Go out and VOTE!

According to eMarketer, 24% of the 34.3 million US child and teen Internet users will visit virtual worlds once a month in 2007. This will rise to 34% in 2008 and by 2011, 53% will do so. Emarketer

TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation, an online brokerage company, said one of its databases was hacked into and the personal information for more than 6.3 million customers was stolen. The company found malicious code in one of its databases. DM News

According to the latest figures, 250,702 of the total purchased were standalone units, while 75,943 Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core bundles have also been snapped up. That’s a total of 326, 645 in just ten days. Next Gen

Compete introduced its Search Analytics solution to fill an unmet need for marketers at both large and small companies — the need for affordable and robust search tools that can have an immediate impact on online and overall business strategy. DM News

Users can also obtain an anonymous credit card with no name or account number on it, something that could cut the risk of identity theft, fraud and problems stemming from lost or stolen cards, Revolution said. Reuters

“We believe great advertising is interrupted all the time,” said John Lack, co-founder and chief executive of Firebrand. “We curate the best TV commercials and promotions -- connecting consumers directly with their favorite brands in an integrated environment.” New York Business

Facebook has overtaken News Corporation's MySpace site as the highest-traffic UK social networking site with 6.5m unique users last month, according to data published today by Nielsen//NetRatings. media.guardian.co.uk

Among the more than 120 arrests announced on Monday in what the authorities called the largest steroids crackdown in the nation’s history, five men charged in a Connecticut sting stood out not for what they were peddling, but for where they were suspected of doing it: on MySpace.com. NY Times

Democratic contender John Edwards will be first presidential candidate to dive head-first into a "presidential dialogue" jointly hosted by MySpace and MTV Thursday. Wired

David Burden, managing director of Daden Ltd, said: “This is an example of the power of Second Life, and virtual worlds in general, in providing a shared visualisation system....offering possibilities for both the consumer and for business operations and scientific research. Being able to walk around data, and view it with others, can bring out insight and analysis that would be impossible in 2D systems, or PC-based 3D systems." Flightglobal

Good use of Twitter?

News/Web 2.0/Website/Twitter
Found: twitter.com

Due to a power outage in San Francisco, many popular web 2.0 websites went down for several hours yesterday, sites like Craigstlist, Technorati, Yelp and Six Apart's VOX and Typepad. While most sites just waited patiently for the power to get restored, Six Apart was busy sending out updates via twitter.

Six Apart's twitter stream says it all:


An update on today's outage: http://tinyurl.com/2bebg4

TypePad blogs are back up; LiveJournal and Vox and the TypePad application are under way.

More at http://status.sixapart.com/ 04:50 PM July 24, 2007 from web

http://status.livejournal.com/ has LiveJournal status info, and we've got details back up on http://status.sixapart.com/ as well. 04:13 PM July 24, 2007 from web

http://status.sixapart.com/ is back up, and will be updated as we progress. 03:44 PM July 24, 2007 from web Power is being restored to our data center, and TypePad, LiveJournal, Vox are each bring brought back online carefully. 03:13 PM July 24, 2007 from web

TypePad, Vox, and LJ are unreachable for many due to a power problem @ hosting facility, also affecting Technorati and Craigslist.

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work

Social Network/Facebook/FB APPS
Found on: readwriteweb.com

Using an open application platform, developers now have the ability to access and use Facebook's user data and ever since it's launch back in May, nearly 1800 apps have made it's way onto the popular social network - eek!

I stumbled onto a great top 10 list of FB apps that are specifically designed for work. Josh Catone from readwriteweb.com put it together and fyi; this is just the first of five categories that Josh will be breaking down for us, so be sure to check back for more.

ReadWriteWeb post:

As part of Facebook Week here on Read/WriteWeb, I am going to be taking a look at the top applications on the Facebook platform. With nearly 1800 apps, the platform has been a runaway success for Facebook, and the most popular ten applications reach over 46 million users. I'm going to be breaking those 1800 apps down to the top 50 across 5 categories (10 in each). This is a completely subjective list, so not everyone will agree with our picks and I encourage you to debate them in the comments.

There are a lot of duplicates on the Facebook platform (i.e., there are at least 10 apps for cataloging books!), and some duplicates even share the same name. In that case, as with the rest of this list, I just chose the one that stood out to me as the best. Today's list deals with apps for work.

NEWS: Roam Un-Free

News/Social Networks/Second Life
Found on: msnbc.com

HiPiHi's 38-year-old CEO and founder, Xu Hui, has some ambitious goals; not only does he want his new virtual world, HiPiHi to be China's answer to Second Life, but through strategic partnerships with U.S., Japanese and other foreign firms, he plans to establish discrete virtual continents and then have them all linked to Second Life, creating a vast metaverse - the big question being: will China's government actually allow him to do it? I guess only time will tell.



MSNBC Post:

Zhao Gang surveys his nearly empty virtual world, and finds it to be good. Zhao is head of the tech team that built HiPiHi—China's answer to Second Life. With the virtual world's basic landscape complete, one of Zhao's jobs these days is to wander HiPiHi, schooling roughly 10,000 ethnic Chinese from the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore who have been specially invited into the test phase to help work out the kinks. The "residents," as they're called, roam, swim and fly around the new world. Zhao approaches two avatars for a chat. Face to face with the virtual world's Master Builder, they have an urgent question: "Can you tell us how to change our clothes?"

NEWS: YouTube/CNN Presidential Debate - Tonight

Web Culture/YouTube/Videos
Found on: Youtube.com

In a matter of hours, the first of two Democratic Presidential debates will be underway, a debate that will be driven entirely on questions submitted via YouTube . The debate will be broadcast live on CNN tonight at 7 P.M. Eastern time - hmm, this could either be totally groundbreaking or utterly ridiculous.

YouTube Post:

This summer and fall, YouTube, CNN and a few engaged and engaging citizens will make political history by having the presidential candidates answer questions submitted via YouTube videos.

The first debate will feature the Democratic candidates on July 23rd in Charleston, South Carolina. Submit your question for the Democrats between June 14 and July 22 (the earlier the better). The CNN political team will choose the most creative and compelling videos, and if yours is one of them, you may get the chance to fly to Charleston to watch the debate live and offer your reactions afterward on YouTube's political video blog, Citizentube.

Video: Sushi

Web Culture/YouTube/Videos
Found on: Youtube.com

It's over eight minutes long but sooooo worth it!



Youtube Stats(as of this post):

Views: 1,009,266
Comments: 820
Favorited: 3292 times


Some of my favorite comments:

Nate6333
Are these pure Japanese people. For some reason they look like they have some white in them .

bayervon
p.s. instead of arguing, some of you, especially the antagonistic ones trying to demean the others, should
invest your time in learning basics of ENGLISH GRAMMAR and taking advantage of that junk spam to increase your penis sizes as that's a pretty good explanation for your inferiority complexes expressed through insipid racist and other incompetent remarks.

Thanks for the link Jacob - yo yo!

NEWS: FaceBook’s First Acquisition: Parakey

News/Social Networks/Facebook
Found on: techcrunch.com

Why would Facebook, currently the hottest property on the Web want to make Parakey, the "web operating system" created by Blake Ross their very first acquisition? Simple - Facebook is in the process of transitioning from being a Social Network into the first Social Operating System - right?

Techcrunch.com post:

Their first acquisition: Facebook has bought Parakey, the yet-to-launch “web operating system” created by Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. The price isn’t being disclosed, but Facebook should be issuing a press release this afternoon.

Parakey was founded in 2005 and raised a seed round of financing from Sequoia Capital (although this was never confirmed). There is a good background story on Parakey, which will include both browser and client software, here.

No posts for awhile...

Gone fishing, literally - in Washington State fly fishing with the in-laws, see you guys in a couple of weeks.

- pop!

Stylehive bookmark of the week: Fisheye Camera

Web Culture/Social Shopping/Stylehive
Found on: stylehive.com

Here's a kick ass fish lens camera for only 50 bucks - now you can take some crazy pictures of your friends when their all up in your grill - so necessary!



Description: Enter the world of extreme close-ups. The only camera in the world with a built-in fisheye lens, this two-tone beauty features a sweeping 170-degree field of view. Barrel distortion compacts your photos to appear as if inside a glass ball: the center bulging larger than life, the borders wrapped to a circular edge. Each 35mm camera includes premium glass optics,
built-in electronic flash powered by one ‘AA’ battery, wrist strap, and editorial booklet.

Tags: cameras,gadgets

URL: veer.com

Spinlets private beta program!

Web Culture/Web 2.0/Website
Found on: spinlets.com

I love getting invited to private betas, they make me feel important and well liked, well liked by other important people that are also well liked...uh okay, I'm totally being facetious, but I do get a lot of invites and not all of them are blog-worthy but this little guy, this little guy is pretty cool.

Spinlets post:

Spinlets are embeddable chunks of code that let you take content anywhere. Create your own "mash-ups" by bringing your favorite YouTube videos, Flickr photos or iMeem music to your blog or personal page. Spinlets work with MySpace, TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, as well as most other blogs, sidebars or webpages. No downloads or plug-ins are needed and they're free.

NEWS: Justin.TV Network Launches: More Shows to Come

News/Social Networks/Videos
Found on: techcrunch.com

Using a process called "lifecasting" sites like Justine.TV and Ustream.tv are taking off and reality television just made a huge shift over to the web. Both platforms provide a network and a set of tools to create your very own live show using a webcam.

Techcrunch.com post:

24/7 reality online TV show Justin.tv has has turned into a bit of a mini-phenomenon since launching just two months ago.Their apartment was raided by the police, and they were later evicted by their landlord. They were on the Today Show. Justin has hung out with famous rappers. They’ve taken extravagant dares from their audience, and a crowd always surrounds Justin and his ubiquitous camera. Hundreds of adolescent viewers watched (sort of) as Justin had sex on the show, although users were left with a black screen and silence until the Justin.tv team started playing porn music. The site has been far more successful so far than the founders anticipated.

Damn twitter cat!

Social Networks/Web 2.o/twitter
Found on: twitter.com

Twitter cat has taken over twitter again - for the love of god already, someone get that damn cat out of the server room!



twitter post:

Whoops! We're either deploying new features or there was a slight network hiccup (an issue we're working through). Please click here in a few seconds and you'll be back to Twitterin' in no time!

NEWS: Companies try eBay to sell themselves

News/Web 2.0/ebay
Found on: news.yahoo.com

Looking for a deal on a Web 2.o dot-com? Well look no further - USATODAY.com is reporting that there are plenty to be had on the popular auction site eBay.

USA Today post:

What do Beanie Babies, Pez Dispensers and troubled Internet companies have in common? They're all for sale on eBay.

More than 10 dot-coms have recently sought buyers on the popular auction site. Search engine DigForIt.com sold for $25,400 this month after promising bidders "great revenue potential." SynapseLife, an online calendar and organizational site, sold for $60,000 despite warning it had "no advertising revenue."