The Creative Commons Foundation announced today that award winning TV and radio news show Democracy Now! will now be distributed under a CC license. Democracy Now! is broadcast daily on more than 700 television and radio stations around the US and as a podcast online.
Whether you agree with the show's political perspective or not, Democracy Now! is undeniably one of the best produced and distributed independent media projects in the world right now. If there are more high profile collections of media distributed under the innovative Creative Commons License, we don't know what they are. Creative Commons is a variation on traditional copyright that switches permission to republish content to opt-out with publisher applied conditions.
PC Magazine, Ziff Davis' flagship print publication, has announced that it will go 100% digital. The January 2009 issue will mark the end of PC Magazine's print edition after 27 years of continuous publication. Instead of the print version, PC Magazine will start publishing a digital version of the magazine, 'PC Magazine Digital Edition.' Current and new subscribers should see this digital edition appear in their inboxes by February 2009.
We like to report good news, not just because it makes us all feel good, but because when a company is doing something positive during a downturn, it indicates something pretty interesting about that company. That is why Jobwire reports on new hires when all the other news is about layoffs. In that same spirit, The A-Team will be a monthly wrap-up of all the Series A VC financing rounds in web technology. To close a Series A VC round these days, you have to be pretty special.
Can you imagine getting a link to your website highlighted just below the search box on Google.com? How much traffic do you think that would drive? According to one estimate published today by traffic analysts Compete.com, the link on Google for the G1 Android phone by T-Mobile delivered an estimated 800,000 unique visitors who clicked that link in the 7 days it was on the site.
Compete estimates that there were about 99 million people who visited Google.com during that period, so that's a little less than 1% click through. To be honest, we're a little surprised the number isn't higher than that. That's just the beginning of the surprises, though.
EtherPad is not likely to win a price for its user interface design, but it might just be one of the most useful web apps we have seen in quite a while. EtherPad allows you to instantly create a workspace for text documents that you can then share with your colleagues, clients, or friends. Every edit to the document will immediately appear on your co-workers' screens in real-time.
EtherPad acknowledges that Google Docs already allows for a similar kind of collaboration, but compared to EtherPad, Google Docs is clunky and slow when you just want to collaborate on a simple text document.
The successful science and educational organization The National Geographic Society, best known for their long-running magazine, has just made an interesting announcement. Their next venture in their for-profit operations is video games. This month, National Geographic Games, a newly formed division within the company, will launch three gaming products to be soon followed by another in December and three (so far) are planned for next year. The games will be developed for major gaming consoles, handhelds, and mobile platforms, including, yes, the iPhone.
San Francisco-based blogging startup Six Apart has announced they will be giving away free accounts on their TypePad blogging system for professional bloggers and journalists who recently lost their jobs as well as those who fear the axe is coming. Cleverly dubbed the "Journalist Bailout Program," the service includes one free blog, a place in the Six Apart Media advertising program, promotion on Blogs.com, a as well as other tools and advice on driving traffic to your site, all courtesy of Six Apart.
It's no secret that - as the most widely deployed operating system - Microsoft Windows has the ignoble distinction of being the primary target of virus and malware developers everywhere. And when you couple that with the fact that many users of the Windows operating system fail to protect their machines - due to both ignorance of the problem and costs associated with virus protection software - you have the potential for rampant virus outbreaks. We've all seen it, time and time again.
Now, Microsoft is proposing to solve that problem with a new antivirus package. The product, code-named Morro, is slated to hit the market late next year. It will offer protection for viruses, spyware, rootkits, and trojans. Even more important? It will offer that protection for free.
The Web is full of examples where developers have built technology for an express purpose, only to have that technology adopted by users or other developers to deliver unforeseen - and often wildly popular - solutions. Flickr - originally a small subset of functionality in a much larger game - comes to mind. As does YouTube, which had its humble beginnings in the world of online dating. And now, the iPhone may be joining those ranks.
It's safe to assume that when the folks at Apple finally released the iPhone, the concept of converting it into "something that replicated an ancient ceramic woodwind instrument" probably wasn't on their list of things to do. And yet, the folks at Smule have done just that with Ocarina, an iPhone app that has skyrocketed to becoming the #1 paid app in the world - in one week.
Citysearch, the popular local restaurant and shopping guide, announced a new beta version of its service tonight. The new version provides a better local search experience, with the ability to search specific neighborhoods instead of just metropolitan areas. Citysearch also announced a retooled mobile site, which lets users read and write reviews on their mobile devices, and gives them access to menus from participating restaurants. Citysearch has also implemented Facebook Connect, which allows users to log in to the site with their Facebook accounts, and the company plans to roll out OpenID support early next year.
You can fine the new beta at beta.citysearch.com.
