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I’m the crossposting whore – I write once and I have everything designed to publish everywhere (well at least when things aren’t broken like Ping.fm to Myspace blogs).   This however is not syncing, it’s distribution and publishing.     A true sync across all platforms would be amazing.

The example I would love is I make an edit to a blog post, then every place and profile that I’ve published that post on would update with no manual intervention.   Since I can’t do that, Creeva.com is considered my authorative location for all blog posts.  If I wanted to edit those other sites I would have to do each one manually.  Granted I’m sure without using syncing it saves on bandwidth.

Things that I can sync?   Well my contacts and calendars with Plaxo, but that kind of is just the tip of the iceberg.   My biggest issue write now is syncing Flickr photos to Facebook.  I am aware of Flickurbook, but this still uses your local machine – there is no reason this can’t be done “in the cloud”.    It’s all soooo sloooooow.   Seriously at the speed it moves I could just reupload all the pictures to Facebook faster then this thing goes.  It’s free, it’s the developers fault, it’s great what he did; but it’s not the solution I’m looking for.

Finally using my distribution chain I chase all over the web to answer comments.  I don’t mind doing that.   However, wouldn’t it be better if across all platforms and services these comments were kept in sync?   Then I could use the spam filters I wanted to from a central location.  I could reply to comments from a central location.

I’m just pipedreaming again…..

The recent twitter phishing scam had non twitter users scratching their heads on why this service would be targeted for a phishing scam at all.. Most people view little or no monetary value to twitter accounts. For most people this may actually be true. For people like Scoble or companies that promote themselves over twitter, well the brand name damage caused by a hijacked twitter account could be quite costly.

One of my friends on twitter had a reply about this issue (I’m assuming the other person didn’t realize the long tail potential impact (yes I used the term long tail – get over it)). What I saw was this:

@jeremyasmus could be any number of reasons, spread malware, spam, get passwords, us humans tend to use the same password over and over.

This is the crux of the issue isn’t it? The problem isn’t average user with nine friends directly, it’s the large power users and the passwords for other services. Let’s look at each of these.

Let’s say you are Scoble and your account get’s hijacked. Scoble has a level of trust built from himself, he is known to get the inside scoop on information, people click his links. Scoble has over 47,000 followers. If his account was hijacked and ten percent clicked a link that was really a malware installer – that would be 4,700 people infected within a matter of minutes. I think however the number of Scoble followers would be much larger probable in the 50-60% range. For a malware distribution this is a great return for the time frame, with the added benefit that you may get some other high profile names in the attack.

The cost to deploy such an attack is extremely low – under ten dollars, while the net return would be a few thousand, potentially more. Since there is little risk to getting caught if you know what you are doing, you could make some decent money by exploiting this chain of trust that exists and is protected by a mere password.

Let’s look at the side of this coin, the normal user.  Adam Baldwin nailed it right on the head when he stated “us humans tend to use the same password over and over”. I know I do, though different level of things have different passwords – my banking account does not use the same username/password combination as my twitter account – neener/neener. It is however shared with some other web 2.0 services. Some other people may not be so diligent. This once again is a chain of trust issue. You are trusting the companies that you give your passwords to are truly them, so once your password is in the wild it’s exposed and all of your accounts are open to attack.

Let’s look at the information an attacker can get from you if they have your twitter password:

User Name – while by itself it’s exposing a little bit about your account and your password – the problem lies in having both bits of this information. That part should be blatantly obvious. The issue lies in the fact that most of us use the same username or “handle” across many sites on the web. Doing a Google search for “Creeva” yields over 46,000 hits. A lot of these hits are different services that I play with and over 90% of the hits link back directly to me in some fashion. Since most sites use you username as your login name, if I used the same password every single one of these services would be exposed if I fell for the twitter phising scam.

E-Mail Address – Yes though it maybe only a small amount these days, your e-mail address is still worth a few percentages of a penny to the spammer. This would get you on more mailing lists, and ones that would be quite hard to get off of. It is also normally used as a login name for service that do not use your handle. More accounts have now been exposed because of this. If your e-mail account passwords is the same as your twitter account (dumb mistake) everything about your online life, accounts, and transactions can now be exposed and utilized against you. Would you notice a gmail filter that someone setup to clone every incoming e-mail?

The other issue is even you do not have accounts that show up in a Google search they could use a service search engine such as Spokeo to find accounts even you may have forgotten about.

Mobile Phone Number – This probably would be one of the most annoying things, that your phone number has been exposed to the internet underground. Phone spam, call back charges; there are a few things they can do with this number. I do think this is small annoyance compared to loosing your email account.

Being a good security professional my recommendation is to use strong passwords that are unique to each service and are rotated regularly. I am also a realist and know that you won’t. This may be the time to start doing segmentation where different accounts do get different levels of passwords. This is what I do so if my twitter account was compromised only the services that I consider on par with Twitter security-wise was at risk. Lower level accounts would be safe and higher level accounts would be safe. I also think with the range of accounts, I could move faster then the phishers going through and knowing what to change faster then they could try all 46,000 sites. It’s a thought – now what are yours?

This article is written by me and originally published at Journey to Get Paid in this article.

It seems I just talked about Discus, but I have a new article for you to check out. Webmonkey posted an article on how to back-up your Discus comments using the Discus API. I use wordpress and I’m lucky enough to have my comments sync back to my blog platform. If you are using anohter blog platform, you may not be so lucky yet.

Instead of loosing your data somewhere in the blogosphere (especially in a time when so many Web 2.0 start-ups are disappearing) why don’t you follow the steps in the article and back up your data.

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Between setting up the blogs, playing the Myspace game Heroes, and tracking down alumni for band on Facebook and Myspace, I’ve spent a huge chunk of time on the social networking sites of the top tier.   (If there are any alumni on secondary tiered social networks I will find you eventually.)  Traditionally I have always held a strong hatred towards Myspace particularly.   My most commented line about the site has been “Myspace, making the Web 2.0 looklike the web from 1996).   Myspace has gotten better, but it is still downright ugly, clunky, and mostly a walled garden.   I don’t like – and no recent usage hasn’t endeared me to it.

I now have about 8 pages of email communication in Myspace (2 pages in Facebook) – that I have no method of saving, archiving, and retaining.   Do you know how much I hate that?  I’m someone who wants to save all his data forever, and thanks to the walled garden scenario it’s trapped.   Maybe I’ll get lucky and it will eventually be freed.

On the plus side my blog has been getting more hits, so I can’t complain about that.  Exposure the whole yadda yadda about getting yourself out there, I’m doing it.   I have been doing it for awhile but lately actually actively doing it.

We’ll see, maybe Myspace will still self impload and take out the west coast.  If it takes out the whole west coast we will know never to make such a monstrosity again.

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So I’ve taken over the position of webmaster for the VCMA (Vermilion Community Music Association).  This is going to start a new series as I’m going to use them as guinea pig’s for what I’ve felt non-profits need to do to survive and thrive in the web 2.0 world.   They are not a big organization, and I’m sure I received this position for my background and not my witty personality.

I’ve been working on the site for a couple of weeks and here is what I’ve found so far.   They had a private member’s section on the old site to share files and personal data.  This section was password protected, but the username field was just a front, as long as you nkew the password anything you put in the username field was accepted.  Since I’m a security engineer, this just wasn’t going to work for me.  I’ve ranted before the illusion of security and how illusionary security wasn’t worthwhile at all anyways.  The other problem was that their member page “password protected” section was just a javascript that rewrote the “HTTP GET” to a file named a combination of the requested page plus the password.   So if the page was index.tml and the password was “password” the ending HTTP in the “HTTP GET” command would be indexpassword.html.   Since it was still a plain text file without any encryption on it, in theory it could still be spidered and stored by google, thereby completely undermining any security it was giving them.

I’m working on a better and more secure solution while maintaining the balance of ease of use.   I don’t want to burden them too much on the security side.  I’m sure some of the older members would blink at me with a blank stare if I handed them secureID tokens to access their newsletters.

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The next thing I discovered is that code each web page by hand, ugh.  There was no way I was going to maintain each HTML manually and hope for any semblance of style and continuity between pages (an issue they had in the past).   They had been using FrontPage and offered to buy me a copy.  First no, no and no – currently I’m using Linux on my main computer (Ok I dual boot into XP and between WoW and Netflix streaming I don’t get into Ubuntu as much as I should), so Frontpage was out.  They were insistent at first that this is how it was done, I however readjusted things.  I moved them to WordPress which I’m not using as a blog but rather as a CMS (Content Management System).

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I manually migrated the data from the old HTML files, I spent hours converting the front page data to be “clean” data that i can migrate and copy paste anywhere.   I was a dumbass though, I should have just copy and pasted the text into notepad or a generic text editor, then I wouldn’t have had all the background crap.  This is my nore to myself to now be stupid next time.  I added images and a javascript navigation menu, but essentially the page was just a cleaned up (easy to maintain now) version of what they already had.

Now the next step is to migrate them to Google Apps for their member related information……

Somehow I always end up volunteering for Vermilion non-profits, now if only I could get one of them to pay me……

In the picture above is my maternal grandfather and my great grandfather, it seems I am going to be joining on them on the ability to reproduce and pass down genetic material to the next generation.  Yes I am going to be a father, Xie want and annouced the pregnancy on Twitter just a few hours ago with the following message:

As of yesterday I am 7 weeks pregnant – coming from the person who would never in a million years want kids, I am very excited & happy :D

I sent the follow up:

@xielanthia congratulations who is the father……nm :P

Then I sent this:

As of yesterday @xielanthia is 7 weeks pregnant and I’m going to be a father – wish us luck – we’ll need it.

So we have announced to the Web 2.0 World (WTW? W2W?) that we are having a baby and doing it in true web fashion.  We have known for about 3 weeks and over that time eeked the information out to family and friends.  The first person I told was the IPS guys I played SWG with that I have constant e-mail communication with.  The first family that knew was my in-laws and followed by Xie’s grandmother (I wish she had a blog i could link to).   Then it was ghoulishcharm.  From there I told my father and my brother who was also there.  I went and told my grandparents last Sunday and drove over to tell my sister, but she already knew it seems that she found out from my father who knew the week before.

I did find out from my sisters that my grandparents had already known about the pregnancy (having heard it through her) but yet they acted like they didn’t know anything.   Welcome to my family, we can act surprise even if we have known something for months.   I know I used to unwrap my Christmas presents before hand and rewrap them – I got that trick from my godmother.

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A few weeks ago I started receive strange notifications on Myspace stating “Click Here To See How Much I’m Worth” and “RANDOMUSER just bought you – click here to see how much I think your worth”.   I was puzzled.  I was confused.  I ignored it for a few weeks.   Eventually I clicked and found the “Own Your Friends” application.

From the help information:

Welcome to Own Your Friends![click here to show help]

Using Own Your Friends, you can:

• Buy and sell your friends as ‘pets’.
• Make your ‘pets’ hug, punch, and poke each other!
• Change your pets’ status messages to whatever you want!

Make Money by:

• Being bought! You earn half the profit everytime you are bought. If you’re a hot commodity, you’ll be rich! ;-)
• Having your pets bought. You earn half the profit when someone else buys one of your pets. Choose pets wisely and make money as an investor!
• Logging in every 8 hours. You earn $1,000 for logging in, but only once every 8 hours.
• Give a Human Gift to a Friend. Earn $1,250 by giving a friend one of your pets as a human gift. Just go to the ‘Buy Friends’ tab and choose a friend to give a gift to!

Hint: Use our new My Bargains feature. Find hot deals on cheap friends, then gift them away or sell them to profit!

The key feature is to buy people you know and sell them later for a profit.   I play this game, I enjoy this game, and I don’t really plan on stopping, however……

One of my friends the other day was talking with me.  I told him I owned him.   He didn’t understand.  He didn’t consent to play the game, nor was he even aware of it.  I was able to purchase him and pull him into my world with out consent.  I can also make him hug, poke, punch, etc. other people I know.   All without his consent, and specifically he wants nothing to do with this and isn’t too happy about it.

I can even change his status message (within the application not on his actual profile) with this i can make him “say things” or express view points that he would never do in normal context if he was in control.   Other friends of his could see him saying that he is going to go off ot India to eat a cow or that he just got a job at a college teaching molecular biology.   Whether he was or wasn’t isn’t the fact, other less savy users may actually believe he is doing/saying this.

Now the initial knee jerk reaction is what does it matter it’s just a stupid game between stupid people.   Well let’s put it in another perspective.  Say you purchase Obama and give him a status that is against his own platform, or McCain.   Say you own coca-cola’s profile and change the status to “I prefer pepsi”.   Now this starts to harm brand image and the reflection on the public that reads this.   It can cause irreparable harm to the right people with the wrong message.

This is why it really needs to turn into an opt in environment, or at least changes to something where you can block your user profile from being used in these sort of application that goes against brand management.   It needs to be simple and it needs to be able to be done within two clicks.   It should also default to being “do not use my profile for these applications”.

We can say this is the Web 2.0 world and brand management has changed greatly from where it was just a few years ago.  I don’t believe in companies removing blog posts and I don’t believe in DMCA takedowns from stories that aren’t up to the approval of the companies.  I do believe I own the lists of my friends, but I don’t believe I should be able to make changes to their status in any context nor do I believe I should be able to make them perform virtual actions without their consent.

That being said yes I enjoy the game and I’m going to keep playing, but i think it’s in a different context.  I’m going to be targetting celebrities and brands in myspace to change the message to something unsuitable (but within Myspace’s TOS) to help raise awareness on this issue.   Brand management is very important to companies and yet they have allowed these applications to yank quite a bit of control from them.  I can make Pepsi my pet (slave) and have it pimp products for a competitor.   If it’s right or wrong is for you to decide, but I’m sure Pepsi won’t be to happy about it.

Picture taken from here

Introduction

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E-mail in the clouds.   Essentially back in 1996 when Hotmail was first released (in the pre-purchased by Microsoft era) the dawn of popular cloud computing for e-mail began.   The main issue was storage space.  I believe that Hotmail launched with 5 megs of storage space for all of your e-mail.   It is frustrating to know all the e-mail that’s been lost over the years due to inadequate storage space.   I now have single pictures in my email archive that are larger then 5 megs.   Times change and space get’s cheap.

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When Google released Gmail into the wild it was a game changer.  By offering 1GB of storage space it made it seem that you literally could keep your e-mail forever.   Other providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo were maxing out at 25 MB at the time, this seemed ridiculous in comparison.

Currently Gmail supports almost 7 GB of storage space and Hotmail and Yahoo went to “unlimited”.  I consolidate almost all of my e-mail to Gmail.

Data Types

To utilize e-mail storage you can attach any (supported) file and keep it in your mailbox.

Data Security

While you have to rely on a username and password to access your e-mail as the security barrier entry, if you want true protection from snooping it is suggested that you either get a web plugin that allows you to do encryption with Gmail, or keep your private messages encrypted and use them with an offline client.

Data Redundancy

Since you can forward e-mail from Gmail, I have it configured to forward all incoming mail to both my Yahoo Mail account and my Hotmail account.  If for some reason GMail loses my data or in the unlikely event Google goes out of business I’ll still be able to access my e-mail messages.

It is recommended that you keep an offline backup of your mail messages so they can be accessible while being off the grid.

Data Accessibility

With Gmail offering accessing via a rich web interface, a basic web interface, a mobile web interface, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP; it seems unlikely that you are going to find an Internet device that can not access it in some way or fashion.

Conclusion

This is the e-mail scenario that works for me.  Since encryption really isn’t ubiquitous across the board I don’t use it like I should.   Beyond that this scenario is highly redundant and should allow you operate from anywhere with a network connection without worrying about losing your data.

Previous entries in the Living in the Clouds Series:

Living In The Clouds Part 1 – Introduction To Cloud Computing

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Where can you post by E-mail?  Well this is the easiest of crossposting methods (especially if you use Blogger).  There are lots of plugins for wordpress or movable type that can send out your full post as an e-mail to another address.   In most cases you would send this to your own e-mail address so you had it for reference.  What about sending it to another site entirely?  What if that site could send it to another site?  You can see how this chain can work.   If you are using Blogger then you can send out your post to ten e-mail addresses.   This means that your post can replicate like bunnies.   What are some of the sites that can receive e-mail posts?  Let’s get into that.

The original Creeva’s World was hosted on Blogger at creeva.blogspot.com.  This is where I started writing and I didn’t want to abandon it after migrating over to wordpress.  This was the very first site I crossposted to from my wordpress blog.  Crossposting allowed me to not abandon my site and any readers that may go to that address, but I could enhance my own experience while keeping theirs the same.

Lifelogger is the “cooler” blogging service, at least that’s what they say.   I’m not going to use any blogging platform again that I can’t customize to the fullest extent.  WordPress has spoiled me.   Though I do maintain a site there.

Unlike some major social networks (I’m looking at you Facebook and Myspace), Friendster does support e-mailing in your blog messages.

Blogr is just another blogging host that accepts e-mail.  Very blogger like, but crossposting friendly.

Evernote is unique unlock some of the rest of these sites, Evernote is a notebook service.   It allows you to e-mail in snippets (or use the desktop applications) to send in information that you can then share with your friends.  You can e-mail in text notes, audio, or video.

Busy Thumbs is a simple moblog site that accepts posts via e-mail.

Twine is similar to Evernote, but it’s about collections and community.   Think of it as sharing what you have with your friends.

Google Groups is a spot that I used to use as an online backup for my blog.   I have a private google group that only handles my own blog posts.   No you can’t join, not like you would want to.

I’ve just recently start crossposting to an old Yahoo Group that I used to moderate.   Mostly this is because I can share my thoughts with my friends that are still in that group, but that group is essentially dead.   So this is the only thing that it’s around for to keep me from pulling the complete axe on it.

Each Day is designed to handle your memories and save them so you can go back over your life.  It handles multiple media formats but all I’m concerned about is the e-mail option.

Multiply is a social network in the same vein as Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook.

Over at Vox I maintain a page to integrate with their community.  I’ve posted in the past how vox is a unique community and because of that I receive unique feedback.   They refer to their e-mail inbound service as moblogging.

I like to think of all of my blog posts as separate documents.   After working on this for awhile, I decided to start e-mailing all of my entries to my google docs account let’s me to search and repurpose documents a little easier then searching through the blog.   It’s my dump all account for documents.  I am annoyed that I can’t e-mail blog posts to Zoho Writer for redundancy, they only take documents as attachments.

When you are looking for a new site to crosspost to check and see if they have an option where you can post by e-mail.  Some sites may refer to this as moblogging.  Also remember to e-mail your post to yourself so you have a backup you can control.

Oh, I use the DJ E-Mail Publish plugin to push out posts from WordPress.

In the next part of our crossposting god series we are going to cover Blogger more in depth.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 – Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 – RSS Feeds to Crosspost

Do you like bleu cheese?
Nope

Do you own a knife?
Nothing that I carry around with me at all, I’m not one of those guys

What flavor do you add to your drink at sonic?
Closest one is hours away and have never been to one.

Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
Not really.

What do you think of hot dogs?
I like them

Favorite Christmas movie?
National Lampoon’s X-Mas Vacation

What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Coca Cola

Can you do push ups?
Can?  Yes.  Willing? No.

What kind of car do you drive?
Geo, Miata, Camaro, Taurus

Whats your favorite piece of jewelry?
Wedding Ring

Favorite hobby?
Blogging, Web 2.0 Activities, Reading, Video Games

Whats your favorite store to shop at?
Amazon

Do you have ADD?
Of course, wait what were we talking about?

What’s one trait you hate about yourself?
Not aggressive enough in life.

Middle name?
Matthew

Name 4 thoughts at this exact moment..
Wondering why I’m doing this, This is going to get absolutely no hits, why is my cat chewing so loudy, am I still answering this

Name 3 things you bought yesterday?
Q-tips, toothbrush, coca cola

Name 3 drinks you regularly drink?
Coke, Water, Milk

Current worry?
Sick Cats

Current hate right now?
Broken Camaro

Favorite place to be?
Home

How did you bring in the New Year?
At home with my wife

Where would you like to go?
Rome

Name three people who will complete this
No one, I’m alone in this struggle and don’t ask anyone to go through this pain.

Do you own slippers?
Nope

What shirt are you wearing?
Smokey and the Bandit T-Shirt

What year would you go back in time to and why???
1985 and watch Back to the Future on opening night and ponder the paradoxical and ironic nature of the event.

Can you whistle?
Kinda

Favorite color?
Black

Would you be a pirate?
Rather be a ninja, but yes.

What songs do you sing in the shower?
Sing, in the shower?

Favorite girls name?
Xie ‘lanthia

Favorite boys name?
Creeva

Last thing that made you laugh?
Episode of 6 feet under

Best Halloween costume as a child?
Ricky Raccoon

Worst injury you’ve ever had?
Falling 6 feet down face first into a plywood construction

Do you love where you live?
Ehhh

How many TVs do you have in your house?
2

Who is your loudest friend?
Ghoulishcharm

How many dogs do you have?
Two

Does someone have a crush on you?
I feel sorry for them if they do

Do you have kids?
Nope

What is your favorite candy?
Spree

Favorite Sports Team?
Cleveland Browns

What song do you want played at your funeral?
Starwars1 on slitherhorn with no flourishing (only SWG players will get that) then everyone can know true pain

What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Watching 6 Feet Under

What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
Must Go Back To Sleep

Granted I can go back and flower the site and think it’s the greatest thing since sliced french bread, but normally I do not.   When I started this post months ago I was in a different place and mindset.   I got distracted and never dug into it much.  I don’t like letting drafts lie for too long, write or delete them.   So I had to scrap everything I had written, but recent news this week brought this idea up again.

When I go through my online sites I return a massive amount of hits in Google.  Could luck perspective employers doing research on me, I’m everywhere.   My transparency gives me a cloak in the Google Data Cloud.   Sometimes though, as I said, I have profiles the succumb to digital rot.   What do we do with rot when we come across it?  Normally we prune it out or toss it away.   Going through my online profiles I rarely delete anything since I can have some use for it at a later time.   Social network that supports blogs – cross post to it from creeva.com.  Items that delivers an RSS feed, well I may use it so let’s throw it in feedburner so I’m reminded it exists and I can repurpose it later.   This happens again and again, but some sites after initial testing really have nothing I can repurpose or reuse to any extent.

The sites I can’t use become eventually pruned, when I remember I go back and delete the account or profile I created.   The problem more and more we are seeing in the Web 2.0 world is that web application providers are making it harder and harder to delete your account.  Sometimes they don’t allow you to delete it at all.   This came to the forefront recently when it was discovered that Facebook never really deleted your account when you unsubscribed.  Pieces of you were left in the system like the Reese’s variety was left in the woods for E.T.   A  few days after this was big news Facebook finally relented and now allow users to delete their profiles.

I can understand the user retention stand point these companies are attempting to make.   I also can understand the ease of use that it is to user to have this happen.  What I don’t understand is why these companies can’t see the rot that is nipping at the branches of their web tree.   Now a company can say it has 20 million subscribers, but if you browse the profiles on their site and see 19.5 million haven’t logged in for 6 months to a year, that is rot.   It makes the companies look bad as well as shows how poorly they are doing.   Some users will help prune that rot away from you and leave no hard feelings.   You do cause emotions to rise by not allowing you users to delete their own data off of your service.    Please for all you users out there and companies, work together to get the rot out of the forest.   A lot will always remain but we can all work to clean it up a little at a time.

Web Wandering Dump

via www.ripten.com Posted: 03 Jan 2008 02:11 AM CST

How to add sidebar(s) to a WordPress Theme | Blog Oh Blog Posted: 03 Jan 2008 02:07 AM CST How to add sidebar(s) to a WordPress Theme | Blog Oh Blog

“sidebar” Posted: 03 Jan 2008 02:05 AM CST “sidebar” - How To Create Your Own WordPress Theme – Jonathan Wold

via www.ukimagehost.com Posted: 03 Jan 2008 12:00 AM CST

via gonintendo.com Posted: 02 Jan 2008 11:46 PM CST

WordPress Demo [del.icio.us] Posted: 02 Jan 2008 08:23 PM CST

10 Awesome Things About Dungeons & Dragons [Digg] Posted: 02 Jan 2008 01:36 PM CST Sean Kelly has started playing the original Dungeons & Dragons again (pen & paper version) and he recently sent out his list of 10 Awesome Things About D&D:

Nintendo DS to Begin Full Game Downloads [Digg] Posted: 02 Jan 2008 09:17 AM CST We’ve long known the NIntendo DS to be a capable of downloading content like demos from kiosks, but “complete games” will soon be downloadable through the Wii, and then Wi-Fi transferable to the DS, according to Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime’s interview with the NYT.

Conspiracy Against Shareaza and Open Letter to the RIAA [Digg] Posted: 02 Jan 2008 08:42 AM CST La Societe Des Producteurs De Phonogrammes En France (SPPF), which represents recording labels in France, is suing three P2P software vendors, including Shareaza. The SPPF make many false claims against Shareaza in order to win in court. This is an open letter to them, setting the record straight.

How the Grinches Stole Net Neutrality [Digg] Posted: 02 Jan 2008 08:04 AM CST Until recently, net neutrality was a difficult issue to explain at a dinner party. It was even more of a struggle to get anybody worked up about it. Now, thanks to the major Internet service providers (ISPs) Comcast and Bell-Sympatico, the stakes are crystal clear and the acrid scent of a smoking gun hangs in the room.

What’s Next on the Web: a ReadWriteWeb Toolkit for 2008 [Digg] Posted: 02 Jan 2008 04:51 AM CST Some people say that the bubble’s going to take a downturn in the next year or two – that huge numbers of copycat startups are going to shut down, people are going to be out of work and Web 2.0 cheerleaders are going to eat their (our) words.

Malware Evolving Too Fast for Antivirus Apps [Digg] Posted: 01 Jan 2008 08:53 PM CST Bad guys use sophisticated testing to create malware that can evade even the best security programs.

Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites 2007 [Digg] Posted: 01 Jan 2008 05:26 PM CST Our 2007 picks are the best examples of what’s new and exciting about the Web right now. Here we honor sites with exceptional style and smarts, sites that offer new and improved ways to access and share content, generate our own and otherwise enrich the online (and off-line) experience. What do you think of our choices?

Why Linux Distros Are More Secure Than Windows [Digg] Posted: 01 Jan 2008 01:55 PM CST Security in an OS refers to a process, not a product. This article discusses the features of Linux which makes a secure process possible when used by a knowledgeable user, namely better patch management, stronger defaults, modularity, better tools against zero day attacks, transparency and diversity of environment.

2008: Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without [Digg] Posted: 01 Jan 2008 01:06 PM CST This is a list of the products I tend to use daily. Some are for work, some are for fun, and some are useful for both. But I use most of them every day, or nearly every day, and I would not be as productive or happy without all of them.

How to Become a Gmail Jedi Master [Digg] Posted: 01 Jan 2008 08:00 AM CST Learn to master Gmail through the use of labels, filters, keyboard shortcuts, and vacation autoresponders. Sync Gmail with your wireless devices through the new IMAP support. “Gmail Master Become I”…

We have everything to fear from ID cards [Digg] Posted: 01 Jan 2008 05:53 AM CST “…Surveillance cameras and lost data will prove minuscule problems next to ID cards, which will obliterate the fundamental right to walk around in society as an unknown.”

/////////////////////////////////////////// MeeMix Opens Beta To Public, Has Much Work Ahead Posted: 01 Jan 2008 10:26 AM CST http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CreevasSharedItemsInGoogleReader/~3/209649583/
Tel Aviv, Israel based MeeMix, which we first covered in August, is kicking-off the New Year by moving their taste-predicting Internet radio service from closed to open Beta.
Internet radio is already a very crowded space dominated by entrenched startups like Last.fm and Pandora. Smaller players and recent entrants such as SpiralFrog, Jango and Slacker are not increasing the breathing room. MeeMix wants its share of the pie, too, and is keeping its crosshairs focused on the U.S. market and its dominant revenue potential.
MeeMix’s public beta launch is marked by the addition of new features:

Meeps: Comment-based conversations users can have regarding a song, album or artist.
Station Home: Every MeeMix station now has a dedicated page allowing users to interact in its context and shape its playlist. Mee Feeds: This is basically MeeMix’s version of Facebook’s News Feed. The feed indicates songs favorited, stations rated, friends added, etc. Mee Journey: Users can see other members’ public log or “journey” of actions in MeeMix. Station Gift: Users can now send other members a station as a gift. The station is then the “property” of the recipient who can customize it without affecting the original station. Twitter Integration: Users can update their Twitter accounts with songs they’ve listened to, their favorite stations, etc.
MeeMix claims to have doubled its music catalog, but a search for my personal favorites ‘John Coltrane’ and ‘Miles Davis’ came-up empty. The same searches on Jango and Slacker both came-up positive.
I would like to have seen the addition of “genre” to the channel creation wizard which is still limited to artist and song. A widgetized player also would have been a welcome addition, especially the desktop kind.
In my original post, I hypothesized that licensing its engine could become MeeMix’s core business. Looks like this might not be far fetched as the company says they have been approached by a mobile operator for the purpose of powering a taste-based cellular music streaming service. The company has also shared with me some interesting offline deals on the horizon that should keep MeeMix’s potential on a positive note for 2008. We’ll post another update soon. In the meantime, let us know how you think MeeMix compares to the competition.
Update: MeeMix also sent out an email to some users today saying that they will be discontinuing the service in Israel for now due to licensing issues (Thanks Orli):

Meemix Loading information about Meemix… Pandora Loading information about Pandora… Last.fm Loading information about Last.fm… Slacker Loading information about Slacker… Jango Loading information about Jango…

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

/////////////////////////////////////////// The Glory, Bliss and How-to of Screen Scraping for RSS Posted: 31 Dec 2007 10:57 PM CST http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CreevasSharedItemsInGoogleReader/~3/209649584/screen-scraping.php
Wired has an awesome top story today on the world of startups utilizing scraped data from big companies to offer new layers of value for their own users. It’s a roughly objective piece that I highly recommend reading but it was also inspiration for me to finally record a screencast on the subject (see below).
I love RSS, probably more than anything on the web. If you’re not familiar with the concept, see my very old definition of RSS and my almost-as-old post on teaching people about RSS.
Not every page on the web publishes an RSS feed, though. Thus the need for these wonderful screen scraping tools. I’ve written about a variety of tools you can use to create a feed for a site or page that doesn’t have one. Sometimes, though, you’ve got to pull out the big guns. In those cases, it’s time for Dapper.

Dapper is a company founded in Israel, now venture backed and was named in the aforementioned Wired article. It is the sweetness.
Dapper will let you pull data from almost any web page and get it in a wide variety of outputs, including RSS, email, iCal, a Google Gadget, CSV and Google Maps. Is that incredible or what?
Let’s let the video do that talking. I have an awful cold (it’s almost better, Mom!) so please excuse the very rough voice. I made the following screencast using JingProject, setting up an RSS feed of search results in Del.icio.us for articles tagged from ReadWriteWeb.
Clicking on the image below will open up another window so you can view the 4 minute video full screen.

If you’re as excited about Dapper as I am, you should check out DapperCamp, a two day free conference all about Dapper coming up in early February in San Francisco. IBM and Mindtouch are sponsoring the event and Mitch Kapor is keynoting it. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Take that, Wired Mag ambivalence! Really, though, you should read that Wired article – it’s a good one that discusses some issues that are going to be very big once more people figure out how exciting data portability is.

/////////////////////////////////////////// January 1st, 1808: Slave Importation Banned In US [Great Moments] Posted: 31 Dec 2007 05:06 PM CST http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CreevasSharedItemsInGoogleReader/~3/209649585/january-1st-1808-slave-importation-banned-in-us
Considering we spend a good deal of time focusing on legislation that protects consumers and/or (usually or) businesses, we thought it appropriate to point out one of the big historical moments of trade law, not to mention human rights—tomorrow marks the “200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited.” Hey, it didn’t stop the madness, but at least it was a start.
Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University, argues in an Op-Ed piece that it was in fact this early shaping of the US slave-based economy that helped prevent an even more disastrous human rights scenario by the time the Civil War erupted:[Without the ban,] it is plausible to assume that hundreds of thousands if not millions of Africans would have been brought into the country.
This most likely would have resulted in the “democratization” of slavery as prices fell and more and more whites could afford to purchase slaves, along with a further increase in Southern political power thanks to the Constitution’s three-fifths clause. These were the very reasons advanced by South Carolina’s political leaders when they tried, unsuccessfully, to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s.
More slaves would also have meant heightened fear of revolt and ever more stringent controls on the slave population. It would have reinforced Southerners’ demands to annex to the United States areas suitable for plantation slavery in the Caribbean and Central America. Had the importation of slaves continued unchecked, the United States could well have become the hemispheric slave-based empire of which many Southerners dreamed.Awww snap! Take that, dead Southerners of the 19th century! Y’all didn’t get your empire! Happy new year.
“Forgotten Step Toward Freedom” [New York Times]
(Photo: Getty)

10 New Years Resolutions Every Geek Should Make

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 03:08 PM CST

It’s the end of the year – almost quite literally. I’ve only got a few more hours to figure out what my personal goals list will be for next year, but I can at least publish my geek goals so that I’ll have some public accountability as to whether any of these will be achieved in 2008.

Most of these are fairly open, too. My guess is that most of you will be able to adopt most or all of this list as your own. Let’s make it a year to remember. Let’s actually achieve some New Year’s resolutions.

01) Log-in to my social networks more than twice a week.
Whether it is because of the copious amounts of spam on MySpace, or the unending piles of Pirate v. Ninja notifications on Facebook, I somehow can’t bring myself to log into either one of them more often than a couple times a week. Interestingly enough, I’m finding that Twitter fills the gaps that I joined Facebook for in the first place. I wanted to be a part of Facebook so that I could communicate with interesting folks in my industry, but as my Twitter network grows, I’m finding that it is much easier to find folks I’m interested in talking to there, than wading through the hassle that is a web-based social network.

Still, there are benefits, like the centralized apps and mini-feed views, that are afforded from Facebook that you simply can’t get out of Twitter. Having one spot for productivity and a quick glance at what my friends have been up to recently is something I’m missing out on.

02) Drink the Apple Kool-Aid
I got my first new laptop computer in several years. Typically, I’m the sort of guy who will buy a machine that’s a generation or two back because I love bargains, and most of the time it is good enough for what I do daily. Since joining up at Mashable and spending literally 12 hours straight on the computer every day, I figured it was time to upgrade. I got a Black Friday special laptop from Dell, a speedy little Vostro 1000. Unfortunately, it came with Vista, and I must say I’m slightly less than impressed with it.

On the other hand, folks with the Apple laptops are always expressing their condolences and telling me how super-great Leopard is. They’re finally starting to wear me down. I want to be one of the shiny happy people now. The Hare Krishna act has finally worn me down. At some point next year, I suppose I’m going to need to drink the Apple Kool-Aid, and hope the increased productivity is worth the sack to my identity as a PC guy.

03) Set up a spam bot for Ron Paul
Because as much as he concerns me with his associations with the Alex Jones’ of the political fringe, unfortunately he’s the one that most closely represents my political desires (based on his Congressional voting record). Additionally, he’s probably the most tech-friendly Presidential candidate. I can vote for him, as I voted for Badnarik last cycle, but voting for the underdog doesn’t always get the job done.

What does get the job done? Apparently setting up spam servers works. Got him all that campaign money. I’m tech savvy, it is the least I can do to help the old coot.

04) Get control of my personal brand.
Not only is my personal website under construction, but as I try out more social networks and lifestreaming utilities, I’ve spread my personal brand all over the Internet. I’ve got podcasts, domains, writings, tumblogs, linkblogs and RSS feeds scattered all over the internet bearing my name. I need to find one or two good utilities and a slick looking format with which to consolidate it all in a useful, user-friendly manner.

05) Invest in the next Google.
I see and profile, what, twenty, thirty startups a day? I should be able to spot the next winner out of this bunch. I wanna be a Web 2.0 billionaire (or whatever we end up calling the buzzword du jour next year).

06) Get my calendaring organized.
This is the one area of my life I’m still really sucking at getting migrated out to the cloud. I still manage my calendaring with a local exchange server that synchronizes with a copy of Outlook on my local machine, which synchronizes with my ancient Asus WinCE unit and my wife’s video iPod. I really like Google’s calendaring, and I know that sites like Upcoming and others are great. I just haven’t found the one calendaring site that manages all my task list and todo needs as well as synchronizing with my ancient mobile devices.

07) Travel to more conferences.
I enjoy networking. I enjoy learning. I enjoy showing myself off as an expert. I even enjoy traveling. I should go to more conferences.

08) Fix my grammar errors.
I’m sure the regular Mashable readers can back me up here. WordPress doesn’t have grammar correction like desktop based word processors, and thus many dangling participles and silly “its-it’s” errors often slip past me. WordPress either needs to implement grammar into the SpellChecker, or I need to get more attentive to these errors. I don’t care which one happens, but I’m tired of Suezanne always calling me out on my grammar errors, I know that much.

09) Make the next blockbuster online video podcast.
It has been a minute since I’ve done any work in video podcasting. My last valiant efforts were before the rampant investment in video monetization firms. With YouTube monetizing, Revver paying out $30 CPM, and BlinkX boasting upwards of $60 CPM, now is the time to make something happen.

10) Get my email under control.
As I write this, I have 2551 unread messages sitting in my inbox. Aside from the 500 emails a day into the Mashable inbox that are forwarded to me, I’ve also got WordPress forwarding me everyone’s comments and track-backs, as well as a 10 year old email account that sends me a hundred or two pieces of Bacn a day. Add to that notifications from my social networks and the occasional email from someone I can actually correspond with, and it’s a monumental task to deal with. I need to set up more advance filtering and make more liberal usage of the delete button.

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New FAA rules limit batteries in checked and carry-on baggage

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 12:45 PM CST

Planning on packing plenty of spare battery power to that New Years party? You might run afoul of new air travel rules that go into effect on January 1, 2008.

Read More…

The Showdown: Street Fighter IV in action… good or bad?

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 11:58 AM CST

Hot off the heels of their last debate, Frank and Ben square off again: this time about the newly-released footage of Street Fighter IV and where the series may be going.

Read More…

Top 10 Business Debacles Of 2007 [Top 10]

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 09:47 AM CST

Maybe we’re just getting better at the job but it seems like the debacles this year were bigger and more scandalous than last year. Every time we turned around, there was another deadly product or breach of consumer rights or act of malfeasance. Here’s our roundup of the top 10 worst moments in business this year…

10. VerizonFiOs Setting People’s Houses On Fire

Verizon’s new fiber optic cable network is blazingly fast, but their technicians can’t be accused of the same swiftness as they keep drilling through customer’s electrical lines and gas lines, leading to small fires. In an effort to put out the PR blaze, the Verizon Policy Blog always seemed to find a way to spin each story into a tale of how wonderful and in-demand their new network is. The phrase goes, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” yet Verizon’s PR mavens felt they could reinvent physics and claim that the smoke at some of the incidents occurred in the absence of fire. (Link to stories)

9. Comcast Throttles Bit Torrent

Though long suspected on tech-oriented sites, the internets went into a frenzy after the AP proved that Comcast was disrupting the traffic of customers using popular file-sharing program BitTorrent, preventing its use. Though often used to trade pirated movies and music, the software is used by popular online game World of Warcraft and open-source groups to distribute new versions of their software, and in the AP’s case, the decidedly non-copyrighted Bible. Comcast denied disrupting BitTorrent traffic, but said that they reserved the right to manage their network. (Link to stories).

8. E.Coli In The Meat Kills Topps Meat Company

Late 2007 saw an extremely high number of meat shipments recalled for e.coli contamination. At Topps Meat, the recall was so massive that the company went bankrupt carrying it out. Insiders say the USDA’s ineffectuality and meatpacker-friendly loopholes have lead to higher tolerances for e.coli at plants. When the meat tests too high for e.coli, meatpackers only have to slap a “Cook Only” label on to and still get to sell it without reporting it to the USDA. Quoth Fast Food Nation, “There’s shit in the meat.” Medium-rare no longer looks so appetizing. (Link to stories).

7. Best Buy Caught Stealing Porn From Customer’s Computers

Following up on insider tip-offs of systematic porn pilfering, The Consumerist rigged a computer to make a video of itself, loaded it with porn, and it took it Best Buy. On video, we caught one of the techs purloining porn from our computer. The video went viral and Best Buy conducted a nationwide internal investigation, outsourced to ex-cops. Kids were interrogated. Kids were fired. Store hard drive were searched and seized. Pants were shat. According to some reports, most of the worst “porn caches,” communal computers where employees swapped porn, movies, music, and documents taken from customer harddrives, somehow managed to escape being hooked up for remote review. (Link to story).

6. Student Loan Scandal

Attorneys General sued and fined prominent banks and universities after uncovering widespread collusion and conflicts of interest between the two to sell college students on high-priced student loans. One of the techniques was to give students a “preferred lenders” list, which is to say, the private institutions the university preferred you to use because it meant kickbacks, gifts and expense-paid trips for them in referral rewards. While they were being shuttled into expensive private loans, the students were often not informed of the array of Federal loans that should be exhausted first. Seems some universities slept through their own Intro to Ethics classes. (Link to stories).

5. Jet Blue Passengers Stuck On The Tarmac

A winter storm swamped discount airline Jet Blue’s operating capacity, with planes grounded, passengers stuck on the tarmac for over four hours, flights canceled, call centers jammed, and thousands of passengers unable to reschedule their flights. The CEO initially won kudos for making an online video apology, but that, and his subsequent apologies upon apologies weren’t enough to save his job. The airline has developed contingency plans for future fiascoes, including new “stranding policies” for passengers, which includes paying passengers if they’re stuck inside a metal tube on a runaway for upwards of four hours and not given any food or allowed to disembark. The debacle helped galvanize a growing passenger’s rights movement and spurred pro-passenger legislation in New York, legislation which the airlines then quickly moved to scuttle. (Link to stories).

4. TJMaxx’s Largest Data Breach In History Of The Universe

Unsecured wireless systems at TJ Maxx lead to the largest data breach in the history of the universe, with millions of credit card numbers compromised. As is typical, the credit card companies and banks tried to keep everything as hush as possible and most customers only were curious as to why they and all their friends were getting their credit cards forcibly replaced. The issue highlighted how retailers have been quick to adopt the convenience of wireless information systems without taking the security measures to make sure they weren’t also conveniencing potential thieves. Who would have thought you could conduct the world’s greatest bank robbery without a note, gun, or even leaving the parking lot? (Link to stories).

3. Menu Foods Kills Pets With Fake Pet Food

Before there was lead, there was the counterfeit pet food. Menu Foods of Canada was found to be selling pet food tainted with fake protein. Swapping out the cheaper ingredients lined their and their suppliers’ pockets, and the intestinal tracts of their customer’s pets with poison, leaving dozens of pets dead. Consumers were livid. A massive recall ensued, and readers got their first glimpse into how Chinese ingredient makers get their contracts approved, only to later replace certain key ingredients with cheaper and sometimes fraudulent components, a practice that would come to be at the center of the massive lead recalls that were to come later that year. (Link to stories).

2. Mattel’s Lead-Tainted Toy Recalls

Worries about children consuming lead were largely confined to jokes about avoiding eating paint chips on old houses, until Mattel was forced to conduct the largest toy recall ever after it was found a number of their toys contained lead well above the federally allowed toxicity levels. As parents, agencies, advocacy groups, and other manufacturers began scrutinizing products and supply chains, scores more products were recalled for high levels of lead. Congressional hearings were held and the story became a staple of local and national news broadcasts. It may not be until 20 years from now that we know the true impact, when we start wondering why national IQ levels have dropped 45 points. (Link to stories).

1. Sub-Prime Mortgage Meltdown

Housing prices stopped going up and banks stopped refinancing houses, pulling out the bottom blocks of the giant Jenga tower that was the housing frenzy. In fact, it was Jenga towers upon Jenga towers, with the mortgages being carved up and reshuffled until they looked like sensible investments. Now banks are washing out billions upon billions of losses, and homeowners across the country are worried about losing their homes. Everyone in the confederacy of dunces; homeowners, loan officers, credit agencies, banks, investment firms, stand to lose. Who will get stuck holding the hot potato? (Link to stories).

(Photo: jgodsey)

Most Bookmarked TechCrunch Posts of 2007

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 09:37 AM CST

Okay, final list for 2007. Here are the top-25 bookmarked or shared posts from the year, as determined by people who used the “Add This” bookmark button at the bottom of each post (see also our other year-end lists: Popular, Headlines, Launches, Deals, Deadpool):

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

TorrentFreak’s Most Memorable Quotes of 2007

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 07:48 AM CST

Some of the quotes are pretty straightforward, others might not make that much sense without context if you’re not a regular TorrentFreak reader. You can always subscribe to our feed if you want to stay stay up to date in 2008.

Happy New Year!

The quotes…

The MPAA after they were caught infringing the copyright of Patrick Robin’s blogging software “Forest Blog”:

“The blog was only ever used for testing purposes.”

BitTorrent Inc. co-founder Ashwin Navin on iTunes DRM:

“iTunes DRM Inspires People to Pirate Content.”

The Pirate Bay’s Gottfrid Svartholm about his favorite anti-piracy organization:

“The MPAA can most accurately be described as rabid, obsessed lunatics.”

Mediadefender CEO Randy Saaf when we found out about Miivi:

“This is really fucked.”

Mark Cuban to Bram Cohen, in a rant about the new BitTorrent movie store:

“But where are they ? Not just the customers Bram. The content? I searched for Prison Break. Lots of torrents. None of them Legal. Is this what Fox had in mind when they signed up with you?”

President Basescu (Romanian President) on copyright infringement:

“Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world … Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania’s friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates.”

Shaw, Canadian ISP gives advise on how to configure BitTorrent:

“Set the KB/s LAN max upload speed [0:unlimited] value to 1.”

MPAA’s Dean Garfield about Pirate Party politicians:

“There’s nothing about what the Pirate Bay does or what the Pirate Party does that is legitimate.”

P2P virus to its victims:

“Ah, I see you are using P2P again……if you don’t stop within 0.5 seconds, i’m going to kill you!”

Scener about Feds that try to stop the Scene:

“No matter how hard the Feds try to stop the scene there are always people smarter than them out there. What they should be doing is leaving us to it and catching pedophiles, rapists and psychopathic killers rather than wasting resources on a few geeks.”

The Pirate Bay about the Caribbean pirate Jack Sparrow:

“Hollywood is trying to ridicule us pirates by portraying us as crazy but sympathetic adventurers. Not far from the truth, but in the 21st century real pirates are riding other torrents than that of the ocean”

BitTorrent admin about Leaseweb:

“It looks like we’re not going to be very safe anymore on Leaseweb, we are putting backups in place on another location, just in case.”

Demonoid explains why they were offline for almost a week, and moved from The Netherlands to Canada:

“We had a system problem which will force us to restore everything from backup. The disks are pretty much empty right now and until we are able to upload the backup and set up everything up, we have to close down.”

IsoHunt’s Gary to Brokep from The Pirate Bay:

“You are either illiterate and don’t check the frontpage of sites you are pointing fingers at, or you are a communist. Or both. What makes you think you have rights to content you didn’t produce? People’s rights vs. copyright holders’ rights? Please. I will laugh at you when you are marked a terrorist and US armies hunt you down. Not that I like the whole anti-terrorist thing from the US but I digress.”

Marnie stern about her BitTorrent addiction:

“Since I’ve been here I have downloaded…I mean I feel I’m going to jail– well, I discovered the torrent– but I feel I’ve downloaded, I would say, honestly 40 or 50 movies, which I hear isn’t that bad, you know, for jail. But I mean, because I’ve pretty much been staying in the studio and a little bit with Zach [Hill], I have all of this time to just sit….”

MPA to “Christmas” movie Pirates:

“We can say this to all the pirates out there: you’d better watch out, you’d better not try”

Pirate Bay admin Brokep on US politics:

“The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don’t want to see us give in to them.”

NiN’s Trent Reznor about OiNK after it was raided:

“I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted.”

TorrentSpy’s Justing Bunnel on the power of the entertainment industry:

“Unfortunately many companies use their power and influence to halt and punish innovations they cannot think of ways to make money with. The monopolies tried to stop the VHS, DVD, and MP3 player, but thankfully failed when they took it to Court. Now Imagine for a second all the amazing products they did manage to squash…”

Dave Peters, frontman of “Throwdown” on supporting musicians:

“If you wanna really support a band, “steal” their album….help bury the label….and buy a tshirt when you show up at their show and sing every word.”

“A former music buyer writes to the CRIA:

“The music industry itself needs to recognize that they are to blame for sagging record sales. For years, they have been marketing recycled crap, and people are getting tired of it.”

Comcast to its customers:

“Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.”

(but we do slow it down)

Researchers on the effect of filesharing on CD sales:

“We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.”

Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the Canadian police on piracy:

“Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted. It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it,” he added.

TorrentFreak council in an open letter to the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN:

“Your “news release” is peppered with inaccurate information, calculated to mislead and intimidate the millions of legitimate users of the many peer-to-peer filesharing services that are in common use throughout the world.”

50 Cent on filesharing:

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”

Eric Wilkinson, the producer of the independent film “The Man from Earth”, wrote an email to RLSlog in which he thanks them for the free promotion they gave him:

“In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”

New Years Eve, Live On The Net

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 04:38 AM CST

Another year has passed us all, and 2008 beckons tomorrow. For those not out and about this New Years Eve, here’s a few places you can join the experience online:

Video Streaming Sites

Sites such as Ustream, Kyte, Justin.tv and others will have many users live stream the new year from where ever they are.

Twitter

Twitter will provide a rolling text version on NYE around the world. The first off the mark are two new Twitter friends I met today, Eli and n8duke, who are both located in Antarctica.

I did a brief interview today with Eli, one of the two most remote Twitter users on the planet:

how long have you been down there?

I’ve been living (and working) at McMurdo Station (on Ross Island) for 3 months, and I’ve got about 6 more weeks to go before the end of the summer season.

How long have you been using Twitter?

my first tweet was posted on 07/07/07 and i’ve really loved it from the very beginning.

Do you find Twitter helps narrow the distance to the rest of the world?

definitely. i have friends all over the planet (US, Europe, etc) using twitter right now and it makes it so easy to stay in touch. it is especially helpful for me down here because the internet connection is pretty terrible, so it’s nice to just hope on to twitter, type a few characters, and be done with it.

What are you doing for new years eve? will you be watching others on the net?

well, it’s 10:45pm on new years eve for me right now, so in a few minutes i’m going to suit up in me ECW (extreme cold weather) gear and hike to the top of Observation Hill with some friends. there’s about 6 inches of snow on the ground (in the summer!) and it’s still snowing. we’re going to bring in the new year in true antarctic fashion!

There’s also live streaming cams as well.

Earthcam is streaming NY NYE live, -5 GMT. MSN is promising a live NYE feed as well, but just don’t try to open the link on a Mac, or not in IE…ouch.

If anyone else has some NYE live links let us know in the comments.

Update: BlogTV has a live zone here.

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

Top 10 Web Tech Stories of 2007

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 04:06 AM CST

2007 was an eventful year in Web Technology, with the rise of Facebook, some frenzied acquisitions from the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, and of course the iPhone. To round out the year (and put an end to the December lists!) here is a look at what we think were the 10 biggest Web tech stories of the year. They’re ordered in terms of technology impact and innovation – however it’s a subjective list, so let us know in the comments what you think should be in there.

This post doubles as the final Weekly Wrapup of 2007 — it’s been a great year and all the best everyone for 2008! Here’s looking forward to more Web innovation and startup success in ’08!

1. iPhone Launch

On January 9, 2007 Steve Jobs announced at Macworld “three revolutionary new products”: an iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator. But turned out it was all one device: the fabled iPhone. This is our number 1, because it finally made the Mobile Web real for the influential US market (and the geeks who bought it in America, then took it overseas and unlocked it! cough).

2. Facebook Announces Platform

Much has already been written about this announcement on May 24, but suffice to say that it ushered in a new era for social networks – where outside companies could deploy advanced functionality inside the Facebook site.

3. Google Acquires DoubleClick for $3.1B

On April 13 Google acquired online advertising company DoubleClick, which set off a frenzy of acquisitions in this space – notably Microsoft’s $6B purchase of aQuantive. The Google/DoubleClick deal confirmed that online advertising was in a bubble period.

4. Google Announces OpenSocial

At the end of October Google launched OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web, in a bid to cut off Facebook’s momentum with third party developers. Perhaps the biggest part of this news was the world’s largest SNS MySpace joining OpenSocial the day after.

5. Amazon Launches Kindle eReader

Despite mixed reviews of this e-Reader device with internet connectivity from Amazon, the Kindle promises to shake up the e-commerce giant’s core business model – by delivering books electronically instead of the familiar brown box.

6. CNN/YouTube Debates

On July 23, eight Democratic presidential hopefuls took the stage in South Carolina — a crucial early primary state — for a debate sponsored by CNN and YouTube in which all of the questions were submitted by users of YouTube. The Republicans got their chance in September. In the same vein, 2007 also saw the MySpace/MTV Candidate Forums and the rise of web 2.0 tools in politics.

7. Google Announces Android

On Nov 5, Google announced an open-source mobile operating system called Android. This could significantly change the way that Mobile Web applications are developed.

8. Steve Jobs’ open letter against DRM

On Feb 6, Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted his Thoughts on Music in the ‘Hot News’ section of the Apple website. In it he outlined why DRM should be abolished by record companies. And Jobs’ pleas seemed to be heard by the record industry, with first EMI and then later Universal and Warner on AmazonMP3 ditching DRM.

9. Facebook Beacon Saga

Late this year Facebook announced a new advertising system that used retail data collected from its users. But after howls of privacy protests, Facebook had to back off some and make the system opt-in. It’s also worth mentioning here another Facebook story that just missed this list: in October Microsoft invested in Facebook at a $15b valuation.

10. Adobe AIR

On June 10, Adobe officially unveiled Adobe Integrated Runtime, or Adobe AIR for short. Formally called Adobe Apollo, it is a cross-operating runtime developed by Adobe that allows developers to create Rich Internet Applications for the desktop. It was a close call between this and Google Gears (the offline browser plug-in), or Microsoft’s Silverlight (a Flash-like plug-in) – both of which were also launched in ’07.

What have we missed? What were your top Web tech stories of 2007?

BBC Censored Bhutto’s Reports that Bin Laden Was Murdered

Posted: 30 Dec 2007 11:30 PM CST

When a news organization as venerable as the BBC censors the reportage of a story as important as the assassination of Benzir Bhutto –a highly visible critic of Bush/British policy with regard to the “War on Terrorism” et al –it is fair to ask: who is the BBC protecting? Are they covering up the motive for her murder?

Worship Your Plastic Heroes in <cite>The DC Comics Action Figure Archive</cite>

Posted: 30 Dec 2007 11:00 PM CST

Worship your plastic heroes in The DC Comics Action Figure Archive.

Winning Even When You Lose

Posted: 30 Dec 2007 07:33 PM CST

* April 1, 2004: Gmail launches in a private beta and starts to offer 1 GB of free storage.
* May 13, 2004: Yahoo increases the free storage from 4 MB to 100 MB. In 2005, Yahoo Mail’s free storage grows to 1GB and now it’s “unlimited”.

* August 25, 2005: Google Talk launches. “Built to support industry standards, Google Talk enables Google users to connect to the Google Talk service and exchange IMs using any client that does the same, including Trillian, Adium, iChat, GAIM, and Psi.”
* October 12, 2005: “Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced a landmark agreement to connect users of their consumer instant messaging (IM) services on a global basis. The industry’s first interoperability agreement between two distinct leading global consumer IM providers will give MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger users the ability to interact with each other, forming what is expected to be the largest consumer IM community in the world, estimated to be more than 275 million strong.”

* July 2007: To bid for the 700MHz spectrum in the US, Google asks four conditions, the most important being to allow people to use any application and any device (these two conditions were accepted).
* November 27, 2007: Verizon Wireless announces “that it will provide customers the option to use, on its nationwide wireless network, wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company”.

* November 2, 2007: Google launches OpenSocial, “a set of common APIs that make it easy to create and host social applications on the web”.
* December 13, 2007: Facebooks opens its application platform. “Now we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms.”

At the end of the day, it’s not important if your product doesn’t win when your offerings can make changes for everyone.

Spokeo is one of the latest Web 2.0 services I have tried here is how it works:

First you sign up and it asks if you want to look for friends from your address book (Gmail, yahoo, AOL, etc,) it then spends time going through all the addresses and see which services they belong (Amazon, MySpace, Last.fm, Digg, Twitter, Etc.) – at this point it shows you all of their public activity on these services.

You also have the option of linking your MySpace, LinkedIn, or other accounts where it doe the same searching as before. This is interesting since it allows you to track your friends without hunting them all down and searching them out. You know what they are up to without actively going to all these different sites online for hours at a time. You may never log into your normal sites to keep up with your friends, it all coming to you.

Now the scary – you can put in any e-mail address and look up someone the same way. You also receive hits from your address book of someone you may have had one quick e-mail exchange with but no relationship. Because of this you are infringing on their privacy.

More people need to be aware of Spokeo so they understand the implications of their online activities and how easy they are to track and monitor. I’m well aware and have been for awhile, I use the internet and post information knowing this and expecting it. Other people I know are not nearly as aware.

I would recommend trying it out just to see what you can find. If your worried about your e-mail address becoming part of the beast I would recommend to sign up with a throw away e-mail address.