Could someone please buy the man a plasma TV? Doesn’t he have, like, a situation room or something with a hi-def feed from the nose cone of the freaking shuttle available to him? Sad, sad, sad. (Via Engadget.)
If you don’t want to make the same mistake as George above, MSNBC.com has a fabulous Flash application to review the Discovery launch. It’s a user-selected, sychronized, multi-cam app where you pick your camera positions to watch the launch. Very slick execution. (Via LostRemote.)
Om Malik today takes note of AOL’s new partnership with Feedster for their new ‘MyAOL‘ – as he notes, Yahoo must be thinking that’s soooo 1999 ;-). Interesting to see a tool like this on AOL; bringing RSS closer to the massses…
“America Online is one step closer in its bid to transform itself from a dial-up ISP into a content powerhouse. The company has just announced MyAOL (it must be 1999, Yahoo people are thinking.) The most exciting part of the news is that they are taking RSS mainstream. Yup – right out of the elites into the AOLplanet. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves (via Bloglines) and supposedly Google are already making RSS part of their future, and now even AOL has signed up.”
He also notes:
“The new site will also allow folks to subscribe and read RSS feeds. This is also a good day for RSS spammers, who can now find gullible clickers amongst the AOL hordes. Going back to that step-closer remark, they are still amillion miles away from where they need to be.”
(Via Om Malik’s Broadband Blog.)
Hat tip to LostRemote.com this morning. Interesting stats on how much video is viewed on their service, and their newly announced extension to MSN Messenger.
Watch MSNBC Video On MSN Messenger: “‘Online video is becoming more and more mainstream,’ says Charlie Tillinghast, GM and publisher of MSNBC.com. ‘One out of every five visits to MSNBC.com includes a video play and we’re reaching audiences that traditional broadcasters are struggling to reach.’
Now the site ‘plans to extend those videos to users of MSN Messenger,’ WebProNews.com says. ‘While many users do not stay on a web site all day, especially at work, many do have instant messaging clients available.’ (Via Lost Remote)”
Yahoo has added another one of my favorite sites to their service – first Flickr, now they have announced the acquisition of Konfabulator. And best of all – it’s now FREE!
Konfabulator is a Windows/Mac tool to allow users to run small mini-apps (called Widgets). The company was created by former Apple employee Arlo Rose, and preceeded the Tiger Dashboard by several years. It remains my favorite over Dashboard – as it has a simply amazing catalog of user-created widgets, and best of all the apps remain on-screen at all times, easily accessible from a menubar icon or expose-like function key reveal feature.
Frankly, I keep one of my two office monitors cluttered with widgets. I’ve got several webcams on there, rotating through radar images, a local Atlanta TV station towercam (all via the WebImages widget). I have Hong Kong, San Fran, Denver, Atlanta and London wall clocks (WorldClockPro). I also have a minicalendar, a couple of spiffy uptime/cpu usage monitors, a weather warning widget, and a great widget called the iTunes Companion. If I play a song w/out album art, it fetches it and installs it in the MP3. Sweet!
I had paid for Konfabulator (it used to be a nag-ware product) for the Mac a couple of years back. When the PC version came out, I was bummed to discover that my existing SN wouldn’t work on the new version – I’d have to pony up cash for the PC independent of the Mac. This past weekend, I was actually considering a purchase for the PC – but Y! made that decision a bit simpler.
Anyway, it’s great news that Yahoo has seen this as a product to spread via their considerable market reach. The PR indicates that they saw value in using Konfabulator as a means to extend access to Yahoo’s APIs. Seems like another in a series of major portals buying a pay service and setting it free. Google’s Maps/Earth (Keyhole) and Picasa are just two examples…
Links:
Konfabulator’s letter to the community
Slashdot reports on the purchase
Om Malik breaks the news about Pixoria’s buyout
PaidContent.org on the new business model