Video startup VMIX is helping so-called old media get a piece of the action in the user-generated video movement. The company on Monday said it was providing technology that allows readers of The San Diego Union-Tribune to post their videos to the newspaper’s web site. The site recently began allowing users to upload videos of such local happenings as Little League games, school board meetings, and road accidents.
Source: Alexandra Berzon, Red Herring, April 9, 2007
Real-Time Map Monitors Disasters Across the Globe
AlertMap is a real-time display of the catastrophic accidents, violent weather and epidemic outbreaks unfolding across the globe. It’s a serious service staffed by serious people dedicated to the idea that accurate information can prevent and mitigate disasters. The ultimate goal of AlertMap is crisis omniscience: “to monitor and document all the events on the Earth which may cause disaster or emergency,” according to the group’s mission statement. To that end, AlertMap tracks some 600 online sources around the clock, creating what they believe is the world’s most comprehensive and accurate emergency resource.
Source: Aaron Rutkoff, The Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2007 (Paid registration required)
The race for speedy online donations: Clinton in first place, Obama dead last
The 2008 presidential campaign is shaping up to be the first to be widely played out in the Web 2.0 world, where Web site performance may play a critical role in campaign fund-raising. Based on campaign sites up and running today, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) will be able to fill her campaign’s coffers much faster than fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), according to a report released today that measured the performance of the online donation features of the sites. At 33 seconds, Obama’s online donation process was 10 times slower than Clinton’s and the slowest of the 17 sites surveyed.
Source: Heather Havenstein, Computerworld, April 11, 2007
Meet the metaverse, your new digital home
The Internet in 2016 will be an all-encompassing digital playground where people will be immersed in an always-on flood of digital information, whether wandering through physical spaces or diving into virtual worlds. That was the general picture painted in a draft report obtained by CNET News.com that summarizes the conclusions of several dozen pundits who met at the first Metaverse Roadmap Summit last May to prognosticate the “pathway to the 3D Web.”
Source: Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com, April 13, 2007
Soon we may all have an online double
This is the vision of Liesl Capper, whose Sydney-based RelevanceNow! last week launched an early version of MyCyberTwin, a service that allows you to create and hone an online version of yourself. Your cyber twin will then chat on your behalf on instant messaging, your blog or your MySpace page. Eventually much of what you do online will be left to your cyber double, indistinguishable from the real thing (you). As Ms. Capper puts it: “You can be you, even when you’re not you.” Your first reaction to this news might be to ask: “Forget instant messaging and stuff — could I send my cyber twin out to work while I stay in bed?” To which the answer would be: not yet.
Source: Jeremy Wagstaff, The Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2007 (Paid registration required)
SpeedBit’s Incredible Shrinking Download
An Israeli startup called SpeedBit says it has devised a solution that can dramatically accelerate video downloading over the Net–potentially opening the door to much wider use of the technology. SpeedBit, based in Herzliya and Haifa, plans to roll out its new video accelerator by Apr. 19. The technology is a work in progress, with constant improvements eked out as the company devises new ways to perk up performance. Already, says co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Idan Feigenbaum, SpeedBit has managed to shrink the download time for a full-length feature to about 40 minutes over a 5 Megabit-per-second (Mbps) Internet connection. At the higher speeds available in some countries, that could be slashed to 20 minutes or less.
Source: Neal Sandler, BusinessWeek Online, April 11, 2007
CDs, chocolate, and cigarettes dumped in favour of phones
The latest survey of how da youth uses mobile phones, due to be released soon, shows that European youngsters will get their first phone around the age of 8, and will sink $28,000 into the device during their lifetime. Today’s young people are spending eight times more on telephony than music. Up to 20 per cent of their disposable income goes on communications and associated services, leading to a rapid decline in sales of CDs, chocolate, and cigarettes — for better or worse.
Source: Bill Ray, The Register, April 15, 2007
