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Yahoo! Widgets gets an upgrade

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Designed to become a more open and accessible platform, Yahoo! has released Yahoo! Widgets version 4.5. Although it has maintained the look and feel on desktops, it has several technical improvements and new partnerships.

Yahoo! has teamed up with NBA All-Stars for the NBA All-Star Ballot Widget and RockYou Widget for creating and watching photo slideshows.

For many widget users, this site has a new At-a-Glance view so they can easily search the highest rated, most downloaded, and newest widgets available in the Yahoo! Widgets Gallery.

yahoo widgets

Moreover, users can now share these widgets to other people through IM, and email. They can also share these widgets via Digg, Reddit, and del.icio.us.

As far as widget developers are concerned, Yahoo! Widgets now supports HTML and Flash-based widget designs. Additionally, it has new rich-media capabilities like videos to help create better widgets.

Get the full details at Widgets team blog.

Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 5:53 am

Fake Mac hack attack backfires

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Do you want to know the sure-fire way to annoy your online community and smear the image of popular blogging platforms like Expression Engine and WordPress?

Well, learn from the great Macheist.com. People behind this site created a fake hacker called Malcor who “hacked” popular Apple-related sites.

To make this fictitious character believable, they asked credible sites like AppleMatters.com, iPhoneMatters.com, Glenn Wolsey, and Macapper.com to be accomplices in this well conjured gig.

Every site had this image and a message saying, “This site has been flagged for excessive Apple fanboism, and has been taken down for 24 hours.”

malcor mac hack attack

Well, initially it was intended as a joke but they underestimated the power of stupidity. This hoax has undermined the image of WordPress, Expression Engine, and hosting companies for many users perceived these companies to be vulnerable to hack attacks.

To matter matters worse, it led many Mac fanatics to believe that such anomaly exists. As for those who participated in this ridiculous joke, they have nothing much to say but sorry, sorry, sorry, and sorry.

The lesson is very simple that I find it very demeaning to point out: think before you act.

Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 8:00 am

Cisco to launch a social networking platform

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cisco.gifSeeking to broaden its reach and profit from Web 2.0, Cisco is making a great leap from router/switch business to social networking.

Cisco plans to release Entertainment Operating System (Eos) platform, an open software platform for creating and managing a community-based entertainment experience.

Unlike popular social network sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, this back-end infrastructure targets media companies by enabling them to create their own communities and deliver social network-based experience at a very reasonable cost.

Sports companies NHL and NASCAR are already using this platform on their respective websites.

In an article in Internetnews.com, Dan Scheinman, a senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Media Solutions group, tried to differentiate its platform from other popular social networks.

“In Facebook, you really care about who your friends are,” he said. But, he argued, enthusiasts such as sports fans want a shared communal experience even if it’s with people they don’t know. On the NASCAR site, he said, one racing fan living in Guam commented on how great it was to connect with people sharing his interests.

Recently, Cisco has acquired several sites related to social networking and Web 2.0. The company is also very busy researching about new advertising alternatives.

Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 7:17 am

Internet Evolution unveils “Wisdom of the Clouds” interface

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For a site like Internet Evolution which is dedicated in investigating the future of the Internet and backed by prominent Internet experts like, it is but fitting to create something unique from time to time.

This time it’s about “The Wisdom of Clouds,” the graphical user interface (GUI) allows site visitors to take a virtual flight through a cloud bank of all ideas generated by more than 80 world-famous contributors to the ThinkerNet blogosphere, and drill down to read the ones that are of interest.

Some of the Contributors to the ThinkerNet include John Hinshaw, Boeing’s CIO; Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist.com; Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, the company that develops and maintains Second Life; and John Grimes, CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense.

wisdom of the clouds interface

Since this busy site publishes about 3 new blogs every single day, the team behind Internet Evolution realized there is a need for a new and more efficient way to organize these ideas.

If you’re wondering why they call the new interface as such, well here is the answer of Stephen Saunders, Internet Evolution’s Founding Editor :

We’re calling our new interface ‘The Wisdom of Clouds’ as an ironic homage to James Surowiecki’s ‘The Wisdom of Crowds,’ which we happen to think is complete nonsense. And we’re referring to it as a ‘Web 3.0’ interface because we know it will really annoy all the alleged experts who talk pretentious twaddle about the Internet and its various iterations.

Originally posted on November 30, 2007 @ 6:29 am

Brightcove no longer a YouTube wannabe

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brightcove.tvOnline video company Brightcove is no longer interested in user-generated videos.

Starting December 18, end-users are no longer allowed to upload and share personal video clips on Brightcove.tv.

Although UG contents generate about 8 million unique visitors monthly, Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire stated in his blog post that they will focus their limited resources in serving their media business partners like HBO, The New York Times, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Fox Entertainment, and many more.

Together, these professional videos deliver more than 120 million unique visitors monthly. Currently, there are more than 4,000 commercial media publishers using the Brightcove platform.

Brightcove.tv will soon host the professional business videos for its media partners.

This is a good decision on the part of Brightcove. Fighting big players like YouTube is an utter waste of resources and will likely fail. Targeting a niche like customized professional videos for different businesses is a safe and profitable path.

Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 1:57 am