(* Source: Pete Cashmore *) 

Vancouver-based TruePath Technology is launching a service called HotListMaker today, which lets you post your favorite music to your MySpace page. Thanks to a partnership with Canadian music store Puretracks, users have access to a catalog of over 1 million tracks.

Creating a hotlist is fairly easily - you search for the tracks or artists you want to include and hit “add” to see them appear on the widget. You can then add a title, caption and tags for your hotlist and register an account. HotListMaker provides custom codes for MySpace, Xanga, hi5, Piczo, Friendster, Blogger, Frappr, MyYearbook, Evite and FreeWebs (a service you don’t often see listed), plus a choice between html and Flash, and the ability to email your list or share it via RSS. The big letdown here is that you can’t play the tracks on your MySpace page or blog - instead, clicking the “play” link opens a pop-up window for Puretracks, and the player on that site seems to require an additional plugin to work on my computer. Since it’s a Flash widget, it would make more sense to play the tracks on your MySpace page itself, but I assume there must be a licensing issue involved there. Once you’ve posted your hotlist, you can supposedly track the number of views it has received.

HotListMaker lies somewhere between the “picklist” idea of FavoriteThingz and Nabbr, and the growing number of MySpace music players. But most of those players actually let you listen to music on your social networking profile - Sonific, FineTune (a Mashable sponsor), Soundstation, Snocap/MySpace Music, ProjectOpus, Tunefeed from Faces.com (another sponsor), iLike, Last.fm and many others provide players, often with the ability to buy tracks with only a few clicks. Qloud has a widget, too, but that’s only for putting a list of tracks on your page - likewise, remixing services like JamGlue, YourSpins and SpliceMusic let you post remixed tracks to your blog or MySpace page.

This market is getting crowded because it’s such a good idea, but ultimately MySpace may take the lion’s share. Even so, controlling even a fraction of this huge market could lead to success. As for HotListMaker, the fact that you can’t play the tracks without going to another site means it’s less appealing than rival services.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Tara Connolly *)

· Time spent on internet rises across Europe

· TV viewing stagnates as social networking booms

 
 
European internet usage is booming with surfers across the region spending over 11 hours a week - an hour more than last year - sending emails, visiting websites, holding online chats and downloading music, according to new research released today.

The social networking phenomenon, epitomised by sites such as MySpace and Bebo, is also blossoming into a full-blown trend with almost a quarter of European internet users visiting such sites at least once a month. The survey, by the European Interactive Advertising Association, also shows that while web usage is on the rise, television viewing has stagnated across Europe this year.

The Mediascope Europe study gives one of the most detailed pictures of how the internet is becoming a part of people's daily lives. The survey, which examined the online habits of over 7,000 people in 10 European countries, shows that 45% of internet users go online every day of the week.

Daily usage is particularly high among the 16-24 year old age group, with 53% of those in this category who have web access, going online every day. Men also use the web much more than women with 51% of male web users accessing the internet daily compared with just 38% of women.

The average European internet user spends 11 hours and 20 minutes online each week, up from 10 hours and 15 minutes last year, an increase of 11%. Denmark leads the pack with Danes spending 12 hours 40 minutes a week online, while of the 10 countries surveyed, Germany is the laggard on 10 hours and 20 minutes. The UK, where the average user accesses the internet five days a week, is firmly in mid-table with people spending 11 hours and 20 minutes on the web a week.

On average, European internet users access the web on more than five days a week; 5.4 days to be exact. That is up from 5.2 days last year and 4.9 days in 2004. That growth is in stark contrast, however, to the stagnating growth in TV viewing. In 2004 viewers watched TV on average six days a week, that grew to 6.2 days a week last year but viewing has not grown this year.

The survey also looked at when people access the internet. From 6am to 10am the majority of European internet users prefer to listen to the radio or read a paper. But that picture inverts dramatically as the day wears on. From 5.30pm to 9pm, three-quarters of web users are watching TV but almost as many are accessing the internet - suggesting many are doing both.

The growth in fast internet access, or broadband connections, across Europe has opened up a wealth of new multi-media services to internet users who until recently mostly used the web to send emails. Downloading a film or TV programme has been done at least once a month this year by 17% of internet users, compared with 13% last year while almost a third of internet users listen to radio once a month over the web, up from 24% last year.

But it is the growth in social networking sites that is perhaps the most marked change. From a standing start last year, when usage was not large enough to register as a separate category, social networking sites are now accessed by 23% of online Europeans at least once a month. Of the key 16- to 24-year-old age group, 32% visit social networking sites at least once a month.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Piers Fawkes *)

We think The Viral Factory just made the audience numbers up for some publicity, but it's a interesting snapshot of modern culture: here's a break down of the top 10 viral videos of all time that has been published in the UK Times:

1 Star Wars Kid (viewed 900 million times)

>2 Numa Numa (700m)

3 One Night in Paris (400m)

4 Kylie Minogue: Agent Provocateur (360m)

5 Exploding Whale (350m) 

6 John West Salmon Bear Fight (300m)

7 Trojan Games (300m)

8 Kolla2001 (200m) 

9 AfroNinja (80m) 

10 The Shining Redux (50m) 

Why do 900m people tune in to watch this teenager? - World - Times Online

Posted by brian tiong at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Video Games Live is an immersive concert event featuring music from the most popular video games of all time. Top orchestras & choirs perform along with exclusive video footage and music arrangements, synchronized lighting, solo performers, electronic percussionists, live action and unique interactive segments to create an explosive entertainment experience! It’s great mash-up between music and videogaming. Here is a short video of their amazing show.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Ozgur Alaz *)

Ziki is an online identity site where members gather all their personal information and digital content published over the Internet (blogs, photos, podcasts, videos...) on one page. Recently, Ziki buys advertising campaigns on behalf of its members on Google, Yahoo and MSN. They say “Ziki sponsors your name on Google, Yahoo and MSN for free”. Here is what they say about campaign:

People are searching for you on the net. We want to make sure they find the right information first! Your Ziki is your personal web page to tell about yourself and assemble your digital life. So we thought, what’s better than getting your Ziki listed at the top of the search results page to control what people find when “googling” your name?

It’s also a cool way to advertise Ziki. Ziki users are usually an influencer people who write a blog and create contents. Sponsoring them means reaching Ziki users own audience, too.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Allison Mooney *)

Wired did a useful comparison of music recommendation sites recently, but it left out the newest kid on the block. Goombah, just launched joins several other services —namely last.fm, Pandora, Qloud , and iLike. Goombah is similar to its predecessors in that it uses iTunes to make recommendations. But whereas Last.fm and Pandora (now aiming for that golden oldie demo) generate radio stations, it compiles a playlist of songs you might like. Unlike Qloud and  iLike, it bases its decisions on your entire library, rather than just your recently played songs or ones you search.

One helpful feature is the adjustable settings tool, which tweaks your recommendations (I covered up my old Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos albums when they looked like a Lilith fair set list.) You can sample each, then click to purchase at iTunes, Amazon or Napster.

Goombah

Posted by brian tiong at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Yahoo News *)

LONDON (Reuters) - The rise of high-speed Internet and the explosion in online video content is fuelling a widespread decline in the number of people watching television according to a worldwide study by Ofcom.

Alongside tech-savvy younger generations watching traditional TV channels on their PC or laptop, instant messaging, blogging, social networking sites such as MySpace and user generated content sites including YouTube are driving more and more to ditch old fashioned sit-and-watch viewing habits.

Aided by the increased choice on-line, users are switching off the television and changing the way they consume media by tailoring what they watch to their personal tastes.

"Rapidly converging technologies and intense competition between providers are transforming the global communications sector," said Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards.

Ofcom said the Netherlands (58 percent), Sweden (45 percent) and Japan (44 percent) had the highest percentage of their populations connected to high speed broadband, while China led the world in the percentage of people watching music videos and television programs over broadband.

Results showed that 76 percent of Chinese broadband users watch downloadable or streaming music video clips while 70 percent watch TV over broadband.

A separate study by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) revealed that online usage was closely linked to broadband penetration. It found broadband penetration was up 14 percent across Europe year-on-year with Europeans now spending over 11 hours a week online.

The Ofcom report showed advertisers have been quick to recognize the booming demand for online content with Internet advertising now attracting almost 10 percent of total advertising spending in the UK.

The Ofcom study found that the British were the most prolific downloaders of music while making phone calls over the Internet was most popular in France.

The study also concluded that Internet access boosted radio audiences.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: DMW *) 

A mobile-based dance game from Square Enix will soon feature Destiny’s Child, a collaborative play involving both Sony BMG and Music World Entertainment. The game, called "Destiny’s Child Groove," is scheduled to launch in the United States this winter across all major carriers.

Group members Beyonce Knowles, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams are all part of the action, and gamers will be challenged to test their dancing skills against the trio. A collection of well-known tracks from the group will be central to the game, including "Survivor," "Bug A Boo," "Say My Name" and "Lose My Breath."

Square Enix will reveal more details about the game as the launch date approaches. Music World Entertainment manages a number of entertainment and business properties, many of which are closely tied into Destiny’s Child and Beyonce Knowles. Square Enix is the producer behind mega-hits like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

YouTube and other online video sites are stealing viewers away from TV in the UK, according to a report by the BBC today. 43% of online video viewers said they watch less TV as a result of YouTube and similar sites, while 20% of those say they watch “a lot less”. Only 3% watch more TV than they did a year ago, while 54% watch the same amount. Three quarters of these viewers watch more online video than they did a year ago. However, it’s worth noting that these are the stats for those who watch video online at least once a week - 67% of the UK population don’t watch online video at all, and don’t plan to within the next year. Unsurprisingly, it’s young people who are leading the way: 28% of 16-24 year-olds watch online video at least once a week.

It’s tempting to say that this contradicts the experience of CBS: they saw more viewers as a result of the YouTube effect. But the obvious difference is that CBS have actually uploaded their clips to YouTube, and have their own CBS channel - you can’t expect YouTube users to be driven to your content if you’re not promoting it in any way. It seems likely that while the number of viewers to CBS shows has risen, those US networks that don’t promote their content have seen no difference. The BBC has some great content that would be perfect for YouTube, Metacafe, iFilm, Bebo and the rest: a talk show along the lines of Letterman, the automotive show Top Gear, plus plenty of comedy sketches and an almost infinite supply of archived content. Clearly, putting that content online could reverse the trend.

The major UK channels - the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 - have pledged to put their content online next year, but I suspect they’ll do that on their own sites, rather than embracing YouTube. What they’ve yet to realize is that they’re in the content business, not the distribution business: it doesn’t matter where your shows are aired, so long as you get a cut of the ad revenue (and yes, this means evolving the business model of the BBC, which is currently paid for by UK residents).

Update: see also this eMarketer report, which suggests that YouTube users are older than many would assume. However, we’ve seen in the past that measuring the age of users is tough - are most MySpace users really over 35? Mashable Labs, which simply recorded the reported age of users, says that 20% of YouTubers are 35 or older, and the average age is 27.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WAYN, a UK-based site that claims to be the world’s largest travel and lifestyle social network, announced today that they’ve raised $11 million in Series A funding from a group of investors led by Esprit Capital Partners. A number of angel investors have also piled in: most notably, Brent Hoberman, co-founder of LastMinute.com. LastMinute went public in 2000, and was acquired by Travelocity last year for $1.07 billion. Also among the investors: the co-founder of Jagex, which runs the popular online game RuneScape. The initial investment came from the founder of Friends Reunited, which is like a UK version of Classmates.com.

WAYN stands for “where are you now?”, and they claim to have 7 million users - up to 35,000 more join every day (650,000 last month). They plan to use the money to expand their technical team, which is based in Poland, add rich media and roll out new features.

I took WAYN for a spin today, and it’s certainly an interesting effort. Like many of these fast-growing sites, it insists on importing your email address book, to the extent that it’s virtually impossible to skip this step - that could explain some of the reported growth in user numbers. Users have profiles pages that can be edited ala Netvibes or Pageflakes - you drag and drop the elements and change their colors. You can also choose from a range of custom skins (like on Bebo), although there doesn’t seem to be the kind of CSS editing that would allow you to import MySpace layouts. Nonetheless, some users have figured out how to embed videos from YouTube. As for travel-specific features, you can mark locations on a map, edit the WAYN list (a wiki guide to locations), write blog entries related to a specific location and so on. The business model is a combination of ads and paid accounts: upgrading your account costs $2.99 per month, and provides unlimited messaging, advanced search, 10MB of picture storage and the ability to see who’s visiting your profile.

I wouldn’t say that WAYN is technically astounding, but what makes these sites valuable is a large user base. Provided a good proportion of those 7 million users are active, the growth curve should continue.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FriendsTribe, which launches today in invite-only beta, is a mobile social network from New York-based Luxinteract Inc. The service works everywhere in the US, they say, since it relies on text messaging. Among the features: tag your favorite venues (restaurants, clubs), upload images and video clips, create events and invite your friends from your cellphone.

What’s more, there’s a keyword system that lets you request information from the service: send an SMS message to 87130 and include words like “GROUP” (send message to group), “AT” (send your location to friends), “GET” (get the location of your friends) or “BLOG” to interact with Friendstribe. If you forget any of these keywords, you can text “KEYWORD” to see the full list. Text messaging is the smartest way to create mobile social networks, since it ensures there aren’t any compatibility issues - these keyword systems are becoming common. Another neat feature allows you to set a radius for the messages you receive - only receive messages from friends who are within a 15 mile radius, for instance.

On the site itself, users have profile pages with a photo, a network of friends, a collection of their recent photos and videos and even friends of friends. You can also explore photo galleries of certain locations - photos of New York, for instance, are sent via SMS to a special email address. Likewise, you can explore venues and see them plotted on a Google Map, read blog entries and browse events. Further down the line, they plan to add band pages, ala MySpace Music or Bebo Bands. Perhaps there would also be an overlap with Mozes or Broadtexter, which allow fans to get updated on their favorite bands via text messaging.

Friendstribe is off to a good start - the basic features are there, the interface is acceptable, but they’ve yet to add anything that really makes them stand out from the crowd. It’s also worth asking whether mobile social networks should really be standalone, or whether they’d be better as an addition to an existing network. MySpace Mobile, for instance, is said to be ramping up over the next few months, while YouTube Mobile is expected in 2007.

For these new networks, the two options seem to be: build a large audience in a certain locale and get acquired based on the size of that audience or (more likely) get acquired by an existing service that wants to integrate mobile into its offering. Unlike web-based social networks, however, mobile socnets are still relatively scarce, meaning that there’s less competition.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Piczo has always tried to be a more private social network designed for connecting with those you already know - it’s like Multiply for teen users who want to build their first website (particularly teen girls). But that causes a problem: unless you already have a lot of friends on the site, it’s hard to browse pages, find new people and get inspiration for your own page design. Today I hit the Piczo homepage and discovered a new feature that aims to change that: “Rate My Site” is like StumbleUpon for Piczo pages, allowing users to rate Piczo sites using a web-based toolbar and have their own sites ranked. This system is pretty simple: the site loads in an iFrame, and you can rate it out of ten stars. It also provides information about the site you just rated - like HotorNot, you’re told how your rating compared to the average.

In a system that’s reminiscent of webrings (remember those?), users can opt in to be part of the Rate My Site system and display a “Rate My Site Meter” on their page. This has a customizable design, and displays your rating and the number of votes your site has received. What’s more, there’s a rankings page that lists the top 150 sites. This idea is a great compromise: it opens up Piczo, while still keeping it secure for those who don’t want to share. Meanwhile, features like comments and guestbooks are disabled when users randomly stumble upon sites. We can expect Piczo’s pageview stats to increase substantially as users become addicted to this random browsing.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The Nokia Music Mixer has been launched last week, it’s available as part of the XpressMusic campaign that accompanies the launch of the Nokia 5300 phone. I’m particularly interested in the music mixer. Nokia once again sets the tone for youngsters enjoying the remix culture.

Anyone can remix tracks to their taste by adding new sound clips and effects in the Nokia Music Mixer. You can start by choosing the loop set of your choice, move clips with drag and drop function to create your own unique mixes and add effects to it. There are R’n'B, Dancehall, HipHop, Reggae, Elektro, Chill, Trance, House, Techno, Disco, Funk, Beatbox and more loop sets to choose from with basic rhythm/bass/guitar/keyboard melody lines and effects to play with. The quality of the loop sets is great, I’m sure anyone can create a cool tune or mix according their taste.

 

Now the fun starts People who own a Nokia phone model supporting AAC can download their mixed ring tones to their phone. The mixes are sent directly to your mobile phone via WAP link (works international). Three mixes a day, free-of-charge can be downloaded per user.

Nokia Club members can take part in the Mix competition and win a new Nokia 5300 XpressMusic phone. More info at the Music Mixer website.

 

 

Posted by brian tiong at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Pete Cashmore *)

The business model for remixing sites is now abundantly clear: stage promotional contests and get users to remix new music and movies. UK-based YourSpins, the music remixing site reviewed on Mashable back in May, has launched a contest this week to remix “Bombs” by Faithless - the prize is one of 10 copies of their newly released “Forever Faithless” album. The competition ends on December 17th. The way they set up these competitions is pretty neat - they create a special branded remixer that includes the album art, and you can buy your mix as a ringtone or save it in your account. They’ve already staged a number of similar contests, and while I’m not sure that any money has changed hands here, the YourSpins platform will become more desirable as they continue to build the user base. What’s more, YourSpins just scored another great deal today: an agreement with IE Music to put the YourSpins’ remixing tools on artist sites like robbiewilliams.com.

On a related topic, SpliceMusic began a competition earlier this month to remix the soundtrack from The Sims 2. It’s a collaboration with EARS and Nettwerk Records, and entries close on November 31st - the winner will have their remix used on the soundtrack of the next Sims game.

It’s hard to find any remixing and karaoke sites that haven’t pursued this strategy: Bix.com, SingShot, Eyespot, Jumpcut and the rest have all got promotional contests running. Newcomer Jamglue will likely follow a similar path. As analysts have been pointing out for years, the future of advertising is about engaging your customers as co-creators, rather than expecting them to passively consume.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

powered by ODEO

Podcast on remix culture, copyright & creative commons. An Interview with Prof. Lawrence Lessig from Stamford University

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Posted by brian tiong at 06:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Steve Rubel *) 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Jeff Squires *)

Sick of being “that guy?”  The underdressed, camera toting dude with a huge fluorescent TOURIST sign over your head?  Fear no more, social networking site Tripmates has got you covered. 

Tripmates' interactive travel community provides its users with the needed tools to beat the tourist wrap and get the inside scoop on travel destinations around the world.

Often finding that travel guides are outdated and inaccurate, founders Sam Rogoway and Emily Dahlberg felt the need to create an up-to-date, candid and interactive social travel network aimed at young and hip travelers who want to be "in the know before they go."

The site enables members to find a travel mate to split costs with, meet locals, get current and candid information about what to do and where to do it, and share travel blogs, reviews, photos, and even videos with their less fortunate friends stuck at home. 

While the site seems to be selling itself as a tool for planning your trip in advance, we think it’s ideal for the backpacker on the go, taking it day by day.  So often trips are planned on the fly and decisions are made based on word of mouth recommendations, so it only seems natural for social networking sites to get the travel bug too.

Tripmates

Posted by brian tiong at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Waxy *) 

Flickr is publishing an amazing concordance of stats about the cameras used by its members: which cameras are popular, which are gaining, and so on. You can also browse photos by camera to see which ones please you most: this is the world's best consumer-guide for cameras. Link (via Waxy)

Posted by brian tiong at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Grouper, the video sharing site that was bought by Sony for $65 million (see Sony-Grouper), has launched a promotion for Seinfeld. Just like their new Screenbites channel, which promoted Sony’s movies, they’re giving away free Seinfeld clips, trailers and bonus material, and encouraging users to share that material on blogs and MySpace. The content is a mix of new stuff and classic episodes like “The Soup Nazi,” “The Sponge” and “The Rye”. There’s also a specially-created Seinfeld section, although these clips can’t be posted elsewhere. And starting at 12:01AM EST today, they’re offering an “exclusive first-look” at new episodes of “Sein-Imation”, where classic Seinfeld scenes are rendered in stick-figure cartoons.

The aim, of course, is to promote the Seinfeld Season 7 DVD - they’re providing 15 clips from this season, plus commentaries, bloopers and the DVD trailer. The plan is to expand this area of the site to include previous seasons. The DVD is released today from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment - it’s another example of how Sony is using Grouper to promote their content and drive more sales. The one-click ordering through Amazon is also a nice touch as Christmas approaches.

Posted by brian tiong at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sydney-based FameWave, which will feature in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday (today, if you’re in Australia), is a new video sharing site for global talent contests. Users upload clips, and viewers vote on them to find the top performers in various categories. If you’re aware of Bix.com, SingShot and the Yahoo Talent Show, there should be no surprises here: the space is hot, and lots of new contenders are jumping in. FameWave wants to be a bridge between performers and talent agencies, but it seems that YouTube and Bix.com are already serving that need to some extent - YouTube stars are being signed by the likes of NBC, and some US talent agencies have even admitted that they’re actively hunting for talent on video-sharing sites.

Aside from staging contests, FameWave wants to differentiate itself by sharing revenue with users - for every 20,000 views your video receives, you’ll get US$100. That’s not a new idea either: Flixya, eefoof, Guba, Revver and established players like Metacafe are starting to pay users (see Producer Rewards). Even Google Video are looking into rev share in a limited form.

The site debuted in October, and they’re reporting 1300 unique visitors and 80,000 page views so far this month - not exactly stellar figures. The reason for that may be some fairly obvious mistakes. First off, they’re using Windows Media Player for the clips - even Microsoft acknowledged that Flash is the way to go when they decided to use it for their YouTube clone, MSN Soapbox (apparently MSN Soapbox does use Windows Media if you access it on Internet Explorer, but otherwise you see Flash). The other issue is no ability to embed the player on MySpace, Friendster, Piczo, Multiply, AIM Pages and the hundreds of other sites that could offer a distribution platform for the clips. If they even want an outside chance of competing in this space, they’ll need to fix those issues.

Posted by brian tiong at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Pete Cashmore *)

Zemble, a mobile social networking startup based in Downtown Los Angeles, launches today. Founded by Doug Ludlow and Johann Moonesinghe in March 2006, they’ve raised $90,000 in a seed round, and they’re considering whether to take on venture capital.

Zemble’s core feature is easy text messaging for a group. The Flash demo on the site conveys this better than a written explanation, but here goes. Let’s say you wanted to arrange an event among friends - you log on to Zemble.com and create a new “Zemble” by entering a topic (eg. “concert”) and description and selecting which friends you want to receive the messages. You then write a text message on your phone and send it to concert@zemble.com - that message is sent to everyone you selected, and you can then fire a series of messages back and forth. To reply to everyone on the Zemble, you put an exclamation mark (!) in front of your message. Otherwise, your reply is just sent to an individual. All the Zembles you’re subscribed to appear on the web interface, and you can unsubscribe from them with one click. And if you want to stop receiving Zembles temporarily, you can send a text to hold@zemble.com to hold your Zembles for 12 hours.

They’re doing some neat things with the Zemble site, too - as well as creating a profile page and building a network of friends, you can choose from around 80 profile skins, embed videos from YouTube and link to your pages on other sites. Soon, they’ll also add support for phones that don’t allow you to send SMS messages, advanced customization of profiles (adding widgets, designing your own theme) and an AJAXy events calendar that will send out event reminders. Other upcoming features include the ability to join groups based around certain interests, and mobile alerts like news stories, weather updates and sports scores.

Mashable hasn’t covered every startup in the mobile space, but some noteworthy alternatives for group text messaging include Mozeo, Kiboze (reviewed by SomewhatFrank), 3jam and Twitter, a product from the podcasting service Odeo. Dodgeball is similar, too. Although comparisons are tempting, I don’t see much difference between these services right now - apart from the fact, perhaps, that Twitter allows you to make messages public. That’s not a feature I’d use, but it does make browsing the site a lot more fun. The verdict on Zemble, meanwhile, is that they’re off to a good start.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New York - CBS said on Tuesday that the more than 300 video clips it has uploaded to YouTube have been viewed a total of 29.2 million in a little over a month. The CBS Brand Channel on YouTube currently claims more than 20,000 subscribers, and averages 857,000 views per day. The most popular CBS programming on YouTube includes clips of "NCIS," "Late Show with David Letterman," "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and "The Early Show." CBS added that TV ratings for Letterman are up 5% over the past month.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Christian Dodd *)

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(* Source: Chroma *)

Posted by brian tiong at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Chris Portella *)

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(* Source: Daniel Modell *)

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(* Source: Jackie Huba *)

There are pockets of them in companies everywhere: the blogging doubters. CK over at CK's Blog polled bloggers about the single greatest point of value they have received from blogging. (Ben and I both participated.)

She incorporated the results of her poll into a cool PDF whose cover is this montage.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: MIT AdLab *)

Posted by brian tiong at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A (viral - you decide) video from New Zealand, for Tiger Beer (check out their site, it's worth a visit)

Posted by brian tiong at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nike just launched a new site for their golf balls. Nike Juice 312. It shows cool daily experiments (including men in white coats) in which the strength of the new balls is demonstrated. This campaign follows the recent success of the similar Will It Blend video's from Blendtec. Are we seeing the birth of a new trend?

Posted by brian tiong at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Paul Tan *)

The social networks around music is splintering... Have a look at some of the web2.0 tools available to users today. 

"Zune, in case you haven’t been following it, is Microsoft’s “iPod killer”, and they claim to be making music more social, sharable and wireless."

"Splice, which is currently in beta, is a very cool music remixing community. Combining a social network with a neat mixing tool and a sweet design, it’s one of the most original new sites."

"Jamglue which is currently in private beta, is another social network crossed with an online music remixing tool. You can upload tracks with Creative Commons licensing, remix them using a neat web-based application, share them with the community and repost them to blogs and other sites (the embed code is a combination of Flash and html, so it should work anywhere)."

and a few more here... 

 
The ability to get your own version of the code - complete with a custom color scheme - from within the widget itself. They generate unique IDs for these players so they know how many are out there and how they were propagated. 

"SayNow provides a widget for bands to post to their MySpace page that enables fans to record a voice message. Once they’ve left their first message, fans automatically receive updates from the artist via voice or text messaging."

Posted by brian tiong at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Steve Rubel *)