After struggling a bit with the format and packaging of Web Trand News Brief, I have decided to change up its format. My specific objectives with 'The Brief' are:

1. To force myself to learn


2. To share what I learn


3. To make a really consumable information tool that serves people like me who need to get the info and get out

Given these objectives,...  (more)

Blogging Bubble Bursting?

Another bubble bursts: blogs

Blog: New numbers suggest interest in blogging may be reaching a plateau. [CNET News.com - The Net]

April 27, 2007 7:29 AM PDT

Another bubble bursts: blogs

Posted by Margaret Kane

Has growth in blogging stalled?

A new article in BusinessWeek says the numbers are pointing to a plateau in active blogs. The magazine is using stats from Technorati for the analysis, which found a decline in the percentage of blogs that are active compared to the total number of blogs tracked by Technorati.

It's a familiar pattern--millions of people got excited by blogging and set up pages of their own. But after a while, they grew tired of maintaining them--or moved on to newer social phenomena like MySpace or Twitter--and let their blogs go silent. Does this mean blogging has joined the ranks of "mature" media? And is that good or bad? The bloggers who are still around are debating the issue.

Blog community response:

"Why, after all, do we do it? If we really had a good answer to that we'd be in a better position to understand why so many of us stop."

--Virtual Economics

"If the 15 million blog figure is, indeed, accurate, I'm torn. On one hand, it's disappointing to see the medium lose some of its momentum. On the other hand, the disappearance of blogging wannabes, personal diaries, etc. may be a healthy development if it raises the profile of blogs generating solid content on a regular basis."

--Mark Evans

"Interesting reporting by Green, but I see this as the inevitable shakeout that had to be coming to the blogosphere. Those that aren't committed to the space will go away, and leave less clutter for the rest of us to wade through. That makes the better blogs that continue to grow and thrive, that much easier to find, and more influential. I see that as a good thing."

--The Viral Garden

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Net Radio: Second Chance for a Fair Deal

A Reprieve For Net Radio?

Porsupah writes "The Register reports that "Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL) have headed the 'Internet Radio Equality Act,' which aims to stop the controversial March 2 decision which puts royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio," as imposed by a recent decision from the Copyright Royalty Board. "If passed, today's bill would set new rates at 7.5 percent of the webcaster's revenue — the same rate paid by satellite radio.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Slashdot]

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Google, MySpace: China or Bust

Google aims to expand China market share
(AP)

AP - Google Inc., No. 2 in China's Web search market, is giving its local managers more autonomy and investing more in China in an effort to make up for its late entry and take the lead in the industry, CEO Eric Schmidt said Friday.

[Yahoo! News - Technology]

MySpace launches new China service
(AP)

AP - News Corp.'s popular social networking site MySpace launched a test version of its new China service on Friday, making a late entry into the intensely competitive Chinese Internet market.

[Yahoo! News - Technology]

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Wiki Nichi Wah

In Brief: Wikipedia appears on cellphones in Japan
(InfoWorld)
InfoWorld - A Japanese Web portal operator has repackaged the content of Wikipedia so it can be searched and viewed on cell phones. [Yahoo! News - Technology]

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Young Many, is THAT an iPod You are Cheating with?

Schools banning iPods to beat cheaters
(AP)

AP - Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious — students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other. Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device.

[Yahoo! News - Technology]

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Vista Security Still Struggling, Microsoft Securities Not Even a Little

Vista Security
(PC World)
PC World - Though Windows Vista may be safer than XP, Microsoft's far-from-impregnable new operating system is already proving to be vulnerable. [Yahoo! News - Technology]

Security experts still proclaim Vista a major improvement over previous Windows versions, and readily say that its important new safety features--including an improved firewall, a "Protected Mode" for Internet Explorer, and User Account Control--make it much more resistant to the most common forms of spyware and malware.

However, this latest flaw (now fixed) is a major black eye for Microsoft; along with two other critical security patches issued for Vista in its first three months on shelves, the problem has tarnished Vista's security sheen (see "Vista's Vulnerabilities" for details). The new OS may be safer, but its users must still be on their guard.

Nagging Defense

User Account Control (UAC) has the best of intentions behind it. According to Microsoft's own estimates, a whopping 95 percent of all pre-Vista Windows users perform everyday tasks logged in with Administrator credentials that let them make any kind of system changes--but that also allow malicious hackers to hijack a PC easily. By default, UAC requires a password for such tasks, keeping users--or malware--from haphazardly changing sensitive parts of the OS.

But UAC is its own worst enemy. Its frequent pop-up prompts seriously annoy many users, particularly during setup of a new machine. The prompts appear less often after about ten days of heavy use, but some early adopters have never made it that far.

Dividends UP!

Microsoft's Vista sales boost 3Q profit
(AP)

AP - Shares of Microsoft Corp. soared nearly 5 percent Friday, after the company posted a 65 percent jump in third-quarter profit, boosted by sales of its new Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007, and by upgrade coupons issued over the holidays.

[Yahoo! News - Technology]

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'$100 laptop' to cost $175
(AP)

AP - The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface.

[Yahoo! News - Technology]

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Jobs: No Subscription Any Time Soon

Steve Jobs: “People want to own their music”

Apple’s Steve Jobs, perhaps the most important person in the music industry today, says again that Apple is not planning on selling music via a subscription model like many of his competitors.

The strategy certainly makes sense as long as as Jobs continues to win territory in his war against DRM, and the subscription music services fail to lure a critical mass of consumers.

More than 2.5 billion songs have now been purchased from iTunes and they control 85% or so of the download music market. DRM free songs on iTunes cost 30 cents more, almost certainly creating greater margin for Apple per song.

The subscription music services are highly competitive, leaving little profit for the providers. As long as Apple can keep selling tracks for a dollar or more per track, they’ll resist entering this market.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

[TechCrunch]

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Dirty Blog Spotlight: TechDirt

Cheating just a little... TechDirt (http://www.techdirt.com/)

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The latest, most interesting highlights of web 2.0 news: Google Profits and Marratech acquisition, Apple Security Patch, Dell Brings back XP, NBC Stupid Branding, Circuit City and Napster, Blackberry Blackout, Call for Open Web Metrics and Measurement

The latest, most interesting highlights of web 2.0 news:
Show Notes:
Web Trend News Brief 2007-04-04
Amazon Patents Humans Assisting Computers
theodp writes "Amazon's latest patent, the Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement, reads like scary sci-fi, with claims covering the use of humans 'of college educated, at most high school educated, at most elementary school educated, and not formally educated' to perform subtasks dispatched by a computer. From the patent: 'For examples, the task on hand requires French speaking humans, and Task Server has requested that each subtask be performed by at least 10 humans with a past accuracy record of at least 90%.' Yikes."
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/106439614/article.pl


FCC says 'no' to cell phones on planes (AP)
AP - Striking a blow for cell phone haters everywhere, a government agency on Tuesday said it will keep a rule in place that requires the divisive devices to be turned off during airline flights.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070403/ap_on_go_ot/cell_phones_airplanes
InfoWorld - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has ended a proceeding that would have allowed mobile phone calls on airplanes, for now ending the possibility of phone conversations during flights.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070403/tc_infoworld/87399

Class Action Suit: Microsoft Used Deceptive Marketing (PC World)
PC World - Microsoft Corp. unfairly labeled PCs "Windows Vista Capable" even when the computers could only run the most basic form of the operating system, according to a lawsuit filed against the software giant on Thursday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070403/tc_pcworld/130372

New Algorithms Improve Image Search
bc90021 writes "Electrical engineers from UC San Diego are making progress on an image search engine that analyzes the images themselves. At the core of this Supervised Multiclass Labeling system is a set of simple yet powerful algorithms developed at UCSD. Once you train the system (the 'supervised' part), you can set it loose on a database of unlabeled images. The system calculates the probability that various objects it has been trained to recognize are present, and labels the images accordingly. After labeling, images can be retrieved via keyword searches. Accuracy of the UCSD system has outpaced that of other content-based image labeling and retrieval systems in the literature. One of the co-authors works at Google, where the researchers have access to image collections at the largest of scales."
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/106397205/article.pl

FBI checks gambling in Second Life virtual world (Reuters)
Reuters - FBI investigators have visited Second Life's Internet casinos at the invitation of the virtual world's creator Linden Lab, but the U.S. government has not decided on the legality of virtual gambling.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070403/wr_nm/secondlife_gambling_dc

Microsoft releases emergency software patch (AFP)
AFP - Microsoft on Tuesday released a high-priority software patch intended to fix a dangerous vulnerability in its Vista and Windows operating systems.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070404/tc_afp/usitinternetsoftwarehackercompanymicrosoft

VoteForTheWorst.com has 'American Idol's' number
With a little help from Howard Stern, the Web site backs singers of whom the hit show's judges are not terribly fond.

http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-6173028.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1023_3-0-5&subj=news

Blog Spotlight: MySpace Will Hold Presidential Primary
TechCrunch: MySpace has more registered members than Mexico has people. If it was a country it would be the 11th largest in the world. So while it may be a major marketing event for MySpace to say it’s holding a presidential primary next January, you can be sure the candidates will take it seriously.
The MySpace primary will be held on January 1 & 2, 2008, before any of the official state primaries. Every user will be asked to vote for their favorite candidate.
Most of the candidates already have MySpace pages. See, for example, Hillary Clinton (7,468 friends), John Edwards (16,921 friends), Rudy Guiliani (private profile), John McCain (3,596 friends) and Barack Obama (89,465 friends). See all of the candidates here.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/106272328/
CNET coverage also: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6172862.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1023_3-0-5&subj=news