Web

FireFox Browser Gains Popularity
The open source Web browser FireFox, has experienced a humongous surge in popularity over the last year according to a report by Nielsen//NetRatings.
In March last year, the Internet research firm reported that Mozilla.org had a unique audience of 1.1 million home and work Internet users in the US – and that number has now soared 284% to 4.1 million unique users last month.
Similarly, the Firefox home page has been given a right royal battering, with figures from Nielsen/NetRatings recording a unique audience of 2.7 million, up 237% from the 795,000 it drew in June 2004.
(It seems that someone must be telling porky pies here, because the SpreadFirefox community marketing site has claimed that Firefox has been downloaded approximately 44.7 million times thus far.)
“The search for an alternative browser has grown in recent years, as the Internet’s early adopters have begun to think of the browser as something other than a commodity,” says Ken Cassar, director of strategic analytics for Nielsen/NetRatings.
“FireFox gives Web surfers a simple tool that blocks unsolicited windows, is less susceptible to virus attacks and offers a unique means of navigating multiple sites within a single browser”, Cassar added.
For reasons best known to themselves, Nielsen/NetRatings also broke down the Mozilla.org audience by sex and – not surprisingly – discovered that gadget-tastic, tech-loving blokes accounted for 71% – or nearly 1.9 million site visitors – compared to the lay-deees who comprised just 29% of traffic.
FireFox was created by a group of former Netscape programmers under the banner of the Mozilla Foundation, and its extra security features – such as the ability to block all pop-up ads and protect against spyware – has led to a steady exodus from Microsoft’s all-conquering Internet Explorer browser.
The browser is also supported by an enthusiastic coding community who offer a raft of free add ons, browser themes and extensions.
Although Microsoft is expected to adopt many of FireFox’s features in its new Internet Explorer version 7.0 (expected this summer), the browser’s exponential growth may force lazy coders to ensure that their sites are also compatible with the upstart browser.
Moreover, FireFox’s growth may have a significant impact on online marketing, with its cookie blocking measures wreaking havoc with companies tracking the results of third party ad campaigns.
What a shame!
Firefox (mozilla.org)
14 April, 2005
IPod And iBook Sales Send Apple Profits Skywards
Stratospheric iPod sales send Apple executives into raptures of hugging joy, with profits almost quadrupling in a year.
The company reported a net profit of US$290m on $3.24bn in revenues for the fiscal quarter ending 31 March, comparing with profit figures of US$46m on sales of US$1.909bn in the same period last year.
“Apple is firing on all cylinders, and we have some incredible new products in the pipeline for the coming year,” frothed CEO Steve Jobs in a statement.
Shipments of Apple computers were up 43 per cent over last year to 1.07 million units, with the Powerbook line of high end notebook computers showing a 34 per cent increase in units shipped relative to last year.
The Power Mac desktop computers were among the worst performers, with year-over-year shipments declining by 19 per cent.
The company said it sold 5.3 million iPods (up 558 per cent on the same period last year) and 1.07 million Macintosh PCs last year.
These figures reveal that Mac sales are up by nearly 40 per cent with iPod sales are up five-fold.
Apple also revealed that its iTunes Music Store has now sold more than 350 million songs worldwide since April 2003, with the combined sales of song downloads, iPod-related accessories and services accounting for US$216m in revenues.
Although sales of iPods increased by 16 per cent, revenue from the product dropped by 16 per cent after Apple added the lower-cost iPod Shuffle to its range.
Apple’s bulging coffers can expect a further boost from sales of the new Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger upgrade, which will go on sale on 29 April.
Apple
14 April, 2005
TComm Launches TELLYfone, A UK Mobile TV Service
TComm has launched a mobile TV service capable of delivering live, streamed and downloaded audio/video content to mobile phones.
Announced at the MIP TV/MILIA audiovisual and digital content trade show, the TELLYfoneSM mobile TV service is the UK’s first cross-platform, network independent mobile TV service.
The service comes with full digital rights management, capable of delivering live, streamed and downloaded audio/video content to suitably equipped mobile phones.
The TELLYfone network includes individual subscription channels and will serve up a “full library” of content including; Comedy, Soaps, Sitcoms, Films,Music, Animations, Horror, Xtreme, Horoscopes, Cooking and a Games show.
Subscribers currently have a choice of six premium channels with another eight channels rolling out over the next 60 days.
“TELLYfone expands on the existing ‘TComm TV’ service and offers a much better content package for subscribers,” enthused Managing Director, Stewart Mclean.
“We feel that it is important to allow users to choose what they want to see and to present them with a broad spectrum of content. With this new service we are confident that we will find European partners in both the mobile industry and retail sector to use the TELLYfone service on their network or make it available to their customers,” continued McLean.
The TELLYfone service is available on the majority of current mobile phones and works over GSM, GPRS and 3G mobile networks with Symbian, JAVA or 3G enabled mobile phones.
Further services will include the ability to deliver the inevitable ringtones, wallpapers and logos with the content.
Tony Johnson, the Content Manager of TComm (UK) Limited, was on hand to lavish praise on his own service: “With content from UK and US production companies such as 2 Minute TV, Fearless Music, Sandy Frank Entertainment and Hungry Biker, TELLYfone sets a new standard in content provision for the mobile phone market.”
“We have committed ourselves to provide more of the very best content to our subscribers,” continued Johnson.
I’m sure you’ll forgive us if we fail to get as excited as ol’Tony about TELLYfone’s current line up which includes “Genius on a Shoestring – a lively reality show set in the streets of New York” and “Krysta LeBall – Daily Horoscopes and Astrology.”
And try as we might, we couldn’t get even slightly moist about this forthcoming service: “SexyCam – The hilariously naughty candid camera format programme that features 260 cheeky situations… Imagine the shock of entering your local restaurant to find all the other diners are suddenly naked!”
A special promotion is offering free access to the service throughout April, after which access will be on a paid subscription basis.
Anyone desperate to discover Krysta LeBall’s latest astrological mumblings can access the service by texting TELLY to 81223.
Tellyfone.tv
12 April, 2005
Google Video To Expand Search To “Video Blogging”
Google plans to invite users to submit personal video clips for archiving as part of its recently launched video search service.
In a speech at the annual cable industry convention in San Francisco, company co-founder Larry Page announced that the company will start taking home video submissions from people, adding that, “we’re not quite sure what we’re going to get, but we decided we’d try this experiment.”
Not surprisingly, Page admitted to having concerns about the nature of content that people may want to upload (but we think that that may only add to the appeal of the service!)
Google first rolled out the test version of its video search service in January, allowing users to find content in television programs from such providers as PBS, Fox News, CSPAN and local ABC and NBC affiliates in San Francisco.
The service, called Google Video, offers up still images from the video clips and associated closed-captioning, but users cannot view video or read a transcript of the program due to unsettled licensing terms.
In the meantime, an “About this show” option provides information on the program’s next air time.
Google has already established search relationships with numerous content and broadband providers, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin commenting, “We’re always looking for ways to expand partnerships.”
The company also announced that it would provide data about popular Web searches to Current, a new television network for the 18- to 34-year-old audience, backed by former US Vice President Al Gore and other investors.
Arch-rivals Yahoo have already begun promoting their own TV and video search site, launched as a beta in December of 2004.
Yahoo has also partnered up with TVEyes to index closed captioning content from BBC, Bloomberg and Sky programming, while Blinxx launched their own movie and TV service, blinkx.tv, at the end of last year.
Google barged its way into the world of blogging after buying the popular blogging tool, Blogger.com in 2003.
The growth of affordable digital camcorders (and movie enabled digital cameras) coupled with cheaper (or free) Web space suggests that vblogging could be big news for 2005, creating a need for suitable search tools.
Google
6 April, 2005
BookSurge, Print-On-Demand Book Company, Signs With Amazon
Online retail giant Amazon.com has scooped up the ‘printing fulfillment’ company BookSurge, which maintains a catalogue of thousands of book titles available for users to print on demand.
“Print-on-demand has changed the economics of small-quantity printing, making it possible for books with low and uncertain demand to be profitably produced,” Greg Greeley, vice president of media products for Amazon.com, said in a written statement.
The move seems to reflect Amazon’s continued efforts to add new revenue streams and fight off competition from online rivals such as eBay and Overstock.com. Amazon has already been forced to lower prices to keep customers wandering off elsewhere.
Despite generating twice the revenue of its main rival eBay, Amazon is lumbered with the hefty financial drain of maintaining and operating its warehouses throughout the world – because eBay sells a service not a product, it manages to be three times more profitable than Amazon with only half its revenue.
Amazon’s deal with BookSurge gives the company the ability to offer a new product without adding any further burden on distribution network.
The company will now offer (cue: North American accent) “inventory-free book fulfillment” to publishers through BookSurge Publisher Services and to authors through BookSurge Publishing.
Print-on-demand allows booksellers to offer titles with limited appeal, without the hassle of having to keep stock which may not get sold.
Additionally, retailers, wholesalers and distributors will be able to leverage the BookSurge Direct wholesale platform.
“BookSurge makes it possible to print books that appeal to targeted audiences, whether it’s one copy or one thousand,” Greeley said. “Our new relationship with BookSurge will provide Amazon customers an ever-expanding selection of titles that are not available through other channels. Thanks to print-on-demand, ‘out of print’ is out of date.”
This latest move continues Amazon.com’s trend toward the world of e-books and other downloadable products, building on its 2001 eBook deal with Adobe Systems that added nearly 2,000 e-books to its catalogue.
Although e-books are still a small part of the current online book market sector, significant growth is expected by publishing companies and online retailers.
Internet portal Yahoo already has an e-book sales deal with four major publishing houses and Amazon are clearly looking to get their size nines wedged into this door of opportunity.
Amazon
BookSurge
6 April, 2005
Legal TV Downloads Offered by UK Channel Five
Channel Five yesterday became the first UK broadcaster to launch a legal video download store, offering DVD-quality downloads of some of the most popular features of its flagship car show, Fifth Gear, from its Web site.
Fifth Gear, produced by North One Television, is selling downloadable high-resolution videos of 12 supercar reviews, including the Porsche 911, Ferrari F430 and Mercedes McLaren SLR, all for £1.50.
Payment can be made by debit or credit card with a provision for ‘younger car enthusiasts’ to pay by mobile phone.
To get the ball rolling, the company is offering four free videos available from their Web site.
Car fans will also have access to a selection of Fifth Gear shoot-outs – one of the programmes most popular features, whereby two similarly priced or similarly powered vehicles race around a track to find out which one is fastest.
Powering the UK’s first legal video downloads store is a system developed by 7 Digital, the company behind download stores for a raft of leading music companies including Universal and EMI.
7 Digital’s Managing Director, Ben Drury said: “Broadcasters have seen the revenues attainable from music downloads and are eager to do the same with their own content. TV footage can work so much harder for broadcasters, with the Internet now a commercially sound distribution channel.”
Richard Pearson, Executive Producer of Fifth Gear said, “Ever since Fifth Gear launched in 2002 viewers have regularly asked whether it’s possible to purchase content. It’s great that we can expand the Fifth Gear brand in this way and give people an affordable opportunity to acquire high quality downloads of their favourite moments from the archive.”
Legal music download sites have become hugely popular in recent years, but TV companies have so far not used the same technology to put programmes online – despite British viewers being the biggest downloaders of copied TV shows.
The BBC has already run trials with what it calls its Interactive Media Player (iMP), which allows surfers to use the Internet to download and watch programmes from BBC TV and Radio
Channel 5
7Digital
Fifth Gear
24 March, 2005
AFP Sues Google Over News Copyright
A large question mark hangs over the future of aggregated news sites supplied by Web companies such as Google after it was revealed that Agence France-Presse had sued the world’s most popular search engine for alleged copyright infringement.
Google had been making the headline, summaries, and thumbnail photos of news stories available to everyone via a search function. Clicking on the story would then take users to the full story and photos on the original site.
It was this practice that set AFP into a giant hissy fit and before you could say “avocat”, the French news agency were filing a law suit in a Washington court.
The action sought damages and interest of at least US$17.5 million dollars (£9m, €13) and an interdiction on the publication of its text and photos without prior agreement.
“Without AFP’s authorisation, defendant is continuously and wilfully reproducing and publicly displaying AFP’s photographs, headlines and story leads on its Google News Web pages,” AFP huffed and puffed in their lawsuit.
The news agency added that it had already asked Google to stop using its copyrighted work, but that the cheeky monkeys “continued in an unabated manner to violate AFP’s copyrights”.
Since the law suit was announced, Google has embarked on the process of removing all AFP content, but has not released a schedule for when the removal will be complete.
Already some pundits are questioning the wisdom of AFPs litigious action, with the Political Gateway Web site serving up a damning article denouncing the ‘stupidity’ of the press agency:
“AFP has over 600 online clients using their news services, sites like Political Gateway. Being blacklisted by the number one search engine in the world is enough to make a news site immediately drop AFP and go to another news service like AP, Reuters, UPI, and the like. We know this to be true because Political Gateway is looking at options right now.
AFP will lose all its online clients except Yahoo.com (which is a search engine itself). However, Yahoo also syndicates its news out via RSS or ‘XML’ feeds. RSS allows webmasters to place news headlines on their site. This would be an offense to AFP and result in suing of Yahoo.
When the dust settles we believe AFP, the oldest news organization in the world, will have lost most of their online clients, their reputation, and face the worst Internet backlash a news service has ever encountered.
As of this week, all AFP news information will be deleted from Political Gateway and hundreds of other sites in protest against the stupidity of AFP.”
The Google News service was launched in 2002 with the site – still in beta – gathering stories and images from the Web and making them freely available to everyone.
With Google making the vast majority of its revenue through online advertising, the news service looks to be an important sector in the increasingly competitive online arena.
If other press agencies follow AFPs litigious route, we could see a premature end to this fledgling service.
We hope not.
Agence France-Presse
Google news
“Google shows AFP who is boss” (PoliticalGateway.com)
23 March, 2005
Xdrive Launches Wireless Access To Online Storage
Xdrive has announced an expansion to their service that gives roaming consumers wireless access to their files through any Internet-connected cell phone, smart phone or handheld device.
With a turn of phrase worthy of the cheesiest made-for-TV pilot, Xdrive implores users to “cut the cord and roam freely with your files” and skip gaily into a new digital dawn “liberated from the confines of a wired world” – possibly while “sipping Mai Tai’s on the sands of Bora Bora”.
Eh, what?!
Back in the real world, we can tell you that Xdrive’s new wireless service allows mobile subscribers to access their files and folders, send faxes, email documents, listen to music and view slide shows while on the move.
Users must first upload their files to their Xdrive account, and using WAP (wireless application protocol) technology they can access their files on the company’s secure server.
The service allows people access to a wide range of stored files – Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, digital photos and videos, QuickBooks files, and MP3s etc – through any Web-enabled hand-held device.
“As the Digital Lifestyle continues to become more and more engrained into our everyday life, people are beginning to break away from the concept of one stationary computer,” states Xdrive CEO Brett O’Brien, “People strive for mobility, yet yearn for connectedness. Xdrive’s new wireless features give people just that.”
Xdrive costs US$9.95 (£5.20, €7.6) or US$99.50 (£50.20, €70.6) annually, with subscribers having 5 Gigabytes of online storage space and access to all of the Xdrive applications and services.
The company offers new subscribers a 15-day free trial period at http://www.xdrive.com
Xdrive
23 March, 2005
Yahoo Buys Flickr
Yahoo has whipped out its wildly wedgified wallet and snapped up the online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after launching a beta test of its new blogging tool.
Flickr lets users upload digital photos from computers, PDAs and camera phones, create their own photo albums, post photos to blogs, and store, sort, search and share your photos online.
Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo, confirmed the deal Sunday: “We look forward to working with them for their innovation and product development across the Yahoo Network in the coming months,” she said.
Stevens said Flickr will remain a standalone site for now. The company’s employees, however, will have to up sticks to Sunnyvale later this year.
Yahoo’s existing photos hosting and sharing service, Yahoo Photos, will gain features from Flickr, although the two services will remain separate “for the foreseeable future.”
There will be some early integration, however, with the ability to log into Flickr using a Yahoo ID and password.
According to Caterina Fake, Flickr’s vice president of marketing and community, users of the company’s free and paid-for services will get more space, while prices for professional accounts are expected to fall.
This announcement comes less than a week after Yahoo announced Yahoo 360. This service combines a new blogging tool, along with long-established Yahoo products such as instant messaging, photo storage/sharing and Internet radio.
The service also includes social networking tools for sharing recommendations about places to eat, favourite films, fab music, great clubs (like London’s Offline, for example!) and so on.
The acquisition of Flickr (and parent company Ludicorp Research & Development) and the development of the Yahoo 360 service reflects a growing interest in social networking and blogging services.
Microsoft added a blog product for its MSN Web service in December, called MSN Spaces. Google, meanwhile, owns the hugely successful Web log service Blogger and social networking site Orkut.
Flickr
Yahoo 360
21 March, 2005
Ask Jeeves Sold To Diller’s InterActive Corp?
The wires are buzzing with rumours that Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp (IAC) is set to buy the Internet search engine service Ask Jeeves for almost $2bn.
Ask Jeeves is currently the fifth-largest search-engine provider on the Internet and the company also owns the popular ask.com, Bloglines and Excite Web sites.
In the UK, Ask Jeeves is the seventh most popular search site with 1.9 per cent of total searches, dwarfed by Google who weigh in with a mighty 63 per cent of total searches.
IAC already owns assorted Web properties including CitySearch, Expedia, Hotels.com, TicketMaster, dating site Match.com and the Home Shopping Network.
CitySearch offers localised search results for businesses, bars, cinemas and restaurants.
The reported US$1.9 billion price tag is something like 35 times AskJeeves’ 2004 earnings from continuing operations of US$52.4 million, and is 27 times its 2004 pro forma earnings from continuing operations of US$71.1 million (this excludes items like depreciation and amortisation).
About US$1.2 billion of the purchase price will be in cash, the New York Times reported (although we don’t think they mean used wads of dollars stuffed in suitcases).
Today’s expected announcement shows that search sites are still attracting investors and that there’s rich pickings to be gained with Microsoft recently following Google and Yahoo into paid-for-search advertising.
We tried to check the story by visiting Ask Jeeves and typing in, “are you being bought by InterActive Corp?”
Disappointingly, the search engine failed to find the answer.
AskJeeves
InterActive Corp
21 March, 2005