Alexis is a big-titted hooker. She is a really good hooker. She is like the Bruce Lee of hookers. The kind of ho that you know really loves her job. The kind of ho that gives it her all. She is the kind of hooker who will blow you, fuck you, let you stick some of your body parts in her ass and then she will eat your cum. Alexis is the kind of hooker all hookers should aspire to be. Watch her be all that she can be on this guy's rod. She picks him up in the street and then takes his meat to go, leading him to the Jacuzzi room in a rent-by-the-hour hotel. Here, in the comfort of this seedy hotel room, she works his junk like a seasoned pro, and she works her crisp British accent, too, which is very fucking hot! So you're probably wondering where all the big-titted, British cock-rockers are hanging out in your area, right? You'll just have to find the right corner, buddy. Check it out!!!
My good friend Kayla and i went shopping at a local sports apparel store for our sons. After we bought our kids what they needed we got a little something for ourselves. Kayla looked so sexy with her boobs pressed against in her extra tight jersey that i just had to invite her back to my place. Let me just say that it wasnt the first time Kayla licked pussy but it was the first time i had a pussy taste so sweet.
Sensual. Playful. Inspiring. Jana Cova exposes her inner-most desires, leaving a trail of women trembling in her wake. Explore the feminine mystique in 5 lust inducing scenes captured on film by Michael Ninn himself.
Julia and I had been playing phonetag for a few days trying to iron out these reports. Standard numbers crunching. When we finally spoke, we set up a meeting at her house, which I found weird but no biggie. I get there and we discuss work for about 2 minutes before getting down to REAL business. She starts to show off her huge round boobs and bubble butt ass that she is hiding in that business suit of hers. Her long blonde hair begging to get pulled. She unleashes her boobs and it was all she wrote after that. She gave me a masterful blowjob before letting me eat her juicy pussy. I could not take it anymore and started to fuck her something serious. Amazing. We had a great time. We should have more business meetings like this in the future. http://www.linkbank.eu/show.php?show=50785 __._,_.___
Tugjobs - She is MY Dominatriqszzzz Added: June 23, 2008
Paola Ray is so sexy and sensual; she knows how to move the right way to warm things up. She talks dirty, and she moans while she is jerking the cock; but she also likes to add a lot of lubrication when she rubs the cock on her pussy. The cock took a pleasurable beating, as Paola slapped it on her tongue, and just slapped it period. Through out the jerk session she was begging for the cock. Although she didn't get fucked, she got her clit rubbed, and she came loud. After jerking the cock and rubbing the balls, she finally got the man chowder out of Joey's cock.
What do you do for an encore once you've built the largest contextual advertising network on the Web? Apparently in Google's case, use it to air cartoons. According to The New York Times, the Google Content Network will soon launch, debuting with short webisodes of a show called "Cavalcade" developed by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane.
The shows will be distributed via the thousands of web sites that run Google AdSense code, featuring pre-roll advertising and a few other formats so the publisher still earns revenue. Here's the really interesting part though: the web sites where Cavalcade will be shown are being selected by Google's existing contextual algorithms. That means that Google will be able to display the show only to those likely to be interested – in Cavalcade's case "typically young men" according to the Times.
The potential for this type of system is pretty massive because everyone wins. Publishers serve something way more interesting than a typical banner or text ad, advertisers get to reach their target audience with video, and Google gets more data based on how the shows perform on different web sites. Also, video ads traditionally have much higher CPMs than text or display ads, meaning it's potentially a lot more money that can be pumped through the AdSense ecosystem if the format proves successful.
As for Cavalcade, the show will have 50 different two-minute episodes. Presumably, short enough so people will watch the whole thing, but long enough to squeeze in a few ads. It will certainly be an interesting experiment to watch.
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The volume of sites and services on the Web doing their thing on the Q&A circuit is quite extensive. There is Yahoo Answers of course. Yedda is another. TickerHound is one which is geared exclusively to financial queries. LinkedIn Answers is a quality forum, too. (Let’s not forget Shouldi, either.) But say you want to simplify the whole question-answer process. You've got a quick question, whose subject is perhaps best described as miscellaneous. And you ideally want answers delivered quick.
Enter, Defuddle. A site started by Oliver Bolton and Edward Dowling of Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, it has been around for a few months now, and it's already showing to be a real treat to use - and aesthetically pleasing to boot.
Defuddle works completely intuitively. After you've registered an account, you have several options on tap. You can offer your wisdom to those in need. You can post your own questions for consideration by the crowd. You can browse the growing archive of data nuggets. Or you can refer to your account for your activity history at the "your stuff" section.
If you're starting out, your account's largely barren. So maybe you're curious about something to do with business, fashion, science, sport, travel, or topics to fit any of 8 other listed categories. Click 'ask something,' and you're given a window in which to write anything question that can be delivered in 200 characters or less. In addition to a chosen category, tags can be administered to your post-in-progress as well.
Next, you're given the option to allow others free reign for answers they provide, or your can specify set options to be chosen by readers. To bring popular opinion to your comparison, for example. Then you're allowed to specify a time by which you wish to receive an answer. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, or 24 hours, or as much as 7 days. You decide.
New users will find there's nothing at all complex to Defuddle. It's meant to be easy, and relatively quick to satisfy. As the site copy explains, it is "a place to ask questions and make up your mind." It's very linear both function and presentation. And that, I think, is what really makes it an enjoyable service to use.
The puppet will live, but the dream will die. So says Loren Feldman of 1938 Media and the technorati favorite, ShelIsrael.com, a domain now purported to be in transfer to the man who inspired the spoof.
If Feldman's blog post yesterday, written to the effect of an angered end to the real Shel Israel's clash with the puppet master, is to be taken at face value, the message is quite clear: "It's over."
I'm of two minds about this. For one, the journey was quite a laugh, at least for the first several clips. Feldman's portrayal, whether accurate at points or unusual at others, was a hoot for some time. But it seemed to have lost its zing along the way. It was no longer fresh. It grew a little tired. Perhaps an ongoing joke dealt at the expense of an individual whose outrage at the effort was very noticeable can only be pushed so far before the viewership starts to show disinterest and begins to fall off and move to something new.
The plush toy won't be given up, however. As Feldman tells it, "The puppet will live on forever…I just like the little bastard, he makes me and a lot of people smile."
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Start pages come in all shapes and sizes. There is the very simple and straightforward Google.com that many Web users maintain. Others prefer the more general-purpose Yahoo.com domain. Some segments, though, enjoy customizable, widgeted palettes like Netvibes, PageFlakes, iGoogle. That last pick was especially popular with the Mashable crowd, in fact, winning top honors at the inaugural Open Web Awards, held in January.
Alas, another party enters the fold. MySurfPad is its name, and while it is not the most visually appealing item to come about as of late, it is useful. If the color wheel suits, and you're a fan of tabbed categorization, this one might make you stick.
By default, MySurfPad presents you with a variety of components, including a calendar, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Wikipedia search options, a mixed news feed, Weather Channel widget, notepad and calculator. Plus Google Maps and a simple app for bookmarks to finish the front page. Across the top of this set of devices are seven tabs, each with their own purpose. The 'News' option displays - you guessed it - lots of news headlines. 'Email+' runs the gamut of email, instant messaging, as well as MySpace and Facebook connections.
'Tools' will likely go into relative disuse, because, well, how often do you require a currency converter, a stop watch, or a global time tracker? Or for that matter a widget-bound spell checker? Also, the 'Music/TV' section is a bit lacking in real utility as well. The same goes for the 'Fun' tab, in my view. The last option, 'Travel,' might be worth a look, if only for its flight tracker apps.
The site could use some extra refinement, for sure. Attention to detail is requirement in this business, with browser real estate being a precious commodity. MySurfPad's competition vastly exceeds it on that count. Still, according to Waleed B, the site's self-described "chief surf officer," the strength of MySurfPad is its out-of-box variety. Users can edit their own SurfPad, too, so if you don't like the standard setup, you can always pick and choose to suit your preferences. There are north of 200 widgets listed in the site's ranks.
Conventional wisdom says politics is ugly, politics is blood sport. And conventional wisdom is spot on. But the field of play is no longer reserved only for the Washington Beltway. Nor is it the sole domain of London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow or Beijing. Now the YouTube set have ample ammunition as well. Just how much they have in store is key to determining whether we've reached a tipping point in favor of the populist power bequeathed by Google, et al. I'll posit that we have. The table has most definitely turned.
Not entirely, mind you. The lobbyist class is in no way a vanishing breed. They're still very much ingrained in legislative organization and debate. And political power unchecked will inevitably corrupt. So on the whole, if any "change" is to occur, it will likely move at snail's pace. But we are in a very interesting position here today. We now see Google, and other technology companies of similar making, holding substantial weight when it comes to influencing the campaign season. And it is the portfolio billions of dollars large that is the most outstanding indication of Google's heft. That, for all intents and purposes, makes Google - in particular its increasingly powerful video service - a platform virtually unchallengeable by government and those associated with government.
Published today in The New York Times is a piece by Jim Rutenberg, in which he describes independent video producers as having effectively supplanted some advocacy groups, many known by the now infamous "527" moniker, to take the reigns as the drafters and manipulators of deeply impactful messages tossed about the campaign trail in the US, and beyond.
Indeed, the negative connotation of the term "manipulators" (which, just to note is my own, not Rutenberg's) is important to highlight here, because, as with the Web's truth seekers, evasions from fact and the viral promotion of fictions also employ YouTube to great effect. YouTube brings the good with the bad, as it were.
But the mere establishment of YouTube (and its competitors) as a channel by which civilians can learn for themselves very quickly and easily the ways of political practice and discover up close the two-sided monster electioneering has become, surely indicates a shifting of the tide. The ingenious craftwork by professional video producers and amateurs alike has proven with ever greater punch that the virtual democratization of media access on the Web, coupled with the very active trend toward ubiquity of Web services, is now a more or less insurmountable and irreversible reality.
The movement toward the tipping point, specifically here in the U.S., began roughly around the time of the 2004 and 2006 elections. And it generally all began with scandalous captures. One recording, taken by a member of Virginia state senator Jim Webb's 2006 campaign of then incumbent George Allen denigrating loosely the man with the camera, was subsequently pushed to YouTube, where it took on a life of its own.
That is only one of the many videos to get this ball rolling, of course. And while the recipe for the creation of a viral video is not precise and is somewhat amorphous, the fact is that such clips do grow legs and do manage, with an able social networking effort, to surface and flow into the mainstream, where they now have ample opportunity to help direct popular opinion one way or another.
The reason Web video has transformed from a political nuisance to something which requires of candidates and elected officials to dust off the damage control alarm is, as I said earlier, because of the trend toward ubiquitous access of Web services. That is obvious enough. The cat is out of the bag.
But what's critical to point out here is that the non-lobbyist crowd can now compete for eyes and ears with historically vested interests involved in the political situation in and around D.C. That wasn't the case pre-2000. Or even pre-2004.
YouTube has risen to become not just a message box complementary to one-way street that is television. It has become something akin to "Fact-Check Central." Video producers may of course propagate lies and distortions on YouTube just as quickly as the so-called change agents. But one would presume the consumer crowd is not looking for misinformation - unless it is to blacklist the slander. Anyone dealing trash is labeled accordingly. This goes for elements on all sides of the division segmenting Democrats from Republicans from Independents and others.
Internet users instead seem to be latch onto things to which tags of reason and accuracy can sensibly be affixed. And preferably with as little varnish as possible. Call it a simple eagerness to know, if nothing else.
So I'm one to believe that the era of gamesmanship for gamesmanship's sake is all but finished. Yes our heavily filtered ignorance-is-bliss lifestyle as a society is little more than something left for scavengers to pick over and for historians to document and embellish. And that past had its benefits, even if it was something of a dead-end fantasy. What's more, there is a bit of a downside to this feverish drive for "gotcha"-style investigations. Mistakes are made. In spades. Reputations can be irrevocably tarnished if maligned messages manage to flourish in the cloud.
But the free-use platform of YouTube and those of similar ilk acts as an open correctant as well. YouTube has no allegiance to one vantage or another. It's a sparring ground for all sides. Most importantly, it's a sparring ground with no concern for the financial details of its users. Have a thick purse? A thin one? It's all the same. One's content is judged almost entirely by the size of one's audience. With a pool of viewers many millions strong stretched across the globe, there seems to be little room left for the old-style tactics of silence, secrecy, and deception. Which I happen to welcome wholeheartedly. How about you?
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Features, I’ve recently come to realize, can be obstacles. Problems. The more powerful an application is, the more specialized it is, and thus with increased power its intended audience shrinks, and ironically, it becomes more, not less, vulnerable to competition.
Specialization, traditionally, is a good thing. But, as Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist argue in their Netocracy, those who overspecialize will not do very well in the age of the Internet. Want to succeed? Be influential in as many important networks as possible, they argue.
Even in this fast moving age specialization can be ok if you’re a person, but what if you’re a service, catering to thousands or millions of people? Sure, if the conditions around you don’t change much, you can satisfy the needs of a certain group very well, but if you exist in a fluid, everchanging medium such as the Internet, where everything shrinks and expands and overlaps all the time, the power that you offer might work against you in the end.
From this notion a new paradigm has arisen. Less is more. Simplicity is power. Create a solid foundation, and let others build a thousand different houses, each catering to a different need, and you’ll never go out of fashion. Simplicity is the key that unlocks the web. Bear with me.
The Twitter Dilemma
I, as many other authors, have bashed my head against the wall thinking: how is it possible that Twitter remains popular despite their frequent technical problems and the fact that there are other similar services out there which offer more? It is an unprecedented situation: normally, a service with solid competition which has the advantage of not having technical difficulties that prevent their user base from using the service (whether or not Twitter’s competition is better with this regard is debatable, but based on current data anything seems to be more reliable than Twitter) would have been dead and buried ages ago. Twitter, however, endures. Why?
The answer is simple: Twitter belongs to a new breed of services, perhaps accidentally discovered, that win by doing less, not more. It’s a foundation upon which hundreds of new applications were built, yet, in itself, it is little more than an API for a simple one-to-many short message broadcast system. I, myself, have thrown my hands up in frustration and tried to find an alternative I can stick with - Pownce, Plurk, and countless others. Unfortunately, it seems, all these services are too good to be a viable alternative.
Unlocking The Web
How can this be? The web, most experts agree, is a platform - a platform for any service that has to do with information of any kind. Unfortunately for developers, as far as platforms go, it’s a very undefined one; there is no universal API for the Internet. Furthermore, the damn thing changes all the time. Web portals were once huge; now they seem clumsy and cluttered, because many new applications have created more elegant ways to start your online day. If you want to develop an application for the Internet, you must first find a way to channel and organize the information that’ll flow through; if you jump on the wrong train here in the very beginning, your application might be doomed.
Some smart developers have thus began to understand that it’s better to build a very simple service that caters to a very basic need, and slap an API on top, than to try and create a specific, complex service that does a lot right from the start. The first type of service, if executed well, has shown to be very resilient: once it breaks the initial attention barrier, competing against it is practically impossible.
By catering to a basic need, creating a service that satisfies it in a simple way and opening it up through an API, you’ve unlocked, or perhaps deciphered, a small part of the web as a platform. You’ve created a mini platform which everyone is going to use because it’s, simply put, good enough. As long as people have a need to send short messages to other people from wherever they are, Twitter is going to be a highly sought for commodity. Unless someone else makes it even more simple.
Less Is More
Add a couple of features to Twitter and it’s Wordpress. Why is a Wordpress minus a couple of features so popular? You have to stop thinking in the traditional way and adopt the new “less is more” philosophy to understand that.
By far the most popular application that thrives from being simpler than its competitors is Google Search. Remember the way search engines looked before Google? Yahoo, with its unbelievably crowded homepage at the time of Google’s advent was probably the worst offender, but Lycos and others were no better. Google Search was very, very good at what it did, and that’s the reason it became so popular, but even beyond the inner workings of its algorithm it was very difficult to compete with it because the site consisted of almost nothing, sans a text form, a logo and some text. How do you top that? Apparently, no one has come up with the answer to that one, yet.
Another such application is FriendFeed. Having come to the game of lifestream aggregators late, it swept everyone off their feet and competitors like Profilactic and Second Brain have received very little press ever since. This is because, again, it does very little: it takes data from your various social profiles, creates a stream out of it and lets users comment and “like” single items. In fact, it’s eerily similar to Twitter, and now - just like in Twitter’s case - applications that bring new functionality to FriendFeed, like NoiseRiver, have started to appear. Would FriendFeed have done better if they provided this exact functionality from the start? I’m betting no, and here’s why.
Distribution Vs. Complexity
Once upon a time, if you wanted to create a successful application, one of the keys to success was to offer a lot of features your competitors don’t have. Adobe’s Photoshop is one such application. If you need to edit some photos, it’s the best, period, because it has every tool you could possibly need.
But this is the disconnected world we’re talking about. On the web, things change. It’s not only important what you can do; you also want to be able to do it from wherever you want; you want to plug in into other services, you want to work together with other people. Furthermore - and this goes even more for mobile applications and services - on the Internet, complexity is looked down upon. People don’t want big applications that can do everything; they want simple, widgety applications that cater to a specific service.
Partly, this is because complexity makes web applications slow and clumsy. Partly, it is because the attention span of an average Internet user has shortened, and partly, it is because his willingness to learn the nuts and bolts of a complex application has diminished. Most importantly, it is because the Internet constantly changes and it’s really hard to build something big and complex on such shaky grounds.
Is it thus smart to create a lot of small apps, each aimed at a different niche? It’s definitely a sound approach. But I think an even better one is to find the lowest common denominator, an underlying basic need that connects all these various niches, cater to that, open it up and let mashups do the rest. This way, people can choose exactly which features they want to use, and your application becomes a fluid, modular service that can be as simple or as complex as the use wants it to be.
The Magic Formula
Determine a basic need -> Create a service that satisfies it in the simplest way possible -> Open it up.
It sounds simple, but it’s not; determining a basic human need, like the need to share photos or the need to communicate with short text messages is a hit and miss affair. A service like FriendFeed could not have existed 15 years ago; explaining it to someone 30 years ago would sound like science fiction. Yet, today, the need to aggregate all your social networking data in one place seems to be a very important need for many humans. Will it ever be a basic human need, like the need to communicate? I can see the naysayers shake their heads in disgust, but it’s hard to predict what the future will bring. Aggregation and organization of data might play a very big part in our lives really soon.
The other part of the equation is equally elusive. How much is too much? Would Twitter be as successful as it is if it had looked more like Twhirl from the very beginning? Who knows. But I believe now that in many cases it is better to reduce the number of features to a minimum, open the application up via an API, and let the community build on what you have started. This synergy will make your application far more valuable than it would be if it had all these extra features itself.
The few that manage to get this formula right will build mini platforms upon which everything else on the web will be built. By unlocking little parts of the web they will each cater to a different need, and as long as that need is shared by a large number of people, it will be impossible to compete against them. And I’m sure that’s a position everyone wants to be in.
Today's the day. Spain v. Germany. Vienna, Austria. Are you ready? After weeks of footwork by national football teams competing in the Euro 2008 tourney, but two forces remain. They begin their battle for top honors at 2:30 EST.
If you live in the United States, you could turn your telly to ABC or ESPN's Desportes channel to watch the game happen in real time. Or you can spring for some Web video coverage. Choose the latter, and your options are several.
SAI's Michael Learmonth has a fairly solid compendium of links to services broadcasting the game over the Net, with nine URLs to try, including ESPN 360, a media hotspot for sports fans that delivers streams freely to U.S.-based viewers for a variety of national and international events.
Unfortunately, all American viewers won't benefit from ESPN's Web-based coverage, as the network only grants access to certain ISPs. (Some cable companies, as well as Verizon.) So those denied entry will have to go elsewhere.
Some of these sites may not be the most beautifully appointed sources for video. But they'll get the job done. Probably. A few might perform better than others. A number of the most promising looking venues are:
- RAI's Euro 2008 site. (Silverlight install required. And it's in Italian. Need direction on what to click? The "La Diretta" link is where you need to go.)
There are sites like Live Footy and Veetle as well, which require Sopcast, a Windows/Mac/Linux download. Or, if you're familiar with Cyrillic, LiveTV can give you what you need.
Wagers on today's champion, anyone?
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This is a public service announcement:Twitter replies are working! The popular messaging service has brought its core “replies” feature back to life after days of downtime.
Will this be enough to resuscitate the maligned startup and keep you away from the temptations of FriendFeed? Why don’t you head over to Twitter and Tweet your opinion to @mashable …while you still can?!
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MOO.com, maker of the unique and stylish “MiniCards” that hit it big with the Flickr crowd, is going corporate: the company is set to launch standard sized Business Cards.
There’s high demand for the product, the company says; but isn’t bigger…kinda boring? I discuss with the aid of a small horse.
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NBC's online coverage of the Summer Olympic Games is expected to be immense in both the quantity of live and on-demand video. But it appears there will be exceptions made for watching August's events in Beijing through a Web browser.
As David Bauder of the AP describes it, NBC will be offering roughly 2,200+ hours of live competition online. That in addition to live blogging services, as well as 3,000 hours of replays. Quite a lot of of material, yes? Absolutely. More than you could possibly view while maintaining a semi-normal lifestyle.
There is a particularity some sport fans might should be aware of, however. NBC will not offer for computer users live video of any events also delivered live via traditional TV broadcast methods.
So, say you look upon the Olympic schedule and see that cycling or track and field events are occurring in real-time. And they get shown on NBC stations. That means you with your Web browser and requisite Microsoft Silverlight plugin will need to wait until after the statistics come in. Because NBC doesn't want to encroach on its decades-old territory, evidently.
Not to call this inconsistency substandard to NBC's televised coverage, since it's only logical to think NBCOlympics.com will provide a much broader view of competition in China later this summer. But the disallowance of continuous live coverage on the Web, regardless of what is and what is not shown on television in the US, is patently absurd.
Are NBC and its affiliates somehow convinced that a shut-off of live broadcasts over the Web will drive those viewers to turn on their televisions - if they even have them within reasonable distance - to continue consuming the network's feed? A very peculiar assessment of viewers' inclinations indeed.
Of course, viewers aren't likely show popular frustration with NBC for this, unless it is brought to very public attention in the final weeks preceding the games. The sheer volume of video offered via the Web, I suspect, will diminish the impact of any disruptions to Web feeds. Which is quite unfortunate for Olympic fans eager to consume live events by way of their computers.
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Say you've gotten into the routine of changing your Facebook status as you go about your day. It's information that you'd like to keep your friends abreast of. And perhaps they appreciate you for it, too. But manually making the switch is costing you clicks of the cursor better used for other stuff. Like chomping through your email inbox. Really, it seems like time wasted.
If that's the case, and you would simply like to automate your status updates to correspond to a schedule, a developer by the name of Ross Squires has released an application called Automatous to make your Facebook account adhere to the timeline you specify.
Automatous is in "public testing" mode, which requires that, following the application's installation, you will need to submit your email address for approval for the beta trial. My own experience is that approval takes only a short while to complete, so you'll be ready to give it a try in short time. After you've made your way through the confirmation process, scheduling a status update, is as simple as clicking the 'Add New Status' button. Options to pause and remove entries are presented as well.
That's basically the extent of the application's utility. It's entirely intuitive, and it of course recognizes current time, so if you're looking to quickly schedule a status update to activate the very moment you press 'Add', you may. Visually speaking, it as elementary as can be. Apart from it's interactive option icons and the Ads by Google bar alongside the main menu, it is completely no-nonsense.
Why does this particular application get a mention? The supply of Facebook applications released in a given week or month is pretty substantial, so the discretion given to such items is of course strict. But Automatous seems less an application, per se, and almost a natural extension of the network's own options. This is really something I can imagine seeing spring from Facebook's own in-house development team at some point in the future. There are others like Automatous that do considerably more, like Super Status and Status Shuffle. The bareboned construction of Automatous is much more subliminal in function. It more directly competes with Scheduled Status Updater, albeit with an extra touch or two of elegance.
Musicians starring in Web videos is nothing new. John Mayer's comedic attempt on Funny or Die comes immediately to mind. And as far as general Internet startups go, M.C. Hammer is only one of many players. 50 Cent, Nick Lachey, and Kylie Minogue are in the fold as well.
Perhaps the newest name to arrive on the scene, with his own video blog, is the Grammy-winning former FugeePras Michel. Topics to be discussed with viewers? Anything on the artist's mind. Music, movies, politics. No gossip, though. That's out. So world news with some hip-hop flavor rolled in?
For the moment Pras is merely giving an introduction to the weekly production, held under the name Platinum Brand. We'll see what comes this new effort. It almost seems normal now to have famous folk of various levels of success experiment with the cloud-based devices - some of course to better effect than others. The Will Farrell-infused Funny or Die venture being perhaps the most viral of all.
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Incremental improvement is the way by which many Internet startups operate. Updates can be week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, or any mix of the three really. So the news this week that Zenbe, a webmail service now in public beta, which brings multiple inboxes together from many major names, including Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and AOL, has introduced several additions came as a welcome development.
When we reviewed the startup in early May, it already boasted quite an impressive array of features. It even sported Facebook news feed integration. Now it supports Google Talk and Twitter. (Other advances include the capability to pool contacts into unique networks for more convenient correspondence, as well as calendar support for 'webcal://' and 'https://' URL prefixes.)
Zenbe's inclusion this week of support for Google Talk and Twitter is definitely the biggest headline to glean from the service's development. The ability for users to now instant message one another and correspond with friends and followers through Twitter from within the Zenbe environment is a big convenience, and with no advertisements to speak of, Zenbe seems to provide one of the best webmail experiences of any data aggregator of its kind.
The cloud-based clients offered by the giant webmail services are more or less the default choices taken by users. And that won't change much, even taking Zenbe's well-rounded evolutioninto account. Habits are habits. But if anything convinces anyone to switch, it's this new extension group.
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If Rodney Dangerfield were to have left this world prior to BitTorrent's debut, I suspect it might be plausible to assume the man had been reincarnated to consist of code and a mission to peer. Or something less ridiculous sounding, maybe.
BitTorrent is hardly the technical target of governments and copyright-owning corporations and ISPs. But it has played the victim of their data filtration and server disconnection exercises again and again, and to ill effect. Just this past week a story by TorrentFreak emerged describing Malaysia's government as playing part to suspensions of BitTorrent trackers hosted within the country's jurisdiction. BitTorrent truly gets no respect. At least among authorities and big business groups.
You have of course heard these lines repeatedly. To exhaustive degree, I'm sure. Yes, these stories have surfaced far too often for most anybody's liking. Even some of those doing the shafting aren't likely to enjoy a number of their actions' aftereffects. The negatives can in some ways be even more extraordinary than the positives. (Positives being a relative term. Many creative commons proponents, for instance, consider copyright law as its written today more a hindrance for Big Media than a safety valve of sorts.)
What's particularly unappealing about the clash today between advocates of unfettered P2P access and hesitant and mistrustful parties within the anti-P2P circle, is that the technology is moving at a fairly fast-paced motion, while regulators are more or less stagnant. In some ways even counterproductive as far as network related legislation.
For one, burdensome network controls can stifle innovation, possibly delaying the arrival of the moment at which media providers and associate industries can see the financial paradigm of Web-based systems and services turn in their favor, so as to replace old, less efficient production and delivery methods. (Sustaining the infrastructure for CD and DVD releases is not in the interest of studios anywhere in the world.)
Also, having one's name placed opposite that of a popular technology, be it a portable media playing device, like the iPod, or BitTorrent, a facilitator of file transfers that helps to maintain a relatively safe dispersion of Internet traffic in an increasingly media-hungry consumer reality, doesn't gain the good graces of those consumers. It simply triggers disillusionment. Which I imagine results in greatly diminished care among consumers for the long-term heath of music and film studio executives, driving many to pursue of free digital copies with ever greater abandon.
Of course, some abuse leveled against BitTorrent isn't in the sole interest of copyright owners. The technology, after all, makes available a multitude of file types over most any open network on the Web. Some regimes have the basic intent to cease the free flow of information. And that's not necessarily a slap at BitTorrent, per se. Such censorship has more to do with authoritarian paranoia than anything else.
But the majority of practitioners of anti-torrent methods are especially mindful of damage dealt present-day copyright law, and think P2P it must be stopped, so as to give them room to contemplate how to reverse their losses without relinquishing technological control. (One of those ideas, if you recall, has been to require music distributors to offer DRM-free tracks fixed with watermarks. In fact, Apple's iTunes Store was reported to place such stamps on select tracks sold.)
So it bears repeating, even if it entails beating the dead horse deader still, that action against users of BitTorrent is not any way to make progress in the media distribution industry. Instead, employing the protocol to try to play the game better than the non-legal crowd is the way make a qualitative, and thus quantitative impact. Otherwise the market will go nowhere.
Or, to posit an even worse outcome, we might turn to a future yet more saturated with illicit activity. At which point - and this goes for musicians in particular - will have no choice but to attempt more independent promotion and compete for a mostly consumer-managed money pool. Granted, that route is currently proving lucrative for some popular artists. But speaking macro-economically, it would surely be a bumpy road to travel for all involved.
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We told you last month about the planned wrap-up of KateModern, the very successful Internet television show exclusive to the AOL-owned Bebo social network. Well, today's the day that all is put to pasture. KateModern is having its finale, and it's going out with 12 episodes in 12 hours. The countdown to the series close began earlier this morning and will stretch to 7PM EST, with hourly videos releases complemented by live chats with and among the fanbase.
The program's following has been an extensive one. Its production company, EQAL, claims for KateModern an average weekly viewership of about 1m, surpassing the popularity of virtually all other original Web-based programs, including LonelyGirl15, a show also produced by EQAL. While that number has been argued by some to be an overestimate of KateModern's sustained reach, the impact the show has had on the Web media space is certainly a lasting one.
Today's KateModern conclusion, after its 300 episode run, is one which its producers have clearly wished to make absolute this time around. It's been said that the murder mystery has effectively run its course, and to exit on a relatively high note with respect to viewer numbers helps EQAL to see that the show maintains its status as a major hit, start to finish. Studio co-founder Miles Beckett said, "KateModern has reached a critical peak in the storyline and as we complete the cycle, the many threads and mysterious elements will come together with an amazing conclusion."
If you've kept your eyes peeled for new KateModern developments since the start of the season or even the show's debut, you've likely already been made full aware of the day's schedule. But for you casual viewers who've strayed or skipped over the episodic reel, you'll see pressing questions answered, hour by hour this morning, afternoon, and evening.
I can't say I've kept an eye on the KateModern storyline. But if its finale is anything like those provided by the arresting yet frustratingly open-ended ABC program "Lost", well, I would hope it's not, and that all pieces to the puzzle will be revealed. Share your thoughts of KateModern's last broadcasts in the comments!
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So you live in New York City, or perhaps travel Manhattan and outer boroughs frequently. And maybe you're one to buck the mass-transit trend and drive around in your own vehicle. If so, you know how precious a commodity street-side parking spaces can be. If you're in need of guidance as to rules and regulations for various points on various avenues, PrimoSpot can help.
A mash-up involving Google Maps and lots and lots of colored pins, PrimoSpot is only applicable to NYC at the moment, and even then only to Manhattan and Brooklyn. So it can only prove useful to a certain number of American drivers. But even so, it is something which can hold considerable utility for those who would like to know what they're going to find when they get there. Whatever and wherever "there" might be.
Very easily operable, PrimoSpot gives the user an address bar at the top of the window. Input a desired location, and the user is returned a map of the point of reference and any streets in relative vicinity. No paid parking garages are represented. Instead, the service lists street-side spaces only, and only standard parking time information is given. As described by the service, "Alternate side of the street parking suspensions suspensions and holidays are currently not reflected in the times left on a spot." And of course, the availability of spots is not offered either. But even taking all those missing bits and pieces into account, PrimoSpot can help the average driver get a quick look at what's out there. Arriving without a grasp of neighborhood restrictions can make for a hellish search.
PrimoSpot is not new. It was first launched in June 2007. It recently had its re-launch, however, with some 13,665 spots marked, and counting. More are being added continually. And in addition to Manhattan and Brooklyn listings, the service is expected to soon bring into the fold detailed maps for Queens as well as the cities of Philadelphia and Boston. If you’re on the go and in need of assistance, a generic mobile site (http://m.primospot.com/) as well as one fitted for use with an iPhone have been launched.
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Master muff (Latest Update)
Here's the really interesting part though: the web sites where Cavalcade will be shown are being selected by Google's existing contextual algorithms. That means that Google will be able to display the show only to those likely to be interested – in Cavalcade's case "typically young men" according to the Times. 
But the mere establishment of 
as I said earlier, because of the trend toward ubiquitous access of Web services. That is obvious enough. The cat is out of the bag.
MOO.com, maker of the unique and stylish “
That in addition to live blogging services, as well as 3,000 hours of replays. Quite a lot of of material, yes? Absolutely. More than you could possibly view while maintaining a semi-normal lifestyle.
Just this past week a story by 
The program's following has been an extensive one. Its production company, EQAL, claims for KateModern an average weekly viewership of about 1m, surpassing the popularity of virtually all other original Web-based programs, including LonelyGirl15, a show also produced by EQAL. While that number has been argued by some to be an overestimate of KateModern's sustained reach, the impact the show has had on the Web media space is certainly a lasting one.
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