Facebook’s Thiel Explains Failed Twitter Takeover – BusinessWeek.In Facebook’s first public confirmation of the talks, Thiel said the parties disagreed over price and structure when they seriously considered a deal last fall. “It became pretty clear it wasn’t going to happen,” Thiel says from the mid-Manhattan office of his hedge fund Clarium Capital. “The deal would have to be done with Facebook stock. And then you have to figure out how much the stock is worth.”
Category: Web 2.0
Yahoo! Launches “Yahoo Live” Service
Last night Yahoo! launched it’s live streaming website allowing users to stream from a webcam so that anyone can watch it. As of writing this the website is full of errors telling me that they are experience a lot of traffic so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to play around with it.
What I have been able to do is watch a few streams and they look pretty good probably not much better than any of the other live streaming websites out there but what sets it apart is the web design itself.
The web site looks gorgeous, you just have to see it for yourself.
It doesn’t look like it is very hard to sign up for the service, all you need is a webcam, a microphone, and a Yahoo! account.
Here Comes Another Bubble – Video
“The Web 2.0 “bubble” had it coming. A Silicon Valley music video by the Richter Scales.
http://www.richterscales.com
Solo, video, arrangement and lyrics by Matt Hempey
Mixed by Bill Hare
Recorded by Jason Hunter & Charlie Forkish
Based on “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” by Billy Joel”
Twitter Tracking, Incredibley Usefull
As some of you may know I absolutely love Twitter, I use it everyday to communicate with my friends but now I use it for something else, tracking trends.
Recently Twitter added a new feature, the ability to track words on Twitter, when using Twitter through SMS or IM all you have to do is send “track WORD” where WORD is any word that you would like to keep track of, now whenever someone mentions that word on Twitter it will get sent to your phone or your IM client, it is quite handy. When you want to stop receiving updates with that word all you have to do is send “untrack WORD.”
I actually used this very recently while I was out bowling. I like being able to keep up with all of the goings on in the internet world but when the whole iPhone hacking firmware 1.1.1 story was still developing, I wasn’t at home where I could keep track of it in my usual way. So, what I did was use tracking to follow two words “iphone” and “hack” this way when anyone was talking about it I would get messages sent to my phone about it.
This way I was able to keep up with what was going on without having to constantly check my RSS feeds for new items, this kept my friends from getting upset with me, and myself happy knowing that I was still up to date on all of the latest news.
Try it out for yourself, you will find it incredibly useful.
Google Adds Presentation App to Google Docs
Google today announced that there will be an addition of a presentation app to the Google Docs suite. This is what everyone has been waiting for, the last piece of the puzzle, now if they would just improve it and add some features it would be a real competitor. At its current feature set it can’t compete with Microsoft office but for those who don’t need all of those features it is a great option.
Here is a paragraph from the Official Google Blog talking about some of the features of the collaborative features in the presentation app:
“Starting today, presentations — whether imported from existing files or created using the new slide editor — are listed alongside documents and spreadsheets in the Google Docs document list. They can be edited, shared, and published using the familiar Google Docs interface, with several collaborators working on a slide deck simultaneously, in real time. When it’s time to present, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they’re watching. Not wanting anyone to feel left out, we’ve made the presentation feature available in 25 languages; Google Apps customers can also access it as part of Google Docs.”
Here is a video presenting the new presentation app.
Digg.com Site Redesign
Digg.com got a nice redesign. I actually think that Digg is adding features that don’t necessarily need to be there and completely missing the most important feature, an image section. The features that they have added include an “All” tab and cleaned up navigation. I personally don’t really like the new site design. I think that the header on digg has gotten uglier and uglier with each design “upgrade.”
There is another feature which I think needs to be added and that is a “related links” box next to the digg story.
Instead of having a graphical ad they can have a list of links that are suggested by diggers as related to the story that they are currently viewing, it will also display 1 or 2 text ads displayed either site wide or category wide. This way Digg can keep generating revenue but also add some value to the users.
A lot of times I will see links in the comments, if Digg added this “related links” box it would separate commentary by diggers from other resources of information about the stories topic. The text ads would also be sitting right next to actual content instead of floating in the middle of no where as the current ads are. Of course the ads would be clearly labeled.
5,000 Web 2.0 Logos in 5 Minutes
It is amazing how the web has grown and the website SimpleSpark is indexing all of the Web 2.0 companies out there. They have indexed over 5,000 logos and have made a little 5 minute video showing all of them. Check it out:
Digg Launches Digg Widgets
Digg has add a new item to its list of ever growing features. The newest addition is Digg Widgets which allow you to add a bit of Digg to your own website or blog. Choose from 5 different styles or create your own style.
You can customize what is shown in the widget such as, popular stories in specific topics, a top 10 list from a specific topic, stories dugg by a user, etc.
The new tool is pretty interesting and makes me wonder if you will start seeing this pop up on personal sites showing things that they have dugg. It would be an interesting way to display new information on your blog all the time.
SeeqPod Music beta – Playable Search
SeeqPod is a very interesting idea. SeeqPod is a search engine for music. They search the internet for servers that have mp3’s on them then puts them in their index. You then can search through their index and find music to listen to.
After searching for a song or artist you can add songs to a playlist on the right and search for more music on the left, the page uses javascript so your music will continue to play as you add songs to your playlist. After creating your playlist you can share it with your friends or embed it on your blog/site.
The site also has an iPhone version which lets you search for music on your iPhone and stream it to your phone by clicking the links to the MP3’s.
What is really cool about the site is that they have a discover button in the search so it will find similar songs to what you type in the search box, so typing in Fall Out Boy will give you things like the Plain White T’s, The F-Ups, The bled, etc.
Check it out is a really cool place to go and find music to listen to along with discovering new music that you might not have ever heard before.
Pownce Invites
I have 5 Pownce invites to give out and at a time when they are being sold on ebay for up to $5 a piece grabbing one for free would be great.
The first 5 people to comment on this post will get one and that is it. All you have to do is leave a valid email address in the email box when leaving a comment.
What is Pownce? check out what I had to say about it here.
Update: I was given 6 more invites from Pownce which gives me a total of 10 invites left after giving away the first invite to MrBlogger.
Pownce a New Way to Share Files with Friends
Pownce is a new way to share files with friends. It has been created by Leah Culver, Kevin Rose, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen. The team has created a new company called Megatechtronium.
The new app that is invitation only but available for Windows and Mac (Linux coming soon) will be a very interesting app once the reviews start to come in. The application will let you leave messages to your friends and colleagues. It also has an instant message feature allowing you to chat live with those friends and colleagues.
Pownce’s website also talks about being able to easily send files and event invitations to your friends on Pownce. You can send events to groups or to individuals.
The application is free but will have some ads on the website and in your notes list. They do offer a pro account for a price allowing you to send bigger files choose from more themes and you don’t have to see any ads.
The application runs under Adobe’s Air allowing you to install it on your own computer or you could use it within your browser.
Here are some pictures of the application:
10 Web 2.0 Services I Couldn’t Live Without
Well I didn’t really have that many web sites that I really go to everyday because I only have about 6 or so bookmarks but I had to choose 10 and I’m pretty confident that if they stopped working right now I would go crazy.
- Digg – this is my favorite because for one thing I love the idea behind it and I think I’m addicted because I go there 20 times or more a day.
- del.icio.us – I just started to get into this site and I love it, there is a humongous amount of links on this site and the vast majority of them are amazing.
- WordPress – I happen to be a new convert to wordpress, I previously was just using blogger for all of my blogging but I love all the customizing abilities of wordpress.
- YouTube – I am on this site everyday just like everyone else in the world watching videos of people lip syncing to theme songs (I don’t really watch those, who does?).
- Revision3 – Well I don’t have cable at my house mostly because of this site. So much of the content on it is so good and even with the recent loss of Geekdrome I still use this practically everyday.
- TWIT – I don’t have cable so I spend most of my time watching video from the internet but when I’m in the car I listen to TWIT podcasts, they are awesome.
- Weblogs inc. – This site is basically a collection of really good blogs. With blogs like Engadget and The Unofficial Apple Weblog, how can you go wrong.
- FeedBurner – I love this and even though I don’t use it everyday I don’t think I could live without it because It is a great way to separate where my feed is from where it actually is. if for any reason my RSS feed has to change I just change where Feedburner looks and I have no problems.
- Flickr – Even though I don’t put many photos up on flickr all of my friends do and they send me links so I can view them there, I love flickr because it is very simple and its fun.
- Pandora – The coolest online radio site in the world because the radio station is yours. You put in a band or song you like and it creates a station for you all based on your original input.