When people gather, conversations are bound to happen. And while people may be gathering and chatting in Web-based IM interfaces like GTalk, Facebook Chat, and MySpace Chat, that user base is relatively insignificant compared to the untold millions of others who live and breathe in online communities outside those walled gardens.
Meebo, the leading "IM in the browser" play, realizes this. And with Community IM, they're hoping to capitalize on it, by incorporating XMPP/Jabber IM into any Web-based community. If early numbers are any indication, they're going to be wildly successful.
We have met our share of secretive startups over the years, but few have been as secretive about their plans as Siri, which was founded in December 2007 and did not even have an official name until today. Siri was spun out of SRI International and its core technology is based on the highly ambitious CALO artificial intelligence project. Today, Siri announced that it has raised an $8.5 million Series A financing round, led by Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.
Tired of sitting patiently by, refreshing your server logs, while you wait for the Googlebot to show up at your site?
So is Google. That's why they provide tools based on the GData API that allow site owners - especially those owners managing hundreds of sites - to submit content directly to Google, making indexing quicker, easier, and more efficient for both parties. And with the latest update to the Webmaster Tools API, site owners have gained even more control over Google's interaction with their content.
How do you make money if you give your software away for free? That's the classic question asked of Open Source software vendors and the expected reply is that they charge customers for software customization and support. That's not the way it works anymore, though, according to a report published today by analyst firm The 451 Group.
Titled "Open source is not a business model," the report challenges some long held beliefs about the technology business. Not everyone is happy with the 451 Group's conclusions, either.
For any company that thought social media was a passing fad not worthy of their time, the numbers coming out of a recent study published by Opinion Research Corporation for Cone should come as a wake-up call. According to that study, 85% of Americans using social media think companies should have an active presence in the social media environment. What's even more interesting is that those users actually want the companies to interact with them while there.
Today, a regional court in Germany ruled that Google is violating German copyright law by displaying thumbnail previews of copyrighted images. German photographer Michael Bernhard and cartoonist Thomas Horn had sued Google and demanded that their images be removed from Google's index. According to the judge at Hamburg's regional court, "no new work is created" by displaying thumbnails.
The Mozilla Foundation announced this morning that it has hired Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, co-founders of Ajaxian and the Ajax Experience, to run a new Developer Tools Lab aimed to make Open Web development easier and more powerful. The term Open Web refers to a paradigm in which data and users can move easily from one standards-based application to the next, without being hindered by proprietary technology or vendors hording user data.
GoDaddy has just unveiled an amazing new service called SmartSpace which lets anyone register a domain name and then instantly turn it into a social web site which aggregates any of the following components onto one page: a blog, a photo album, a chat application, email, RSS feeds, and even components from social networking applications like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn. All you have to do is register the domain name you want and all the technical work is done for you - the site builds itself automatically.
If you ever wished for a central place to keep track of your online purchases and to store all those email receipts, MyThings might just be what you are looking for. The London-based company just announced a $5 million Series B round. Besides helping you to keep track of your purchases, MyThings also provides access to information about product recalls, manuals, and insurance, as well as an easy way to sell you things on eBay, donate them, or report them stolen. For art collectors, MyThings also provides a valuation service. This new round of financing was led by Dotcorp Asset Management and GP Bullhound Sidecar.
SourceForge.net, a longtime provider of open source code and applications, has announced a new service for developers that provides virtualized access to open source apps. With the new Hosted Apps service, you're able to install an app within your own web space, and it's managed by the SourceForge team in a dedicated and secure web space, including any necessary maintenance like updates and patches.
