br / bAuteur:/b a href='http://www.cinezik.org/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofileu=895'Minos/abr /br / bPosté le:/b Sam Nov 22, 2008 11:40 ambr /br / br /br / Bonjour,br / br / Elle est disponible sur a href=http://www.amazon.fr/Angel-Heart-Trevor-Jones/dp/B00000ESDX target=_blank class=postlinkAmazon/a, sur a href=http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/65961227/Trevor-Jones-Angel-Heart-33-Tours.html target=_blank class=postlinkPriceMinister/a (en LP), ainsi que sur Ebay (en LP) à environ 30 ¤. Sur Ebay, ça peut varier, tu t'en doutes.. img src=images/smiles/icon_wink.gif alt=Wink border=0 /

http://www.deekstarshoppingnetwork.com Price Comparison Shopping UK, as told in pictures by The Deekstar UK Shopping Network, This is the only Online Comparison Shopping site on the Planet with it's own ebay Stores and Amazon Shops Network attached! Come and see the easiest to use, most entertaining and renowned UK Price search Site, every top British High Street Reatiler is at your Fingertips! You'll be Amazed at the Choices and savings!

Auteur : deekstar
Tags : price compare comparison deekstar shopping uk compared prices site
Envoyé : 22 novembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

Hello,

I recently bought an old Blueberry iMac G3 400MHz on ebay. It came with a clean install of OS X 10.2 Jaguar. I'd use Jaguar, but it's just a little too old for some of the things I want to use the G3 for (my printer requires 10.3 Panther or later and so does some other software). So, I want to install 10.3 Panther. I've read some things about firmware updates being required for people ugrading from OS 9 to OS X, but nothing about them being required for people upgrading from an older version of OS X to a newer version.

So I just want to check with you guys to make sure I'm not going to fry this thing by forgetting to install something critical beforehand. Also, do you think this thing will run Panther alright? I plan on upgrading the RAM to at least 512MB, maybe 768MB. If I were to leave all the specs as they are, would it run Panther okay?

iMac 400MHz PowerPC G3
384 MB RAM
40GB HD
DVD-ROM Drive

Thanks for your help!

Pat

"bought" not "thought" sorry lol








So I was in the middle of picking out the perfect case for my 3G after going through all the reviews and forums. I looked at everything from Speck to Switcheasy to Incase to iFrogz etc...everything. However, by chance I ran into this perfect looking case on Ebay. It didn't have a brand name but it just looked perfect from the picture and what the heck it was only $14.95 shipped. So I decided to pull the trigger.

Let me tell you I was more than inpressed when I received it today in the mail. The case fits perfectly on the 3G. It is snugged, light, perfectly cut openings, easy to put on and pull out...I just cannot say enough good things about this. It is designed like the Incase Slider but even BETTER to me! I tried scratching the case with my fingernails and the light scratches just disappear when you rub them out. In other words, it is unscratchable. The case also seems very durable like it can really take a hit and it also covers all the chrome bezel. I love it and thought I would share with you guys. The brand is Cellet Proguard and I got it from this guy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Apple-iPhone...1%7C240%3A1318

Also, there are two different types on sliding cases on there. One covers the bezel and one looks like it doesn't so make sure you pick the one you want. Mine covers the chrome parts and made of a different material i think.

Hiya All , was wondering if u could help me? ... got an iphone 3g here , running 2.1 , and i got Carrier NULL/NULL ... was wonering if anyone knows how to fix it .. this is a jailbroken American iphone i got on Ebay .. im from the UK , photo is below

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/culture/" rel="tag"Culture/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/ds/" rel="tag"Nintendo DS/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/retro/" rel="tag"Retro/a/pdiv align="center" div align="left"a href="http://www.siliconera.com/2008/11/21/club-nintendo-only-game-watch-collection-coming-to-the-usa/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="0" align="right" class="imagepadding" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/11/game.and.watch.collection.225.jpg" //aThe best thing about Japan's Club Nintendo? The occasional emvery /emcool a href="http://club.nintendo.jp/rank2008/index.html"branded merchandise/a, but, mostly, the exclusive games. Now there's a glimmer of hope that one of the most popular of these may be offered as a loyalty prize by the a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/02/club-nintendo-coming-to-north-america-by-the-end-of-the-year/"new North American chapter/a of the Club.br /br /We're talking about the emGame amp; Watch Collection/em, which has only been available in Japan ... or for those willing to pay for it on eBay and various online retailers to the tune of $40 and up. But now the game has been rated by the a href="http://www.esrb.org"ESRB/a (it got an "E" rating, not surprisingly) leading to the inevitable conclusion / wishful thinking that it will be available in the States for some amount of Club Nintendo points.br /br /The collection brings together re-creations of three classic Nintendo a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_%26_Watch"Game amp; Watch/a LCD games: emDonkey Kong/em, emOil Panic, /emand emGreen House/em. emWatch/em them in action after the break.br //div br //div [Via a href="http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/11/21/game-and-watch-collection-coming-to-the-us/"DS Fanboy/a]pa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/21/esrb-rated-game-and-watch-collection-could-be-us-bound/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emGame amp; Watch Collection could be US-bound/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/21/esrb-rated-game-and-watch-collection-could-be-us-bound/"Game amp;amp; Watch Collection could be US-bound/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.siliconera.com/2008/11/21/club-nintendo-only-game-watch-collection-coming-to-the-usa/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/21/esrb-rated-game-and-watch-collection-could-be-us-bound/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1379958/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/21/esrb-rated-game-and-watch-collection-could-be-us-bound/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/k1t7862C-1fgPRUWhtB4J4Vx-tY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/k1t7862C-1fgPRUWhtB4J4Vx-tY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=W2kvqAmu"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=W2kvqAmu" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=8LyKjkJR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=8LyKjkJR" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/4QPx6TLM4lA" height="1" width="1"/

h488 domain names, admin tools, provisional patent, and more!/h4 pIn the summer of 2006, at the height of the digerati's Web 2.0 frenzy, social networking startup Kiko.com sold itself on eBay. The share-your-appointments-with-the-world online calendar extravaganza was pulling in exactly zero dollars a month. But after a flurry of late bidding, eBayers decided it was worth $258,100..../pa href="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/jump/reg.rss.4159/main;sz=336x280;ord=1234567891?" target="_blank"img src="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/ad/reg.rss.4159/main;sz=336x280;ord=1234567891?" border="0" alt=""/a

div style="margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 10px;"posted by Neil/div a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6L1zPW0YW7k/SSdHmeCUOwI/AAAAAAAAL9c/6ucLxvezjQQ/s1600-h/Coraline-movie-poster.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6L1zPW0YW7k/SSdHmeCUOwI/AAAAAAAAL9c/6ucLxvezjQQ/s400/Coraline-movie-poster.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271260615083834114" border="0" //abr /There's an official CORALINE trailer out....br /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nZI3X8advPYamp;hl=enamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nZI3X8advPYamp;hl=enamp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /It's out in English, but this version of it is it in Italian. Because everything sounds better in Italian.br /br /A few of you have written in asking if I'd done an Alan Moore and taken my name off the film, or if I'd had a falling out with the studio, as my name isn't mentioned in this trailer, just Henry Selick's -- and no, not at all. Nobody's name except Henry's is mentioned in the trailer, and that has more to do with Focus wanting to make sure that if they invoked span style="font-style: italic;"The Nightmare Before Xmas/span, people wouldn't then assume this was a Tim Burton film, and go and see it -- or stay away -- based on that. (On the international poster -- above -- you won't find my namespan style="font-style: italic;" or /spanHenry's.) I suppose it's a marketing decision.br /br /I chatted to Henry today, and am really looking forward to seeing a finished film -- the last twenty minutes of the thing weren't done the last time I was sent anything. And it has music...br /br /Incidentally, thea href="http://www.amazon.com/Coraline-Movie-Collectors-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0061649708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8amp;s=booksamp;qid=1227317385amp;sr=1-1" Coraline Movie edition /ais now out, with an essay by me in the back, and another by Henry Selick...br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513N7j%2Bs8bL._SS500_.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 500px;" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513N7j%2Bs8bL._SS500_.jpg" alt="" border="0" //abr /br /I've now assembled the same list of passwords for the CORALINE website -- a href="http://www.coraline.com/"www.coraline.com/a -- that a href="http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/683120.html"everyone else with access to a search engine has/a:br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"span style="font-weight: bold;"stopmotion /span: the Biggest Smallest movie ever made.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"buttoneyes/span : Meet the cast...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"moustachio /span: Bo Henry, art director of Coraline, shows off his remarkable moustache tricks.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"armpithair /span: Every hair in the film was placed there by hand...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"puppetlove/span : Director Henry Selick explains what it must be like for the puppets in the film.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"sweaterxxs/span : Micro-knitting. That's right: micro-knitting./spanbr /br /...br /br /A small collection of MAD fold-ins are up at a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html"http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html/a. I cannot imagine a better time-waster than if someone were to put every span style="font-style: italic;"Mad/span Fold-in up on line. I could click my way through them forever...br /br /...br /br /I've started playing with the T-mobile G1. First reactions -- I like it, mostly. It feels good in your hand. It's reasonably intuitive. (Bizarrely, when it isn't intuitive and I've had to head into manual land, the phone's software and the PDF of the manual do not always agree with each other.) I've had fun making ring tones, creating galleries. The way that your contacts list is also your Gmail contacts is mostly terrific (although it won't let me create entries that have the same email address as someone already on the list).br /br /The things I don't like about it so far seem huge and obvious: no Blogger app (when there's a LiveJournal app and several others) seems a huge omission, seeing it's from Google; it can't read or open PDF files yet; you can send it pictures and watch them as a slideshow, but you can't save them; the built in Gmail app can't do anywhere near the things that the gmail program on my N73 can do; the camera is about the same standard as the iPhone's, which is to say, a bit span style="font-style: italic;"meh/span. I like having a real keyboard but wish it was a tiny bit bigger -- I find myself typing with fingernails. Battery life is fine unless you've got Wifi on.br /br /More reactions after it's been on the road with me and been used for a bit.br /br /...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Hi Neil,br /br /I just had a quick question on the span style="font-style: italic;"Who Killed Amanda Palmer/span book. I have the album already (and have listened to it countless times. It's beautiful).br /br /I was going to go and order the book, but when I went to the site, I found that the book seems to only be in packages. I was wondering if there are any plans to sell the book alone, or whether I should buy one of the packages. The extra CD could make a nice gift.br /br /Thanks,br /Nate/spanbr /br /Let's see... the book is being desgned right now, then it goes off to the printers. The people who bought the package version will get theirs first. Depending on where in the world it's printed, this could be a couple of months before anyone else. Then, when copies come in from the printer, they'll go on sale -- probably in the early Spring. I think.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Neil!br /br /I'm re-reading American Gods, and I'm at the point where Shadow first meets Sam. At the diner, Shadow reads a newspaper story saying "local farmers wanted to hang dead crows around the town to frighten the others away; ornithologists said it wouldn't work, that the living crows would simply eat the dead ones. The locals were implacable. 'When they see the corpses of their friends,' said a spokesman, 'they'll know we don't want them here.'"br /br /Neil, I don't have Time Enough for Love here at school, but wasn't there something very similar to that in that story? Was your dead crow story a little Heinlein homage?br /br /And OMG - just realized that Sam's last name is Black Crow, and that story was about crows. Wow. Sneaky of you.br /br /Chrisbr /br //spanbr /br /When I'm driving through small-town America I make a point of buying local papers in towns where I stop, and reading them, preferably in local coffee shops. I read that in a small town as I went, and thought "It belongs in my book". So I put it there.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Dear Mr Gaiman,br /I recently finished reading M is For Magic, and I have a question about the story Chivalry. Sir Galahad was considered the holiest of Arthur's knights; so, how coul he have obtained an apple from the garden of the Hespiredes? The Hespiredes were a part of greek mythology which was actually a religeon based on monotheism. So, how could he get something that his religeon said didn't exist? I am sorry to bother you with this question, but it has sparked my interest.br /br / - a young and curious reader/spanbr /br /He had to travel a long way.br /br /I don't think it would have been a problem for early Christians, of whom Galaad would have been one: in span style="font-style: italic;"The Golden Legend/span, which was the most popular book of stories about saints, collected in the thriteenth century, Saint Nicholas (the one who became Santa Claus) went up against the Goddess Diana. Then again, Narnia, a most monotheistic world, had more than its share of nymphs (just like the Hesperides) not to mention such gods as Bacchus and Silenus (and Santa Claus again) wandering around. So I would not worry about it, were I you.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"I loved the link to the Sandman Death 20th Anniversary Bookends you put up.br /When should they be coming out and how much of a dent will they put on my wallet, please?/spanbr /br /According to a quick Google, a href="http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/9960.shtml"http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/9960.shtml/a says they came out in September, and they will cost a wallet-twinging $295. (Ouch.) There are only a thousand of them.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"This one has almost nothing to do with you Neil, but since his website is still in the makings I thought you could perhaps forward this to him.br /I was very sad (like a child whose told there won't be a Christmas this year) to learn that Dave McKean's appearance this weekend in Buenos Aires was canceled.br /In the event's blog they posted Dave's email in which he mentioned he couldn't make it because a date was changed (which sounds reasonable). But it remained unclear if it was the date of ANIMATE (the Buenos Aires event) which was changed, or if it was one of Dave's previous engagements./spanbr /br /Dave McKean said...br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"Hi Neil,br /br /Please post this, as I certainly do feel very bad letting people down:br /br /I agreed to go to Animate in the summer and had to organize a militarybr /operation of friends and family to take care of our son Liam duringbr /the proposed week, as he is appearing as Gavroche in Les Miserables inbr /London and has to be accompanied to and from the theatre each day he'sbr /on, and also be available on 12 hours notice every day in case anotherbr /actor drops out.br /We managed this, so both Clare and I could make the trip to Buenosbr /Aires, a city we've always wanted to visit.br /Unfortunately, the date was changed by the organizers, and so we hadbr /to re-arrange.br /More importantly, it became obvious that the festival was nowbr /colliding with a variety of previous commitments falling in the latterbr /half of November, so I decided with great sadness to withdraw thisbr /year.br /I hate letting people down, and I was really looking forward to thebr /trip (though not the 24 hours travelling each way, I admit!).br /br /Hopefully there will be another event, an animation or film festival,br /that will allow me to visit the city in the future. Or maybe we'llbr /just go for a holiday, and do a signing in a bookstore.br /br /Thanks,br /Dave/spanbr /br /(I think it's worth pointing out that ten-year old Liam McKean -- owner of the original Pig Puppet -- is in span style="font-style: italic;"Les Miserables/span in London. If you happen to go and see it, check if he's in your performance. Get his autograph. Mention pigs. Make his day.) And that reminds me...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Hi Neil,br /br /I thought you might like to let people know that Dave McKean is on the BBC4 programme "Picture Book" talking about his illustations for David Almond's 'The Savage' and how he was inspired by Comic Book's art. The programme is airing (again) at 19.10 on Saturday and 3.30 on Sunday, and is also currently available on the BBC i-player. a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fhnb6/comingup"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fhnb6/comingup/abr /br /Thank you again for all the stories,br /br /Marjorie/spanbr /br /You're welcome.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Hi,br /br /Just read that you completed "the Dying Earth story." Huh? Is there a new collection of Dying Earth stories coming out? Is it an homage to Jack Vance's work, or what?br /br /Did a search for "dying earth" on your website and saw no other mention of it.br /br /Thanks,br /Chrisbr /br //spanspanIt's for a href="http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PRODamp;Product_Code=martin07amp;Category_Code=PREamp;Product_Count=24"this/a./spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"br //spanbr /...br /br /And finally, Larry Marder talks about why a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/NEIL-GAIMAN-SANDMAN-Sketch-With-Larry-Marder_W0QQitemZ140282064832QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item140282064832amp;_trksid=p3911.c0.m14amp;_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318"the drawing we did together/a is so special at a href="http://larrymarder.blogspot.com/2008/11/neil-gaimanlarry-marder-drawing-up-for.html"http://larrymarder.blogspot.com/2008/11/neil-gaimanlarry-marder-drawing-up-for.html/a. div class="label_list" style="margin-top: 20px; padding-left: 15px; text-indent: -15px; font-size: 78%/1.4em; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: .1em;"strongLabels:/strongnbsp; a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Coraline%20movie" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Coraline movie/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/liam%20mckean" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"liam mckean/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Jack%20Vance" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Jack Vance/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Dave%20McKean" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Dave McKean/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/crows" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"crows/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/why%20I%20was%20disappointed%20they%20cut%20Bacchus%20out%20of%20the%20Prince%20Caspian%20Movie" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"why I was disappointed they cut Bacchus out of the Prince Caspian Movie/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/G1" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"G1/a/div

Call it a coincidence, but over the past few days I have spent a lot of time with folks who used to work for Amazon but are now out doing new things. It all started with Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu, who was a keynote speaker at our NewTeeVee Live conference. Then last night I met with Dave Schapell, founder and CEO of TeachStreet, an e-marketplace for teachers. And this morning I had coffee with Jeff Lawson, co-founder of Twilo.

My buddy Dave McClure was the one who pointed out that they are all part of the Ex-Amazon club. Just like the rising number of ex-Google entrepreneurs I wrote about last year, these guys are leaving top jobs at one of the best technology companies in the U.S. Here is a list of just some of those names, their current companies and their previous positions at the e-tailer:

• -Jeff Holden, CEO and co-founder, Pelago (Amazon consumer web sites)
• -Michael Sha, co-founder, WikInvest (Amazon Payments)
• -Dave Schappell, CEO and founder, TeachStreet (Misc.)
• -Vikas Gupta, co-founder, Jambool (Amazon Flexible Payment Systems)
• -Reza Hussein, co-founder, Jambool (Mechanical Turk)
• -Jeff Lawson, co-founder, Twilio (Amazon Web Services)
• -Keith Schorsch, CEO and founder, Trusera (Misc.)

Plus Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu (Amazon Marketplace)

Now this isn’t even a comprehensive list, and slowly and surely, it is expanding. The easy availability of capital in Seattle certainly helps, but more importantly it speaks to the amount of top-quality talent that Amazon has been able to attract over the years. Lawson, who stopped by for a cup of tea this morning to pitch his company, Twilio, said that one of Amazon’s biggest strengths has always been its ability to recruit and hire great minds.

It is because of this hiring policy that the company has not only stayed ahead of the technology curve, but established itself as the leader in Web 2.0 innovation. That’s in stark contrast to other tech giants such as Yahoo and Google, which have instead taken their cues from small startups. For talented people, the allure of working with Jeff Bezos can be what clinches the deal, according to Schappell of TeachStreet, which counts Bezos Expeditions as one of its investors. His company has essentially developed a place where you can go to find things like a French teacher, or someone to give you trombone lessons. I like to call it the Yellow Pages with brains, and it’s the kind of service a company like eBay should have launched instead of mucking around with things like Skype.

Those who know Bezos well say that he isn’t afraid of losing and wants to win big — and that means making big bets. This “nothing-in-the-middle” attitude is particularly attractive to folks with an entrepreneurial gene.

Of course, it also has its downside. Bezos’ big-play approach frustrates those who want to unleash small ideas, and nurture them over a period of time. Eventually some great people couldn’t live within the corporate structure of Amazon and went on to do their own thing. Like Lawson, who until recently was the CTO of Stubhub before starting Twilio, a company that has developed an easy way for web application developers to add voice capabilities to their offerings using standard web-programming techniques.

Should Amazon be worried about this brain drain? Absolutely not, for the company continues to attract talent the way lights attracts moths. I’ve often wondered what Amazon would do next, and I have a few ideas as to where I think they’re going. Someday I’ll blog about that, too.

Check out my video interview with Jeff Bezos.

Call it a coincidence, but over the past few days I have spent a lot of time with folks who used to work for Amazon but are now out doing new things. It all started with Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu, who was a keynote speaker at our NewTeeVee Live conference. Then last night I met with Dave Schapell, founder and CEO of TeachStreet, an e-marketplace for teachers. And this morning I had coffee with Jeff Lawson, co-founder of Twilo.

My buddy Dave McClure was the one who pointed out that they are all part of the Ex-Amazon club. Just like the rising number of ex-Google entrepreneurs I wrote about last year, these guys are leaving top jobs at one of the best technology companies in the U.S. Here is a list of just some of those names, their current companies and their previous positions at the e-tailer:

• -Jeff Holden, CEO and co-founder, Pelago (Amazon consumer web sites)
• -Michael Sha, co-founder, WikInvest (Amazon Payments)
• -Dave Schappell, CEO and founder, TeachStreet (Misc.)
• -Vikas Gupta, co-founder, Jambool (Amazon Flexible Payment Systems)
• -Reza Hussein, co-founder, Jambool (Mechanical Turk)
• -Jeff Lawson, co-founder, Twilio (Amazon Web Services)
• -Keith Schorsch, CEO and founder, Trusera (Misc.)

Plus Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu (Amazon Marketplace)

Now this isn’t even a comprehensive list, and slowly and surely, it is expanding. The easy availability of capital in Seattle certainly helps, but more importantly it speaks to the amount of top-quality talent that Amazon has been able to attract over the years. Lawson, who stopped by for a cup of tea this morning to pitch his company, Twilio, said that one of Amazon’s biggest strengths has always been its ability to recruit and hire great minds.

It is because of this hiring policy that the company has not only stayed ahead of the technology curve, but established itself as the leader in Web 2.0 innovation. That’s in stark contrast to other tech giants such as Yahoo and Google, which have instead taken their cues from small startups. For talented people, the allure of working with Jeff Bezos can be what clinches the deal, according to Schappell of TeachStreet, which counts Bezos Expeditions as one of its investors. His company has essentially developed a place where you can go to find things like a French teacher, or someone to give you trombone lessons. I like to call it the Yellow Pages with brains, and it’s the kind of service a company like eBay should have launched instead of mucking around with things like Skype.

Those who know Bezos well say that he isn’t afraid of losing and wants to win big — and that means making big bets. This “nothing-in-the-middle” attitude is particularly attractive to folks with an entrepreneurial gene.

Of course, it also has its downside. Bezos’ big-play approach frustrates those who want to unleash small ideas, and nurture them over a period of time. Eventually some great people couldn’t live within the corporate structure of Amazon and went on to do their own thing. Like Lawson, who until recently was the CTO of Stubhub before starting Twilio, a company that has developed an easy way for web application developers to add voice capabilities to their offerings using standard web-programming techniques.

Should Amazon be worried about this brain drain? Absolutely not, for the company continues to attract talent the way lights attracts moths. I’ve often wondered what Amazon would do next, and I have a few ideas as to where I think they’re going. Someday I’ll blog about that, too.

Check out my video interview with Jeff Bezos.

File this one under “stuff that doesn’t make sense”. Someone put a Nintendo 64 into a Wii. Yes, we know you can download those games with virtual console. Maybe they did it just to look cool. Maybe a Wii case just happened to be laying there when they got some Nintendo 64 guts. Whatever the reason, it is for sale on Ebay.

[via DVICE]

      

For new bloggers looking to build up their reader base, it's not always enough just to write well; you need to advertise, to get the word out. And what better way to advertise than with ads? Unfortunately, most advertising online still leaves much to be desired, both for advertisers trying to get noticed and for host sites trying to earn some cash. Many of the problems can be traced back to ads' sole reliance on "click-through" -- the theory that a host website should receive payment based on the number of visitors that actually click on the ads. But what other alternatives exist to this pervasive ad model? Where can bloggers go to find something better?

The Problems with Click-Through

Click-through ads remain the most familiar form of Internet advertising to most websurfers. Most ad services, including Google's AdSense, still operate primarily on this model. Unfortunately, the click is plagued by the potential for fraud, as some site owners resort to multi-clicking their own ads or setting up bots to do so for them. (You can see Google has tried to address in its terms of service agreement, which, for example, admonishes site owners against directing readers to click on the ads.)

Click-through ads also tend to be annoying for site owners. The desperation to catch the reader's eye and entice him or her to click an ad has led to the proliferation of flashy but nonsensical ads -- including display ads with an annoying dancing alien and about a million permutations of the "Punch the Monkey and win a free (blank)" mini-game. There's also the fact that most click-through ads aren't specific to the site where they appear -- they're usually generic banners that will pop up on a site based on an algorithm that looks at key words. This can be especially frustrating to bloggers, who often write about set topics only to have their sites cluttered with unrelated ads.

"There's an industrywide discussion about the value of the click -- both how we're recording clicks and how successful it is," said Matt DiPietro, Marketing Manager for FM Publishing, one of several ad services pioneering alternatives to the click. "It's essentially the way that marketers have been trained to think of the market online, but it's something that's evolving as we speak."

If advertisers want to attract customers and bloggers want to make some money, it would behoove both sides to look for something beyond the click-through. But what else is there? At least a few companies have come up with some ideas.

Project Wonderful

One of the newer advertising services available is Project Wonderful, which throws out the click-through method entirely. Ryan North, the cartoonist behind the popular webcomic Dinosaur Comics , first created Project Wonderful out of frustration in dealing with traditional click-through advertising, instead replacing it with a system that sells ads based on "air-time."

"You can't hack time unless you've got a time machine, and if you've got a time machine you've hopefully got better things to do than defraud internet companies!" said North, "And around that idea we've build this really responsive auction system, where you can say "I want my ad to be on this site right away", and boom, it's up. And then ten days (or ten seconds!) later you can say "You know what, I'd rather have it on this site instead", and you can cancel your existing bid and you're only charged for the time your site is up."

North said that he designed Project Wonderful to be as fair and transparent as possible, tracking traffic statistics, including hits, referrers, and country of origin for thirty days. It works on a bidding system that he calls the infinite auction. Essentially, a participating webmaster designates a set number of ad spaces on his or her page, and advertisers bid to have their ads posted in those slots. The more advertisers bidding, the higher the price goes and the more money earned for the webmaster. When nobody's bidding, the price of ads returns to zero. (Participating blogs are allowed to set their own starting prices, but are encouraged to let the marketplace set it for them.)

"The main advantages are responsiveness, value, and transparency," North told me. "Our system is fine-grained enough that you can have your ad on a specific spot on a specific site at a specific time, but broad enough that you can also say 'I want to be on these KINDS of sites' instead, and not have to micromanage...I think we've built the only advertising network where it's not a chore, where you have this fun atmosphere and a little competition going on between advertisers and publishers. On top of that, our commission is only 25%, which means we give more money to our publishers than elsewhere, and for advertisers, our prices are really fair and reasonable."

The auction system means that, when starting out, many sites essentially give away ad space for free. It's a good deal for advertisers, as it means that they will always get the best possible price. And so far, Project Wonderful is a buyer's market. Blogger Splitbrain was disappointed to find he'd only earned 8 cents after 4 days of hosting ads through Project Wonderful. Meanwhile, Penn State Finance student Jim blogging at The Net Fool praised the system as a good way for the blogger on a budget to drum up traffic, comparing it to what would happen if "AdSense and eBay got into a bad car wreck."

Currently, some blogs and websites with more-established readerships are able to sell a single ad for as much as $70 a day, but, for most sites, ads range from only a few cents to $10. The system seems to have caught on with webcomics, art sites, and related blogs. As of this writing, a small frontpage Project Wonderful ad on comics blog The Comics Curmudgeon goes for 70 cents a day, while an ad on North's Dinosaur Comics goes for $1.90.

For now at least, the real value of Project Wonderful to blogs might not be as a money-making tool so much as a way to get affordable publicity. With over 8000 participating sites, the system is good for a beginning blogger trying to get word out to the most sites for the lowest price. Even some participants who might not earn a lot of money said that offering cheap ads for sale on their sites is a good way to attract notice - and hopefully eventually build up a reader base. This may be due to one unique aspect of the system which allows it to function as a quasi-socializing network: Money earned through ads can be used to purchase ads on other sites, blurring the distinction between advertisers and hosts. North said:


bq. I love it because, as a publisher, I'm making this money that I can take out at any time, but I can also spend it right away on advertising my own site. And when I do that, it increases the profile of my site and can then even increase the amount of money I'm making for advertising! So that's fun and really convenient, but there's also this social thing you mentioned. That can take the form of "You bid on my site so I'll bid on yours as a thank you at the end," or things like "You bid on my site and I checked out your site and it's really great and I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know!"

Project Wonderful really taught me the value of an endorsement. When we launched, I didn't do any press for it at all -- I just signed myself up as the first publisher, put the ads up on Dinosaur Comics, and let the network sell itself. It's why we took off in webcomics so quickly: people saw it there and beneath our ad boxes is a message saying "Your ad could be here, right now, for just $3.00" or whatever the going rate is. That got a lot of interest from both advertisers and publishers, and the network sort of spread virally throughout that community, which was really gratifying. It was nice to see that something I built to be helpful was actually being used in that way, and that people were getting value from it. That's the best thing you can ask as a developer!

Blogads

One advantage of Project Wonderful, from a small blogger's point of view, is that it's open to the public. Other alternative advertising systems may be more selective, preferring to foster a small network of high-priced blogs rather than a large one of cheap deals. That's the case with Blogads, one of the early innovators in blog advertising. Founded in 2002 by Henry Copeland as a network catering to political blogs, it has in recent years expanded into a wide-ranging network that includes some of the most high-profile blogs on the Internet, including Perezhilton.com , Cute Overload, and Failblog .

For bloggers, entry to the system is by invitation only. But once accepted into the network, it also does away with counting click-throughs as bloggers get to set their own ad rates. "Bloggers set their own prices for a period of time -- one week, two weeks, one month, three months," said Blogads CEO Copeland. "This method emphasizes the audience's quality and branding versus the very transactional basis."

Copeland said that advertisers working through Blogads can be sure they'll reach a very specific audience. Speaking via email, he differentiated Blogads from other ad systems, like Google Adsense, noting that Blogads could be "purchased on specific blogs or groups of blogs."

As opposed to algorithm-generated click-through ads, advertisers using Blogads know exactly where their ads will appear. That makes the system ideal, Copeland said, for "an advertiser looking to make a mark with early adopters, opinion-makers and taste influencers. This could be a new brand or service, an emerging politician, a new movie or book, or a cause." Copeland said:

Blog readers are responding to individual writer's unedited voices, so their loyalty tends to be much more intense than that of readers of corporate publications. People obviously consume information in lots of forms. We listen to the radio alone in the car. We watch TV with our families. We read the newspaper alone on the subway. Each blog has its own distinct personality and community feel. We read blogs as a participant in a community. It's like being in a movie theater, versus at home alone... we're interested in how other people react as much as in our own reaction. So this makes advertising on individual blogs, or groups of individual blogs, really distinct.

In keeping with its focus on a more savvy audience, Blogads also emphasizes the aesthetics of ad design with clear, focused ads that play on blog readers' love of words. A section on Great Blogads featuring examples of some of the most successful, innovative blogads and commentary on what made them work, including the campaign for the 2006 Audi A3 presented as an ongoing mystery story with clues in different ads.

Since Blogads works with many of the most popular blogs, advertising prices can be pretty high. The number one ad spot on I Can Has Cheezeburger , your first stop for funny cat photos with Internet pidjin captions, costs $1,800 for a single week. The price may be steep for a smaller advertiser, but consider that Blogads estimates a top-placed ad will garner 11,909,512 views in that time. Prices vary widely depending on a blogger's popularity, subject matter, or whims, and a week's worth of advertising on a less well-known blog can run as low as $10 to $20 a week yet still be expected to get over 3000 views. (The Blogads website says that the average Blogads member can make about $50 a month selling ads, and claims that some make up to $5000.)

FM Publishing

One company that's latched onto the possibilities of social media to spread buzz is Federated Media Publishing. FM Publishing still works with traditional Internet ads, but it specializes in what Matt DiPietro calls a "conversational approach" to marketing. It's not geared as much to selling specific ads as it is to building a brand -- using interactive tools to encourage audience participation and increasing name recognition through a varied, holistic approach.

DiPietro doesn't think the familiar click-through ads are completely useless. Despite their often scattershot approach, they're still a useful tool in the advertiser's arsenal -- but advertisers have to be aware of their limitations.

"For one thing, they don't take advantage of the unique way that people interact online," he said.

Like Blogads, FM Publishing works with a select group of high-traffic blogs and websites, including Boing Boing , TechCrunch , and Ask a Ninja . Pietro said that thousands of blogs apply to become part of FM's network every month, but, at writing, the company works with a group of about 150. Most participants receive payment on a 50-50 revenue sharing basis, although DiPietro noted that each contract is different. FM Publishing boasts over 50 million unique viewers monthly, and works closely with large advertisers like McDonalds, JC Penny, and Proctor and Gamble.

FM Publishing says that almost 30% of visitors to its sites published their own blogs -- so any advertising that could get them talking as well would be well worth it. DiPietro also pointed out that viewing ad campaigns as a conversation builds a more loyal audience -- FM Publishing reported that more than 80% of visitors to its affiliate blogs visited multiple times per week. The same audience tended to be more engaged, eager to participate in conversations and be a part of the community.

For example, FM Publishing is behind the BMW Graffitti Car Contest -- a Facebook page that invites visitors to paint a simulated BMW and offers prizes for the best paintjob and most realistic efforts. In another campaign, this time for Intel/Asus, FM Publishing helped create We PC , a site that allows the public to design its own computers. Web surfers can submit suggestions for what features they think should be incorporated into a new line of computers -- Should you be able to type underwater? Should upgrades be available to combat inevitable obsolescence? Or do you just have strong feelings about the computer's color scheme? -- and the site's community votes for what it feels are the best ideas.

"This is a campaign that goes out to the community to solicit advice on how to create a new computer," said DiPietro. "It's asking users what they want, it's a way to brand the company and get the community invested. It's also a project in which FM bloggers are heavily involved. A lot of traffic going to We PC is from FM Publishing's affiliate blogs."

These companies are all going beyond the old click-through model, looking at new ways to use networks to advertise -- whether by auctioning ads by time, matching specific ads to specific publishers, or by creating interactive campaigns. What other sorts of advertising are available out there? What other ad services are moving away from the click and what are they doing? Tell me what I missed in the comments!

Mike Rosen-Molina is a Northern California freelance reporter and an associate editor for MediaShift. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley schools of journalism and law, he has worked as an editor for the Fairfield Daily Republic and as a managing editor for JURIST legal news services.

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So often testing and tweaking a product once it’s released is a nice-to-have but not a need-to-have. Tel Aviv-based startup EyeView believes it can make the refinement process easy when it comes to online product demo videos. The company shoots and optimizes product demo videos for its customers to help boost conversion rates. The company said this week that it received more than $1 million in its first round of funding led by Lightspeed-Gemini Internet Lab and another private investor.

There are two components to EyeView’s service. The first is a video production company that focuses solely on making product demo videos — nothing else. The second part of the company provides analytics to determine how a customer can best optimize those videos to improve conversion rates. A conversion could be a sale or site registration — however the customer defines it.

EyeView’s solution is straightforward a/b testing. It runs different versions of videos to audiences to see which one performs best and adjusts accordingly. For example, through its work, EyeView ran videos with both male and female voiceovers and found that for finance-related products, a male voice over converts better.

Since EyeView has its own video production facilities in-house it can make changes and run different tests all on its own. A company like TurnHere can create and distribute your video, but doesn’t provide much in the way of analytics. Using Google Optimizer or Omniture will provide analytics, but not the video.

EyeView offers two packages for customers to choose from. The Rich Media option is the more straightforward of the two, with EyeView charging “thousands” per video plus a payment for the technology, based on traffic. The newly-announced Full Conversion option is meant for larger companies and does not cost anything upfront, but the company will be charged based on the percentage growth of the conversions (assuming there is growth).

It seems like, because the process isn’t more automated and requires more production work, this business will be hard to scale. But there is value for companies who rely on these types of videos to explain their product or business.

EyeView has been around for a year and has offices in Tel Aviv, Boston and Syndney. The company has a roster of 40 clients including eBay using the service.

centerimg title="Wii64 Mod" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="Wii64 Mod" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/11/wii64-mod.jpg" border="0" //centerbr / pIt doesn't really make much sense to rip apart the innards of a current generation console and replace those with one from a couple of generations ago. Still, truth is often stranger than fiction, and this modder has decided to use the chassis of the Nintendo Wii to carry the innards of a Nintendo 64. This hybrid creation is dubbed the "Wii64", and retains the Wii's blue lights that light up whenever it is turned on. The Wii64 is currently being put on eBay, where bidding began with $49.99. Not something we would want to get though, but it is still an interesting hack to begin with./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/wii64_mod.html"Wii64 Mod/a from a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"Ubergizmo/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry Storm/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081121091817" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081121091817?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081121091817" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081121091817amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F11%2Fwii64_mod.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/UjuJNjJDCGfaG2TEaBt7sfN6fTM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/UjuJNjJDCGfaG2TEaBt7sfN6fTM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=6uS8Ppdx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=n6utLPWO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=n6utLPWO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=omt6dx1f"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=Xw8MVDf0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=Xw8MVDf0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=WmC2TIxJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=WmC2TIxJ" border="0"/img/a /div