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YouTube, eBay lead winners in 11th Webby Awards

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The winners of The 11th Annual Webby Awards will be saluted alongside a remarkable slate of special achievement honorees, including rock legend David Bowie, eBay President and CEO Meg Whitman on behalf of the eBay community, and the co-founders of YouTube, at the June 5th gala in New York City, Webby organizers announced.

The Webby Awards winners were revealed in a wide range of categories, including Websites and brand new categories honoring online film and video, interactive advertising, and mobile content.

In addition, over 400,000 votes were cast by people around the world for their favorite sites, videos, and ads in The Webby People’s Voice Awards presented by Verizon. A full list of both Webby Awards and People’s Voice Awards winners can be found at www.webbyawards.com.

Originally posted on May 2, 2007 @ 8:55 am

80% of blogs contain “offensive” content

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scansafeA new survey from Scansafe has found that 80% of blogs contain “offensive” content, ranging from “adult language” to pornographic images.

In a report at Ars Technia, ScanSafe says that it discovered the “offensive” nature of blogs by analyzing more than 7 billion web requests coming from their corporate customers.

Further, 6% of blogs were also said to contain some sort of malware.

Now I know that MySpace blogs aren’t pretty, but does bad layout and bright graphics make for offensive content, or is it just that ScanSafe’s Corporate customers have a predilection for porn?

Apparently, any blog that contains the F word is considered offensive by Scansafe, which pretty much means this blog, along with every over blog I read would be marked as offensive, at least at one point in time. I suppose it could be worse, they could find terms such as “freedom online” and “surveys are stupid” offensive as well :-)

Originally posted on April 25, 2007 @ 10:42 pm

Sirius dumps Podshow

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Bad news for Adam Curry, content from the Podshow network is being dumped from Sirius Satellite Radio from May 1.

There is no word yet as to why the previous arrangement was not renewed.

Paul Colligan believes that the decision means that Satellite Radio “Becomes Even Less Important”, and that 10.5 million iPods sold last quarter is proof of the potential audience size for podcasts.

Originally posted on April 29, 2007 @ 9:42 pm

Google unseats Microsoft as world’s most powerful brand

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Google, with a brand value of $66.4 billion, has unseated Microsoft as the world’s most powerful brand, according to an annual ranking by UK research firm Millward Brown Optimor. The search engine’s brand value increased by 77 percent since last year and is followed closely by General Electric at $61.8 billion. Microsoft is a distant third at $54.9 billion and Coca-Cola at $44.1 billion.

“Success stories from this year’s Brandz Top 100 demonstrate that winning brands leverage major market trends effectively to create business value,” said Joanna Seddon, chief executive at Millward Brown.

“Strong brands are capable of extending into areas of opportunity to access new revenue streams and to help businesses respond to market changes.”

The ranking attempts to put a dollar value on a brand based on current and expected future earnings. The figure is generated from hard economic data as well as softer variables such as intangible consumer loyalty and perceived growth potential.

Originally posted on April 27, 2007 @ 3:20 pm

New Media Wire – Thur Apr 26, 2007

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Why Web 2.0 Sucks
When the term “web 2.0” first started appearing en masse, I hated the term because it just seemed like hype. I even said so on Tim O’Reilly’s blog. (He’s the publishing genius behind O’Reilly and the guy that came up with the term.) Since then, I’ve written dozens of articles on Web 2.0 and haven’t thought twice about how much I disliked the term. Now, I don’t think about the term and I’m caught up in all the incredible applications. Though not everyone feels that way. This Is Going To Be Big gives a critical but insightful look at their top ten reasons why Web 2.0 sucks. While it’s definitely worth a read, I’d say many of the reasons apply to the Web in general, not just Web 2.0.

What Meshly’s Really About?
Read/Write Web has a better explanation of what Meshly is really about. I might have gotten it wrong, saying it was like Twitter with Digg voting. RWW says its more for bookmarking through IM. So it’s kind of like Twitter over IM rolled up with del.icio.us and Digg. I think. Though if you’ve how many steps you have to go through just to post a bookmark, you might think twice about using it that way. Delicious takes about 1.5 steps, especially with the bookmarklet button I have on my Firefox browser. I’m not discounting the potential value of Meshly, just saying it takes too many steps to do what should take about 1-3 steps. And that’s inherent in the medium (IM), not so much Meshly’s fault.

Are Blogs Offensive?
Ars Technica writes about a ScanSafe “Global Threat” report that finds that 80% of blogs have offensive content. No kidding, big surprise. I don’t know about the 80%, but they apparently scanned seven billion page requests to come up with this waste of paper. I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry – stupid arse sniffing gits :)

Originally posted on April 26, 2007 @ 2:23 pm