Archive for the ‘Companies’ Category
Yahoo! embraces the Semantic Web in a big way March 13th, 2008
I am not sure if anyone has taken a look at this in much detail (I haven’t), but it looks like a pretty significant step …
Yahoo Embraces The Semantic Web - Expect The Internet To Organize Itself In A Hurry
Stii, any thoughts?
Technorati Tags:
yahoo, semantic web, search, open architecture, open search
Posted in Companies, Search, Semantic Web, Sharing | Comments (2)
Plaxo Pulse: Facebook clone or innovation? February 4th, 2008
One of my new favourite services on the social web is Plaxo’s Pulse. Plaxo is one of the few companies that seems to be putting out updates every few days. I have had the rare experience of asking for a feature only to be told that it is there already, baked into the service (not that I am the most attentive of users, mind you). Anyway, Plaxo announced a new public profile for users which is developed using Google’s new Social Graph API. One of the things that struck me about my updated profile on Plaxo is its similarity to my Facebook profile, at least in terms of it structure and appearance. Here is my Plaxo profile:
And here is my Facebook profile page:
There is an obvious similarity between the two and aside from a couple layout issues, the real difference between the two is that there is more content and more applications on my Facebook profile, thanks to the Facebook application platform. I don’t think this status quo will persist too long because Plaxo is part of Google’s Open Social initiative so it is really only a matter of time before I should be able to start adding Open Social widgets/gadgets/thingies to my Plaxo profile.
So one question that comes to mind is whether Plaxo is hard at work mimicking Facebook or whether Joseph and the lads are aiming for something more? The one big thing about Facebook that detracts from it, at least for me, is that I have to jump through a couple hoops to get some of my content imported into my profile and to create a lifestream in my Facebook profile as opposed to a steady stream of application updates. I don’t use many of the native Facebook services like its photo sharing service or notes for my blogging mainly because that stuff is all intended to be used in-house. Sure there are feeds for certain items that I can publish and pass around to my friends but the portability of my Facebook lifestream is pretty limited.
Plaxo, on the other hand, is taking a different approach. Plaxo doesn’t dictate to me which services I have to use to share my photos or blog posts in my and the public activity stream (aka my Plaxo “news feed”). Instead Plaxo gives me the opportunity to basically add anything with an RSS feed and then decide who gets to see it (business contacts, friends, family, specific groups etc). It is also worth mentioning that Plaxo enables users to create distinct personal and professional profiles which is sorely missing in Facebook. This is what the Plaxo activity stream looks like from my perspective (like Facebook it depends on who I am connected with):
By comparison, here is my Facebook news feed:
Again there are similarities but one of the main differences is that the Plaxo activity stream/news feed/public stream takes advantage of incoming feeds and streams to populate it and uses finer controls over who gets to see what to ensure that incoming content is more relevant to the person seeing it and privacy is respected (items shared with friends are only shared with friends, they don’t appear in the public stream). I am not a fan of the relatively closed system Facebook is to me. The recent hubbub over Scoble and the Plaxo script he ran serves as a reminder that despite the apparently open nature of the Facebook application platform (especially with recent reports about Facebook opening up even more), I am still forced to use approved Facebook services and not the services I am using anyway (at least not directly).
This is pretty much where the similarities end. It is also important to look at the bigger picture and at what Facebook and Plaxo offer holistically. From Facebook’s perspective, what you get is a profile and the ability to connect to other Facebook users as well as to take advantage of the Facebook applications. It is all about the Facebook experience. The way I see Plaxo, it is a facilitator and not your entire social ecosystem. Plaxo began with the ability to synchronise your address book and keep up to date with your Plaxo contacts’ changes in their address and contact information. Since adding Pulse to the mix the whole Plaxo experience opens up completely and becomes more of a base for your social experience. Plaxo doesn’t make any claims to own your information and your content (explicitly or implicitly) but rather seeks to facilitate your sharing of that information with the people you choose to connect to.
To me, my address book is the focal point of my social experience on the Web and this is borne out whenever I see a service invite me to tap into my address book to find my friends and contacts. Plaxo didn’t add that service after establishing the social network, it started with that and the social network is an overlay on top of my address book. What I really like about my Plaxo profile is that I can comfortably use that as my “home page” because it contains my public contact information as well as a sample of what I am doing. My Facebook profile also has my contact details but I want to be able to present that information in an uncluttered environment and also present the appropriate information to different groups of people. With Plaxo I can show personal information to my friends and family and my business info to my business contacts. I like being able to do that.
So while there are similarities between Plaxo Pulse and Facebook at some level, I don’t see Pulse as a Facebook clone but rather an illustration of what Facebook just can’t be for me - a really useful and fun service that appropriate in multiple contexts, not to mention more open and flexible. Now all I need to do is figure out how to expand Pulse’s functionality with OpenSocial …
Technorati Tags:
data portability, facebook, opensocial, plaxo, scoble, public profile, lifestream
Posted in Companies, Infrastructure, Useful stuff | Comments (1)
Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo! (for real this time) February 1st, 2008
Microsoft has formally made an offer to buy Yahoo! for $44.6bn, for real! According to a press statement issued by Microsoft:
REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 1, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.
“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.”
On the face of it the offer is a pretty decent one. My one concern is what a sale could mean for the Yahoo! services I have been using and love like a close cousin, Flickr and del.icio.us. What will the Microsoft effect be on these fine services? The debate about the merits of this purchase are likely to mirror the debate about Microsoft’s purchase of a stake in Facebook last year although this time around the fervor will be that much more intense. We’re now talking about everyone at Yahoo! running Windows Vista with a smile, not just the latest update to Windows Live Messenger.
This could be bad.
That being said it could really make things interesting between Microsoft and Google. I would actually prefer that Google buy up Yahoo! and really stick it to Redmond but I haven’t seen anything about such a move. I would be far more comfortable if Flickr and del.icio.us wound up in Google’s hands. I don’t know what I will do if this sale actually goes through. I have a fortune of content invested in those two services alone and would have to have to look at an alternative. I guess one option would be to ignore the Microsoft presence but that would be downright dishonest and, like so many other precedents in history, a bad idea.
What would you do? Close your Yahoo! accounts and get the heck out of there or stick with the services you have grown to love, regardless of the Microsoft influence?
(Source: Mashable)
Technorati Tags:
microsoft, yahoo, google, the sky is falling, microsoft to buy yahoo, yhoo, msft, goog, flickr, del.icio.us, mass panic
Posted in Companies | Comments (0)
Amazon to buy Audible January 31st, 2008
Ok, I should really be working but I wanted to mention this tidbit which I found to be pretty interesting. Amazon has said it is buying Audible, a pretty big downloadable audiobook retailer. I wonder how this will impact on Apple both in the greater scheme of things and also because I believe there is an Audible presence in the Apple iTunes Store.
I buy my audiobooks from Audible directly and load them into iTunes for transfer to my iPod. I don’t see Amazon disabling support for iPods in Audible but I wonder how this acquisition will play out. Amazon is going head to head with Apple for market share in the music download biz through Amazon MP3 which is also due to open up internationally later this year.
Clearly Amazon is intent on gunning for Apple in the consumer media space and if the Amazon MP3 service becomes available here in South Africa, legitimately, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over a decision to use that service for my music, especially considering that Apple doesn’t deem us South Africans worthy of the iTunes Store. This deal reminds me of that video that did the rounds a little while ago about the future of the Web and how Google eventually takes over the world as the primary source of all information and knowledge (anyone know where the video is? I can’t find the silly thing). At one point in the video there is talk about Google buying Amazon to form Googlezon … although there is a close tie between Google and Apple so could there perhaps be a three way one day?
Now I am tempted to go buy an audiobook …
Technorati Tags:
amazon, apple, apple supplier, ipod touch, itunes, audible, audiobooks, ipod
Posted in Companies, Media | Comments (0)
Amazon MP3 to the rescue January 27th, 2008
I have ranted about how decent music downloads are hard to come by here in South Africa, at least legal music downloads. There is the iTunes Store workaround but then that isn’t exactly in accordance with Apple’s terms of service. There are a couple options available like eMusic but the catalogues are rarely chock full of mainstream releases.
Thankfully there is light at the end of the tunnel. Amazon has announced that its Amazon MP3 service is going to open up to international customers sometime this year.
“We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can’t wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future,” said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital Music. “We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year.”
Launched on Amazon.com in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers Earth’s Biggest Selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Every song and album in the Amazon MP3 music download store is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software and is encoded at 256 kbps to deliver high audio quality. Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any music management application, such as iTunes(R) or Windows Media Player(TM); and burn songs to CDs for personal use.
This service is currently restricted to US customers and enables them to purchase DRM-free, 256kbps MP3 files which you can play on the device of your choice. Amazon MP3 is one of the few real competitors iTunes has and if Amazon opens the store up more than the iTunes Store then I can see Apple having a tough time hanging on to its dominance in the digital music download market.
I will certainly be there with my credit card to buy music from Amazon if the store becomes available here. Songs cost between $0.89 and $0.99 and albums cost between $5.99 and $8.99. To boot, Amazon is selling music from all 4 music labels and you can be pretty sure this is partly the music industry’s response to Apple’s refusal to introduce flexible pricing for music historically.
What a win!
(Source: Engadget)
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apple, amazon, amazon mp3, music downloads, mp3, drm-free, no drm, announcement, legal music downloads, itunes
Posted in Companies, Entertainment, Media, Sharing | Comments (8)