Windows Live News

Techcrunch posted a teaser about a new Windows Live service, code-named Fremont. But what is Fremont? Rumor has it that it’s Microsoft’s answer to Google Base, yet another Craigslist/Ebay wannabe. I have to be honest, I don’t get the Google Base thing yet. It seems to be superflous to what our needs are right now…which makes me wonder if it’s been put out there for beta testing before we get to what it’s real use will be: the database that hosts your Google Office files. C’mon. Google/Sun merger? Google hiring programmers to work on Open Office? You know it’s coming.

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Oh it just gets better, doesn’t it? It has been revealed that Sony knew about the rootkits a full month before the story broke on the Sysinternals blog. A well-known security company, F-Secure, alerted Sony to the problem back on October 4th. According to F-Secure, "Sony BMG didn’t understand the software it was introducing to people’s computers and was slow to react. If [Sony] had woken up and smelled the coffee when we told them there was a problem, they could have avoided this trouble," says Mikko H. Hypponen, F-Secure’s director of antivirus research.

Commercial blogging gets a lot of attention these days, doesn’t it? What with the sale of Weblogs, Inc. to AOL and the like. The latest entry is Federated Media Publishing. "FM works by "federating" authors into topic clusters. Our first federation focuses on digital business and culture, and includes sites such as Boing Boing, Matt Haughey’s Metafilter and PVRblog, Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders, Om Malik’s Broadband Blog, Glenn Fleishman’s Wi-Fi Networking News, John Battelle’s Searchblog, Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch, and many more."

To find out more about FM, I had a quick email interview with Bill Brazell over at FM (who, by the way, said I have a "nice blog"). 

Here’s what I asked:

* How do you choose your blogs?
FM chooses their blogs based on quality of writing, integrity of writer, authority and popularity of writer, and relevance of topic area — i.e., if the blog is about a topic that interests us, we dig a little deeper. Right now we’re focused on technology and culture.

* Are the blogs you picked affliated with your network in some way or are you just picking your personal favorites?
Some authors known to us have referred other authors; some authors have found their way to FM; some we have discovered.

* Does a blog have to be an A-Lister/high traffic blog to even get considered?
The more traffic, the better, obviously, but we haven’t put a number on it; we consider a number of factors as we evaluate each potential FM blog.

* Are you looking for the next instapundit?
While we enjoy reading political blogs, we’re not focusing on them at the moment. We are, though, looking at a few good blogs that comment on media.

* Who’s paying who for what?
FM brings good advertisers to its authors, and pays itself a cut of that revenue.

* What’s your goal?
To enable great authors to keep doing what they love to do, to ensure that those authors’ efforts are rewarded, and to help them reach an ever-wider audience.

According to an article over at BusinessWeek online, there is reason to believe that Windows Vista may be available sooner than expected. Vista was originally slated to ship late 2006, but BusinessWeek has obtained a copy of an internal blog entry by Chris Jones, who is one of Microsoft’s top Windows executives. His blog entry states the new shipping target date is August 31st, 2006. This isn’t the date that Vista will be on stores’ shelves, rather the date that code must be complete and ready to ship to computer manufacturers so they can do their own testing.

…and to go along with that new Vista computer, the first holographic discs will be ready by late 2006 as well. Developed as a joint project between Hitachi and InPhase Technologies, the discs are capable of storing up to 300 GB of data. However, holographic discs have a theoretical capacity of 1.6 TB. These will be just what we need to hold hours and hours (26, to be exact) of HDTV shows. Something tells me I should hold off on buying that new laptop until late 2006….

via Neowin

Yahoo! beats Google and Microsoft to the punch with the introduction of Yahoo! Audio Search. With audio search, Yahoo! allows you to search for all kinds of audio files from across the Web, including popular and hard to find music, podcasts, interviews, speeches, newscasts, stand-up comedy, and sound effects. Search for a favorite artist, and you’ll get links to albums, songs, videos, websites, images, as well as being able to click to hear snippets of their songs. If you want to purchase the music, you can hop into Yahoo! Music or find other download locations for an album or a song. For podcast searches, click the "matching: podcasts" link and see the results for that particular podcaster. You can save results to My Web 2.0, with the click of a link which pops up a window where you can tag it and make notes, though I do think that link needs to be a little bolder. Overall, Yahoo’s audio search is a great, and desperately needed tool, though the whole interface is a bit busy and disorganized for my desire…but that’s probably because I’m used to more Googlesque simplicity. Still, until MSN or Google releases their own audio search engine, Yahoo!’s will be the one to beat.

Although companies like Microsoft and Google are getting the headlines, Yahoo! has been quietly building up an arsenal of Web 2.0 products and services. One of the latest and greatest is My Web 2.0, a social search engine that allows tagging of content, "community pages", and personal search history. Then there is Yahoo! 360, a social networking, blogging, photo-sharing mesh of a site — their verision of MySpace. Now that Yahoo! acquired flickr, a major Web 2.0 player, flickr is integrated into 360 as well. Another popular acquistion was that of  Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets), a maker of widgets, which are customizable little things that hang out on your desktop, giving you easy access to a wide range of content like the weather, sports scores, and now, of course, Yahoo!-specific information. (You may remember my post on this). Finally, they’ve one-upped Google and Microsoft by beating them both to the development of an audio search engine, which really deserves its own post.

Google has launched an internet cafe in London’s Heathrow airport called "Google Space."  There are 10 Samsung laptops, 2 Google employees, and free access to services like Google Mail (known as Gmail, stateside), Picassa, Google Maps, Google Local, and Google Earth, as well as internet access. The temporary installation will be in place until December 19th. Although all access is free of charge, Google plans on using Google Space as a physical test bed for new applications. They will also get to see how people interact with their applications. See photos of Google Space here.

Today was my first ever "Black Friday" shopping trip. Despite getting up at 4 AM and standing in a line that wrapped around the building, the savings were worth it. One of my great finds this morning was a D-Link Wireless G Kit for $15.00 at Best Buy. The router came with networking software called "Network Magic," which is supposed to simplify the setup of a home network. The software automates the sharing of folders, files, printers, as well as the internet connection. It looked interesting, so I thought I would give it a try. GREAT concept. Well-designed setup screens with directions in plain English. So simple, anyone could do it….if it worked. I thought it was hilarious how it claimed my router "was not supported" after it tried to detect it from my Windows XP machine (it worked fine on the Windows 2K box). After fiddling with it for a couple of minutes, I said "oh well," and uninstalled the software. I then quickly configured the connection manually. Although, manual configuration is easy for me, I thought it was pretty disappointing that the included software would bomb out on install. How difficult that would be for the average user! Such a shame…better luck next time, D-Link.

Some are saying that Google’s motto "don’t be evil" is not being heeded much these days. The controversy surrounds the Google Print project (now rebranded "Google Book Search"). Without the publishers’ or authors’ consent, Google is scanning all the books in 3 big libraries and creating searchable digital copies via Google Print. Google feels what they are doing is "fair use" and no big deal since the publishers can "opt out," if they choose. Publishers say that’s not how the law works — if you want to make a full copy of a book, you must get permission from the copyright holder.

On Google’s official blog, their statement is: "We regret that this group chose to sue us over a program that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world — especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program. What’s more, many of Google Print’s chief beneficiaries will be authors whose backlist, out of print and lightly marketed new titles will be suggested to countless readers who wouldn’t have found them otherwise. Let’s be clear: Google doesn’t show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries."

As you know, I love Google, but I don’t think they’re going to win this battle now that they’ve been sued by both the authors guild and the Association of American Publishers. Google is basically breaking the law and trying to set some sort of new precedent by forcing publishers to take this battle to court. It seems as though they are hedging their bets that the courts will rule in their favor. It’s as if they are trying to exercise eminent domain over content, perhaps starting with books, but with plans to move on to other media. I think that searchable books are a great idea, but working with the publishers, a la Amazon, may have kept Google out of the courts. Both cases are in the courts now, waiting a judge’s ruling.