четверг, 1 ноября 2007 г.

Capazoo lets you earn for contributing on its social network

 



 


Capazoo, has launched what it believes is a radically different model of social networking and online entertainment that allows members to achieve personal recognition and generate real revenue based on their content and participation in site features and services.


In addition to all the most popular features and services of websites such as MySpace, YouTube, Revver and others, Capazoo provides a unique business model that enables members to earn ‘Zoops’ – Capazoo points that can be converted to real cash – through member-to-member Tipping, through referral of friends and by sharing in Capazoo’s advertising revenues and corporate profits. 


Capazoo’s unique Tipping feature allows members to give a Tip to other members for their videos, photos, music, profiles, blogs and more.  Simply put, members earn real rewards from their virtual work.


While the idea of sharing the revenue with the community is appealing the problem Capazoo will have is building up the community in the first place.


The social networking market is already very crowded and time will tell whether this innocvative model will be enough for Capazoo to create traction and build a large users base.








среда, 31 октября 2007 г.

How Gmail blocks Spam

 



 


While Gmail doesn't filters all the spam messages that could reach your inbox, it certainly does a better job than other webmail apps like Yahoo Mail or Hotmail. Gmail's filters are constantly improving and an important ingredient of their effectiveness is the use of community signals.


Every time you click on the "Mark as spam" button, Gmail uses that information to block similar future messages not only for you, but for all Gmail users. But spam is also evolving and it's harder to block, especially when it uses images and literary texts.


"Many Google teams provide pieces of the spam-protection puzzle, from distributed computing to language detection. For example, we use optical character recognition (OCR) developed by the Google Book Search team to protect Gmail users from image spam. And machine-learning algorithms developed to merge and rank large sets of Google search results allow us to combine hundreds of factors to classify spam," explains Google.


"Gmail supports multiple authentication systems, including SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DomainKeys, and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), so we can be more certain that your mail is from who it says it's from. Also, unlike many other providers that automatically let through all mail from certain senders, making it possible for their messages to bypass spam filters, Gmail puts all senders through the same rigorous checks."


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Worktopia secures $5 Million in Series A funding led by DFJ Gotham Ventures

 



 


Worktopia, the direct online booking engine for meeting space in hotels, airport
lounges and other venues, has completed a $5 million financing from a syndicate led by New York-based DFJ Gotham Ventures and including Milestone Venture Partners and High Peaks Venture Partners.


Worktopia will deploy the additional capital to drive expansion of its network of hotel partners, to build on its foundation of corporate travel distribution relationships and to extend its leadership position.


Worktopia is the first service to allow meeting planners to search, compare and book meeting space, equipment and simple catering online in real-time, a $24 billion market that has until now been conducted over the telephone.


A service primarily designed for booking meetings of under 100 attendees, Worktopia is bringing the $24 billion small-meetings segment of the $165 billion U.S. meetings and event industry online.


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вторник, 30 октября 2007 г.

Stinkers receives $16 million Series B to expand P2P live TV platform

 


 

Skinkers, the UK company that is building a P2P live TV platform with Microsoft, has taken $16 million Series B in a round led by Acacia Capital Partners that included original investors Spark Ventures and the Skinkers Management team.


In April 2007, Skinkers announced LiveStation, the first interactive global broadcast platform over IP, providing the most scalable and cost effective solution to broadcast live and linear TV channels over the Internet directly to millions of computer screens.


Built on unique technology acquired from Microsoft in a pioneering “technology for equity” deal in 2006, LiveStation is due to launch a large scale technical trial involving some of the leading global broadcasters shortly.


Skinkers will use the funding to further develop and enhance their Live Notification Platform technology and bring to market LiveStation, their live P2P television platform.


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Can News Corp's Hulu compete with YouTube?

 



 


Hulu has set out to compete with YouTube by helpin you find and enjoy the world's premium content when, where and how you want it.


Hulu hopes to provide  the web's most comprehensive selection of premium programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature films, clips, and more.


Hulu offers current primetime shows like The Office, Prison Break, Bionic Woman, House and Bones, and episodes from TV classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Miami Vice, Arrested Development and more.


Hulu has also partnered with premier content owners like E! Entertainment, FUEL TV, SciFi Network and USA Networks to add to our growing collection of premium programming.


While Hulu offers a different take on online video with this premium content that will add to the user submitted content found on MySpace, News Corp wills truggle to get close to the size of YouTube.


YouTube has won the battle for video online and without some spectacular innovation from MySpace the online video market is unlikely to change with the introduction of Hulu. 








понедельник, 29 октября 2007 г.

E-Commerce sales up 23 percent in third quarter

 



 


Online sales in the third quarter across all categories (excluding travel) rise 23 percent to $28.4 billion, according to comScore. (Including travel, e-commerce sales are up 18 percent to $48.6 billion). Non-travel E-commerce sales for the year are on track to hit $200 billion.


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Mozilla launches competitor to AIR and Silverlight

 



 


Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur.


Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, we’re not building a proprietary platform to replace the web. We think the web is a powerful and open platform for this sort of innovation, so our goal is to identify and facilitate the development of enhancements that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the web platform.  The first of these experiments is based on Webrunner.


Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.


Prism lets users add their favorite web apps to their desktop environment:


 



 


When invoked, these applications run in their own window:


 



 


They are accessible with Control-Tab, Command-Tab, and Exposé, just like desktop apps. And users can still access these same applications from any web browser when they are away from their own computers.


Prism isn’t a new platform, it’s simply the web platform integrated into the desktop experience. Web developers don’t have to target it separately, because any application that can run in a modern standards-compliant web browser can run in Prism. Prism is built on Firefox, so it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and <canvas> and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.


And while Prism focuses on how web apps can integrate into the desktop experience, we’re also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.


To try out the prototype, download and install it: Download Prism for Windows


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