Startup Watch: Weblo (A Social Network For Speculators)

It's official. The domainers have taken over the asylum. Next week, a new social network/ virtual world called Weblo will launch where members can buy digital real estate (including cities and states), manage celebrity fan pages, and own Weblo domains (that only exist within the social network). Each piece of real estate is tied to an actual property in the real world—Buckingham Palace, the Taj Mahal, your house.

Rumor Mill: Apple iPhone-Cingular Deal?

Will the much lusted-after Apple iPhone finally show it's pretty little face in early 2007? ThinkSecret predicts an exclusive launch with Cingular after the holidays. (Note: image on right is just a fake mockup).

BTW, Apple launching an iPhone by January 12, 2007 is one of the events we are trading at BizPredict. Last time I checked, the crowd was giving that a 62.5 percent probability of happening. If you think the probability is higher, register for a free account and buy that event at $62.50 a share. It pays out at $100 if it turns out to be true. It's all play money, but you can build your reputation as a business prognosticator.

Yahoo Buys Web Video Editing Startup

Adding to its arsenal of Web 2.0 startups, Yahoo just bought Jumpcut. This gives Yahoo a whole new Web-based set of video remixing tools.

Gizmo Project for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

GizmoProject is like Skype, in that you can call other Gizmo users for free and their PC client has instant messenger functionality, but it gets better.

Viliv P2 Hands-On

Navigadget gives us a hands-on preview of the Viliv P2. Just to recap, this player supports MPEG-1/2/4, H.264, DivX, WMV 7/8/9, XviD, MP3, WMA, OGG, AC-3, and WAV formats. It’s powered by an AMD processor (400MHz) and offers 60GB of storage space. Other features include a 4.3-inch widescreen LCD display, GPS receiver (optional), and USB 2.0 connectivity. Video after the jump.

PodTech.net

PodTech is on the air, on the ground, and on the go, bringing to you fresh, defining voices in digital lifestyle, innovation, and thought leadership from frontline events, newsmakers, and experts.

Fuji Xerox Announces Power-Saving E-Paper

Fuji Xerox has announced a prototype electronic paper called "E-Paper Visual Index Card." The ultra-thin e-paper reduces electrical consumption because it does not need electricity to maintain its display configuration. The e-paper is made of photoconductivity seats that contain an LCD layer, and is expected to come out next year. :: Story on CNet.

More on e-paper at Wikipedia.

Advice For Those Trying To Create The Next YouTube Killer

Everyone is looking for a YouTube killer and the truth is that nobody is going to find one! YouTube holds the market share and for the foreseeable future will continue to hold it. If you want to post a video you should visit YouTube or one of the many "YouTube Killers" out there. If you are interested in editing and mixing videos then visit eyespot.

Details Emerge Concerning Microsoft's So-Called iPod Killer

Microsoft's Argo device is reportedly being developed within the Xbox group under the leadership of Xbox co-founder J Allard. The device is expected to go on sale during the 2006 holiday season and will go head to head with Apple's iPod.

Apple Rumored to be Working on Talking iPod

According to a patent filing, Apple is billing the talking-iPod technology as a safety feature that will eliminate the need for eye-to-iPod contact in settings, such as driving a car or walking across a street, that require full attention.

Firefox 2.0 Beta Set to Launch This Week

Samir Bhavnani, director of research at Current Analysis, downplayed the new features in Firefox 2.0, saying users might not see a whole lot of difference between 2.0 and earlier versions of the browser. "A lot of changes are background changes, which are security in nature," he said.

How Google Works


Google is more than just a leading search firm. It's a pioneer that may be definining information management for the next generation of Web-centric businesses.

YahooLocal adopts microformats

Upcoming.org's Andy Baio discusses a better way of browsing.

More about microformats.

Netvibes - Personal Homepage


Netvibes, a project started in France by Florant Fremont, is the latest web-app based on the idea of personalized homepages and like some others (like Start and Google’s personal homepage), it is powered by some nicely developed Ajax. Their goal: The aim of it is to provide a place on the internet where you can set just the content you like, a super easy way of building your personnalized homepage, available anywhere, anytime. No registration is needed, however if you want to access your page from another computer you’ll be able to do it by registering with your email address and a password.

Addtional links:
Netvibes development blog
Netvibes API documentation
Netvibes Ecosystem (official list of modules, feeds, iCal files, and tabs)

Yahoo gives One.org a Web 2.0 upgrade.

As part of an employee volunteer program, Yahoo has upgraded the Web site of a prominent charity. Read here.

eBay dives into Web 2.0

eBay, arguably the original Web 2.0 company, is latching onto the newfangled 2.0 stuff. It has announced eBay Wiki, with service hosted by JotSpot. It's intended to allow members to offer their own expertise on any eBay topic they know about, and for people to find answers to questions that eBay itself may not have anticipated. That's on top of eBay Blogs, also announced today, that let members create their own blogs to promote their business or indulge their collectible passion. They're both naturals for a site that has rightly prided itself on enabling a community to be formed around commerce.

Riya supersizes plan: will become a "visual" search engine

Riya, the Silicon Valley photo recognition start-up, is expanding its ambition: It wants to become a full-fledged "visual" search engine.

The move was signaled today by chief executive Munjal Shah, who told us in a phone call that he has radically transformed the company in recent days to go after this new goal. It will take about three months to crawl the entire Web, collect images and then process them to identify their various qualities so that they are searchable, he said.

More here.

Video start-up One True Media lands $5 million from Kleiner Perkins

One True Media is a new Silicon Valley start-up (Redwood City) that is offering video creation tools, and wants to be the next video-sharing company. There are dozens of competitors, so this is a long shot.

Yahoo Hack Day

Yahoo has had a a couple of regional “Hack Days”, which are day long events where engineers stop everything they are doing and just build stuff that they think is cool. The idea was first popularized by Jot last year, and a number of companies have picked up on the idea as a great way to stoke innovation and creativity in a semi-organized way. The goal? Take something from idea to prototype in 24 hours.

Today at noon, however, Yahoo got serious about Hack Days by making it Yahoo-wide. Every Yahoo engineer is invited to participate, and other employees are joining in as well. Anyone with an idea is encouraged to gather a team up and spend a day coding. Tomorrow (Friday) at noon, the hacking stops and everyone will get together to review what’s been built.

The effort is being led out of Bradley Horowitz’s product strategy group, with Chad Dickerson and Caterina Fake organizing the event.

(Article from TechCrunch)

Where 2.0 Conference: June 13-14

Everything Happens Somewhere. Be there when it happens here. The Where 2.0 Conference brings together the people, projects, and issues leading the charge into the location based technological frontier.