthly fee. It is true that there is an (intentional) small discrepancy between the $0.25/100MB for Solo subscribers and the $1.50/500MB for the Business subscribers. On the other hand, Business subscribers have up to 10 times the cameras of the Solo subscribers with increased bandwidth costs that is not a factor in the pricing. It is not easy to map what Amazon S3 charges us into a simple schema for end-users and this is an initial attempt. I would like to refrain from using number of “HTTP PUTS” and bandwidth in the pricing schema for our subscribers. Somehow they need to be factored in. We will be able to refine the pricing once we have a better understanding of the common usage patterns in real situations.

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A Data Cap Might be Technically Bearable, But it’s Consciously Limiting
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An interesting statement emerged on NewTeeVee today. Post author Chris Albrecht quotes Roku VP of consumer products “It’s unfortunate that the limitless possibilities are being capped by an ISP [Comcast], but it has no direct business impact on us.” Roku, for those unaware, is in a partnership with Netflix to deliver streaming movies on a $99 buy-in deal fully subsidized through one’s monthly rental subscription cost. Comcast, meanwhile, will be initiating a bandwidth limit of 250GB for residential broadband users per month starting in October.

Let me say that 1) the limits to be enact could have a direct business impact on Roku, and 2) of course the company will say otherwise. The reason being that it is in Roku’s interest to disregard changes at Comcast. If it were to complain in ways that prospective users would notice, it might risk cutting into sales by dissuading shoppers concerned about hitting the data limit. And at this point in time, Roku likely doesn’t need such disruptions to its output.

VP Tim Twerdhal says that consumers’ choice of downstream video bitrates allows Roku to safely stay within the bounds set by Comcast. A valid point. Equally valid is his explanation that visual quality will be sustained while bitrates drop as the technologies involved improve and advance. But such progress is a relative unknown to Comcast’s very real “cut-off.”

Furthermore, it only takes knowledge of existence a limit - not too big or too small - to influence consumer decisions. Give a user warning of what might be if he/she were to seek the full potential (or close to it) of modern conveniences like high-quality media downloads, and that tricky thing known as deliberation creeps into the picture. A user might begin to weight the pros and cons of his/her situation. And that eventually eats into interconnected economies. With the movie/TV download sector being one of the hungriest around today.

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German Security Office Smells Stink on Google Chrome
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Germany’s Office for Information Security, also known as the BSI, has apparently looked at Google’s Chrome browser and felt a pinch of uneasy déjà vu (a la Microsoft), only this time sensing that the company behind the software wants to know too much about you, too often. As a result, the BSI is advising anyone who’ll listen to steer clear of the crayon invader’s brand new beta. At least for anything other than experimental tasks.

Though this isn’t a warning stretched to the whole EU, the fact is that the BSI’s red flag has been shown by a number of German media stalwarts, including Berliner Zeitung and Tagesschau, the second of which is a news program widely viewed by the public. Which makes for fairly substantial news. And just so we’re thorough, the way we’ve learned of this official relay is the through the German blog Spreeblick, sourced by Philipp Lensen of Google Blogoscoped. Lensen summarized the matter thusly:

The Federal Office for Information Security warned Internet users of the new browser Chrome. The application by the company Google should not be used for surfing the Internet, as a spokesperson for the office told the Berliner Zeitung. It was said to be problematic that Chrome was distributed as an unfinished advance version. Furthermore it was said to be risky that user data is hoarded with a single vendor. With its search engine, email program and the new browser, Google now covers all important areas on the Internet.

To be honest, a part of me wishes to draw a bit of humor from this news chain. After all, it’s not as if Google hasn’t walked this line before. It manages vast amounts of user data, regularly distributes “unfinished advance version(s)” of software and services, and generally gives privacy hawks the willies. On the other hand, we knew this moment would come.

All this conversation about Google this and Google that, Google so easy and Google so smart. The Chrome project aggregates pretty much every concern into one quick install. Naturally the whistle gets blown. This time from Germany’s own BSI. The issue of security can really only be compounded by the fears of a one-stop shop for both corporation and criminal. The premise of those fears: Google Chrome equals Google Concentrate. “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you,” goes the song.

There’s more of this on its way, to be sure. Regardless of intent or execution, words of caution ring more loudly than calm, and with holes in Chrome to fill, it’s easy to see why various folks would prefer people dabble rather than dive. No doubt, this discussion will be an open one for long time hence, and Google as it is known today will never escape the cloud of suspicion that hovers ever more darkly. All the company can do now is…deal.

Just to lay the cards fully out onto the table, I used Google Translate to put articles from both Berliner Zeitung and Spreeblick into poor, algorithmically-arranged English.

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eHub di Emily Chang

Zimplit
Date Published: 2008-09-05T14:01:00-08:00
Description: A free downloadable content management system that is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. Zimplit consists of only one core engine file (about 30kb in size), which is easy to install and use via a simple web interface.
Tags: Content Management System, Development and/or open source

Soup.io
Date Published: 2008-09-05T07:02:00-08:00
Description: A free hosted microblog service with a fast bookmarklet, blog by email, automatic image galleries and custom domains.
Tags: Blogging, Publishing

KidZui
Date Published: 2008-09-04T07:04:01-08:00
Description: A new browser for kids ages 3-12. KidZui''s team of trained teachers and parents has hand-picked over 800,000 kid-friendly websites, pictures, and videos that your kids can explore freely so you don't have to worry about what they're seeing online.
Tags: Browsers and surfing, Kids, Parents

Office 2.0 Conference 2008
Date Published: 2008-09-03T15:04:00-08:00
Description: "The Office 2.0 Conference is a collective experiment organized every year in San Francisco, CA and aimed at discovering the future of online productivity & collaboration.
Tags: Events

Classtell
Date Published: 2008-09-03T07:30:00-08:00
Description: A service that allows teachers to easily create class websites to share information with their students and parents.
Tags: eLearning, Parents

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Web 2.0 Buch - HAW Hamburg - Fakultät DMI - Department Information
Date Published: 2008-09-08T07:07:38Z
Description: Artikel noch lesen!!
Tags: Web2.0

Rememble
Date Published: 2008-09-08T07:07:23Z
Description:
Tags: web2.0 timeline photos

nuTsie.com : Free Your iTunes - Listen now! - playlists, music, songs, ringtones, MP3s, lyrics, and CDs. nuTsie.com
Date Published: 2008-09-08T07:07:06Z
Description:
Tags: web2.0 songs radio streaming tools

beon
Date Published: 2008-09-08T07:06:39Z
Description: beon networks solutions - beon. thats all you need - Some applications and information cannot be anywhere but in your desktop. To solve this we have created our beon widgets, widgets as is, independent, free... like yourself.
Tags: applications widget webdesign widgets web2.0 tools web software mobile

Treemo: Media Sharing on a Mission
Date Published: 2008-09-08T07:04:57Z
Description: Treemo: Media Sharing on a Mission
Tags: web2.0 web storage socialsoftware socialnetworking social mobile media

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