Pottz dot net - Web Ramblings

Internet social networking leader MySpace is joining Google Inc.’s platform for sharing applications across the Web _ a concept that threatens to undermine the rapid growth of their common rival, Facebook Inc.

Google trumpeted the MySpace coup Thursday in a meeting with reporters, two days after revealing its plans to create a distribution network for interactive applications known as “widgets.”

The programs _ created by a hodgepodge of independent software developers and other Web sites _ make it easier to share music, pictures, video and other personal interests on social networking sites.

MySpace, owned by News Corp., was conspicuously absent from the initial list of Web sites that agreed to host the widgets from Google’s “OpenSocial” platform.

That raised questions whether MySpace might try to build its own proprietary platform, much like Facebook has already done.

But MySpace and Google executives said they began discussing an open-ended system that culminated in OpenSocial more than a year ago. The formal announcement about the alliance was timed to coincide with a party that Google is throwing for software developers Thursday evening in Mountain View.

Google also disclosed for the first time that another popular social networking site, Bebo.com, will host widgets supplied from its platform, which is trying to create a common coding standard for the applications so they work on hundreds of Web sites.

Other previously disclosed participants networks include social networks Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Ning and the Google-owned Orkut.

All told, OpenSocial’s potential audience is expected to exceed 200 million people.

But OpenSocial was an unimpressive alternative to Facebook’s platform until MySpace confirmed its participation, said Gartner analyst Ray Valdes.

“This is more likely to get developers’ attention,” Valdes said Thursday.

Although Facebook has been growing faster, MySpace remains the Internet’s biggest social network _ a hangout where people look for dates, share their passions, make new friends or just connect with familiar faces.

In September, MySpace’s U.S. audience totaled 68 million compared with 30.6 million for Facebook, according to the latest data from comScore Media Metrix.

Google’s one-size-fits-all approach contrasts with Palo Alto-based Facebook’s, which relies on unique coding that has prevented widgets developed for its sites from working at other places on the Web.

Facebook’s formula has been highly effective so far, spawning more than 8,000 widgets in the five months since the platform started. Including visitors from outside the United States, Facebook says it now has 50 million members and has doubled in size since May.

Facebook’s booming membership encouraged Microsoft Corp. to pay $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook last week _ a deal that valued the 3-year-old startup at $15 billion.

Now, it looks like Google and MySpace are forming a tag team to duel Facebook and Microsoft. “This clarifies the battle lines, but it’s not just a two-way conflict,” Valdes said.

That’s because other large Web sites like longtime Google rival Yahoo Inc., online auctioneer eBay Inc. and Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. haven’t picked a side yet. It’s also possible that those Web sites might introduce competing platforms for social networking widgets.

Because social networks are attracting so many users, they are emerging as potentially lucrative advertising channels. Google already has been placing text-based ad links on MySpace, just as Microsoft has been doing at Facebook. The partners share the ad revenue with each other.

Social networking widgets are expected to yield a myriad of other moneymaking opportunities, but for now Google has no plans to insert ads in its OpenSocial network.

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is confident that OpenSocial will transform his site into a hotbed of communal applications.

“OpenSocial will become the de facto standard for developing applications right out of the gate,” DeWolfe said.

Facebook was invited to join OpenSocial, said Vic Gundotra, a vice president of engineering for Google, and Schmidt said the door remains open.

“Everyone is invited to join,” Schmidt said. “There has been no effort to discriminate or exclude.”

Facebook didn’t get any notice about OpenSocial, according to company spokeswoman Brandee Barker.

“When we have had a chance to understand the technology, Facebook will evaluate participation relative to the benefits to its 50 million users and 100,000 platform developers,” she said.

AP

After locking himself away in the studio for the past year, Phrase is back with a brand new single from his upcoming album Burn It Down.

Working with long-time collaborator/producer J-Skub (of Jackson Jackson fame), Phrase has created a stomping track that combines the elements of both rock and hip-hop to forge a new sound that has not been touched before in Australia.

‘Face It’ is more than just a new single, it marks the first time someone from Australia’s rock scene has ventured outside the box to collaborate with someone from the Australian hip-hop community.

Earlier this year, Xbox approached Phrase to create a song that would encapsulate the energy and theme of their latest addition to the highest selling Xbox video game series of all time, Halo 3. Phrase and J-Skub studied the online preview trailers of the video game and soon, ‘Face It’ was born.

After Xbox heard ‘Face It’ they immediately decided it would be part of their marketing campaign for Halo 3 in Australia. The video for ‘Face It’ was directed by award winning director Tom Spark and features stunning special effects along with sneak previews from the new video game.

Love this video? Hate it? Have your say below.
ninemsn

Apple Inc.’s delayed update to the Mac OS X operating system is hitting store shelves as consumers are increasingly snapping up Macintosh computers to complement their iPods and iPhones.

Dubbed Leopard, the upgrade went on sale at 6 p.m. local time Friday at stores around the world. It offers improvements to an operating system that already was widely praised for its ease-of-use and slick interface.

Leopard boasts more than 300 new features, including one called “Boot Camp” that lets users install Windows on Macs, though both operating systems can’t run at the same time. “Time Machine,” an automated data backup system, and “Spaces,” a way to simultaneously view open applications, are among the other highlighted features.

Macs have reached record sale levels, and the launch of Leopard is expected to bolster a continuing rise.

At Apple’s flagship 5th Avenue store in New York City, a line of about 500 people snaked around the block before Leopard went on sale. The anxious, some of whom queued up more than four hours beforehand, included not only the longtime Apple faithful but new converts.

Patrick van Rosendaal, 31, visiting from Columbus, Ohio, stood in line for an hour and a half before he got his hands on a shrink-wrapped copy of Leopard. He bought his first Mac two months ago.

“Macs are still rather new to me,” he said. “But I’m completely addicted.”

Dennis Huang, 18, of New York City, was third in line. He became a Mac owner in August after finding the computer “a lot easier to use.” While in the store, he was among many giving Leopard’s snazzy-looking “Time Machine” feature a whirl.

Computers with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows platform still dominate the PC market, but Apple has made significant gains over the past year, outstripping the worldwide 15 percent growth rate in the rest of the industry. Apple, which for years hovered at a 2 percent to 3 percent share of the U.S. market, now claims an 8 percent slice, according to market researcher Gartner Inc.

As Apple’s iPod players became a cultural phenomenon, they introduced millions of Windows users to Apple’s software and design. And the iPhone, Apple’s new hybrid mobile phone and iPod, is spreading that halo effect.

Also, Apple’s 197 shiny retail outlets have become magnets, while Best Buy Co. Inc. started carrying Macs at some of its stores this fall. Apple says more than half of the customers buying computers at Apple stores are new to the Mac platform.

Existing Mac users can buy the Leopard operating system update separately, and it is being built into all new Macs. It costs $129 for a single user or $199 for a license for up to five machines.

Leopard is the sixth major upgrade Apple has made to Mac OS X since the computer operating system debuted in 2001. The previous major upgrade, Tiger, was released in April 2005.

By comparison, it took Microsoft five years to complete its major Windows upgrade, Vista, which went on sale in January and has been since dogged by complaints of incompatibility problems. Vista comes in different consumer editions, depending how many features are included, and ranges in price from $100 to $400.

Leopard was originally due in June, but Apple said in April it needed to divert resources to accomplish the summer launch of the much-anticipated iPhone and would delay Leopard to do that.

Product delays are rare for the Cupertino-based company, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs _ with his typical hubris _ promised it would be worth the wait. Now, consumers get to see for themselves whether it will have been.

“That’s a common question, and I think the answer will be an emphatic yes,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

Shares of Apple, which have more than doubled since January, were up $1.92, or 1.1 percent, to close at $184.70 Friday.

Peter Svensson

Rapidly rising Internet star Facebook Inc. has sold a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft Corp. for $240 million, spurning a competing offer from online search leader Google Inc.

Culminating weeks of negotiations, the investment announced Wednesday values Palo Alto-based Facebook at $15 billion _ a stunning figure for an online hangout started in a Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.

Microsoft also will sell Internet ads for Facebook as the site expands outside the United States, broadening a marketing relationship that began last year.

“This is a strong statement of confidence in this partnership and in Facebook,” Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division, said during a Wednesday conference call with reporters and analysts.

Besides validating founder Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to rebuff a $1 billion takeover offer from Yahoo Inc. last year, Microsoft’s money should be more than enough to pay for Facebook’s ambitious expansion plans until the privately held company goes public.

Zuckerberg, 23, has indicated he would like to hold off on an initial public offering for at least two more years. In the meantime, Facebook hopes to become an advertising magnet by substantially increasing its current worldwide audience of nearly 50 million active users, who connect with friends on the site through messaging, photo-sharing and other tools it offers.

Although News Corp.’s MySpace.com remains the largest social network, Facebook has been growing much faster the past year.

Facebook attracted 30.6 million U.S. visitors during September compared with 68.4 million at MySpace. Microsoft’s entry in the social networking arena _ “Windows Live Spaces” _ attracted 9.8 million U.S. visitors, according to comScore Inc.

To support its growth, Facebook is gearing up to more than double its payroll during the next year to about 700 employees. The company currently employs about 300 workers with annual revenue believed to fall between $100 million and $150 million.

The Facebook investment represents a coup for Microsoft because it strengthen for several years as it watched Google deepen its dominance of the space.

During its fiscal year, ending in June, Microsoft’s online ad revenue rose 21 percent to $1.84 billion. Over the same period, Google’s ad revenue soared 64 percent to $13.3 billion.

Microsoft also appears interested in Facebook’s success with “widgets” _ the interactive capsules that offer applications available on other Web sites. Outside developers have created about 8,000 widgets since Facebook began soliciting the contributions in May.

Johnson said Microsoft plans to work with Facebook in areas besides advertising but declined to elaborate.

With the Facebook investment, Microsoft dealt a rare setback to Google, which trumped its rival in earlier bidding battles involving a stake in AOL and ownership of online video sharing pioneer YouTube and Internet ad service DoubleClick Inc.

Microsoft couldn’t afford to lose the tug-of-war for the Facebook investment and advertising alliance, said Gartner analyst Allen Weiner.

“This was a muscle-in from Microsoft,” Weiner said. “It would have been a nice-to-have for Google, but it was certainly not essential.”

Facebook also felt more comfortable about working with Microsoft because Google has made no secret about its interest in building a more formidable social network of its own. Google’s current social network, called Orkut, has had relatively little success outside South America.

Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s chief revenue officer, said the company talked to several suitors before settling on Microsoft. He declined to provide further details.

Microsoft’s successful courtship of Facebook shows the 32-year-old company is becoming more savvy about the Internet, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the research group Directions on Microsoft.

“I think they understand it now and they’re proceeding correctly,” Rosoff said. “Two years ago, I would have said they don’t get it at all.”

Tim Armstrong, who oversees Google’s North American advertising, declined to comment on the Facebook negotiations during a meeting with analysts Wednesday at the company’s Mountain View headquarters.

“We have tremendous respect for them,” Armstrong said of Facebook.

Jessica Mintz

Microsoft on Tuesday began US sales of a scaled-down Xbox 360 model billed by some analysts as a doomed bid to unseat Nintendo’s Wii console as ruler of the casual video game market.

“It is squarely targeted at the Wii,” Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff told AFP.

Xbox 360 Arcade comes with five family-oriented video games including PAC-MAN and Uno, and is capable of downloading more games from the Internet.

The Arcade model lacks a hard drive but provides 256 megabytes of memory for storing game play and software, according to Microsoft.

Arcade consoles are priced at 280 US dollars while Nintendo’s Wii consoles are priced at 250 US dollars and have been selling as fast as they arrive in US stores.

Xbox 360 Arcade won’t knock Wii from the casual gaming throne it has occupied since Nintendo launched the consoles in the United States in November of last year, according to Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey.

“It is not even remotely close to what the Wii offers the market,” Hickey told AFP.

“The best they can hope for is someone naive goes to a store to buy a Wii and there isn’t one there so they buy an Xbox 360 Arcade.”

Wii consoles with unique motion-sensing controllers are a video game sensation, appealing to families, women, seniors and other “casual gamers” that don’t fit the typically young male “hardcore gamer” demographic.

Hickey described Arcade as a “clumsy” repositioning of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Core model minus a hard drive.

“They are trying to be opportunistic; appeal to the casual gamer as well,” Hickey said of Microsoft.

“If you are a casual gamer, you buy the Wii. You don’t buy Xbox 360 Arcade. The thing that attracts people to the Wii is the games, the fun, and the buzz.”

Rosoff countered that the Arcade price and the variety of games available for the consoles should be enough for Microsoft to “reach some kind of parity” with Wii in the market.

AFP

Police arrested the alleged operator of a file-sharing website, which specialized in distributing leaked albums on the Internet, a music industry group said Tuesday.

The 24-year-old British manager of OiNK was arrested following a two-year investigation by Dutch and British police, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a statement.

The site allows an estimated 180,000 users to distribute music albums before their release dates.

British police confirmed that the man, whose name was not released, was arrested in connection with copyright infringement and conspiracy to defraud.

OiNK’s servers, based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, were seized in a series of raids last week, the IFPI said.

An invitation-only site, OiNK disseminated music albums often weeks before their official release date, the IFPI said. Within hours, OiNK’s users would post the albums to public forums and blogs across the Internet.

More than 60 major album releases were leaked to OiNK this year alone, the IFPI said, calling it the “primary source worldwide for illegal prerelease music.”

“OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of prerelease music online,” said Jeremy Banks, the head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit.

“This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.”

AP

Competition in China’s booming Internet sector has turned nasty ahead of the Beijing Olympics, with Sohu.com upsetting its rivals through a lucrative sponsorship deal that is now being challenged.

The Chinese portal paid a reported 30 million US dollars in 2005 for the rights to set up the Games website for the Beijing Olympics organising committee and to use the logo of the event — the signature silhouette of a dancing man.

However it has since put the squeeze on rivals by claiming the deal included exclusive rights to host all the advertising by Beijing Games sponsors bearing the official logo.

This would give Sohu.com an effective Internet monopoly on ads by firms such as Adidas, Volkswagen, Johnson and Johnson and Bank of China, and its rivals are fuming.

The organising committee’s legal department is now working to untangle the affair that could determine who gets millions of US dollars in advertising revenue between now and the August Games.

It could also give an invaluable boost in the broader Internet advertising sector, which marketing analysts iResearch believes will be worth more one billion US dollars this year, up nearly 40 percent on 2006.

Sohu.com said its rivals feel they cannot allow the firm to gain an edge through its Olympic deal.

“In China the Internet industry is very tough and the competition will do whatever it can to fight this deal because they know it’s a big one,” said Chen Luming, Sohu.com vice-president and chief of its Olympic business division.

He said that Olympic sponsorships were tailored to exclusivity, which accounted for the growing success of the marketing programme of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and of the Beijing organising committee, known by its initials BOCOG.

But Internet sponsorship is a new category, introduced for the Beijing Olympics for the first time, and the exact extent of the rights enjoyed by the holder have yet to be clearly defined, according to BOCOG.

“Our legal department is still working to determine what is exclusive and what is not,” said Niu Wei, an official in BOCOG’s media and communications department.

China’s other major portals have formed an alliance against Sohu.com to fight the exlusivity claim and say they plan to put together Internet content for the Games and sell ads around it.

Zeng Fuhu, general manager of portal business at Tom.Com, a major rival of Sohu.com, said the case was clear cut.

“They have paid to get the rights to set up the official website of the Games and we are okay with that,” he said. “They get to use the logo as well but anything beyond that is bogus.”

Zeng says he should know. He worked for Sohu.com as business department director before defecting to Tom.Com two years ago. One of his projects at Sohu.com was the Olympic deal.

“The claim about exclusivity on advertising has no basis… It would be like saying that all Olympic sponsors in the US would have to put their TV ads on NBC.”

The network is the official US television rights holder with exclusive rights to cover the Olympics.

An IOC official told AFP that Sohu.com’s sponsorship deal should not guarantee the portal “exclusive or special editorial or advertising rights on their website in relation to the Beijing Games.”

However, BOCOG has yet to issue a ruling, while sponsors have been left in the dark.

“We have had no directive from BOCOG about advertising on the Internet,” said Zhou Yi, general manager of China Mobile, a Beijing Olympic partner.

AFP

Microsoft is slashing Xbox 360 prices in Japan by about 13 percent as the price war among video game consoles heats up around the world ahead of the key year-end shopping season.

The Xbox 360 console will sell in Japan for 34,800 yen (US$304; euro213) from Nov. 1, down from 39,795 yen (US$348; euro244), the U.S. software maker’s Japan unit said Monday in a statement.

A more basic version of the machine now selling for 29,800 yen (US$261; euro182) will go for 27,800 yen (US$243; euro171), according to Microsoft Corp.

Last week in the U.S., Sony Corp. cut the price of its PlayStation 3 game console. It had already announced similar price cuts in Europe and Japan for the PS3.

The top-line PlayStation model, with an 80 gigabyte hard drive, now costs $499 in the U.S., down from $599. That effectively eliminates the lower-end model, which has a 60-gigabyte drive and sold for $499. A new low-end model with a 40-gigabyte drive will go on sale Nov. 2 for $399.

The big winner in game consoles recently has been Nintendo Co. with its Wii machine, which has a wandlike remote.

Nintendo, the Kyoto-based manufacturer of Pokemon and Super Mario games, has not announced any price cuts for the Wii, which is already cheaper than Xbox 36o or PS3.

The Wii now sells for US$250 in the U.S. and 25,000 yen (US$219; euro153) in Japan. The Xbox 360 costs US$350 (euro245) in the U.S.

Nintendo has chosen a different strategy from Sony and Microsoft, with their more expensive machines, and has been trying to woo novices with brain teasers, sport games and virtual pets, instead of the usual shooter and role-playing games.

Since Wii went on sale late last year, Nintendo has shipped 9.3 million units around the world, with supplies barely keeping up with demand. By the end of this fiscal year in March 2008, Wii global shipments are expected to have reached 22.3 million.

So far, Sony has sold 5 million PlayStation 3s. The game console went on sale late last year in Japan and the U.S. and in March in Europe.

Microsoft has sold 11.6 million Xbox 360 machines in the last two years.

AP

Skype is preparing to launch its own branded mobile phone in conjunction with the 3 mobile network as early as this month.

The phone is codenamed “white phone” and BusinessWeek reported it would launch in Australia, Britain, Italy and Hong Kong “by late October”.

A spokeswoman for 3 in Australia confirmed it was working with a leading internet communications company “to produce an exciting new product to make free internet calls completely mobile”.

She would not give any further details but said the product would “close the gap between internet communications and mobile calling and is something you won’t see from any other operator”.

BusinessWeek reported the device would feature a big button above the keypad to activate Skype for long-distance and international calls. 3 would not charge anything on top of Skype’s normal rates, but users would be required to spend a certain amount per month.

The partnership between 3 and Skype is noteworthy because VoIP providers, by offering free calls over the internet, compete with the mobile carriers’ own plans.

By forming the partnership, 3 ensures it can reap a share of the revenue. Earlier this year, Skype launched its X-Series service that allowed 3 customers to make Skype calls through their handset.

But the impending announcement between the two companies will takes the partnership a step further.

“The move marks a radical step forward in operator thinking and will mobilise internet calls for a mass market,” the 3 spokeswoman said.

Skype, still reeling after owner eBay admitted it had paid more than a billion dollars too much to acquire the internet phone company in 2005, has sought recently to enter a new growth phase through various strategic partnerships.

On Wednesday it announced it had partnered with MySpace to offer free voice calls between Skype and MySpace users through the social network’s instant messaging program.

The entrance of Skype into the mobile phone market will add new competition to an already crowded market. Apple made its first mobile phone play earlier this year with the launch of the iPhone overseas, and Google is rumoured to be working on its own mobile software platform.

Asher Moses

Australia’s draconian classification regime for video games has taken yet another scalp, with local retailers banned from selling the upcoming shooter title Soldier of Fortune: Pay Back. The highly anticipated game, which was to be released on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, was refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification for being too violent.

Aside from Singapore, which is reviewing its classification system, Australia is understood to be the only country in the western world that does not have an R18+ rating for games.

As a result, games that do not meet the MA15+ standard - such as those with excessive violence or sexual content - are simply banned from sale.

This is despite recent figures from the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) showing the average Australian gamer is 28, and over 50 per cent of gamers are over the age of 18.

Blitz: The League, BMX XXX, Manhunt, Reservoir Dogs and 50 Cent: Bullet Proof are just a few recent titles the OFLC has prohibited.

The latest to be banned was Blitz in January because, according to former chief censor Des Clark, it “contains drug use related to incentives or rewards”.

In its board report on Soldier of Fortune: Pay Back, dated October 16, the OFLC said frequent high impact violence made the game unsuitable for those aged under 18 years.

“Successfully shooting an opponent results in the depiction of blood spray,” the board said.

“When the enemy is shot from close range, the blood spray is substantial, especially when a high-caliber weapon is used, and blood splatters onto the ground and walls in the environment.

“The player may target various limbs of the opponents and this can result in the limb being dismembered.

“Large amounts of blood spray forth from the stump with the opponent sometimes remaining alive before eventually dying from the wounds.”

The OFLC made its decision despite acknowledging the game included a violence setting, which when set to “off” reduced blood and dismemberment depictions.

The IEAA has long campaigned against what it says is a draconian and illogical game censorship regime. There has long been an R18+ classification for movies and the IEAA says both movies and games should have a common rating system.

But when asked to comment on the Soldier of Fortune decision, IEAA CEO Chris Hanlon refused to comment, saying he had not yet seen the OFLC board’s report. The game’s publisher, Activision, also declined to comment.

In Australia, significant changes to classification policy must be agreed on unanimously by the Australian, State and Territory censorship ministers, who are usually the attorneys-general.

Over the last few years, the IEAA has attended censorship ministers meetings to put forward its case and demonstrate parental locking technology. The technology is a feature of the latest games consoles and PC operating systems, allowing parents to control the level of content consumed by their kids.

But despite the IEAA’s pleadings the attorneys-general have given no indication they intend to continue discussing the games classification system this year.

The Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, was being sought for comment.

Asher Moses

A scene from Soldier of Fortune: Pay Back, which the OFLC says is too violent for Australians