According to reports the USA have struck a deal with mother Russia at last to shut down the illegal MP3 distribution website, AllofMP3.com.
We can seriously see how AllofMP3 must’ve been pissing George Bush off, but why go spoil everybody’s fun? See the thing is, you can download full albums from there for ridiculously low prices – ie. get Tenacious D’s new album, The Pick of Destiny, (over here) for only $1.63…
But we guess AllofMP3 was probably considered a threat to Bush for some reason and that’s why they were closed down…
Everyone, who is anybody, is jumping on the social networking / web 2.0 bandwagon – and mixing the old with the new seems even more popular! According to reports the UK’s Channel 4 have decided to audition candidates for their upcoming Big Brother series via Social Networks.
Apparently, their website, E4.com, will be redesigned to look more like MySpace & Friendster, with visitors being able to upload photos and videos, chat to other members and rate their stuff.
Channel 4 chief, Andy Duncan, has however gone the “safe route” by declaring that they will choose “at least one” contestant from social networking, which means that the majority will still be auditioned through “normal” means.
Although this is quite clever and it will give Channel 4 some cloud in the blogosphere, it is only conforming to Web 2.0 and thus to whatever everyone else is doing. But again we find ourselves in a situation, where we can diss / rant / comment too much, because after the big blogging boom, who got on the blogwagon as well? One of these days however, you’re not going to need to leave your computer screen, because we’ll all be Matrix-type “robots” and we’ll just be plugged into the system – Google and Microsoft (or MySpace perhaps) are still however fighting for the right to be in control of the Matrix…
Well, according to owner Rupert Murdoch (News Corp) MySpace is valued at about $6 billion – already ten times more than the $580 million they paid earlier this year and also 4 times as much as the $1.6 billion price Google paid for Myspace a month ago…
We think this is absolutely bull-crap – how could anyone ever expect to make a profit on a $6 billion investment? A good business breaks even within two years, which means that any new buyer would need to make about $3 billion each for two years. We all know the internet and Web 2.0 are going places, but those sums are insane, and all the profit is coming from advertising revenue. And advertising is a very subjective decision – MySpace is not selling a physical product.
According to MySpace they currently have 130 million users, which keeps on growing at 8 million a month. Although they admit that “some” of the accounts are indeed inactive, we’d like to guess a percentage of inactive accounts – let’s say, ummm, maybe, a third of all accounts? How people on MySpace actually use it frequently anyway? Not being a big fan of MySpace, our opinion is that MySpace is used more commercial interests by commercial parties these days, than it is being used by individuals to socially connect to others. But hey, who are we to judge Mr Murdoch and his gang?
The reason why the big record companies did not sue YouTube too emerged today. This is after Grouper and Bolt! got sued last week…Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG all signed deals with GooTube (on the day of the deal) to take a share in the newly formed company. With the expected rise in the market value of the company, the record companies have already earned an estimated $50 million on their share…
This comes as a real surprise to us (or does it really???), since the big record companies are not known to be very friendly with other people (read: Napster). But what the heck, now at least we know what’s going on as well…
Found this really cool photoblog online, called Greyscale Gorilla. The blog features a wide variety of pics taken by the author / owner – some of the photos are more personal (like pics from his ski trip), and unfortunately there’s no kinky photos of his wife and / or mistress… : )
Nah, that’s only tongue-in-cheek talk. Definitely a blog to check out – it’s got some awesome, awesome, awesome photos. Here’s just one example:
Well, a lot has been said about Google buying YouTube last week and a lot of people are very angry. Others like Microsoft and Yahoo! have decided to up their research budgets and invest more in social networking. But the big question still remains what will happen to YouTube now that it is controlled by someone else? Will it still be so cool or will it be Googled (not saying that that is a bad thing either…)?
Well one YouTuber, Zunbidos, has a theory about what will happen and he’s posted his video theory on YouTube (where else huh?). We love this little comedy…
At one stage, the video also suggests GoogleFox, which we must say in our humble opinion will be the f$^#-up of the century, since Mozilla Firefox is the best browser around at the moment and we don’t think a Googled version of Firefox would be too good for our health…
Just a short post to link to an article we found about the top 8 earners with Google AdSense accounts. Earning $300K / month is no laughing matter, for a job which normally entails sitting at home and running a proper website. If you all just click on our ads a little more, we can maybe, one day, in the distant future, earn that much as well…Mmm…Don’t think so. We earn small, minute, almost-non-existent change compared to that…
We’re in a very lazy mood today, and we’re not that interested in typing too much. So here’s some news tidbits from the lads over at TechCrunch, which is indeed quite interesting.
Web 2.0 is growing even more from day to day, with a lot of new startup companies going down the Web 2.0 route. Overall this is a very good trend for us, the internet geeks, since it will most certainly improve online services, but will also create an awesome amount of options to consume your time.
Go2Web2 is just such a company. And although they probably don’t showcase exactly what Web 2.0 is, they surely promote the hell out of it. The very-well designed Flash website showcases all the best Web 2.0 companies out there and supplies you with information and various blog postings about them. You are also able to sort and search through the database, by using tags.
The site was created by Israeli’s, Orli Yakuel & Eyal Shahar, and that definitely sums up what Web 2.0 is probably about. Some of the best new companies have risen to fame from countries such as Israel & Thailand, which makes the whole movement that much more accessible and interesting. More diverse influences and ideas will surely ensure really interesting projects in the future.
Visit Orli’s blog for profiles on some of the best new Web 2.0 companies.
The web is rife with rumours about a Microsoft’s new service called, Soapbox, which will basicly emulate YouTube. Soapbox will probably not differ even a little (except for the look & interface), from the very popular services that YT are offering.
To me, this just seems ridiculous. Can’t these internet companies come up with their own Web 2.0 ideas? Has it all come down to copying your competitors and trying to be better than them? Back in the day, being an entrepeneur, meant running with your own ideas and being innovative. But seems that nowadays, the financial bottomline is everything.
Anyway, just a little rant. We use MS Windows, but we still don’t like Microsoft.
According to reports the USA have struck a deal with mother Russia at last to shut down the illegal MP3 distribution website, AllofMP3.com.
Everyone, who is anybody, is jumping on the social networking / web 2.0 bandwagon – and mixing the old with the new seems even more popular! According to reports the UK’s Channel 4 have decided to audition candidates for their upcoming Big Brother series via Social Networks.
Just a short post to link to an article we found about the top 8 earners with Google AdSense accounts. Earning $300K / month is no laughing matter, for a job which normally entails sitting at home and running a proper website. If you all just click on our ads a little more, we can maybe, one day, in the distant future, earn that much as well…Mmm…Don’t think so. We earn small, minute, almost-non-existent change compared to that…
The web is rife with rumours about a Microsoft’s new service called, Soapbox, which will basicly emulate YouTube. Soapbox will probably not differ even a little (except for the look & interface), from the very popular services that YT are offering.
