The subject of Yahoo's independence will be decided, as it should, by Yahoo's shareholders. The battle to control Yahoo fascinates so many other people because it is a good drama. However, it is more than just drama. Yahoo's independence does impact the Internet ecosystem - developers, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will all benefit from more choice and more competition. An Internet dominated by GYM (Google Yahoo Microsoft) is better than one dominated by just Google and Microsoft.
The trailblazing blog PaidContent, specializing in coverage of the business of new media, will be acquired by the Guardian Media Group, writes Kara Swisher tonight in a very sweet scoop. As Swisher says, it's a coup for new media - but it's another great move by the Guardian Media Group as well.
Kara Swisher expects an announcement tomorrow, but the deal was essentially confirmed a few minutes ago on Twitter in a conversation between the Guardian's Technology Editor Charles Arthur and travel writer Craig McGinty. Jeff Jarvis also says he's got embargoed info on it - so this sounds very real. Below are our thoughts about what it means.
While the US waits agonizingly for their 3G iPhones to arrive, some of us have been playing with our new toys :-) There's been a lot of excitement over the App Store today, and on first inspection there are some outstanding iPhone apps available. Right now the top 5 apps are: Sega's Super Monkey Ball, MLB.com At Bat, Enigmo, OmniFocus, and Cro-Mag Rally. No I've never heard of them either. I guess we will soon enough. See below for the RWW editor's first pics of his new unwrapped white 16GB iPhone...
Meebone is a bit of a strange piece of software, in that it is an AIR based desktop client for Meebo. Meebo itself is a great web application that allows you to easily log into all your favorite IM services from the web, so having a desktop client for it might seem like a rather odd choice at first. However, it actually turns out to be quite a useful tool.
What Meebone basically does is display the Meebo web app in an AIR window, somewhat akin to what Fluid does on the Mac.
Social media, it's all about the democratization of communication and empowering new voices - right? A few years into the new media revolution, reality is looking a little more complicated than that theory would suggest.
The wild garden of services growing from the read/write soil of the new web struggles each time a new app is launched and looks more like a ghost town than a place to enjoy the network effect of the crowd. How can new services ramp up social connections quickly? Recommending "friendship" with active early adopters is one strategy being explored by a number of sites. The end result can be a lopsided environment where a handful of winners dominate the collective mindshare - again.
The iPhone App Store has just gone live and one of the apps getting early attention is Loopt, a location aware mobile social network startup we profiled in June. Loopt enables users to broadcast their status
to a broad set of services and find interesting locations and reviews nearby. Their latest release for the
iPhone integrates microblogging and reviews from Yelp into its interface.
According to founder Sam Altman, Loopt is using the
iPhone's rich media platform to pilot new features and services before they
filter their way into other mobile phones.
As the hype around the iPhone 3G launch tomorrow is kicking into high gear, Apple has released a new version of iTunes, which includes the long-awaited App Store. According to Pinch Media, there are currently 552 applications available in the store. More than 25% of the apps are available for free. Applications from the App Store will run on both the iPhone and iPhone touch after users upgrade to the latest firmware, which will also be released today.
Today, the Toronto-based travel site PlanetEye officially launched its new travel planning service, which combines extensive travel content, booking, mapping, and geotagged photo sharing. PlanetEye aims to be a one-stop travel destination, where users can prepare for a vacation, book it, and share their experiences after returning from the trip. To provide all of this, PlanetEye has partnered with TraveloCity, OpenTable, StubHub, WaySpa, and Microsoft.
AideRSS, the marvelous service that filters items in any RSS feed for popularity with readers, has spun out its core technology PostRank as an Application Programing Interface (API) for integration into any other application. We love a good API here at RWW and hope to see some really interesting uses of this one.
PostRank looks at every item that comes through an RSS feed and scores it on a scale of 1 through 10 based on the number of comments it's received, inbound links, saves to del.cio.us, times it's been Tweeted and Dugg. The excitement comes in when the service delivers a filtered feed of just the 15% "most popular" items in that feed. It's a great way to pay casual attention to prolific feeds when you just want to see its own highlights.
Kiva.org is the world's first person-to-person lending web site that helps empower entrepreneurs in the developing world by connecting them with others who lend them small amounts of money called "micro-payments." Founded in 2005, the site now connects lenders in 70+ countries with business owners in 43 developing countries and works with 89 microfinance partners. Now Kiva is tapping into the power of Facebook to attract new members to their cause.
