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Statsaholic defense hits a spanner: owner a convicted extortionist

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statsaholic logoThe defense of the well regarded Statsaholic (previously Alexaholic), currently on the receiving end of law suit from Amazon for the crime of daring to use Amazon’s open API’s and render Alexa data better than Amazon was, has just hit the mother of all spanners, according to TechCrunch, Statsaholic’s owner, Ron Hornbaker, is a convicted extortionist.

But wait, it gets better, because as well as serving jail time for extortion, Hornbaker wasn’t just your garden variety, every day extortionist, he was an internet extortionist as well, frequenting AOL Chat rooms trying to extort money from wayward husbands. Yep, he’s 1996’s version of Michael Crook.

Knowing this, a lot of people have got egg on their faces, including yours truly, for going in to bat for a chap who well…just doesn’t play cricket, if you know what I mean. Time to remove my name from the online petition against the legal action as well, and apologize to Amazon. Sorry Amazon, I’ll do some digging before acting against you in the future.

Originally posted on April 22, 2007 @ 11:26 pm

eBay acquires StumbleUpon for $40-$45 million

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Techcrunch has the scoop: eBay has acquired social networking meets random surfing outfit StumbleUpon for $40-$45 million.

Valleywag does the figures and works out that whilst the deal is obviously good for the folks behind StumbleUpon.. they only ever took $1.5m in funding and never had a full venture capital round; the price means that sites like Digg may only be worth $100-$150 million, and the entire sector worth no more than $500million, which is probably significantly less than the sum total of funding that has gone into startups in Silicon Valley alone.

Originally posted on April 18, 2007 @ 7:49 pm

Will the Virginia Tech Massacre be the tipping point for Facebook?

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facebookTerrible, terrible business. I could start on the stupidity on American Gun Control laws (or lack there of) but this isn’t the time nor place.

In an internet sense though, is the Virginia Tech Massacre the tipping point for Facebook?

Did anyone see coverage of the whole thing on MySpace?

Articles like this at Reuters are reflected through out the MSM and the blog world: the response on the ground was covered nearly exclusively on Facebook. We know that Facebook had its day in the past, and was passed over by MySpace, and yet as a destination Facebook of late has become the new MySpace, the new in destination amongst a fickle user base, literally Facebook is experiencing a second coming, a new resurgence of popularity.

I’ve literally just signed up for Facebook today, and a bit like MySpace, I don’t fully get it yet. It reminds me of LinkedIn but with the ability to post stuff.

I’m yet to take the time to find/ read the VT Massacre coverage, but I will be shortly, as no doubt many others already have.

It’s a terrible thing to suggest that a site/ service succeeds off the back of tragedy, but in the same way that blogs came of age during the 2004 US presidential elections, the VT Massacre could be the tipping point for Facebook, the day that a rapidly growing social networking service finally hit the spotlight, a day that shall be remembered not only for the appalling loss of life, but also for a day that Facebook became the new MySpace, the new black.

Now if only they’d do something about the proliferation of guns in the United States.

Originally posted on April 18, 2007 @ 1:01 am

Vale Internet Radio

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Mark May 15 in your diary. It’s the day Internet Radio in the United States will cease to be.

In an outrageous move, the US Copyright Royalty Board has refused to consider complaints from industry representatives against it’s earlier decision to implement the RIAA supported new royalty structure for online radio. The new fee structure, that will commence May 15, sees internet radio stations having to pay a per song, per listener rating that worse still in being implemented retrospectively back to the beginning on 2006.Currently internet radio stations pay a portion of profit for each station paid in royalties. On top of this, there will also be a minimum fee of $500 per channel per year.

The move won’t drive all internet radio stations offline, after all, not all internet radio stations are located in the United States, but it is going to see a pile of US based stations either shut up shop, or move to other countries, with a fair bit of talk about the place of a number of operators looking at moving to Canada.

Sites such as Pandora are urging users to write to their Congressman, if you’re in the US I’d encourage you to do so.

Originally posted on April 17, 2007 @ 4:05 am

Google acquires Tonic Systems, Powerpoint competitor on its way

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tonicGoogle has acquired Tonic Systems, a Silicon Valley based firm with roots in Australia as well, that has in its kit bag of goodies a java based Powerpoint clone.

The acquisition sees Google now officially announcing that the missing leg in the hat trick of Office functionality will soon be available at Google: Google Presentations, an online Powerpoint style service that makes working online all that much more appealing to the business world.

The dollar figure of the acquisition was not disclosed.

Originally posted on April 17, 2007 @ 10:33 pm