The winners of the Independent Game Festival Awards were announced last night. A few winners are playable now: the awesome Max and the Magic Marker won the Vision award with its whimsical drawing-based action; Closure, featuring creepy light-based puzzles, won for sound design; Continuity, a student-created puzzling platform game. Big winners Monaco and the visually stunning Limbo are only available in video form now, but are worth a look anyway. [Closure and Continuity are in Flash; Max is in Unity, but worth it]

Filed under: web 2.0, Browsers

Whatever happened to being different?

Once upon a time, difference was revered. Heck, I still think people, deep down, admire difference. It takes guts and balls and nerve to stand out from the crowd, to stand up for the ideas and paradigms that are important to us. Being truly different -- doing something that no one has done before -- pushes boundaries. I'm not talking about wearing eyeliner because the other kids are doing it; I'm talking about innovation.

That's the very definition of 'risk'. Turning up to work in a short skirt is risky. Investing your money in a new venture is risky. Working on something without the promise of an immediate gain (financial or otherwise), is risk incarnate. But despite the chance of failure, and the associated loss of face or funds, we still take risks -- why? Individuals and corporations invest millions of man hours and billions of dollars into innovation every year. In many cases they risk everything for one big pay-off.

Often that pay-off never comes. Start-ups and garden-shed inventors come and go with nary a ripple made in the global market. But does that stop the next generation from risking their chips on a single throw of the die?

No. Human nature dictates that we get up and try again -- unless you're a web browser developer, of course. In that case you're one of those kids that reads magazines to find out this month's eyeliner trend. The major browsers are hopping over each other to be the cool kid in school, while the science lab goes unoccupied and innovation all but ceases.

In 2009, between the five big browsers -- Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera -- we saw a grand total of three new, never-before-seen features: Chrome Frame (pretty cool, and a great way to free those poor sods that are locked into IE6); HTML 5 support (as we've seen since the start of 2010, this is going to be a big thing this year); and... wait, that's it. There is no third. In 2009 we saw two new innovations in browser technology.

Sure, there have been advances but no changes; no alterations in how we surf. True, JavaScript performance has increased considerably. Yes, all of the browsers are approaching some semblance of standards-compliance. Even Firefox and Chrome have finally joined Opera in the ability to customize the browser's look and feel. But so what? We don't congratulate Intel on producing faster CPUs -- that's just what they're meant to do! Where is the 2009 equivalent of per-tab processes or incognito browsing? Where is our damn innovation?

No one really knew, back in 1995, what Netscape's introduction of JavaScript might herald. It was a risky and bold addition to an otherwise lackluster browser, but when Microsoft fought back in 1996 with its own version (JScript), the world knew it was going to be big. Meanwhile, Opera was quietly working on inventions that would soon make an appearance in every other browser: tabs and mouse gestures. Those were the glory days, before pesky considerations like 'stability' entered the equation.

But it's now 2010. Chrome and its rapid development demands a lot of attention, but its only real addition to the field has been per-tab processes. Firefox is treading water and borrowing from Chrome's open source code to stay afloat -- JetPack is the next big thing, but it's still a ways off. Opera, after becoming freeware in 2005, has almost frozen its feature list and is simply focused on improving its performance -- they churn out good browsers, but where has the innovation and creativity gone?

The problem is a lack of necessity. The browser war has ended, and with it innovation has died. It was an odd war, with no real monetary or territorial significance. Rather romantically, the browser war was always been about the end user; it was all about enriching our web experience -- but then the war ended. With HTML and JavaScript standards finally reached, big corporations marched on in and fortified. It was no longer about merely satisfying the user; it was time to capitalize.

Classically, users can't desire something new, something they've never seen before. We can whine about stability, or speed, but we don't ask for things that don't exist -- and thus the browser has become a platform, rather than a tool. Websites and apps now dictate browser innovation, when really it should be a symbiotic relationship, with ideas flowing in both directions. Mozilla, instead of sticking to its guns and innovating, is playing into Google's hands by copy-catting Chrome -- Google wants a platform. Google, unlike Firefox, is a large corporate entity that needs a platform for its web apps and Chrome OS. Firefox needs to be different, but is too afraid to push in its chips and take a risk. Your market share is going to continue dwindling, Mozilla; do something about it!

The only real risk-taker left in the field is Microsoft... but it too wants a platform for the Office 2010 web apps! The browser, in 2010, will become a slow-moving, stability-and-security-comes-first operating system. With the maturity of the Internet comes the inexorable maturity of the browser: back in 1996, the dreaded Blink and Marquee tags were considered proprietary inventions of Netscape and Microsoft; today... shit, I can hardly tell the difference between the browsers. I use them all interchangeably. The web browser has never been less pertinent than it is today.

Looking forward, 2010 could still be bright. Mozilla's JetPack needs to get a move on, and Opera must continue to push HTML5. Perhaps, if we're lucky, Microsoft will risk it and roll Pivot into IE9. That'd be some actual innovation. Woah.

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Firefox Friday: the homogenization of browsers and the death of innovation originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft - Opera - Safari - Firefox - Internet Explorer

Earlier this week, the social discovery tool StumbleUpon revamped its advertising platform.

These changes don’t so much change the basics of how StumbleUpon Advertising works, as much as they add additional tools and metrics for advertisers to better track and understand the results of their campaigns.

I got to speak with StumbleUpon’s founder and CEO Garrett Camp, as well as Marc Leibowitz, VP of business development and marketing, about the changes and what it means for advertisers who want to better target their content.

StumbleUpon’s advertising platform has always worked by integrating sponsored pages into organically liked or stumbled pages. Users rate and share content the same way, whether a page is sponsored or not — but they are made aware of pages that are sponsored. Advertisers can target their campaigns to specific StumbeUpon categories so that sites can be shown to the right kind of people.

Last fall, StumbleUpon competitor Digg launched a similar platform and early results have been very positive.

StumbleUpon isn’t changing the structure of how ads are displayed to users — that works, and works quite well — for users and advertisers. Instead, most of the changes with the platform are most noticeable on the backend.

What’s New

You can view this video tour to get an overview of how StumbleUpon Advertising works, but the big difference for advertisers is that the platform is now built on top of the same technology that powers Su.pr, the URL shortener for content publishers that StumbleUpon launched last summer. This new platform is faster and more responsive and now StumbleUpon ads is better integrated with the overall site.

Additionally, the dashboard and how data is reported has been greatly enhanced. In the past, advertisers were able to see traffic generated from stumbles they purchased, but not for any organic traffic that also came from the campaign. If a lot of people end of liking and recommending a sponsored site, it can end up getting several times the number pageviews from organic, unpaid traffic than from the actual campaign.

This greatly changes CPV, but this wasn’t accounted for in the old system. Garrett told me that some advertisers would use their own site logs to calculate the additional traffic they received from Stumble, but that’s a process that should really be done by the advertising platform. And now it is. When you can actually see your effective CPV (which, depending on the site or URL, could be considerably lower than the flat rate of $0.05 per impression that StumbleUpon charges), it can make evaluating how to budget future campaigns more efficient.

In addition to viewing paid and free traffic, the dashboard has now made it easier to identify trends and other metrics for success.

Payment options for advertisers have also been expanded. In the past, PayPal was the only way you could make an ad purchase. Now you can use Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover. This is good for companies that might like to allocate funds to certain cards without having to divert things to a separate PayPal account.

The Future

Marc came to StumbleUpon from Google, where he was a senior director of strategic partnerships. As such, he brings in lots of experience from the AdWords and AdSense teams and this is clearly having an impact on how Stumble does its ad platform.

This is a good thing. As a writer, I know that StumbleUpon can be a terrific source of traffic — its community is engaged and its recommendation algorithm is sound. Highlighting these benefits to advertisers is key to building the community — and the company.

As it stands, I like the direction Stumble is taking its advertising platform and I hope to see even deeper integration between publishing and advertising tools in the future.

Have you ever used StumbleUpon or other social recommendation services for advertising campaigns? Let us know your experiences!

Reviews: Google, StumbleUpon

Tags: advertising, digg, stumbleupon, stumbleupon ads

It is not really that surprising to see platforms like Offerwall materialize, since social gaming is reaching an all-time high that might radically redefine the way people spend leisure time online. Platforms like Offerwall (an initiative that has been started by Boomerang Networks) are there to ensure that the payment of in-game goods is both straightforward and secure. But in this particular there is more to it than that, since users have a ready chance to review and rate different virtual currency offers.

Read more

Learn more about Offerwall.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much Offerwall.com is worth with Stimator.com

That you can count on the WWW for promoting a live event is something that nobody ignores or belittles by now, and services like Hot Potato just make that fact even more noticeable.

At its most basic level, it is a platform that can be used to promote any event that is forthcoming like a party, a conference or a product’s launch. Events are created by being added to the calendar that is provided, and then people are invited to join in the fun in the usual way.

Read more

Learn more about HotPotato.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much HotPotato.com is worth with Stimator.com

From TechCrunch: Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained nearly 2 million users, say Aol. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at lifestream.aol.com.

Continue reading on TechCrunch >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• 10 Shocking Developments Since The Bubble Burst 10 Years Ago Today
• AOL Poaches Another Googler
• AOL Is The Biggest Loser In Search

I've been banging my head against the wall for a bit now trying to get my tests to run. I keep getting this error message.

 

I've even moved the set of assemblies so they are within the same directory as the sln file to ensure it picks up the test assemblies.

 

at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
at JetBrains.TeamCity.Utils.ProcessRunnerBase.Run(ProcessStartInfo psi) in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcUtilssrcProcessRunnerBase.cs:line 57
at JetBrains.TeamCity.Utils.Runtime.ProcessRun.Execute(IRunProcess proc) in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcUtilssrcRuntimeProcessRun.cs:line 88
at JetBrains.TeamCity.Utils.Runtime.ProcessRun.Run(String executable, PlatformVersion env, PlatformType platform, String[] args) in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcUtilssrcRuntimeProcessRun.cs:line 39
at JetBrains.TeamCity.Utils.Runtime.ProcessRun.RunWithCommandLine(PlatformVersion env, PlatformType platform, String assembly, String[] args) in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcUtilssrcRuntimeProcessRun.cs:line 30
at JetBrains.TeamCity.Utils.Runtime.RunInRuntime.ForkInRuntime(PlatformVersion version, PlatformType type, String executable, String[] args) in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcUtilssrcRuntimeRunInRuntime.cs:line 49
at JetBrains.TeamCity.NUnitCommon.PlugableRunFactory.AsPlugable.Run() in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcNUnitCommonsrcPlugableRunFactory.cs:line 27
at JetBrains.BuildServer.NAntLoggers.NUnitLauncher2.Run2(String[] args) in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcNUnitBootstrapsrcNUnitLauncher2.cs:line 146
at JetBrains.BuildServer.NAntLoggers.NUnitLauncher2.Run(String[] args) in c:Agentwork3f3d88bdf17c1223srcNUnitBootstrapsrcNUnitLauncher2.cs:line 45

[17:42:44]: [Project "Sample.sln.teamcity.patch.tcprojx" (Build_TeamCity_generated_3fedb854bf3b4218bc0e33436dc3b934;NUnit_TeamCity_generated_3fedb854bf3b4218bc0e33436dc3b934 target(s)):] D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgentwork5315a39364461f07demoMainSrccsharpSample.sln.teamcity.patch.tcprojx(10, 5): D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgentpluginsdotnetPluginbinJetBrains.BuildServer.NUnitLauncher.exe "@@" D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgenttempbuildTmptmp17DB.tmp exited with code -1 Now I've checked the tmp file and it does list the test assembly. I've even executed the command line directly on the buildserver where the agent is installed: D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgentwork5315a39364461f07demoMainSrccsharpSample.sln.teamcity.patch.tcprojx(10, 5): D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgentpluginsdotnetPluginbinJetBrains.BuildServer.NUnitLauncher.exe "@@" D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgenttempbuildTmptmp17DB.tmp And it works: C:Test>D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgentpluginsdotnetPluginbinJetBrains.BuildSerauncher.exe "@@" D:ToolsTeamCityBuildAgenttempbuildTmptmp17DB.tmpTeamCity is unavailable. Messages will be printed to standard outputTeamCity is unavailable. Messages will be printed to standard output<jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>Text</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415968418</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="java.lang.String">Start TeamCity NUnit Test Runner</myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1><jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>BlockStart</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415969368</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BlockData">    <blockName>Sample.BusinessLogic.Test.dll</blockName>    <blockType>$TEST_SUITE$</blockType>  </myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1><jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>BlockStart</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415969388</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BlockData">    <blockName>Sample.BusinessLogic.Test.TestBuildManager.TestBuildManagerAnswersCorrectly</blockName>    <blockType>$TEST_BLOCK$</blockType>  </myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1><jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>BlockEnd</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415969418</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BlockData">    <blockName>Sample.BusinessLogic.Test.TestBuildManager.TestBuildManagerAnswersCorrectly</blockName>    <blockType>$TEST_BLOCK$</blockType>  </myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1><jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>BlockStart</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415969418</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BlockData">    <blockName>Sample.BusinessLogic.Test.TestTestManager.TestTestManagerAnswersCorrectly</blockName>    <blockType>$TEST_BLOCK$</blockType>  </myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1><jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>BlockEnd</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415969428</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BlockData">    <blockName>Sample.BusinessLogic.Test.TestTestManager.TestTestManagerAnswersCorrectly</blockName>    <blockType>$TEST_BLOCK$</blockType>  </myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1><jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>BlockEnd</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415969428</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BlockData">    <blockName>Sample.BusinessLogic.Test.dll</blockName>    <blockType>$TEST_SUITE$</blockType>  </myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1><jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1>  <myFlowId>04b7d489-ef59-4430-b756-bb0c114277ab</myFlowId>  <mySourceId>DefaultMessage</mySourceId>  <myTypeId>Text</myTypeId>  <myStatus>1</myStatus>  <myTimestamp>1268415969878</myTimestamp>  <myValue class="java.lang.String">Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Not run: 0, Time: 0.060 seconds</myValue></jetbrains.buildServer.messages.BuildMessage1> As you can see this is a very basic sample. I like TeamCity but am concerned other users will come across this issue too. Many Thanks, John

The tracks which interested me today were “How do you test that?”, which dealt with scenarios where testing (especially automation) is particularly challenging, and “Browser as a Platform”, which is self-explanatory.

Joe Walker: Introduction to Bespin, Mozilla’s Web Based Code Editor

I didn’t make it to this talk, but Bespin looks very interesting. It’s “a Mozilla Labs Experiment to build a code editor in a web browser that Open Web and Open Source developers could love”.

I experimented briefly with the Mozilla hosted instance of Bespin. It seems mostly oriented for web application development, and still isn’t nearly as nice as desktop editors. However, I think something like this, combined with Bazaar and Launchpad, could make small code changes in Ubuntu very fast and easy to do, like editing a wiki.

Doron Reuveni: The Mobile Testing Challenge

Why Mobile Apps Need Real-World Testing Coverage and How Crowdsourcing Can Help

Doron explained how the unique testing requirements of mobile handset application are well suited to a crowdsourcing approach. As the founder of uTest, he explained their approach to connecting their customers (application vendors) with a global community of testers with a variety of mobile devices. Customers evaluate the quality of the testers’ work, and this data is used to grade them and select testers for future testing efforts in a similar domain. The testers earn money for their efforts, based on test case coverage (starting at about $20 each), bug reports (starting at about $5 each), and so on. Their highest performers earn thousands per month.

uTest also has a system, uTest Remote Access, which allows developers to “borrow” access to testers’ devices temporarily, for the purpose of reproducing bugs and verifying fixes. Doron gave us a live demo of the system, which (after verifying a code out of band through Skype) displayed a mockup of a BlackBerry device with the appropriate hardware buttons and a screenshot of what was displayed on the user’s screen. The updates were not quite real-time, but were sufficient for basic operation. He demonstrated taking a picture with the phone’s camera and seeing the photo within a few seconds.

Dylan Schiemann: Now What?

Dylan did a great job of extrapolating a future for web development based on the trend of the past 15 years. He began with a review of the origin of web technologies, which were focused on presentation and layout concerns, then on to JavaScript, CSS and DHTML. At this point, there was clear potential for rich applications, though there were many roadblocks: browser implementations were slow, buggy or nonexistent, security models were weak or missing, and rich web applications were generally difficult to engineer.

Things got better as more browsers came on the scene, with better implementations of CSS, DOM, XML, DHTML and so on. However, we’re still supporting an ancient implementation in IE. This is a recurring refrain among web developers, for whom IE seems to be the bane of their work. Dylan added something I hadn’t heard before, though, which was that Microsoft states that anti-trust restrictions were a major factor which prevented this problem from being fixed.

Next, there was an explosion of innovation

around Ajax and related toolkits, faster javascript implementations, infrastructure as a service, and rich web applications like GMail, Google Maps, Facebook, etc.

Dylan believes that web applications are what users and developers really want, and that desktop and mobile applications will fall by the wayside. App stores, he says, are a short term anomaly to avoid the complexities of paying many different parties for software and services. I’m not sure I agree on this point, but there are massive advantages to the web as an application platform for both parties. Web applications are:

• fast, easy and cheap to deploy to many users
• relatively affordable to build
• relatively easy to link together in useful ways
• increasingly remix-able via APIs and code reuse

There are tradeoffs, though. I have an article brewing on this topic which I hope to write up sometime in the next few weeks.

Dylan pointed out that different layers of the stack exhibit different rates of change: browsers are slowest, then plugins (such as Flex and SilverLight), then toolkits like Dojo, and finally applications which can update very quickly. Automatically updating browsers are accelerating this, and Chrome in particular values frequent updates. This is good news for web developers, as this seems to be one of the key constraints for rolling out new web technologies today.

Dylan feels that technological monocultures are unhealthy, and prefers to see a set of competing implementations converging on standards. He acknowledged that this is less true where the monoculture is based on free software, though this can still inhibit innovation somewhat if it leads to everyone working from the same point of view (by virtue of sharing a code base and design). He mentioned that de facto standardization can move fairly quickly; if 2-3 browsers implement something, it can start to be adopted by application developers.

Comparing the different economics associated with browsers, he pointed out that Mozilla is dominated by search through the chrome (with less incentive to improve the rendering engine), Apple is driven by hardware sales, and Google by advertising delivered through the browser. It’s a bit of a mystery why Microsoft continues to develop Internet Explorer.

Dylan summarized the key platform considerations for developers:

• choice and control
• taste (e.g. language preferences, what makes them most productive)
• performance and scalability
• security

and surmised that the best way to deliver these is through open web technologies, such as HTML 5, which now offers rich media functionality including audio, video, vector graphics and animations. He closed with a few flashy demos of HTML 5 applications showing what could be done.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Open Source

We've all been there...

Those dark, dreary, lonely nights when you're up to date with your video games and you're out of books. You look at your last good friend, your ever-present ally that's seen you through thick and thin: your hand. Just one more time... I'll get a girlfriend soon, I promise...

I'm talking, of course, about Rock-paper-scissors: the fairest of compromise, the inexorable justice of fates, THE ULTIMATE EQUALIZER. Have you ever played it on your own... or tried to? No, I didn't think so, but Steve Hoefer has; that sad bastard. He cites a love of 'computers interacting with us on our own terms', but we all know it's because his weiner is horrendously chafed and in desperate need of rest.

He simply slips on his glove and goes to work: 'Ick... ack... ock!' (or however you do it in your country... you weird Americans!) -- and all the while, the glove is learning his habits and playing against him! How cool is that?! If you often open with rock, the glove will start with paper. That's about it really, but as is always the case with 'mods' (yes, this must surely be the first 'glove mod' I've seen), it's all about the making. Go check the masterful nerd's site for a complete walkthrough (yes, you can quite easily make one of these yourself!). For me, though, the most interesting bit was the 'open source hardware' used to process the glove's inputs and power the outputs. At its heart is a programmable prototyping platform called Arduino. You can purchase the boards, or make them yourself! The language used to program the platform is also open source-- cool.

It's all a bit nerdy, but as you can see in the video after the break, well worth the effort. No longer will nerds have to carry dice in their pockets to decide what to get for lunch at the canteen.

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Play yourself at Rock, Paper, Scissors with an open source training glove originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rock-paper-scissors - Video game - Open source - Games - Download Squad

Google has just rolled out the first version of the Google Wave extensions gallery, making it easier for users to take advantage of some of the cool add-ons developers are building into the service.

After making a big slash at Google I/O last year, Google Wave (the real-time communication platform that is still in preview) has re-gained some momentum, thanks to an improved API and the addition of e-mail notifications. The addition of an extensions gallery speaks to even more growth on the service’s part.

If you have a Google Wave account, you’ll see an “Extensions” item in your navigation panel. Click on it and you can see what extensions are available to install and then use.

Here’s a rundown of some of the extensions you can install and use now:

Wave Sudoku – Play Sudoku with a friend in real-time using Wave

Developers Extension Installer — Developers can use this to create an embeddable installer for extensions they create

Yellow Highlighter — Adds a yellow highlighter tool to your toolbar

Trippy — Useful for planning trips with friends

Video Chat Experience — Video chat in Wave

Pollo Gadget — Conduct polls and surveys across Wave

AccuWeather — See the weather of people in the Wave or from places you are planning on visiting

Once you install an extension, in most cases it is added to your toolbar and can then be accessed within a wave.

There are more extensions in the gallery and developers can submit their own to be included by going to this submission page for Google to review.

What Google Wave extensions are you using? Let us know!

Disclosure: Mashable has teamed with Google for the Google Wave API Challenge.

Tags: Google Wave, google wave extensions

When you think about internships at media companies, you probably picture people fetching coffee, running errands, or worse. But some internships have taken a different tack, setting up specialized blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages for their interns to help them understand new technology and spread the word about their programs.

At NPR, the 40-plus interns put together a special 30-minute multimedia and audio presentation for the rest of the staff each term. The special "Intern Edition" -- run mainly by interns themselves -- has morphed into a regular blog with daily updates. At satellite radio giant SiriusXM, 150 interns are herded by "Ross the Boss" Herosian, a former intern who has a special Twitter feed, Facebook page, blog, podcast and even YouTube channel for the internship program.

The advantage for interns coming into these programs (which run in spring, summer or fall terms) is that many of them are already immersed in digital media, so there's nothing to relearn. As Doug Mitchell, former head of the NPR Intern Edition, told me for a MediaShift story in 2008:

There's no 'legacy' to concern ourselves with because Intern Edition starts completely from scratch each term with a room full of strangers and me as the continuity and institutional memory. What better place to develop new thinking about media, development and consumption than where nothing truly exists.

A Major Juggle

One thing that interns at NPR have in common with other workers at media companies is the need to juggle like mad. They have their regular internship with a specific NPR radio show or production service; they might have classes at school or other internships; and then they have the extra-curricular work of Intern Edition, their creative outlet. And that creativity can take many forms: video, drawing, comics and more.

"It's never easy," said NPR senior trainer Sora Newman, who has taken on Doug Mitchell's former role. "The interns need to be committed to the project and they always underestimate the amount of time it takes to produce a radio story or slide show, etc. These are just skills learned by experience."

A slide-show by NPR intern May Ying-Lam of the Tiny Desk concert series

Intern Edition gives NPR interns a place to showcase new skills, test their limits and even build an online audience via social media. The @NPRInterns Twitter feed has more than 2,500 followers. And one intern, Teresa Gorman, has just one job for her internship: executive producing the Intern Edition. Gorman told me that "We do almost everything ourselves ... It's tough. It's worth it, though."

At SiriusXM, social media outreach is less about promoting the work of interns as it is about promoting the internship programs to prospective interns. Herosian told me he took a program that had 15 interns four years ago and built it into a powerhouse with 150 interns spread out around the country. The internships are unpaid, but they do offer college credit.

"I wanted to get the message out about what we're doing and market it to college students," he said. "I thought it would be great to go where the students are, rather than waiting for them to come to us. So when Facebook came out, I was creating groups for people to join, and when they launched the Pages feature, I saw a great opportunity for a community and outlet so that people can follow us."

Challenges for Interns

While both programs have had success in training college students and bringing some of them on board with full-time jobs, there have been some obstacles along the way. NPR interns have had to deal with an entrenched traditional media mentality, and SiriusXM has had to sort through various online platforms to get it right.

Dominic Ruiz-Esparza is the communications director for Intern Edition, and an intern at "Talk of the Nation." He told me there have been battles among interns over the direction of Intern Edition, which mixes newsy stories with lighter fare.

"There's a bit of disagreement about how much should be news content and how much is trying out new things that are fun for interns," Ruiz-Esparza said. "There's a bit of a battle here among people who run Intern Edition. I have a news background and would like that, but that gets boring and some people want to try innovative things. So it's really up to the managing editor to decide, so that we have some news and the interns have creative freedom, too."

He's also noticed that there's still resistance to change at NPR as a whole.

"Guy Raz, the weekend 'All Things Considered' host, talked to us awhile ago and acknowledged that there's a very conservative spirit here at NPR and it's changed," Ruiz-Esparza said. "It's a lot better than it was, but it's still not the norm for these new forms of content to be primary. The website has changed a lot due to the new CEO [Vivian Schiller], but there is that divide. It's changed somewhat, but not quick enough for young people here."

At SiriusXM, Herosian has a serious challenge just keeping track of the 150 interns spread out around the country. Luckily, he has interns to help him with that task. Because Herosian is only a handful of years removed from his own internship, he can relate to the interns and has taken on the "Ross the Boss" nickname in a light-hearted way. Herosian hasn't been afraid to try new digital platforms to promote the SiriusXM internships -- and he admits some of them just didn't work out.

"At first with the blog I set up a LiveJournal format where everyone had their own account, but it was just too many moving parts," Herosian said. "For us, it wasn't the best interface to use. We also used Ning, which is a great service but it didn't quite meet our needs. Sometimes less in more with social media, because everything you create you have to maintain. People in corporate environments will create these pages and then say 'my job is done' and there's no maintenance that goes into it. It's the conversation aspect that's important, so you can't create them and then have them lie dormant."

Intern Learning and Teaching

As for what's been working well in social media, Herosian said Facebook has been the best way to promote the program to college students, who are much more comfortable commenting or asking questions in that environment. He was surprised that many college interns were new to Twitter and had to be prompted to use it regularly. One SiriusXM intern, Jeremy Lubsey, said he had heard a lot about Twitter before, but had never used it very much until his internship. That said, he thinks he'll get a lot more use out of his new LinkedIn profile.

"[One of my biggest lessons was] the importance of social networking sites such as LinkedIn," Lubsey told me. "The second week, I was talking to one of the production guys and he said to put up a page on LinkedIn and get your name out there. That's helped me to work on my career after SiriusXM."

And when it comes to social media, sometimes it's the interns who help teach the staffers new tricks. Mediaite editor-at-large Rachel Sklar told me that the startup site had been blessed with "awesome, kickass interns" who also have their own Twitter feed.

"As for social media training, it's gone both ways!" Sklar said. "Only an idiot would welcome these kids just out of school without making a point of learning from them. They've grown up steeped in this stuff. The training flows both ways!"

*****

What do you think about internships that include blogs, podcasts, Twitter feeds and more? Should more media companies do that? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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Last August, we wrote about Lunch.com, a reviews site that’s setting out with the goal to make the world a better place by changing the way people think about each other (as I wrote then, it’s a pretty lofty goal). Today, the company is launching a new feature called Communities that lets users build their own review sites around any niche topic. If you’d like to try founding a community, you can do so using the beta code “techcrunch”.

The new feature can be likened to a ‘Ning for review sites’. As a community founder, you select a topic on whatever you’d like, then invite other users to contribute reviews and other content (you can elect to moderate this as it comes in). For examples, check out Strollerland, a new community that’s dedicated to reviewing strollers. There’s also Gluten Free Groupies, for (surprise) people who like to talk about gluten-free foods.

The benefits of this kind of niche-community setup are clear — if you cater to a group of people passionate about a given topic, they’re probably going to be more knowledgeable and engaged than your average user. I’d rather take recommendations from someone who reads about strollers all day than from a guy who liked the one he chose at random at Wal-Mart.

CEO J.R. Johnson says that Lunch’s system allows for the creation of multiple communities around the same topic (for example, there could be ten different reviews communities that revolved around bicycles). Because all of these niche review sites are built on the Lunch.com platform, the site can use its universal search and suggestion engine to recommend content you may be interested in, even if it’s found on a different community than the one you’re currently browsing.

However, it sounds like new communities may have some trouble getting off the ground.  Johnson says he expects that lots of the niche review sites will be launched by existing online communities (say, a Yahoo Group).  For them, the system should work well, but if you just want to launch a review site about stamps but don’t already have many friends who are interested in the topic, you may have trouble getting much traction.  That said, these niche communities will be exposed to search engines, and if you produce relevant content Lunch’s recommendation engine should also help introduce your community to new users.

CrunchBase Information Lunch Information provided by CrunchBase

Forced death is something I've had an aversion to ever since the game Nocturne, in which you were forced into a hallway full of doors in which only one door didn't lead to instant death. Given the buggy nature of the game and the long load times, that hallway was not a fun experience. Instead it was more like an hour of desk-pounding frustration as I screamed at my computer screen every 5 seconds.

I've come around since then, as I've seen a few examples of death as a useful mechanic. Certainly Braid's rewinding of time helped me see the instructive value of the occasional death. There've been plenty of FPS games where the camera shows me who killed me, letting me know what I'm up against. There's also Starcraft 2, which what little I've gotten to play of the beta has me addicted to their replay feature.

Maru is different though. Maru, from Jesse Venbrux, is a 2D platformer where you jump between different platforms, moving toward a goal and avoiding spikes, except the gravity is towards the platform, not down--very similar to how Super Mario Galaxy works, but in 2D.

What stood out to me about the game though was how it handles death. You collect extra men as floaty little orbs that look just like your character's head. However when you die, you turn into a floaty little white orb of light. When you get back to where you died, you can pick that up. You then run into platforms that need those light orbs before you can proceed.

Death in a game can certainly be a learning experience, but having be required to pass? You get a little ball of light when you die that you have to collect and spend later. It's similar to how The Nexus works in Demon's Souls. In Demon's Souls, when you die you can attack demons for more souls in order to become more powerful. Except here, it's required to progress.

Why You Should Check This Out: Besides the forced suicide, it's an interesting platformer that has some really great physics. There's only 7 levels, though sometimes you may need to go through a level multiple times. The art and music are both pretty good for an indie platformer and certainly not generic. The multicolored platforms and weird, bugeyed protagonist give the art a different feel than most other games. While they're requiring you to die to complete the game, it doesn't feel too forced or onerous. Instead, it's a refreshing way to use death in a platformer as more than just a way to burn up extra lives.

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At the GDC show, InstantAction has shown off a new platform that will enable game developers to embed video games in websites such as Facebook, MySpace or blogs, as well as in e-mails. This means users do not need to download the games, and access them from any web-connected computer that has access to a website or e-mail that hosts their game. The company claims that thanks to a combination of in-browser, thin-client and progressive downloading technologies, embedding even high-end games is as easy and fast as uploading a photo or video....

When MySpace announced earlier this week that they had now established themselves as the number one social networking application on the Android platform and the number three download overall, needless to say, we were a bit shocked. After all, (with no offense to MySpace intended), there are more Facebook users than MySpace users in the world. It's just a simple fact.

So how did this happen? Is the MySpace Android app that much better than Facebook's? Are Android users more interested in MySpace for some reason? Are they younger than other mobile users and therefore choosing MySpace over Facebook?

As it turns out, the truth is that measuring the mobile downloads of official applications may not be mean anything when it comes to measuring the success of social networking sites.

Sponsor

After scratching our heads for a good ten minutes, we decided to reach out to a mobile expert for help. Peter Farago of mobile analytics firm Flurry had a few ideas, all of which seem more than plausible.

Theory #1: Third-Party Apps

On the Android platform, there are over ten third-party applications which allow social networking users access to Facebook outside of the Facebook official app or mobile website. This means that thousands upon thousands of Facebook users are downloading other Facebook applications which are not being counted towards the official app's total.

Meanwhile, there is only one third-party MySpace application, so most of the downloads from MySpace users are going to the official app.

Theory #2: Facebook Pre-Installs

The Facebook application is pre-installed on the Droid, the most popular Android handset. It's highly likely that those pre-installed copies of the Facebook app are not being counted as downloads on the Android marketplace.

In addition, the Facebook application is included on the Android 2.0 mobile platform, alongside other popular apps like Amazon and Pandora. So again, that's another potential area where Facebook application downloads are not being counted.

Theory #3: Mobile Web Use

Another theory, (this one ours not Farago's), is that some Facebook and MySpace users don't access the sites via apps - they do so via the customized mobile websites. Facebook, for example, has two mobile alternatives to the official app - m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com. For personal reasons, some Android owners may actually prefer accessing Facebook via these sites instead of by way of the app itself - an app which, unlike its iPhone counterpart, points to the mobile website when you interact with some of its functions, a regular complaint among Android users. In fact, many users actually consider the MySpace app to be the more polished of the two.

Theory #4: All of the Above

MySpace claims that its popularity on the Android is due to "deep integration with the Android platform" and, in their press release, the company mentions the multiple MySpace homescreen widgets for things like voice-enabled updates and photo uploads. The release also notes that the MySpace user base is highly engaged, with 70% of the mobile app users checking in three or more times per day.

However, these are probably not the major reasons contributing to the app's popularity on the charts, where it now ranks #3 overall. It's more likely that the combination of factors described above have more to do with where MySpace stands today on Android. Mystery solved.

Discuss

So, we brought you along for the big reveal and some playtesting, and even presented you with this handy guide just in case you had any more questions. You still haven't got enough of Sony's new motion controller? You're going to want to hop on over to Joystiq for an enjoyable interview with Sony Worldwide Studios VP Scott Rohde where he gets down to brass tacks and answers questions involving the ins and outs of Move game distro, whether the preponderance of "shovelware" mini-game collections will help or hurt the platform, and the fate of the DualShock controller. It's a wild ride, indeed. So why are you still here?

Joystiq and Sony VP Scott Rohde talk PlayStation Move originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though Xbox 360 editions of multiplatform releases like Aliens vs. Predator outsold their PS3 counterparts for the most part, BioShock 2's PS3 version cracked the NPD Group's top 20 U.S. retail games chart for February. Following the release of last month's retail video game sales data yesterday, the NPD Group has provided Gamasutra with an exclusive list of the top 20 U.S. console retail video games across all platforms for February 2009 according to unit ...

25 San Fransisco entrepreneurs were picked to get on a bus, drive to Austin, and conceive and launch 6 tech startups, all in 48 hours, in time for a launch party at South by Southwest.

No, that's not a reality show pitch. And no, we didn't just make it up.

This is a real life contest currently underway, called the Startup Bus. The startups will be judged by "a panel of mentors from Austin-based incubator The Capital Factory and Australian headquartered eStrategyGroup", and the winning idea's team will be mentored by angel investor Naval Ravikant.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• How To Not Be A Jerk At SXSW
• Twitter Ad Platform Launching At SXSW Next Month
• 'People Vs George Lucas' Premiering At SXSW

A lot happened in the US smartphone market from October 2009 to January 2010, but thankfully there are companies like comScore kicking about to help us make sense of just which platforms were the biggest winners and losers during this period. The biggest platform was not surprisingly Google’s Android which saw an uptick of 4.3% to a total of 7.1% thanks in part to the successful launches of handsets like the DROID, DROID ERIS and Hero. RIM’s BlackBerry OS, which faired second best with a gain of 1.7% continued to dominate the total smartphone market at 43%, but one has to wonder if RIM could have done just a little bit more. After all, it did launch the BlackBerry Bold 9700, Curve 8530 and Storm2 during these months. Apple’s iPhone didn’t do as well as many would have guessed, but its 0.3% increase makes quite a bit of sense when you consider the tradition of people holding out on iPhone purchases in the six months leading up the summer release of the devices later iteration. Nonetheless, it does hold a 25.1% stake in the US smartphone market. When it comes to market share, one’s success is another’s misfortune. Not exactly a stranger to losing ground, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile managed to shed 4.0% thanks in part to what can be politely summed up as a general indifference to its current platform (how things will change). After this, we saw Palm with a loss of 2.1%. In Palm’s defence a lot of this can be attributed to people finally getting around to ditching Palm OS, but the fact remains that thing’s aren’t going to well for a company that many felt was on the path to recovery just 15 months ago.

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We here at MAKE are thrilled to have teamed up with the fine folks at Jameco to bring you The Make: Robot Build. Over the next eight weeks, we'll be featuring a series of tutorials here on the site about the basics of robot building, from overall design considerations to mechanical construction, electronics, and programming. The information in these tutorials and the build contest are designed so that anyone can participate, even if you don't know anything about electronics or robots! On March 27, we'll officially launch The Make: Robot Build contest, and over the ensuing weeks, each week, we'll cover a different subsystem of robot construction (drive train, controllers, sensors, etc.) and help contestants in building these subsystems on their bot. Builders will post progress images to the MAKE Flickr pool and we have a topic set up in the MAKE Forums for discussing your project.

The Goal: Build a CoasterBot!
The goal of this series and the contest is to teach you how to build a simple robot and for you to learn all of the various aspects of design and the mechanical and electronic systems used in robots. Contestants will build "CoasterBots," mini robot development platforms, made using CD/DVD media as the main body components ("coaster" being slang for a dead/damaged CD/DVD). Your goal is to create a CoasterBot that can navigate a space on its own, avoiding obstacles, and that is designed so that additional sensor systems (proximity, heat, light, sound, etc.) can be added "on top" of this obstacle-avoidance behavior. Contestants are free to use the CD/DVD media in any way they choose. Extra points will be given for creativity and innovation in the overall design.

We will have a two-week prep phase where we'll post overview articles here about basic robot design and construction and to allow time for readers to start planning out their design and to gather needed parts and supplies. Then, each week, we'll cover a different build phase, from design and chassis/drive train, to microcontrollers and sensors. The final two weeks will be devoted to finishing up the bots, fleshing out your documentation, and submitting your project(s). Please see the timeline and further details on The Make: Robot Build contest page. You can enter as many bots as you like, but you can only do a single entry for each one.

The Contest and Prizes
The contest will begin at 12:01am PDT on March 27, 2010 and will end at 11:59 p.m. PDT on May 7, 2010. Winners will be announced on May 14th, 2010.

Judging Criteria
The robots entered into the contest will be judged on the following criteria:

• 50% Overall Robot Design
• 20% Creative Use of Materials and Innovation of Design
• 20% Project Documentation
• 10% Degree of Improvement (from early phases of the competition)

The Prizes

• The Grand Prize is $500 Cash (in the form of a pre-paid credit card) and a free ticket to Maker Faire Bay Area 2010. The $500 can be used towards travel to the Faire, as the winning robot will be featured at Maker Faire. The Grand Prize winner will also receive a Jameco jacket.
• Second Prize is a Parallax Stingray Robot and a Jameco T-shirt.
• Third Prize is a $100 Jameco gift certificate, along with a Jameco T-shirt.

Every contestant who finishes the robot build and documents his or her finished project will receive a Maker's Notebook from the Maker Shed.

The Robot Build Newsletter
We'll be mailing out a newsletter each week of the contest with the latest contest details, tutorials, images from contestants' designs, build tips, technical advice, and more. We'll also be sending out word of the final contest submission form through the newsletter, so if you want to be a contestant, you need to subscribe. All we need is your name and email address (which we'll keep confidential):

Name:

Email:

The Jameco Robot Build Kit Bundle
Jameco has put together a core parts bundle to make it easy to gather the necessary parts for the contest. It includes a Solarbotics Ardweeny Arduino microcontroller, a Solarbotics Breadboard Voltage Regulator, an L293D motor controller, two Hi-Tec HS-322HD servomotors, two Parallax BOE-BOT/Sumobot wheel/tire sets, two lever switches, a breadboard, battery holders, wire, hardware, all sorts of goodies for building your coasterbot. You do not have to buy this kit to participate, and it won't be counted in the judging, but we at MAKE and the folks at Jameco put it together to make getting started in this contest as easy as possible. You can purchase your Jameco bundle and other parts here.

Check out the Make: Robot Build contest page for more info, the build timeline, and full contest rules. Matt Mets and I will be heading up the project/contest. We think this is going to be a whole lot of fun and we hope you'll join in!

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NEW YORK, March 12 /PRNewswire/ -- AppNexus today announced the launch of its advanced ad platform specializing in real-time advertising (www.appnexus.com). Founded and managed by the pioneers of the Web's original and most successful ad exchanges at Yahoo!'s Right Media and Google's DoubleClick, Ap

Editor’s Note: This guest post was written and reported by Steven Rosenbaum, the CEO of Magnify.net.

Today, the world of music, film, and the internet converges on Austin, Texas for what is fast becoming one of the key the places to launch new software products. For the folks at AOL, South By Southwest—know also as SXSW—will be a debutant party for AOL’s new Seed form of journalism.

AOL has it’s hopes pinned on that fact that SXSW will be the perfect place to both introduce the new Seed content machine to a large audience and test the concept of mixing freelance and pro-journalists to create a huge amount of original content. Seed has been operational for a few months now, but SXSW will be it coming out party, according to former New York Times writer Saul Hansell who is now the Program Director of Seed.

How’s this all going to work? Well, fielding an army of freelancers to cover SXSW’s 2000 bands is certainly a baptism by fire. AOL solicited freelance writers on its music site Spinner. Those interested in contributing were redirected to Seed, where they signed up. Hansell asked for work experience, music tastes, and clips. He says: “I can tell you now that we didn’t read the clips. We looked at these things to see if people can follow directions and if they didn’t write us 1,000 words when we asked for 100. And that was the criteria.”

Next, each of the more than two thousand bands that will play at SXSW were assigned to a Seedster to interview. Hansell says he had his fingers crossed. “I think we’re over the hump of my darkest fears,” he says, “and I had many of them. The first dark fear was we’d get total losers. The second fear was how good the interviews would be. “

Now, with first results surfacing on Spinner, Hansell says, “The people who sent us e-mails back were entertainment writers for weekend publications, kids in J-school who are also in bands, exactly the right type of people.” But they aren’t treated exactly like journalists. Hansell points out that Seedsters don’t get a press pass—if they want to hear the bands live they’ll have to buy their own ticket. But he expects some number of folks to try and hustle their way into shows by waving around their AOL clips. “That’s just expected.”

With clips like these, Seed writers are held to the same standards as any other freelancer on the AOL site. spinner’s editor Melissa Owen and her team edit the submissions and have final say on what runs and what doesn’t.

Why launch at South By Southwest? For Hansell, that was a no-brainer. “I know it is communicating our ambition. We are about reporting. We are about doing big and interesting things.” The big SXSW bet is that Hansell and his Seedsters can make more content, faster, better, and cheaper than anyone else. In addition the distributed community of potential contributors on Seed, AOL already employs 3,500 professional journalists on staff or as regular freelancers. And AOL has some interesting content search technology from its earlier acquisitions of Relegence and Truveo.

Man vs. Machine: The Bionic Solution

AOL has built a three legged stool to create content: part professional, part freelance, and part aggregated . . . but its model is far more hand-crafted than the other new players in the mass content creation space. “The essence of journalism has always been separating signal from noise,” says Hansell. “It’s all judgment. It’s all selecting the best bits.” What AOL hopes to create with Seed is an editorial machine which automates the assignment process as much as possible, but keeps the final selection part in human hands.

“I call it Bionic Journalism,” says Hansell. “Left brain, right brain. We are trying to take the best of a machine, which does lots of things over and over again, and a person.” It’s a tall order, and will take a lot more than a couple thousand band interviews to prove it works.

Is AOL trying to beat Google at the news gathering game? Hansell says it’s far more than that. “Google News will give you a whole clump of things that are probably about the same thing with a reasonable degree of accuracy. But it can’t tell you what it’s really about. It can’t summarize it. It can’t translate it into people language.”

The Ugly Economics: Not My Problem

So, what about cost? Some freelancers are complaining that the web doesn’t pay a living wage. “That is not my problem” Says Hansell. He quickly rephrases, “It is my problem but I didn’t do that, the world did that.”

He is however trying to sort it out. Asks Hansell: “How do you deal with the fact that the economics of the Internet can’t let you pay what people think that a freelancer can get paid? One way is you give them a bundle. If you give them ten of the same assignments, even if the price is low, by the time they’re done with the tenth one, they can do the tenth one in half the time they could do the first one.”

Here’s another one of Hansell’s analogies: “Seed is to freelancing as Ebay is to classified ads.” AOL’s Seed may be the future of freelance, but the math remains daunting; “The fact that we gave somebody ten interviews to do after she did one or two before, she’s delighted. That’s 500 bucks. That’s 500 bucks more than she was going to make doing something else, and it’s fun.” Well, “delighted” might be pushing it. Pumping out ten assignments for the price of what many professional freelancers charge for one will favor quantity over quality.

But if it all works—if Bionic Journalism can attract a massive audience and save AOL—what’s the home run? Here Hansell gets a little bit ahead of himself, but at least he is thinking big:

“It’s the most high risk improbable outcome, but the most exciting, which is that we become the most dominant force in journalism, broadly defined, in the Twenty-First Century. That’s what we’re shooting for. That’s what Tim is shooting for. That’s what I’m shooting for.”

And it all starts this weekend with 2,000 indie rock band interviews.

Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO of Magnify.net, a video curation platform that powers more than 68,000 web sites. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur and Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker. Watch his video notes of Saul Hansell talking about Bionic Journalism and AOL’s larger journalistic ambitions by clicking in the two previous links. .Follow Steve on Twitter.

CrunchBase InformationAOLSaul HansellInformation provided by CrunchBase

Recently, startup Cc: Betty, a nifty service that organized and managed group email threads, decided to rebrand and relaunch its service. The new product, Threadbox, was going to be streamlined and tweaked to appeal to workspace users.

Today, Threadbox is officially launching in private beta, as a more collaborative and user-friendly service. Essentially, the site aims to combine email, IM, and collaboration tools into one platform. Instead of focusing on email like Cc:Betty, Threadbox centers around collaboration in the workplace. The service organizes and logs every type of communications with clients, allows users to share documents and images, and record decisions and feedback. The new service also has the ability to serve as a project management tool, allowing users to share and track requirements and specs, then track and follow team members from start to finish.

Additionally, Threadbox aims to serve as a communications tool between employees, with the ability to gather comments, opinions, exchange feedback, share documents and media on the same page. You can add maps, files start conference calls from within the platform. And as the service’s name implies, all communications are threaded and organized according to client and subject. Threadbox still incorporates elements of Cc:Betty’s technology. You can received notifications of thread activity and reply to threads directly from your email client. It’s unclear if the service will integrate with social networks, like Twitter and Facebook.

The basic Threadbox service is free but the startup offers a premium product for $19.95 per year. Cc: Betty raised $500,000 in December of last year, and has $2 million in total funding now.

With Threadbox the startup is clearly making a play towards the work user; I’m doubt the average consumer will find the service as appealing as Cc:Betty was for personal use. But collaboration is the key word in enterprise-focused products at the moment, so Threadbox will certainly catch the wave of small to medium sized businesses which are looking to upgrade their communication platforms. However, this is a crowded space with many worthy players so the competition, which includes Yammer, Chatter, Jive, Socialtext, WizeHive, and many more products, will be tough.

Here’s a video from Threadbox that goes into more detail about the new service:

CrunchBase InformationThreadboxInformation provided by CrunchBase

Linux User and Developer: "In an age when Linux has become a powerful platform for development work, graphics processing and video production, it's a welcome relief to see a mid-range system built for people who may or may not have experience with Linux."

[SXSW] We published about Lunch.com when it launched in April 09 at Web 2.0. Lunch.com connects people with similar interests via the proprietary “Similarity Engine” and provides them a platform to publish and share opinions and reviews about various topics.

Today, Lunch.com announced the release of “Communities on Lunch” a new feature that allows users to manage their own review websites on the Lunch domain, with a combination of their own content and contributions from others. Anyone with a passion is able to become a community manager, using Lunch’s broad range of tools to create, select and share the most valuable content. Content creators can choose from ratings, reviews, wikis, lists, and Twitter-length micro reviews to express their opinions and share their advices. The community manager can set a simple editorial guideline by providing review templates to the community members to ensure consistency of content.

We have private beta invites,check the complete article.

Permalink: Lunch.com Launches Communities: Yelp meets Wordpress meets Wikipedia from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

Microsoft launched a site dubbed the MSN Video Player in the U.K. Thursday that aims to be something of a U.K. version of Hulu, featuring TV shows like Peep Show, League of Gentlemen and Doctor Who. It’s pretty standard fare, as far as British online TV content is concerned. In fact, the recently-launched Seesaw platform offers an almost identical catalog. However, there’s one feature worth noting: MSN Video Player uses Microsoft Silverlight to stream video if possible, but it defaults to a Flash-based player for users without Silverlight.

That’s an important departure from Microsoft’s earlier habit of forcing users to download Silverlight to access any content at all, and it acknowledges that Silverlight is still far from being as omnipresent as Adobe’s Flash.

MSN Video Player isn’t the only site that has adopted such a dual strategy for Silverlight and Flash, and Adobe has been making inroads with content providers previously signed up with Move Networks as well. YouTube and some other sites have recently been experimenting with HTML5, and Apple’s decision to ship the iPad without Flash has gotten some people to wonder whether a big switch to HTML5 and H.264 is on the horizon. But for the time being, it looks like Adobe is stronger than ever.

Visit the MSN Video Player site without Silverlight installed on your machine, and you’d barely notice a difference to other Flash-based platforms. Videos start in Flash without any hiccup, or warning message for that matter, and playback in full-screen mode isn’t an issue either.  Granted, the site does feature a small button labeled “MSN Video Player works best with Silverlight” somewhere in its upper left corner, but honestly, it’s barely noticeable, and there’s no explanation as to how installing it will improve the experience.

The MSN Video Player site isn’t alone with offering Flash as a substitute for Silverlight. March Madness On Demand, a CBS-affiliated site that is expected to serve tons of live streams as the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament goes underway starting this Sunday, also offers a Flash stream, albeit with a lower bit rate than their Silverlight player is going to offer. One reason for CBS’s reluctance to go all out with Silverlight could be that NBC has been taking a beating for forcing users to install Silverlight ever since the 2008 Olympics.

Biut what about HTML5? Google rolled out a test of the standards-based way of playing video straight in your browser without any plug-in in January, and Wikipedia is gearing up for a major HTML5 video roll-out across its site as well. However, differences about the codec used in various implementations have delayed the adoption of HTML5, and advertisers haven’t signed on to the format yet either, making it unlikely that it will be chosen as a default solution by any of the big commercial platforms any time soon.

Flash, meanwhile, continues to make inroads. This week, ESPN announced that it is dumping Move Networks for MLB Advanced Media, a switch that includes transitioning from Move’s video plug-in to Flash. ESPN isn’t alone in abandoning Move for Flash — Fox.com left the erstwhile high-flying start-up in January for Flash delivered by Brightcove, and ABC.com is reportedly working on a similar transition.

The fact Move lost all these high-profile customers may have a lot to do with issues related to pricing and the overall direction of the company; the fact however that those customers went right back to Flash, and not to Silverlight, should give HTML5 supporters pause. It was easy for the FSF to get headlines when it recently suggested killing Flash. Following through with that goal could prove to be much harder.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Cameron  Russell.

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The Internet is the tool most feared today by the elites, the media and by the power. It empowers those who otherwise would remain forgotten, oppressed. It is a weapon that gives ammo to those who are protesting for justice, equality and freedom and that shakes the structures of the state – and of companies – which sees no other choice but to censor.

– Brazilian blogger and Global Voices author Raphael Tsavkko Garcia

Today marks the World Day Against Cyber Censorship, an initiative promoted by global NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in support of a single Internet that is unrestricted and accessible to all.   The day will hopefully inspire Internet users to increase their own awareness of online censorship, which is something that many Global Voices authors know all too well.

GV author Lina Ben Mhenni is one such blogger.  She lives in Tunisia, which has been named by RSF as an “enemy of the Internet” several years in a row.  In her own blog, she writes:

Do you know how does it feel to be censored?

Well, I do !
Indeed, I am experiencing this DISGUSTING feeling since February, 24th 2010. That day, back home from work, I was so disappointed when I discovered the horrible “Error 404″ message- a message that stands for a censored web page in my country- when I tried to log in my Facebook and my blog.

Diego Casaes, a Brazilian GV author who wrote this post on the subject linking to bloggers around the world and highlighting Global Voices' many projects, wrote his own prescription for how governments should deal with the Internet on his blog:

I also think that governments should be encouraged not to regulate, but rather give the proper infra-structure and educate people on how to use the web. This way, citizens will trust the government and be able to freely express themselves on the web: this is of utmost importance! On this matter, I also think companies should become  more aware of their influence in society. Google’s decision not to regulate search results in China after having some Human Rights activists’ accounts hacked (follow this link for more information) is a demonstration of  how companies should position themselves.

Today is the World Day Against Cyber Censorship

On his blog, Moroccan GV author Hisham answers the question, “What does anti-censorship mean online?”:

In my humble opinion it means protecting what in some countries has become the last frontier of freedom of expression, which is at the core of all other freedoms; the last place where people can still escape restrictions of oppressive regimes. It means using blogs, videos, pictures, social networks, podcasts and the innumerable tools available online to mobilize people around a cause, expose rights abuses, communicate local struggles and causes to the rest of the world, give voices to the disenfranchised and the minority groups, hold governments accountable, investigate and reveal the truth.

Pakistan is not considered an “Internet enemy,” but its online censorship often affects bloggers heavily. Of his country, GV Advocacy author Awab Alvi writes:

It is my position that the internet should be free and open to the People of Pakistan allowing the people to harness this boundless platform for creating new spaces for exchanging ideas and information, the Internet should be considered as a force for freedom and looked upon as a tool for progressing the growth of a struggling nation.

Lebanon is not engaged in filtering the Internet, but that doesn't stop Layal Al Khatib from speaking out about it on her blog.  This is what being anti-censorship means to her:

Freedom! Our most basic right as human beings! We need to be free to express our feelings, thoughts and opinions with no fear of anyone! Censorship by other parties usually ends up with self-censorship, you’ll end up imprisoning yourself if they don’t do it themselves! Which is more dangerous to me..

Lingua Malagasy translator Tomavana notes that in Madagascar, the problem is not necessarily filtering, but access, reminding us [FR] that censorship is not the only barrier to free expression:

Quant à évoquer cette liberté d’expression à Madagascar, c’est invariablement buter à la réalité des manques de moyens communs aux pays en développement….De plus, avec un taux d'utilisation d'internet de moins de 5% de la population, il s'agit plus d'un avantage supplémentaire que monnaie une minorité de privilégié plutôt que de véritable droit. Je formule cependant le vÅ“u que ces dérives ne puissent servir de prétexte à un musèlement ni une censure d'Internet à Madagascar mais qu'au contraire son accès soit facilité pour le plus grand nombre notamment par une amélioration de l'offre internet accompagnée à une baisse des coûts de connexions.

As for talk of freedom of expression in Madagascar, is invariably up against the reality of lack of resources common to developing countries….Moreover, with a rate of Internet penetration rate of less than 5% of the population, it is more of an advantage to a privileged, moneyed minority rather than an issue of actual law. But I hope that these deviations will not be used as a pretext for MUZZLING or censorship of the Internet in Madagascar but to provide easy access for many, as well as improvement of the Internet, accompanied by declining cost of connecting.

There was an interesting moment during the Q&A session of Peter Molyneux's Fable 3 panel at GDC this year. When asked if Fable 3 will be released on PC, Molyneux was cagey though he did say that he would 'love' to see the game appear on the platform. He was careful not to raise the ire of Microsoft's "PR police people ... with sniper rifles," but went on to state, "I can say, mystically, that I love the PC." He continued, "I love what's happening to the PC, and I would love to see the Fable franchise on the PC." He concluded that he would want to make sure it was "a truly amazing experience on the PC and that, you know, it's brilliant."

Hardly a confirmation of any actual plans for a PC version of Fable 3 -- and it should be noted that Fable 2 has remained exclusive to the Xbox 360 since 2008 -- but it's clear that Lionhead would jump at the opportunity if given the chance.

Peter Molyneux would 'love' to see Fable 3 on PC originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There was an interesting moment during the Q&A session of Peter Molyneux's Fable 3 panel at GDC this year. When asked if Fable 3 will be released on PC, Molyneux was cagey though he did say that he would 'love' to see the game appear on the platform. He was careful not to raise the ire of Microsoft's "PR police people ... with sniper rifles," but went on to state, "I can say, mystically, that I love the PC." He continued, "I love what's happening to the PC, and I would love to see the Fable franchise on the PC." He concluded that he would want to make sure it was "a truly amazing experience on the PC and that, you know, it's brilliant."

Hardly a confirmation of any actual plans for a PC version of Fable 3 -- and it should be noted that Fable 2 has remained exclusive to the Xbox 360 since 2008 -- but it's clear that Lionhead would jump at the opportunity if given the chance.

Peter Molyneux would 'love' to see Fable 3 on PC originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments