Pownce, the microblogging service often compared to Twitter, has been acquired by Six Apart. According to the company blog, the service will be shutdown on December 15th, while the main Pownce team – Leah Culver and Mike Malone – will join Six Apart. Users will have the option to “import [their] posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.”

The brainchild of Culver and Digg founder Kevin Rose, Pownce launched with much fanfare in 2007. But despite the early buzz and in many ways a superior feature-set, the service hasn’t been able to gain nearly the type of traction as the darling of short-form messaging – that of course being Twitter.

It doesn’t sound like Six Apart has aspirations to revamp Pownce and take on Twitter either. They echo the sentiment that this deal is more about acquiring talent from Pownce, writing, “we are very sorry the site will be closing ... We’re planning on doing great things with the help and expertise of the Pownce team, and can’t wait to see all the results of their hard work.”

Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka will also be joining Six Apart as advisers as part of the deal.

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Pownce Invites Increased: Please Invite Others
Pownce Adds RSS, Support For More Video/Photo Sites
Pownce To Launch Public API
Pownce Releases Public API
Pownce Invites on eBay
Pownce Gets New Features
Put Pownce on Facebook

pBlog tech and advertising company a href="http://www.sixapart.com/" title="Six Apart"Six Apart/a has acquired micro-blogging platform a href="http://pownce.com/" title="Pownce "Pownce/a for an undisclosed sum, a href="http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/01/six-apart-acquires-and-shuts-down-pownce/" title="VentureBeat reports"VB reports/a. But don't expect Pownce, which lets users broadcast short messages (including videos, photos and mp3s) to be embedded into any of Six Apart's current blogging tools—at least not in its current form—as Six Apart is pulling the plug on the service as of Dec 15. Pownce's lead developers Leah Culver and Mike Malone will likely take on similar roles within Six Apart, and its technology will be pulled into Six Apart's overall infrastructure. /p p Pownce was founded in January 2008 by Culver and Digg vets Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka; and though the service was hyped as Twitter's top competitor, it ultimately failed to catch its rival in terms of user adoption. But clearly, the micro-blogging space remains hot: Facebook was a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-this-phantasmagoric-life-acquisition-talks-between-facebook-and-twitter" title="eyeing a Twitter buyout"eyeing a Twitter buyout/a as recently as a month ago (for about $500 million worth of its stock, no less), Stocktwits, a Twitter-based stock tracking service a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-stocktwits-gets-angel-funding-for-twitter-based-financial-message-board" title="got funding in late September"got funding in late September/a, and social video startup a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-seesmic-acquires-twitter-client-twhirl" title="Seesmic acquired Twhirl"Seesmic acquired Twhirl/a, a micro-blogging and messaging aggregation service in April. /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-this-phantasmagoric-life-acquisition-talks-between-facebook-and-twitter/"This Phantasmagoric Life: Acquisition Talks Between Facebook And Twitter Break Down/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-seesmic-acquires-twitter-client-twhirl/"Seesmic Acquires Twitter Desktop Client Twhirl/a/li /ul p!-- iMark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. a href="http://content.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=000010cb0000000000000000/SITE=PC_US/AAMSZ=PREMB_NEWS/relocate=http://marklogicdps.eventbrite.com/"Register now!/a/i --/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=HbfyIh"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=HbfyIh" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=7xJYO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=7xJYO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=U9LGO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=U9LGO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=g9Gzo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=g9Gzo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=5kgSO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=5kgSO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=sxzdO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=sxzdO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/471691550" height="1" width="1"/

Pownce, the media-rich Twitter competitor that was co-founded by Digg’s Kevin Rose along with Leah Culver and Daniel Burka, has been acquired by Six Apart and will be closing its doors on December 15. Users will be able to export their accounts to other services, allowing them to retain their messages and media, but it looks like Pownce users will have to turn to Twitter for their micro-blogging needs (if they haven’t already). Culver and Mike Malone (Pownce’s two engineers) will be integrated into the Six Apart team.

The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise - Pownce has long struggled in the shadow of Twitter in the microblogging space, despite the fact that the Pownce crew objects to being called a Twitter competitor. There were some major differences: Pownce allowed users to share photos, music, videos, events and offered niceties like an official AIR application, but its core functionality was still very similar.

We first heard about the site back in summer 2007, when it made it headlines as Rose’s secret new startup. Excitement built up to the point that invites were being sold on eBay, but by the end of the year, it became clear that Pownce wasn’t catching on nearly as quickly as Twitter, and it seemed like it might be headed to the deadpool before it even launched to the public in January. Even Robert Scoble, who usually embraces social web services, hasn’t updated his account since July.

Co-founder Leah Culver has written a semi-sweet farewell to the Pownce community on the site’s blog.

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img src=http://www.bide-et-musique.com/images/thumb75/9497.jpg width=75 align=left /table border=0trtdbAnnée :/b/tdtd1979/td/trtrtdbAuteur(s) :/b/tdtdJordan/td/trtrtdbLabel :/b/tdtdDecca / EMI / Kevin Parott/td/trtrtdbRéférencenbsp;:/b/tdtd190 004/td/trtrtdbDurée :/b/tdtd2 m 24 s/td/tr/table

Once considered a Twitter rival, the start-up co-founded by Diggs Kevin Rose will be closing down in two weeks.

Once considered a Twitter rival, the start-up co-founded by Diggs Kevin Rose will be closing down in two weeks.

Once considered a Twitter rival, the start-up co-founded by Diggs Kevin Rose will be closing down in two weeks.

pOutgoing FCC Chair Kevin Martin will get a chance to see his smut free wireless plan approved by the Commission in December. But many loose ends remain to be tied up. /ppa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081201-fcc-to-vote-on-smut-free-wireless-broadband-before-christmas.html"Read More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/o-RsRU3VNXi6d9i0ZRpThHmCC8U/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/o-RsRU3VNXi6d9i0ZRpThHmCC8U/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=I77PgvMl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?i=I77PgvMl" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=i8Hu3ugK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=zyuxi7Ez"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=41" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~4/b8U5LqVQSm8" height="1" width="1"/

pOutgoing FCC Chair Kevin Martin will get a chance to see his smut free wireless plan approved by the Commission in December. But many loose ends remain to be tied up. /ppa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081201-fcc-to-vote-on-smut-free-wireless-broadband-before-christmas.html"Read More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/o-RsRU3VNXi6d9i0ZRpThHmCC8U/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/o-RsRU3VNXi6d9i0ZRpThHmCC8U/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=I77PgvMl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?i=I77PgvMl" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=i8Hu3ugK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=zyuxi7Ez"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=41" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~4/b8U5LqVQSm8" height="1" width="1"/

h4No-smut opt-opt?/h4 pThe Federal Communications Commission is set to consider chairman Kevin Martin's plan for a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/fcc_unveils_free_wireless_plan/"free US-wide puritanical wireless broadband/a at its next meeting on December 18..../p

In the waning days of his leadership at the FCC, chairman Kevin J. Martin is trying to push through some striking initiatives in his last chance to leave his mark on the agency. On Election Day, for instance, the FCC approved unlicensed use for white-space TV spectrum (aka, WiFi 2.0) that is being freed up. Now Martin wants to rid the wireless Web of porn.

One of the issues he plans to tackle in upcoming meetings this month, is a plan to give all Americans free access to the Web via the airwaves, minus the porn. Adults would be able to opt back in to get the raw, unfiltered Internet.

The proposal opens the door for the FCC to regulate decency standards on the Web, but only when it is accessed over the airwaves by wireless devices. It would reassert the FCC’s authority in this area, which harkens back to the decency standards it imposes on broadcast TV. This is a bad idea for several reasons.

1. The FCC has a hard enough time figuring out what is decent and what is not on 500 channels. It is not equipped to police decency on billions of Websites, even if it relies on automated filters to do most of the work.

2. The rule would apply to only one sliver of spectrum, the AWS-3 band, which nobody really uses yet. It would be like banning porn on fiber-optic IPTV, but not doing anything about it on satellite or cable. If children watching porn is the problem, this will do nothing to stop it.

3. Porn filtering aside, requiring winners of the AWS-3 spectrum auction to give up a quarter of the airwaves they win to set up a free slower-tier wireless Internet service will certainly make those airwaves worth less to any potential bidders. Worse, it could drive away the best potential bidders who might decide it is just not worth their effort or capital.

You’ve got to wonder whether Martin really thinks he can get this passed, or whether he just wants it as a resume stuffer. It’s the kind of thing that plays well on the campaign trail, should Martin decide to run for political office in the future. Why is he bringing this up now for what is ultimately a minor swath of spectrum? If he was serious about eradicating porn on the wireless Web, he should have tried to impose this kind of rule during the last set of auctions for the 700 MHz spectrum. But he didn’t.

Setting up a free tier of wireless Web access is the more interesting part of his proposal. Perhaps a better way to do that would be to set up economic incentives for spectrum winners to offer free tiers of service, rather than mandate it. For instance, why not offer a 25 percent discount to each bid that includes provisions for free Web access that could be supported by advertising. That way the market would sort out what portion should be free and what portion should be paid.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Kevin Johnson is one day away from officially taking office and the challenges he'll face as the Mayor of Sacramento dwarf any on-court maneuverings he performed as an All-Star point guard with the Phoenix Suns. With unemployment at a 10-year high, the city's crime rate reaching record numbers and the school system in need of a reset, Johnson is running full speed ahead in tackling the city's critically important issues. It's also no surprise that one of the NBA's premier assist men is asking the citizens to lend a hand in volunteerism and philanthropy. Emphasizing public service, those attending Johnson's public swearing-in ceremony last Tuesday at Memorial Auditorium were required to either sign up and volunteer or donate to the Sacramento Food Bank. The native Sacramentean spoke to NBA.com's John Hareas just days before he is to take oath at the City Council meeting and discussed a number of topics including his vision for the city, which former NBA players were instrumental in his campaign and why his friend, President Elect Barack Obama, would be wise not to challenge him in a game of one on one.

pThe a href="/article/news/50842-byrnedirty-projectors-collab-sufjan-feist-on-comp"strongeagerly anticipated/strong/a compilation emDark Was the Night/em, a href="/article/news/50921-aaron-dessner-discusses-red-hot-comp-the-national"strongcurated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the National/strong/a to benefit the a href="http://www.redhot.org/"strongRed Hot Organization/strong/a, has now completed its all-star lineup, and man, is it impressive./p pa href="/article/news/147030-more-details-about-dessners-aids-benefit-comp"strongAs previously reported/strong/a, emDark Was the Night /emarrives on double CD, triple LP, or download February 17 from a href="http://4ad.com/"strong4AD/strong/a, benefiting both your record collection and Red Hot's AIDS-fighting efforts around the world. It's Red Hot's 20th such compilation, released in conjunction with the organization's 20th anniversary, and they pulled out all the stops for this celebration./p pDeep breath...br /br /Sufjan Stevens turns in a track of his own, and he also appears on a Buck 65 remix alongside Chicago rapper Serengeti. Feist joins Grizzly Bear for a track and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard for another, and the Grizz turn in a tune by themselves. Conor Oberst is joined by Gillian Welch, David Byrne joins the Dirty Projectors, Joseacute; Gonzaacute;lez jumps on a cover of Nick Drake's "Cello Song" with the Books, and Blonde Redhead meet up with Devastations. Spoon's got a song on there, as do Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues, Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch, Yo La Tengo, Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene, Beirut, Iron and Wine, Andrew Bird, My Morning Jacket, the New Pornographers, Beach House, Yeasayer, Sigur Roacute;s offshoot Riceboy Sleeps, Bon Iver, TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Yeasayer, My Brightest Diamond (doing "Feeling Good", made famous by Nina Simone), and the Kronos Quartet, doing the Blind Willie Johnson song "Dark Was the Night"./p pThe National boys, not content to stay put in the curator's chair, turn in quite a few appearances on the thing as well. Bryce Dessner is joined by Antony Hegarty on a track, Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner join forces for a tune, and the National themselves loan one to the proceedings.br /br /On a related note, today (December 1) is World AIDS Day. To find out how you can pitch in, visit a href="http://www.worldaidscampaign.org/static/en/"strongworldaidscampaign.org/strong/a./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/1t9yvawvMq8buVJXQzS-UR5zJsk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/1t9yvawvMq8buVJXQzS-UR5zJsk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/9Jfrj-pEZK4" height="1" width="1"/

How to Build an Igloo (book review) by Kevin Kelly @ Cool Tools - the book is available at Amazon.

A wonderfully illustrated guide to making snow shelters. How to build with snow, how to work with snow rather than against it, and what not to do. Amazingly informative, succinct and fun. This book is the kind of expert you dream of. a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/how_to_build_an_igloo_boo.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/how_to_build_an_igloo_boo.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/how_to_build_an_igloo_boo.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/reviews/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Reviews/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fhow_to_build_an_igloo_boo.htmltitle=How%20to%20Build%20an%20Igloo%20%28book%20review%29bodytext=%20How%20to%20Build%20an%20Igloo%20%28book%20review%29%20by%20Kevin%20Kelly%20%40%20Cool%20Tools%20-%20the%20book%20is%20available%20at%20Amazon.%20A%20wonderfully%20illustrated%20guide%20to%20making%20snow%20shelters.%20How%20to%20build%20with%20snow%2C%20how%20to%20work%20with%20snow%20rather...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

The Wall Street Journal reports that outgoing FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to offer free Wi-Fi to allmdash;porn-free Wi-Fi, to be more specific. The no-smut specification is a little troubling,...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/free-wi-fi.png" width="200" height="189" /The Wall Street Journal reports that outgoing FCC Chairman Kevin Martin a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122809560499668087.html"wants to offer free Wi-Fi to all/amdash;porn-free Wi-Fi, to be more specific. The no-smut specification is a little troubling, since drawing a straight line through the massive gray area of propriety isn't a simple task, but the FCC has also proposed a version of the plan that would allow adults to opt out of the filtering. Sound like a winner to you? iPhoto by a href="http://flickr.com/photos/superfem/842710939/"superfem/a/i./p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=87a3747feb2c1c23a4109c49f571c4d4p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=87a3747feb2c1c23a4109c49f571c4d4p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=87a3747feb2c1c23a4109c49f571c4d4" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=7rpocdEz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=PeBV0Hwi"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=JhZTjCUr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=JhZTjCUr" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=C4gjmPEu"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=C4gjmPEu" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/7aQBHUtT12A" height="1" width="1"/

Posted by Dennis Sellers

Code by Kevin has released QuickWho 1.0, a tool that can help users to find out more about who registered a particular Internet domain name. QuickWho provides a graphical interface to the Unix “whois” command-line utility, which is used to find out more about who registered a particular Internet domain...

Kevin Kelly reviews How To Build an Igloo (and other snow shelters).

(link)

Amy Schatz / Wall Street Journal:
FCC Head Pushes Free Web Plan  —  Outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing for action in December on a plan to offer free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to all Americans, despite objections from the wireless industry and some consumer groups.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to address the issue of creating a nationwide, filtered broadband network at its Dec. 18 meeting according to the Wall Street Journal. That gives that meeting the potential to be as controversial as the one held last month on election day. The November meeting approved two mergers and created the potential for free wireless spectrum over the protests of broadcasters. This upcoming meeting could create free, licensed wireless spectrum in the AWS-3 band, ticking off T-Mobile, which paid $4 billion to lease the adjacent AWS-1 spectrum.

The FCC had issued a rule making on the topic back in June with a proposal that would create two tiers of wireless Internet service in the 2155-2175 MHz spectrum band. The lowest tier would provide free wireless broadband for the 100 million Americans who don’t have access to broadband right now, and a carrier would sell access to the faster tier for all comers. The rule making was similar to a proposal created by the Kleiner-backed startup M2Z Networks, which had asked the FCC to give it the spectrum for free.

Originally, the FCC had talked about filtering that free wireless network to rid it of objectionable content for everyone, but in October, when the FCC issued a report saying that such a network wouldn’t interfere with T-Mobile’s network, a spokesman for the regulatory agency said the filtering provisions would only be aimed at children. That could stop some consumer advocates from protesting the FCC actions, but it won’t stop T-Mobile, which shows no signs of backing down, even though its efforts to stop the proposal on the grounds that it will interfere with the T-Mobile network have failed.

At the meeting, the Commission is also expected to take up the issue of a la carte cable, as well as cable providers’ tactic of switching some formerly basic channels to a higher service tier — in effect raising the price for service for some subscribers, angering consumers and content providers. Much like the outgoing Bush administration is striving to issue its own rules before the changing of the guard, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is attempting to make his mark on the nation’s communications before his exit.

Writer/director/actor Kevin Smith has sent a proposal to Criterion for a Blu-ray release of his film 'Chasing Amy'. The filmmaker always had planned for a super 10-year anniversary release (much like the one completed for his earlier films 'Clerks' and 'Mallrat'), but Criterion has stated they refuse to double-dip (history, however, may disagree with that statement). So now he is proposing a Blu-ray release with all the added material, meaning it wouldn't technically be a double-dip of the DVD release....brbra href="http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=2120"Read full article at Blu-ray.com/a

Papparazzi-Alarm in Hollywood: The German Fröhlichkeit, wie Heidi Klum in den USA genannt wird, dreht einen neuen Werbespot. Eine Woche lang stand das Model vor der Kamera und begeisterte Kollegen und Fotografen gleichermaßen. Nur Filmpartner Kevin ließ die Klum eiskalt abblitzen.