The US Senate last night passed a bill that would extend the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibits local governments from taxing Internet connections, for seven years. About two weeks ago the House of Representatives passed a similar measure that would extend the act for four years. Barring an unlikely presidential veto, this will be the third time the bill has been extended since it was passed into law.
The extension of the tax moratorium has broad support, reports Ars Technica. Most ISPs and the National Governors Association would like to see the tax ban extended at least 4 years. It is commonly thought that the law will eventually be made permanent (perhaps the next time it comes up for extension?). According to Reuters, ISPs claim service costs might jump by as much as 17% if the tax ban were to expire.
A Mozilla Labs blog post yesterday announced Prism, an application that takes web apps to the desktop. Prism isn't a proprietary platform, but rather gives any web application that runs in a standards-compliant browser its own window and icons on the desktop. Right now, that's all Prism does. It doesn't add any offline functionality or give apps things like file system access, but Mozilla seems to hint about developments in that direction in the Labs announcement.
Earlier this year, when we wrote about plans for offline apps in Firefox 3, Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla told us that applications would need to be reengineered to be taken offline with Firefox 3. That's not the case with Prism, which can take apps to the desktop as long as they run in the browser (though, as we mentioned, Prism doesn't actually take web apps offline, just puts them in their own desktop window).
This morning we published a great piece by my colleague Alex Iskold that asked if Google should be afraid of Facebook. Alex concluded that, no, Facebook is not in the same league as Google and Larry and Sergey should be breathing easy. I'll briefly offer a contrarian view in light of the massive influx of cash that Facebook received yesterday, and more importantly, who it came from.
Alex argues that in order for Facebook to compete on Google's level, they will need "serious cash." Yesterday's $240 million investment from Microsoft is not chump change, and if unsubstantiated rumors pan out, the total amount that Facebook raised could be nearer to $750 million. That may still be a marketing error for Google, but enough for Facebook to expand comfortably for awhile. And what if Facebook gets into search?
In order to do that, said Alex, "they would have to build their own search engine or partner with someone." The former was always unlikely, but the latter is exactly what they've done. And not only did they partner with any someone, they partnered with someone who 1. is already gunning for Google in the search space, and 2. is already the 3rd most used search engine (in the US) according to comScore.
Zogby International and 463 Communications released the results last night of an interesting and well executed poll about the attitudes US adults have about the internet. Nearly 10,000 respondents were included and I presume the companies did not seek out the craziest 10,000 people in America (only 20% were from the West Coast, for example) - so these are probably pretty valid results.
To summarize: an alarming percentage of respondents are open to brain implants that allow them to access the internet with their minds and that allow their children's locations to be tracked, they think government censorship of online video content is acceptable, the internet makes them feel closer to God and less close their significant others - but their own identities on the internet are not very important to them. This is frightening stuff.
There are not one, but two stories on Techmeme this morning broken by Fake Steve Jobs, a.k.a. Forbes' Daniel Lyons. Both were repeated on a number of blogs. Yes, we know who Fake Steve is now, and yes he's a credible reporter working for a respected publication, but bear in mind that these stories were reported with no sources and on the blog of a fictional character. Yet, they were taken at face value by a number of prominent bloggers.
The first story Lyon's "broke" was about the supposed imminent demise of PodTech. "Well, they've had a good run but apparently the Casa de Scoble is heading for the big sleep," wrote Lyons. "Or is it the dirt nap? I can never remember. No announcement yet but we hear it's imminent." It was picked up by TechCrunch, Valleywag and others and repeated as if the original source was, well, Lyons and not his fictional persona (the one that just released a book).
PodTech VP Robert Scoble responded this morning by ripping into the reports as "total, 100% bull####. Not even deserving of a response."
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In the latest issue of Fortune magazine, Josh Quittner wrote
a page length article entitled Look Who's Worried Now (online here), in which he argues that Google
is increasingly worried about Facebook. He says that Facebook is taking Google's talent, taking its traffic,
and is using its platform to power a new Internet micro-economy.
During the Web 2.0 Summit last week, Jeff Huber, Google's Vice President of Engineering, proclaimed from the stage that the platform wars are over and the web has won. Clearly, Google does not want to have to deal separately with a Facebook silo, since its already has an algorithm for indexing entire web (though Google has recently released their own Facebook applications). The real question is this: Can Facebook really hurt Google? And if the answer is yes, then how and when?
Especially given today's news that Google lost out to Microsoft for the rights to acquire a stake in Facebook, the question of whether Google should be worried is a pertinent one.
Last week while in San Francisco I got the chance to visit Current's offices, to check out the launch of their new Current.com website. I spoke to Robin Sloan (Online Product Strategist) and Joshua Katz (President of Marketing), who gave me a demo and overview of their strategy. I came away impressed by Current.com's stunning design - but more importantly the new Web Native functionality that Current has built into (and around) Television watching. This post explores that innovation, which may well change our television viewing habits over time.
Current's Pod format - more on this below
We wrote earlier this morning that Google and Microsoft were competing for a stake in Facebook, the super-hot social networking platform. Earlier, the NY Post was reporting that Google was the frontrunner. But a WSJ report has now confirmed that Microsoft won out:
"Microsoft Corp. agreed to invest $240 million for a minority stake in Facebook Inc. that values the social-networking site at $15 billion. As part of the deal, the two companies expanded their advertising agreement."
The amount invested is lower than expectations, which were around $500M. Microsoft's new deal with Facebook is all about bolstering their existing advertising arrangement - Microsoft will now sell Facebook's international display ads, in addition to the banner ads it already sells on the US site. However this deal leaves room for Facebook to run its own advertising network, which we have been discussing on Read/WriteWeb. Facebook's ad system will likely use social profiling to target ads, given the wealth of such data that Facebook has.
There are more and more ways to get your instant messaging done, with a large number of new online and offline clients from third parties. With so many instant messaging options, it's hard to figure out which one to use. Below, we've listed a large number of online and offline instant messengers, as well the various protocols supported by each, so that you can more easily find the one that's right for you. There's really not all that much difference between each except in interface and supported protocols. The best option for you will likely be the one that supports the networks your friends connect to and has an interface that you feel comfortable using. If there are any we've missed, please mention them in the comments. (Note: we did not link to any official offline clients.)
