Posted 11/20/09 at 08:21:54 AM by Paul Lilly

YouTube's reign as the No. 1 online video site doesn't appear to be in jeopardy, but among the also-rans, Facebook now ranks as the third most popular portal for viewing video on the Internet, according to Nielsen's VideoCensus report.

YouTube leads the way with 6.6 billion streams and just shy of 106 million unique visitors in October, leaving the real battle to be fought for second place. As it stands, the No. 2 spot belongs to Hulu, which served up 632.6 million streams and recorded 13.4 million unique visitors. Facebook trailed not far behind with 217.7 million streams, but had more unique visitors than Hulu with 31.6 million hits.

Not to underestimate the significance, Nielsen noted that the amount of time Web users spend hanging out at social networking sites watching videos increased 98 percent year over year. And viewing of video streams in general jumped by 26 percent, Nielseon said.

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Posted 11/18/09 at 06:21:26 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Many online commenters try and compensate for their lack of insight into the subject at hand by summoning their ability to enliven even the most vapid discussion with a highly stimulating cocktail of profanities. But not everyone can fully relish this amazing ability as not everyone possesses it. The practitioners of this colorful art are often persecuted by the prim archpriests of insipid internet discussions.

An anonymous commenter paid with his job for what was an earnest attempt to breathe some life into a discussion on a newspaper’s site. Last Friday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a blog post titled “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it?” One anonymous user replied with “a single word, a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy.” But his terse reply was deleted within one minute of being posted (probably for being way too brief). The obdurate commenter returned to repost his single-word comment, only to have it deleted once again.

But the paper’s director of social media, Kurt Greenbaum, who had posted the concerned article, managed to track down the anonymous poster using the WordPress e-mail alert that accompanies every comment. The alert included the commenter's IP address, which was found to be from a local school.

“About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot,” Greenbaum wrote in a blog post on Monday. Was it right on the paper’s part to pursue an anonymous commenter? If yes, then what is the point of allowing anonymous comments? Have your say without the fear of getting fired.

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Posted 11/18/09 at 03:06:56 PM by Bart Salisbury

Stuff like this is why we’re told to always be wary. Not just of strangers, it appears, but of friends as well. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing on Tuesday, where it laid out the ‘questionable’ marketing practices of Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion, web merchants that sign up users to “web loyalty programs,” to the tune of $9 to $12 a month, without the user being aware. How? By riding on the coattails of respected e-retailers such as Orbitz, Buy.com, Fandango, and Continental Airlines.

How’s the alleged scam work? At the end of a transaction at a legitimate web site a pop-up appears asking the user to enter an email address if they are interested in receiving cash back or a coupon. Simple enough, except buried in the fine print is enrollment in the web loyalty program, along with permission to charge the user’s credit card a monthly fee. Where’s the credit card information come from? The legitimate web site sells that information to the loyalty program. The user never knows about the transaction until a charge appears on their credit card statement. The user gets double-pwn3d: by the unscrupulous web loyalty program, and by a trusted merchant.

Overall, the Senate Committee estimates the three loyalty programs generated more than $1.4 billion from the scheme, with $792 million kicked back to the web retailers who provided the user’s credit card information. (Classmates.com, for example, raked in $70 million.)

It would be easy to lay the blame at the users feet: you really should read the fine print. (Although the vast majority of us never do.) But the Senate Committee reported that managers at Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty knew full well that people were completely unaware of what they were signing up for, and that their programs were specifically designed to mislead people. The ‘legitimate’ retailers who enabled this were also aware of what was going on, but turned a blind-eye because of the revenue it generated.

Webloyalty and Vertrue stated during the hearing they’ve changed their business practice, and now require additional information for enrollment. Others aren’t convinced, arguing that the only way to curb the practice is to make it illegal for retailers to sell customer’s personal information.

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Posted 11/17/09 at 02:16:51 PM by Bart Salisbury

It’s not just the season for giving thanks, it’s apparently the season for coughing up betas. Yesterday Microsoft released the Office 2010 beta to developers (and to regular users on November 18). Today Adobe has announced beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0.

AIR allows developers to create Internet applications that run outside a browser on a variety of operating systems. Flash provides multimedia content within a browser, again on various operating systems. Both beta versions will offer global error handling (a benefit for developers), local microphone access, and, should you be blessed with a touch screen, support for multi-touch and gestures. Flash will also incorporate the latest hardware decoding of H.264 on Windows PCs. While AIR will add communication with native applications on the local machine; mass storage detection; an open document API; a faster JavaScript engine; and new HTML5/CSS3 capabilities.

The betas for Flash Player and AIR are available now for Windows, OS X, and Linux, as well as x86-based netbooks.

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Posted 11/16/09 at 04:04:28 PM by Bart Salisbury

There’s good news and bad news for Rupert Murdoch in a study recently published by the Boston Consulting Group. People are willing to pay for online content, supporting Murdoch’s insistence it shouldn’t be given away free. But, the study reveals, they aren’t inclined to pay a whole lot for that content, possibly leaving Murdoch no better off then where he is right now.

The study included the United States, Western Europe, and Australia. Forty-eight percent of Americans, classified as regular Internet users, said they were willing to pay for online content. This, along with Great Britain’s Internet users, was the lowest the study recorded. Most other countries reported about 60 percent of users would be willing to pay.

But, on average, Americans said that online news was worth only $3 a month, again a bottom figure (which tied with Australia). Italian Internet users were the most generous, on average saying they’d pay $7 for such a service.

The lack of willingness to pay, and the relative tight-fistedness of Americans is a reflection of content availability, says John Rose, a senor partner in the Boston Consulting Group. According to Rose: “Consumer willingness and intent to pay is related to the availability of a rich amount of free content. There is more, better, richer free in the United States than anywhere else.” According to Rose, a banding together of major news providers in the United States wouldn’t help because of the availability of other free sources on the Internet users can access.

The study concludes that newspapers which charge for online content probably won’t see a big increase in revenues, but, because online content is cheaper to provide, profits should increase. Maybe that will be enough to make Murdoch happy.

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Posted 11/16/09 at 03:26:44 PM by Bart Salisbury

No matter the outcome, there are those who will be unhappy with Google’s plans to digitize the universe of books and make them available online. Google, which is being sued over the venture, filed a revised agreement with the Federal Court in New York hearing the case. The revision contains what John Timmer of Ars Technica calls “significant concessions,” including limiting the scope of the project.

But the Open Book Alliance (OBA), isn’t buying into it. OBA co-chair Peter Brantley, in a statement, said “By performing surgical nip and tuck, Google, the AAP, and the AG are attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution; usurp Congress's role in setting copyright policy; lock writers into their unsought registry, stripping them of their individual contract rights; put library budgets and patron privacy at risk; and establish a dangerous precedent by abusing the class action process.”

Brantley calls the revised agreement “a sleight of hand.” It “remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners.” Further, Brantley maintains it does nothing to “address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest.”

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Posted 11/16/09 at 03:05:00 PM by Bart Salisbury

At at townhall style session with Chinese students in Shanghai, President Obama spoke up for an uncensored Internet. “I am a big believer in technology and I’m a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information,” the President said in response to a student’s question, following up with “I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas. It encourages creativity.”


Mr. Obama was treading carefully, given the Chinese government’s careful control of Internet content, derisively referred to as “the great firewall.” During the days surrounding the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, for example, the Chinese government blocked access to popular Web sites, such as Hotmail, Flickr and Twitter. (YouTube has been blocked since March.)

The President added: “I’ve always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I’m a big supporter of non-censorship. This is part of the tradition of the United States that I discussed before, and I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet — or unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.”

Mr. Obama’s comments were webcast, via the White House web site, but were only available in transcript form within China. Broadcast of the event was limited to Shanghai.

In a revealing movement, Mr. Obama confessed to be a Twitter virgin. “Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. … My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.”

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Posted 11/16/09 at 02:15:37 PM by Paul Lilly

It might sound hard to believe for those of us who attended grade school back before broadband, cell phones, and the social networking phenomenon, but according to a new report, as many as 340,000 kids and teens are regular victims of cyberbullying, a term that didn't even exist not that long ago.

"We know the consequences of online bullying are just as traumatic as those of face-to-face bullying," said Emma-Jane Cross,  chief executive of the charity Beatbullying. "We want all social networking sites, Internet service providers, and mobile phone companies to take measures to identify and remove offensive material."

Beatbully's survey pinged 2,094 respondents between the ages of 11 and 18, nearly two-thirds of which said they had been witness to some form of online bullying. About half of them said they know of people setting up fake profiles, and 20 percent said they had seen hate groups set up with the sole intention of bullying someone.

This raises the question of whether social networking sites are doing enough. Over half of the those who claim to have been bullied said the incident took place on MSN, now renamed Windows Live Messenger. But Microsoft contends that "as with any communication service, these online communication tools are misused by a tiny minority."

In other news, "O'Doyle rules!"

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