Web Development Live

THIS week MySpace will unveil the biggest website redesign the company has ever undertaken.

After a year of development and planning, the social network will roll out a series of new features designed to simplify the user experience, starting this Wednesday.

Rebekah Horne, vice president of Fox Interactive Media and MySpace in Australia and New Zealand, said a lot of the changes were based on user messages sent to MySpace founder and first friend of every new user Tom Anderson.

Google has been courting software developers to entice them into a money-making relationship built on turning its array of online widgets into a global infrastructure.

At a conference in San Francisco, said to be the biggest yet for net developers, the search giant made clear that the Web is the future for application development.

It wants its own bit of web infrastructure the Google Cloud to be more accessible to developers and spent two days wooing them to build and run applications on it.

To encourage them aboard, Google invited the 3,000 developers to mash-up Google’s online services, like Gmail, Docs, Maps and Search, with their own applications.

To show client-cloud connectivity, it showed off Google Gears, a browser add-on in the Adobe Flash mould that allows for richer browser experiences, to improve search in MySpace email.

It then showcased the new Google Web Toolkit, so rich net applications can be Java-built, and the hosting of new Ajax libraries, which enhances applications via JavaScript tagging.

Top of its agenda, Google wants the web browser the enabler of its cloud to have more functionality, interaction and to evolve so it becomes as powerful as its desktop counterpart.

“These diverse tools and technologies might seem loosely unintegrated and targeted at different areas,” said Ovum analyst Madan Sheina.

“In fact they’re all cogs and wheels of a more meaningfully connected web that hosts Google web services powered by the Google App Engine. Importantly some of these web services and applications aren’t written just by Google, but by an entire market of independent developers.”

The analyst believes most of these third-party developers no longer build ‘cool’ web applications just for the sake of it; rather they want a slice of Google as a lucrative advertising business.

“Google likes to separate its web development technologies from its advertising. But the two are inextricably linked,” Ms Sheina said.

“Google’s monetisation strategy is simple. Invest in advancement of the web by allowing users to do more on the internet. That makes the Web a much bigger market for Google to monetise services like search.”

Is South Korea a graveyard for overseas Internet companies? American Internet heavies such as Google, YouTube and MySpace, leaders of the so-called “web 2.0″ frenzy, face heavy odds in South Korea. Why is it that these companies boast astronomical numbers of subscribers and users in many other markets around the Web Development Tutorial world but find little luck here?

MySpace, the world’s largest online social network, launched a Korean service last week, but local portal and blog users have given the new service the cold shoulder. “I signed up out of curiosity, but I canceled my membership soon after because I found it un-user friendly,” a Korean blogger reported. Another blogger said, “MySpace isn’t new or interesting for Korean users who are already familiar with online communities like Cyworld.”

Google and YouTube are also having a hard time here. Since it launched its Korean-language service in 2006, Google, the Web Development Tutorial world’s top Internet search engine, has earned a mere 2 percent-range share of the local Internet portal market. YouTube launched a Korean-language service in January. But while the world’s largest video sharing website boasts about 30 million visitors per month in the U.S., in Korea it has only about one-tenth the number of users as PandoraTV, South Korea’s No. 1 video sharing website.

Experts say the foreign challengers have failed to understand the peculiarities of the South Korean market. Their quality suffers in comparison to local offerings in terms of Korean-language features, site design and sophistication of services, South Korean experts argue.

In addition, South Korean Internet users generally tend to be uninterested in services from abroad. AFP reported recently, “South Korea is one of the world’s most wired countries, with some 70 percent of homes having high-speed Internet access. But it has largely shunned popular overseas services.”

Since 2004, there has been no notable change in the rankings of the local portal market, where Naver tops the list. Cho Il-sang, CEO of MetriX, an online survey agency, said, “Overseas web service providers should be more sincere in approaching the Korean market, so that their participation in the Web Development Tutorial market can give a wholesome impetus to the development of the Korean Internet industry.”

SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to take over Yahoo Inc. has become so tortured it may help Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc. grow stronger, undermining Microsoft’s main reason for pursing the deal in the first place.”We find this to be a very advantageous situation for Google,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown said Thursday. “The longer this gets dragged out, the better for Google.”Yahoo signaled it is bracing for a protracted battle late Wednesday when an announcement and a media leak provided a glimpse at its labyrinthine search for alternatives to Microsoft’s bid of more than $40 billion.The options include an experimental advertising alliance with Google that could lead to a broader partnership and, according to published reports, a combination with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL. Google also owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.As part of the AOL deal, Time Warner would get a roughly 20 percent stake in the merged entity in return for a substantial sum of cash that would help Yahoo buy back some of its stock at a price well above Microsoft’s offer, which was initially valued at $31 per share.”This is the first time that we have seen real feasible alternatives that could derail the Microsoft deal,” said analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein %26 Co.Other analysts doubt Yahoo will succeed in thwarting Microsoft but believe it could force the world’s largest software maker to raise its offer as high as $35 per share, or about $50 billion.For its part, Microsoft has indicated that it may lower its offer if Yahoo doesn’t accept the current bid by April 26.But Microsoft made that threat before the details about Yahoo’s alternatives with Google and AOL emerged.Although Microsoft has plenty of money to up the ante on its own, the Redmond, Wash.-based company may draw upon another deep pocket - Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.Under this reported scenario, News Corp. would contribute the Internet’s top social network, MySpace.com, and some cash in a Yahoo takeover. The proposed deal would put three of the Web’s most popular sites - Yahoo, MySpace and Microsoft’s MSN - under the same umbrella.In another ironic twist, Google could benefit if Microsoft and News Corp. buy Yahoo because it already has a long-term contract to show ads on MySpace.Microsoft, Time Warner and News Corp. all declined to comment Thursday. A Yahoo representative didn’t respond to inquiries about the AOL deal. Google and Yahoo announced their advertising test Wednesday.Yahoo directors are expected to meet Friday to discuss the company’s options.Investors seemed to welcome the latest developments. Yahoo shares rose 82 cents to $28.59 while Microsoft shares gained 22 cents to close at $29.11. The stocks of Google and Time Warner also moved up, while News Corp.’s Class A shares dipped 5 cents to $18.89.The reported negotiations to bring together some of the world’s largest Web sites underscores the Internet’s maturation as a business sector. As consumers spend more time online, the smart money is following them - and now there’s a mad scramble to latch on to the prime properties in this promised land of future profit.”The most likely outcome here is that a few players will become more and more dominant on the Internet,” said James Owers, a Georgia State University professor specializing in media and corporate finance.The stakes are so high that News Corp. and AOL might decide to join forces if their latest negotiations with Microsoft and Yahoo don’t pan out, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a Thursday note to investors.Google has emerged as the Internet’s most profitable company so far, primarily by showing relevant text-based ad links alongside the billions of search results that it churns out each month.Propelled by its success in search, Google built up a vast computer network that hosts a wide range of free services - many of which threaten to make Microsoft’s software less vital to consumers and businesses.Microsoft believes Yahoo’s franchise will give it more weapons to retaliate against Google and reverse the losses that have plagued its online division.But it’s looking less likely that Microsoft will be able to realize its goal of completing the Yahoo deal by the end of this year.If Yahoo continues to resist, Microsoft probably will have to take its bid directly to shareholders - an acrimonious process that is typically settled at the target company’s annual meeting. Yahoo doesn’t have to hold its annual meeting until July 12.And a deal done that late in the year isn’t likely to emerge from antitrust regulators’ purview until 2009, according to experts.Yahoo may be able to rally support from its shareholders by pointing to the possibility of a long-term partnership with Google, which some analysts believe could boost Yahoo’s cash flow by 25 percent to 35 percent.Google, too, could make more money from the alliance. But Lindsay doubts that’s the search leader’s main incentive for the tests.”Anything that Google can do to keep Yahoo from going to Microsoft is good for Google,” Lindsay said.If Yahoo turned over all its search-driven advertising to Google, it would face intense regulatory scrutiny that would be difficult to overcome, analysts predicted. Google controls 59 percent of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 22 percent and Microsoft at 10 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.For now, Yahoo is allowing Google to show advertising links alongside no more than 3 percent of its U.S. search results and only for two weeks.Microsoft already has signaled that it will strenuously object to antitrust regulators if Google sells search ads for Yahoo on a full-time basis. But a regulatory review might hurt Microsoft more than Google, Lindsay said, because it could mean waiting even longer to own Yahoo.If Microsoft is able to pull off the Yahoo takeover, melding the two organizations will be difficult, especially if the deal is hostile or includes a third party like News Corp.”The more complicated a deal gets, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy all parties,” Brown said. “And the more complicated the (post-deal) integration gets, the more it favors Google.”

Mobile Internet devices and online communities are merging to a new kind of web diary: “micro-blogging,” where people fire off terse missives about what they are doing or thinking at any given moment.
The postings are bare-bones, on-the-go versions of online journals in which people share their lives and dreams — hence the name micro-blogging.
“Blogging has evolved and become more formalized,” said Yahoo Design Pattern Library curator Christian Crumlish, author of social networking book “The Tower of Many.”
“A beautiful blog entry is an art form, and it takes time. So, micro-blogging fits into your life where you take a minute or two to see what’s going on and go back to work.”
Hot website Twitter has attracted a large following since launching slightly more than two years ago as a way to share Haiku-like text message updates with unlimited numbers of friends instantly via mobile telephones.
The service entices users with its signature line, “What are you doing?”
Startup Utterz, publicly unveiled last year, goes a step further by allowing users to post text, video, photos or audio from mobile telephones to the Internet with a simple call.
“What are the four things you can do with a mobile phone? You can talk, you can send text, you can take pictures and send video,” Utterz president Randy Corke told AFP.
“We want to use the technology that you have in your pocket,” he said.
“We want to make blogging as easy as talking … Our users can literally take their mobile telephone out and capture the experience, and the emotion of their voice, and interview people.”
Websites where people post blogs or share pictures or videos have become ubiquitous and firms like Twitter and Utterz are positioning themselves as places to merge and manage the images and words.
The power of these technologies was unexpectedly unleashed at a recent US tech conference, SXSW, when attendees micro-blogged searing critiques of an on-stage interview of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“The woman interviewing Zuckerberg is lame,” Utterz user Leora Zellman wrote beneath a live picture she snapped of the interviewer, BusinessWeek magazine’s Sarah Lacey, on stage during the event.
“Never, ever have I seen such a train wreck of an interview,” wrote Twitter user Jason Pontin. “Poor girl, flirtatiously awful though she was.”
Lacey “Twittered” her own response.
“Seriously screw all you guys,” she wrote. “I did my best to ask a range of things.”
Enthusiasm for micro-blogging has prompted numerous blogging and social networking sites to focus attention on ease-of-use and accessibility in a world increasingly fond of mobile net devices.
Top social networking properties Facebook and MySpace offer mobile versions of their sites to increase user accessibility.
Facebook invited Twitter to customize applications for the online community when it opened its platform to outside developers early last year.
Video-sharing superstar YouTube tailors links for mobile telephones, including a special player built into Apple’s iPhones, which combine video, music, Internet and mobile telephone capabilities.
Picture-sharing website Flickr, which added a video feature in April, encourages uploads from camera-equipped mobile telephones.
“New technologies are most accessible when they take something you need to do anyway and make it much easier and much more useful,” Corke said.

Music social networking Web site operator imeem Inc. said Monday it has agreed to acquire Snocap Inc., the digital content tracking company founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning.
San Francisco-based Imeem did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Snocap developed a digital fingerprinting technology that checks media files uploaded to a Web site against a registry of copyrighted works to determine if a song has been cleared for playback in its entirety online.
It also tracks payments to record labels and artists whose music is streamed on sites like imeem.
In addition, Snocap powers technology that lets users of News Corp.’s MySpace sell downloads of original music directly through their MySpace Web pages.
Snocap’s technology for buying music downloads on MySpace will continue to be operated by imeem.
Fanning, who created the Napster online file-sharing service as a college student, founded Snocap in 2002.
He was a member of the board of directors but had not been active in the company in recent years.
In October, the San Francisco-based company cut its work force by nearly half so it could focus on selling itself.
___
On the Net:
Snocap Inc.: http://www.snocap.com

SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to take over Yahoo Inc. has become so tortured it may help Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc. grow stronger, undermining Microsoft’s main reason for pursing the deal in the first place.”We find this to be a very advantageous situation for Google,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown said Thursday. “The longer this gets dragged out, the better for Google.”Yahoo signaled it is bracing for a protracted battle late Wednesday when an announcement and a media leak provided a glimpse at its labyrinthine search for alternatives to Microsoft’s bid of more than $40 billion.The options include an experimental advertising alliance with Google that could lead to a broader partnership and, according to published reports, a combination with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.’s AOL. Google also owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.As part of the AOL deal, Time Warner would get a roughly 20 percent stake in the merged entity in return for a substantial sum of cash that would help Yahoo buy back some of its stock at a price well above Microsoft’s offer, which was initially valued at $31 per share.”This is the first time that we have seen real feasible alternatives that could derail the Microsoft deal,” said analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein %26 Co.Other analysts doubt Yahoo will succeed in thwarting Microsoft but believe it could force the world’s largest software maker to raise its offer as high as $35 per share, or about $50 billion.For its part, Microsoft has indicated that it may lower its offer if Yahoo doesn’t accept the current bid by April 26.But Microsoft made that threat before the details about Yahoo’s alternatives with Google and AOL emerged.Although Microsoft has plenty of money to up the ante on its own, the Redmond, Wash.-based company may draw upon another deep pocket - Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.Under this reported scenario, News Corp. would contribute the Internet’s top social network, MySpace.com, and some cash in a Yahoo takeover. The proposed deal would put three of the Web’s most popular sites - Yahoo, MySpace and Microsoft’s MSN - under the same umbrella.In another ironic twist, Google could benefit if Microsoft and News Corp. buy Yahoo because it already has a long-term contract to show ads on MySpace.Microsoft, Time Warner and News Corp. all declined to comment Thursday. A Yahoo representative didn’t respond to inquiries about the AOL deal. Google and Yahoo announced their advertising test Wednesday.Yahoo directors are expected to meet Friday to discuss the company’s options.Investors seemed to welcome the latest developments. Yahoo shares rose 82 cents to $28.59 while Microsoft shares gained 22 cents to close at $29.11. The stocks of Google and Time Warner also moved up, while News Corp.’s Class A shares dipped 5 cents to $18.89.The reported negotiations to bring together some of the world’s largest Web sites underscores the Internet’s maturation as a business sector. As consumers spend more time online, the smart money is following them - and now there’s a mad scramble to latch on to the prime properties in this promised land of future profit.”The most likely outcome here is that a few players will become more and more dominant on the Internet,” said James Owers, a Georgia State University professor specializing in media and corporate finance.The stakes are so high that News Corp. and AOL might decide to join forces if their latest negotiations with Microsoft and Yahoo don’t pan out, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a Thursday note to investors.Google has emerged as the Internet’s most profitable company so far, primarily by showing relevant text-based ad links alongside the billions of search results that it churns out each month.Propelled by its success in search, Google built up a vast computer network that hosts a wide range of free services - many of which threaten to make Microsoft’s software less vital to consumers and businesses.Microsoft believes Yahoo’s franchise will give it more weapons to retaliate against Google and reverse the losses that have plagued its online division.But it’s looking less likely that Microsoft will be able to realize its goal of completing the Yahoo deal by the end of this year.If Yahoo continues to resist, Microsoft probably will have to take its bid directly to shareholders - an acrimonious process that is typically settled at the target company’s annual meeting. Yahoo doesn’t have to hold its annual meeting until July 12.And a deal done that late in the year isn’t likely to emerge from antitrust regulators’ purview until 2009, according to experts.Yahoo may be able to rally support from its shareholders by pointing to the possibility of a long-term partnership with Google, which some analysts believe could boost Yahoo’s cash flow by 25 percent to 35 percent.Google, too, could make more money from the alliance. But Lindsay doubts that’s the search leader’s main incentive for the tests.”Anything that Google can do to keep Yahoo from going to Microsoft is good for Google,” Lindsay said.If Yahoo turned over all its search-driven advertising to Google, it would face intense regulatory scrutiny that would be difficult to overcome, analysts predicted. Google controls 59 percent of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 22 percent and Microsoft at 10 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.For now, Yahoo is allowing Google to show advertising links alongside no more than 3 percent of its U.S. search results and only for two weeks.Microsoft already has signaled that it will strenuously object to antitrust regulators if Google sells search ads for Yahoo on a full-time basis. But a regulatory review might hurt Microsoft more than Google, Lindsay said, because it could mean waiting even longer to own Yahoo.If Microsoft is able to pull off the Yahoo takeover, melding the two organizations will be difficult, especially if the deal is hostile or includes a third party like News Corp.”The more complicated a deal gets, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy all parties,” Brown said. “And the more complicated the (post-deal) integration gets, the more it favors Google.”

Music social networking Web site operator imeem Inc. said Monday it has agreed to acquire Snocap Inc., the digital content tracking company founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning.
San Francisco-based Imeem did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Snocap developed a digital fingerprinting technology that checks media files uploaded to a Web site against a registry of copyrighted works to determine if a song has been cleared for playback in its entirety online.
It also tracks payments to record labels and artists whose music is streamed on sites like imeem.
In addition, Snocap powers technology that lets users of News Corp.’s MySpace sell downloads of original music directly through their MySpace Web pages.
Snocap’s technology for buying music downloads on MySpace will continue to be operated by imeem.
Fanning, who created the Napster online file-sharing service as a college student, founded Snocap in 2002.
He was a member of the board of directors but had not been active in the company in recent years.
In October, the San Francisco-based company cut its work force by nearly half so it could focus on selling itself.
___
On the Net:
Snocap Inc.: http://www.snocap.com

YOU’VE probably heard of the term Web 2.0. It was invented by
computer book publisher Tim O’Reilly and refers to the increasingly
large number of internet applications that are collaborative and
interactive.
There are many examples - Wikipedia, Second Life, social
networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, photo sharing site
Flickr and a host of others. These have emerged just in the last
few years and have already changed the way many of us use the
internet.
Indeed, they have changed the way many of us live. This tends to
be especially true of younger people, to whom cyberspace is almost
as big a part of life as the “real” world.
Until now, Web 2.0 applications have mostly affected
individuals. Companies and government organisations have largely
retained more traditional methods of communication. The primary
collaborative technology for most organisations in the modern world
has become email, which is very much a Web 1.0, or first
generation, internet application.
That is now changing. Web 2.0 applications are increasingly
finding their way into the enterprise. This phenomenon has,
inevitably, been dubbed Enterprise 2.0. That term was invented last
year by Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee, who has
emerged as something of an international authority on the subject.
Last week I heard a remarkable presentation by Professor McAfee on
the state of play with Enterprise 2.0 worldwide. His talk was
beamed in via Skype from Orlando, Florida, where he was attending
an enterprise search conference. He spoke to 200 of us assembled in
a conference room in Sydney’s Luna Park to discuss Enterprise 2.0
in Australia.
First, Professor McAfee defined the subject. Fair enough. He
invented the term, after all. “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of
emergent social software platforms within companies, or between
companies and their partners or customers.”
Those “emergent social software platforms” are the Web 2.0
applications we looked at above. Professor McAfee refers to these
as “free and easy” applications, in contrast to something like
email which he describes as “a channel which closes down after each
message”.
Another key point about these “emergent applications” is that
the important thing is how the software is used, not about how it
is delivered, or how it is developed, or how it is integrated. The
key to Enterprise 2.0 is usage - getting more people in the
organisation using software applications that enable them to share
ideas and information.
The event I attended where we heard Professor McAfee’s words of
wisdom was the grandly named “Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum”, run
by Sydney company Future Enterprise Network (FEN). FEN
(futureexploration.net) is run by Ross Dawson, who has become one
of Australia’s leading internet gurus in recent years. He also runs
regular events on the future of media.
We also heard, via the wonders of a Skype videolink, from Euan
Semple, formerly head of knowledge management at the BBC. Mr Semple
reported to us from his sister’s kitchen in Munich, where he was
working as part of his new career as an adviser to European
companies on Enterprise 2.0 issues.
We also heard, from real live individuals within the room, about
a number of Australian companies and their use of Enterprise 2.0
technologies. Westpac is using Second Life for staff training.
Bionic ear company Cochlear uses a wiki for software development.
Pharmaceutical company Janssen-Cilag has developed a blog-like
corporate internet for internal communications. Clearly, Enterprise
2.0 is here.
But there is reluctance to embrace the technology in many
quarters. Mr Semple told of some of the problems he had introducing
the technology at the BBC. “There are significant cultural hurdles.
Many senior managers are not comfortable with the tools. I often
found it was easier to go around barriers rather than confront
them. It is easier to apologise afterwards than to ask permission
up-front.”
He spoke about one manager who could not initially believe that
staff could be trusted with social networking tools in a work
environment. He was worried that they would waste time, or that
material in blogs could be read by people outside the organisation
and give away corporate secrets.
These sorts of issues, as many speakers discussed, are common
barriers to the introduction of Enterprise 2.0 technologies in many
organisations. But the common theme was how these barriers can be
overcome and the many benefits that the technology can bring to the
organisation.
“It’s cheap, it’s easy and it conforms to the way knowledge
workers work,” Professor McAfee says.
“Among strongly tied co-workers, a wiki can function as a kind
of online whiteboard. Among those with looser affiliations, social
networking tools are very important, and can serve as bridges to
other networks, just as they do in the personal sphere.
“And blogs are great ways of coming across serendipitous
information, helping innovation and fostering new ideas.”
We’ve been hearing for years that companies need to be smarter
and more responsive and that they need to find new ways to tap into
employees’ capabilities. Enterprise 2.0 tools would seem to offer
just those capabilities. This may scare some people of my
generation but with the Gen X and Gen Y types coming through, they
will have no choice.
graeme@philipson.info

Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday that it was joining rival Google Inc.’s initiative for creating photo-sharing and other social tools that work across the Web.
News Corp.’s MySpace earlier pledged support, and the three companies announced Tuesday that they were forming a nonprofit organization, the OpenSocial Foundation, to ensure that the platform remains neutral and viable.
The idea behind the Google-initiated OpenSocial platform is to create a common coding standard for the applications so they work on hundreds of Web sites. The applications could permit chats, games, media sharing and more.
By contrast, sites that haven’t joined OpenSocial typically rely on unique coding that has prevented widgets developed for its sites from working at other places on the Web.
The addition of Yahoo could put pressure on Facebook, the No. 2 social-networking site behind MySpace, to pledge support as well, though Facebook has had tremendous success encouraging developers to write tools specifically for it.
Other participants in OpenSocial include Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Ning, the Google-owned Orkut and Bebo, which Time Warner Inc.’s AOL is planning to buy for $850 million.
In a company blog entry, Yahoo Vice President Wade Chambers said the company was joining OpenSocial now because “it’s no longer a trial balloon _ it’s for real.”
Chambers said Yahoo wanted to make developers feel confident about using OpenSocial as a building block for future social applications.
By creating a nonprofit to oversee OpenSocial, effective July 1, the companies want to ensure that intellectual property assets remain available to everyone. The companies said the foundation also would provide transparency and guidelines around technical and legal issues as the platform evolves.