PC Magazine, Ziff Davis' flagship print publication, has announced that it will go 100% digital. The January 2008 issue will mark the end of PC Magazine's print edition after 27 years of continuous publication. Instead of the print version, PC Magazine will start publishing a digital version of the magazine, 'PC Magazine Digital Edition.' Current and new subscribers should see this digital edition appear in their inboxes by February 2009.

Sponsor

100% Digital

PC Magazine has been publishing a digital edition since 2002, but at least in its current version, this digital edition only imitates the print version in its layout, which is definitely not the easiest and most convenient way to read text. Also, the problem for print magazines is not the fact that they are physical objects, but simply the fact that a publication which only appears once a month will always lag behind its online competition, especially in a fast moving business like technology news.

A number of publishers have been experimenting with digital editions similar to PC Magazine's. The New York Times, for example, has its Times Reader application, which allows offline access to the paper. However, in a world where online access is becoming ubiquitous, these products are at best bridges to a pure online experience.

PC Magazine, of course, already has a strong online presence and a number of very interesting blogs and online video shows. The value of PC Magazine often wasn't in its news content anyway, but in its reviews - all of which are available online, without the need to subscribe to a digital edition of the magazine.

Would You Subscribe to a Digital Edition?

While we are glad to see that a quality publication like PC Magazine is taking steps to secure its future, it is not clear to us why PC Magazine would put time and effort into producing a digital edition of its magazine instead of just focusing on the online experience.

Discuss

We like to report good news, not just because it makes us all feel good, but because when a company is doing something positive during a downturn, it indicates something pretty interesting about that company. That is why Jobwire reports on new hires when all the other news is about layoffs. In that same spirit, The A-Team will be a monthly wrap-up of all the Series A VC financing rounds in web technology. To close a Series A VC round these days, you have to be pretty special.

Sponsor

The Qualifying Rules

• A minimum of $1 million. We don't want $50,000 financing being called Series A. Sorry, no grade inflation here.
• Lead Institutional VC. There are plenty of other very good types of financing. We celebrate bootstrappers in our Gritty Entrepreneurs series. Angels are wonderful, and we all love friends and family. But this series is about the classic VC fund, the core of the start-up financing world. We only report the lead VC because that is what matters: with a good lead there is never a shortage of followers.
• Reported data. We need to see the dollar amount and the lead VC publicly reported. No "unreported sum" or "undisclosed investors." If you want to be stealthy, you don't need any visibility, which is fine.
• Web technology only. We are seeing a lot in alternative energy, biotech, and other sectors, which is all very interesting, but not what we do at ReadWriteWeb.
• Series A only. We recognize that getting Series B or C financing is important as well, but it is hard to see from public data whether these are really positive events or not. During a downturn, many of them, sadly, will be down rounds that protect VC capital but, because of onerous preference terms, often leave the entrepreneurs with very little. We don't want to celebrate something only to find it is viewed as negative by the participants. But everybody can celebrate a Series A: it speaks of optimism, new trends, and a go-for-it spirit.

The Heroes And their Partners

We believe that entrepreneurs are the heroes, but we also really want to celebrate their partners, the VC guys who have the guts to go against the trend and back them during tough times. All VCs talk the talk, which is that this is a great time for investing. We want to report on the ones who actually walk the walk as well. There is only one way to get into this list: close a Series A round and wire the money.

We want to use this to learn about changes in the VC business and so that entrepreneurs can see who is actually doing deals today.

Our A-Team Series Starts in October

October 2008 was a unique month for anybody in the business world. The word that kept dropping from the lips of even the most experienced been-there, done-that kind of person was "unprecedented." These are not normal times. And October was certainly not a normal month.

So, the October list was pretty short. We have heard plenty of stories from entrepreneurs about deals that were agreed on and in the final legal phase but that got pulled in September and October. We did not track September because the worst and final phase of the crash kicked in mid-September, and deals were still being done in the early days of September. So, October was the first full month of the new reality.

We count from the date when the deal was announced. But we recognize that the contract may have been signed some weeks before then.

Enough Preamble. What Deals Were Done?

Oops! Using our strict criteria, only one deal was done in October. We saw some that came close. We saw a seed round of $225,000 for a game company called Kirkland North from a venture fund called Harrison Meta Capital. We saw a Series B for $4.5 million coming from RRE Ventures to our good friends at Adaptive Blue. We saw an Israeli company called CogniSafe getting an undisclosed seed round from 21 VCs.

The one deal that squeaked into October was Zimbio with a $6.8 million Series A from DFJ and Menlo Ventures. The deal was announced on September 30th. So it is entirely possible (indeed probable) that this contract was signed before our official Meltdown Day. But the deal got done, and that is what matters.

Zimbio has very few facts on its "About Us" page. TradeVibes at least has a CEO listed; so we tracked down Anthony Mamone, and the data was sparse, not even a LinkedIn profile. All we found was a sketchy profile on Link Silicon Valley.

A Special Cheer for Syncplicity and True Ventures

The deal that kicked off the A-Team series and gave us the idea for it was the one with Syncplicity with its $2.35 million Series A funding from True Ventures. So we went to meet Leonard Chu, CEO, at True Venture's offices in San Francisco. True Venture's open-plan offices on Pier 38 do not look like classic VC, and that is probably the point. Phil Black of True Ventures made the point that ever-increasing fund sizes were taking VC away from its entrepreneurial start-up roots.

Then we noticed that our friends at GigaOm have their offices right next door. No coincidence as it happens, True Ventures was the lead investor in their Series A funding. So, True Ventures is a founding member of our A-Team. Take your best venture to them!

We have not had time to fully review Syncplicity yet. We promise to do so soon. So, in the meantime, we will fall back on the journalistic standby, quoting from its site:

"Everyday sync, backup, and sharing as simple as can be. The only all-in-one service that makes sure your files are everywhere you need them."

That is a crowded space. But so was search when Google entered the market. Getting an A round done in today's market makes one think they must have done something right, so we will check them out and urge you to do the same.

Good News from a November Sneak Peek

Here is the good news. Taking a sneak peek at November, around the middle of the month, we already see quite a few Series A deals that meet all of our criteria. We will tell all in our A-Team report in early December.

Who did we miss in October? (No spam please; look at the qualifying rules above.)

Discuss

Can you imagine getting a link to your website highlighted just below the search box on Google.com? How much traffic do you think that would drive? According to one estimate published today by traffic analysts Compete.com, the link on Google for the G1 Android phone by T-Mobile delivered an estimated 800,000 unique visitors who clicked that link in the 7 days it was on the site.

Compete estimates that there were about 99 million people who visited Google.com during that period, so that's a little less than 1% click through. To be honest, we're a little surprised the number isn't higher than that. That's just the beginning of the surprises, though.

Sponsor

In fact, according to Compete, that Google.com link only delivered 40% of the traffic that the G1 landing page saw during that period. We've asked Compete what other sources were big but again, we're pretty surprised by these numbers.

We're a little surprised that less than 1% of visitors were curious enough to click on the first new link on Google.com in a long time and we're quite surprised that other parts of the marketing campaign were able to deliver even more traffic!

How did all this traffic convert into sales? Some people have said that there's an estimated 1.5 million G1 phones in circulation, but others, like Information Week, say those numbers aren't believable.

Compete's traffic numbers are probably a little soft as well, but they sure are fun to think about. For the full write up, see the Compete blog.

Discuss

EtherPad is not likely to win a price for its user interface design, but it might just be one of the most useful web apps we have seen in quite a while. EtherPad allows you to instantly create a workspace for text documents that you can then share with your colleagues, clients, or friends. Every edit to the document will immediately appear on your co-workers' screens in real-time.

EtherPad acknowledges that Google Docs already allows for a similar kind of collaboration, but compared to EtherPad, Google Docs is clunky and slow when you just want to collaborate on a simple text document.

Sponsor

EtherPad would be a great tool if you want to keep collaborative notes during a conference call or meeting, but you could also use it to draft or edit text for a press release or email collaboratively.

No-Sign Up

EtherPad, for example, doesn't require you to sign-up before you can start working on your document. You can also just share your workspace's URL with your co-workers and they, too, don't have to sign up. Indeed, you can't even sign up for the service, which may become a bit of a problem if you want to go back to a document you worked on earlier, but don't remember the randomly assigned URL.

Google Docs requires you to send email invitation to all your collaborators and updates to documents don't appear in real-time.

Features

EtherPad also has a versioning system that allows you, or anybody else with access to your workspace, to save the document at any time.

Developers who want to share code might also find this a useful tool, as it can highlight JavaScript syntax. Looking at EtherPad's heritage, it becomes clear why the developers added this feature. The service was developed by AppJet, an online web programming platform, and is basically a showcase for the next version of AppJet's tools, but was mainly created because the developers at AppJet were looking for a tool that had EtherPad's functionality but weren't able to find one.

Verdict

As is often the case, the most useful tools are those that have a relatively restricted feature set, but allow users the freedom to use them as they see fit. EtherPad is one of these services and it will probably become a standard tools for us very soon.

You can find a screencast of the product here, but given that you don't have to sign up for it, you could just as well try it out for yourself (or join this workspace we already created).

Discuss

The successful science and educational organization The National Geographic Society, best known for their long-running magazine, has just made an interesting announcement. Their next venture in their for-profit operations is video games. This month, National Geographic Games, a newly formed division within the company, will launch three gaming products to be soon followed by another in December and three (so far) are planned for next year. The games will be developed for major gaming consoles, handhelds, and mobile platforms, including, yes, the iPhone.

Sponsor

There are few people out there who don't have fond memories of flipping through the pages of a National Geographic magazine, admiring the award-winning photography that graced its pages as our eyes widened to the wonders of the world around us. Since its launch in the "ancient" times of 1888, the world has gotten a lot smaller, figuratively speaking. Television, air travel, and, of course, the internet, have allowed us to explore much more of the world than ever before. To some extent, the information age has impacted, if not the magazine's sales themselves, the sense of wonder that was once to be had when perusing the magazine's articles and images.

To keep up with the changing times, the new National Geographic Games division (NGG), will attempt to connect with people once again on the platforms of our modern age, including the Wii, Playstation 3, Nintendo DS, PC and Mac, the PS3 Network, and the iPhone. There will also be free Flash games online at nationalgeographic.com/channel. As always, the company's goal is to encourage people to explore their world, this time though, it's through play.

Lest you think these games will be wimpy attempts at educational experiences, it's worth nothing that Chris Mate, a former executive at Take2 Interactive, the company behind "Grand Theft Auto," will serve as VP and GM of the games venture. Hopefully, his history, which also includes Bethesda Softworks, will bring some spunk to the usually dry "learning is fun!" gaming experience.

The first game to launch will be "Herod's Lost Tomb," an online game which blends in content from both the December 2008 issue of National Geographic magazine as well as the National Geographic Channel feature broadcast on the biblical figure King Herod, architect of the ancient world.

Discuss

San Francisco-based blogging startup Six Apart has announced they will be giving away free accounts on their TypePad blogging system for professional bloggers and journalists who recently lost their jobs as well as those who fear the axe is coming. Cleverly dubbed the "Journalist Bailout Program," the service includes one free blog, a place in the Six Apart Media advertising program, promotion on Blogs.com, a as well as other tools and advice on driving traffic to your site, all courtesy of Six Apart.

Sponsor

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program

The program launched over the weekend through via this lighthearted post over on TypePad.com which reminds you that "Tumblr...will not pay your bills." According to the company, they've already seen hundreds of journalists signing up to participate.

As detailed in the TypePad blog post, the bailout program includes the following, a dollar value of at least $150 per year (the price of the TypePad service alone), if not more :

A free TypePad Pro blog account, the same service that powers many big-name media blogs. It includes professional support so Six Apart will answer any questions you have.

The blog is enrolled in the Six Apart Media advertising program. These are display ads that pay a more than Google text ads, and bloggers get to keep the revenue.

Six Apart will promote the new site on Blogs.com, a directory of the best in blogs. Blogs.com will be a way for all of the bloggers peers in the Journalist Bailout Program to cross-promote and share traffic for their independent sites.

Lots more. Six Apart can also introduce you to their VIP program to help drive traffic to the site, help connect blogs to LinkedIn profiles, make it easy to manage your comments from an iPhone, and even show you how to automatically promote posts to your Facebook friends

There are no rules on how the blog must be used. Journalists can use the blog showcase their best work, launch something new, or hang onto the site, you know, "just in case."

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

We're in the midst of a great upheaval. The internet is impacting the business models of so many established ventures. Newspapers and magazines aren't the only industries affected by any means. The internet has left nothing untouched, whether music, video, news, sports, communication, marketing, advertsing and more, those wishing to stave off its force of change are simply trying to outswim a tidal wave.

What's better for those being impacted is to be prepared and thinking ahead for the future - what is Plan B? As we mentioned earlier this week, not everyone sees the death of the journalism ahead - media mogul Rupert Murdoch, for example, sees opportunity.

And if you think successful journalism can only come on the platform of old media, you're wrong. Look around. So many journalists are now getting into blogging, but one of our newest favs that proves the potential success of the model is TechFlash, home to John Cook and Todd Bishop, both of whom left their respected papers and struck out on their own to deliver quality tech news in readable format without all the bias, backstabbing, and petty quarrels the tech "blogosphere" seems to get itself involved in from time to time.

Journalists may also want to keep in mind Arianna Huffington's recent, but vague, promise to begin funding investigative journalism through her incredibly successful The Huffington Post site, one of the most recognizable and read blogs out there.

So journalists, get your platforms ready...there's no better time than now and no better price than free.

Note: Six Apart's Movable Type weblogging platform is what powers our blog here at ReadWriteWeb.

Discuss

It's no secret that - as the most widely deployed operating system - Microsoft Windows has the ignoble distinction of being the primary target of virus and malware developers everywhere. And when you couple that with the fact that many users of the Windows operating system fail to protect their machines - due to both ignorance of the problem and costs associated with virus protection software - you have the potential for rampant virus outbreaks. We've all seen it, time and time again.

Now, Microsoft is proposing to solve that problem with a new antivirus package. The product, code-named Morro, is slated to hit the market late next year. It will offer protection for viruses, spyware, rootkits, and trojans. Even more important? It will offer that protection for free.

Sponsor

Designed to protect XP, Vista, and Windows 7 operating systems, Morro will be based on functionality that already exists in other Microsoft virus solutions:

"Built on Microsoft's award-winning malware protection engine, 'Morro' will take advantage of the same core anti-malware technology that fuels the company's current line of security products, which have received the VB100 award from Virus Bulletin, Checkmark Certification from West Coast Labs and certification from the International Computer Security Association Labs."

An added benefit? Morro will be designed to run on a much smaller footprint than its predecessor, ensuring that computers receive adequate protection without sapping much-needed processing resources.

As a result of the new offering, Microsoft will be shuttering their paid virus protection service Windows Live OneCare, which has been provided on a subscription basis at a cost of $49.95 US for up to three machines.

Just in Time or Too Little Too Late?

This isn't a new problem, by any means. It has existed ever since users starting pulling a disk or tape out of one machine and putting it in another. The Internet only exacerbated it. Now, more than a decade after the problems started gaining momentum, Microsoft is taking more definitive action. Better late than never.

Microsoft sits among a group of companies who have made a business out of attempting to reduce the number of systems being exploited by nefarious programs. And yet Microsoft holds a unique position compared to the others. As a company, Microsoft actually has the ability to fix the problems and exploits at their source - within the operating system itself - rather than simply covering those holes with band-aids as outsiders have struggled to do.

The release of this free product promises to help Microsoft better bookend that problem, corralling viruses from both sides. But what does giving the product away do to a market that has grown up around Microsoft's vulnerability? And does the potential cannibalization of that market raise red flags from the antitrust watchdogs? Hard to say. It's likely that some of the current antivirus companies will survive by providing additional features and functionality - or by employing their technology in other ways. But - clearly - selling antivirus solutions just got a great deal more difficult.

Regardless of the business and market impact, working to make the antivirus software more accessible to a wider group of users will likely help stave off larger problems. And if the Microsoft solution actually begins to make a dent in reducing the number of costly outbreaks, isn't it worth it? At the very least, it's a step in the right direction.

Discuss

The Web is full of examples where developers have built technology for an express purpose, only to have that technology adopted by users or other developers to deliver unforeseen - and often wildly popular - solutions. Flickr - originally a small subset of functionality in a much larger game - comes to mind. As does YouTube, which had its humble beginnings in the world of online dating. And now, the iPhone may be joining those ranks.

It's safe to assume that when the folks at Apple finally released the iPhone, the concept of converting it into "something that replicated an ancient ceramic woodwind instrument" probably wasn't on their list of things to do. And yet, the folks at Smule have done just that with Ocarina, an iPhone app that has skyrocketed to becoming the #1 paid app in the world - in one week.

Sponsor

Seven days ago, The Unofficial Apple Weblog was providing a first look at Ocarina, dubbing it a must-have for "Zelda nerds." Today, David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners is using Ocarina as an example of what startups today should be doing.

Even more impressive? The Ocarina app, currently priced at $0.99 US, is the number one paid iPhone app in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Holland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and the US. It's also in the Top 5 for a handful of other countries.

So how did an application that turns an iPhone user into a pale imitation of the master of the pan flute become such an overnight sensation? Well, there are a five specific things working in its favor.

First, it's a musical instrument. A quick glimpse at the top paid iPhone apps shows Ocarina shares the list with a guitar, drums, and a piano. Some of today's most popular games on traditional gaming platforms revolve around the emulation of rock stars and their bands. Shortcutting your way to musical stardom is the most popular thing around.

But why is Ocarina more popular than traditional instruments on the iPhone platform? Size for one thing. It's the only popular instrument app where the iPhone actually replicates the instrument form factor. But I think it has another distinct advantage, as well. The number of people who actually know how to play the instrument is infinitesimal - as is the number of people who know what it should sound like. So no one is likely to show you up. What's more, pretty much anything that comes out of the app sounds strangely appealing.

Second, it's social. One of the most interesting aspects of Ocarina is the ability to see who else on earth - at this very moment - is either completely slaughtering music as we know it or belting out an amazing tune. Every person playing the app has the option to broadcast their Ocarina warblings, which causes their tune to radiate from their position on the globe. Aside from being an interesting study in data visualization, that gives Ocarina the same voyeuristic appeal of any social networking site.

Third, it's fun and completely addictive. For some odd reason, you simply cannot put the app down. It's simple to learn and nearly impossible to master. (I've had to stop writing this post any number of times just to pick up my iPhone and muck with it again.)

Fourth, Ocarina picked a pricing model that iTunes users are already conditioned to understand: the $0.99 purchase. It's rarely enough for an individual to give it a second thought and yet, in bulk, it's enough to generate a real revenue stream for a company.

Finally, for all its seeming simplicity, Ocarina is actually one of the most inclusive uses of the iPhone and its capabilities. The app takes advantage of the touch screen, the microphone, the accelerometer, and the location and presence information. It is incredibly responsive to user input and that gives users the feeling that they're "actually doing something."

When you break it down, it comes as little surprise that Ocarina is as popular as it is. But hindsight is 20-20. Did the developers actually foresee this success or did it just seem like an interesting creative pursuit? An even better question: does it matter?

One thing's for sure, Ocarina is a runaway hit driving some very real revenue for Smule - and it has the potential to become one of those "must-have" iPhone apps for every user. Here's hoping it's not a one-hit wonder for the folks at Smule.

To purchase the application for the iPhone, visit the Ocarina page in the App Store.

Discuss

Citysearch, the popular local restaurant and shopping guide, announced a new beta version of its service tonight. The new version provides a better local search experience, with the ability to search specific neighborhoods instead of just metropolitan areas. Citysearch also announced a retooled mobile site, which lets users read and write reviews on their mobile devices, and gives them access to menus from participating restaurants. Citysearch has also implemented Facebook Connect, which allows users to log in to the site with their Facebook accounts, and the company plans to roll out OpenID support early next year.

You can fine the new beta at beta.citysearch.com.

Sponsor

Obviously, the restaurant review market is quite crowded right now and a lot of the updates to Citysearch were surely prompted by the success of other services like Yelp.

More Local

Besides giving the service a cleaner and more modern look, Citysearch also retooled the back-end to allow users to perform more granular searches. While the old Citysearch was only focused on 140 metropolitan areas, the new version allows you to drill down to the neighborhood level.

Social

The new version of Citysearch puts more emphasis on the social experience by highlighting reviews from your Facebook friends while browsing through reviews. Besides making the sign-in easier for new users, Citysearch now also allows you to publish your updates on the service to your Facebook profile. On the service itself, setting up a profile has now become easier, though you can't really do too much with these profiles besides adding your profile picture.

Users can now also vote reviews up or down, which is a nice feature, given that some reviews can be blatantly biased.

The update also puts more emphasis on professionally produced videos of local establishments. The new player, which is provided by BrightCove, allows for wide-screen HD playback, which is a nice upgrade from the old version.

Mobile

Early next year, Citysearch will start to allow users to upload their own photos and videos to the service. Citysearch also expects to release a native iPhone application around the same time, though for now, the updated mobile site is already quite useful.

Overall, this is a nice update to Citysearch and puts the service back on par with its competitors. In the mobile market, however, review services like Yelp or discovery services like Whrll have a head-start and it will be interesting to see if Citysearch's mobile site can compete with these.

Discuss

At ReadWriteWeb we work hard to provide you with the smartest Internet news and reviews each and every day. The sponsors that give us the opportunity to spend our time writing are companies that appreciate the thoughtfulness of the whole community here, including our readers. Once a week we like to write a post about them; here's who they are, what they do and what they've been up to lately. We hope you'll pay them a visit as a way to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site.

Interested in joining our crew of supporting companies? ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is read by a particularly sophisticated audience of thought leaders and decision makers. You can email us for more info.

Ready to learn more about the smart companies that are supporting this site you love to read? Read on...

Sponsor

---

Skip to info about... Strands: recommendations Mindmeister: online mind mapping Glue: social browsing Rackspace: cloud computing experts Direct Media Exchange: meta ad network for websites Crowd Science: demographic data Wild Apricot: membership management Quintura: visual search Eurekester: custom topic portals Our Hosts and Blogging Software: Media Temple and SixApart

---

Mindmeister

Mindmeister is an collaborative online mapping tool. A 'mind map' is a popular way to brainstorm new ideas, graphically instead of textually or verbally. Many people do their best thinking when visualizing ideas and connections. And as with most other online tools, bringing mind maps onto the Web means that users can collaborate with each other in real time. This is the case with Mindmeister, where users can create, manage and share mind maps online. Check out all the latest features in Mindmeister, on the company blog - task management, wikimaps, history view, and more.

If you're curious about how online mind mapping works, check it out by signing up for a free account at www.mindmeister.com.

Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we've struggled to get in the past. It's important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

You can sign up to get demographic data by clicking here.

Wild Apricot

WildApricot enables clubs, associations and communities to automate and streamline administrative tasks, using their online membership management software.

The company has an active and well written blog, focusing on issues and trends in web technologies that help your organization achieve more with less. Example posts include Show, Don't Tell: Google Earth Outreach for Nonprofits and How to Learn More About Your Website Audience.

Wild Apricot gets lots of love in the social media; book sales pro Ann Kingman, for example, says she has "been very happy with Wild Apricot in the past few months we've been using it. Great customer support."

See for yourself what Wild Apricot can do at http://wildapricot.com.

Strands

Strands has created a social recommender engine that is able to provide real-time recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices. Recently the company announced the 5 finalists in its Strands $100K Call for Recommender Start-Ups and the companies they unearthed look pretty interesting. Also Strands recently added personalization to music.strands.tv. As Atlanta-based creative strategy consultant Vincent Hunt said on Twitter: "If you are not on @strands... All I can say is... You are MISSIN it!! HOT"

Check their new Strands Business Solutions to add recommendations to your site.

Glue

Glue enables you to connect with friends while browsing. It is a product of AdaptiveBlue, an innovative company founded by one of our own genius writers, Alex Iskold. In the company's blog, Glue is described as a browser add-on that "makes it easier to connect with friends around books, music, movies, restaurants, stocks, wine and more."

The beauty of Glue is that it displays on popular websites such as Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yahoo! Finance, and many others - Glue goes where you go. When you go to Amazon and other sites, Glue shows you what your friends have looked at there and what they thought.

You can sign up to Glue by clicking here.

Rackspace

Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting. The company is hosting two events this month, a conference on Cloud Computing and the Rackspace Customer Conference 2008.

Direct Media Exchange

Direct Media Exchange is a simple solution for managing ad networks that allows publishers to make more money from their websites. You can find a number of case studies on their site describing publishers that they helped double ad revenues for.

Quintura

Quintura is a visual-based search engine, which we are now using to power ReadWriteWeb's main search. Check it out here. If you haven't tried it before, you should - it's a very interesting way to explore search results.

Quintura can power visual search on your site for free. This company is backed by Mangrove Capital Partners, the same VCs that provided early funding to Skype.

Eurekester

Eurekster is developer of the swicki that we use on RWW, a custom social search portal on the topic of your choice (in our case web tech), powered by the community.

People build swickis on all kinds of topics, some people build a lot of them. Alex Holmes, for example, builds really nice looking swickis on topics like the 2008 Election, Ocean Animals and Home Buying.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

ReadWriteWeb is hosted by Media Temple and is published using SixApart's MovableType.

If you've ever wondered what RWW looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the MovableType publishing interface - that's it on the left. That's where we live, virtually, though our staff lives physically all over the world. Some of live in the Southern United States, some of us in Oregon, others in New Zealand. Wherever we are though, the companies above pay our rents or mortgages and we appreciate it. We hope you'll stop by their sites and see what they've got to offer.

Have you got a smart company that could use some more visits by the sophisticated readers of a blog like ReadWriteWeb? Drop us a line and let's talk.

Thanks to all our sponsors and our readers for your support!

Discuss

Startups - want to be innovative? Go back to the garage. That's the message venture capitalists at the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase in Redwood City CA today, are offering to entrepreneurs and startups.

In the midst of one of the worst economic crises the world has seen, investors are in the main optimistic, and agree that to weather this storm and come out on top, today's entrepreneur's need to change their mindset and go back to basics: go back to the garage, and success will follow.

Sponsor

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney explained that today's market brings new opportunities if you're willing to look for them. In the late 90's when all looked bleak, one company that broke through was eBay(EBAY); it went public in the fall of 98. "While the bar is exceptionally high right now, it doesn't mean someone can't break through it."

Pointing out that even though this is going to be a tough period, William Tai, Charles River Ventures anticipates the companies that will show up in VC portfolios will be born now. "If you look at returns on venture funds that were invested during a recession, they offered the best return. Companies that are being built now have fewer competitors, have the ability to address bigger markets and can hire high quality people that charge less."

Five Tips for Startups and Entrepreneurs

1. Don't focus on growth; focus on cash preservation

David Cowan, Bessemer Venture Partners, recommends companies move toward cash preservation rather than growth. "Spend less time worrying about what competitors will do in terms of features, it won't be your biggest problem because competitors will have same issues in terms of growth," he said. "Move toward cash preservation."

2. Work out how to monetize social networks

Mahaney said the opportunities he sees are in social networks. "At the moment, no one has figured out how to monetize them, but they can - absolutely," he said.

3. Don't make new commitments, look for opportunities in mobile technology

Cowan also recommends to avoid new commitments, and to make money he suggests looking at new ways to use media. Taking out his iPhone, he played a tune for the audience using the new Ocarina application. "Six people developed this and it's sold tens of thousands." This is only one idea; there are lots of creative ways to use the Internet and mobiles.

4. Strike while there is less competition

Tai sees opportunity in going forward, and is most excited about Internet technologies, mobile and open source. "Everything is bigger and happens faster when stuff hits in this environment," he said. In the environment of a few years ago, you'd have 20-50 competitors; in this market you have fewer competitors and an opportunity to shine.

5 Look to the virtual world and expect to nurture your product for 7 - 8 years

Basil Horangic, North Bridge Venture Partners said that they're seeing excellent growth in companies that are working on social networks, virtual world space and the monetization for virtual goods. "There is a lot of innovation in those areas," he said. As for startups looking to be acquired, he tells the audience that the data shows companies go public and get sold at seven or eight years of age.

Page and Brin in Wojcicki's garage, 232 Santa Margarita Ave, Menlo Park CA

If a simple garage was good enough for Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start goliath search engine Google, it should be good enough for new startups trying to break out at a time when the odds are against them. So the advice of the day? Stop paying $5 for a latte, invest in a basic coffee machine and start innovating.

Discuss

Anything that can be a video will be a video

During the Web 2.0 Summit recently, the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, pointed out that one of the reasons the world is no longer the same is YouTube. For better or worse, said Mr. Newsom, we are now always on the record. Every significant and insignificant conversation is being recorded, and the videos are available on YouTube.

Sponsor

His co-panelist Joe Trippi, who was in charge of Howard Dean's presidential campaign, further explained that because of YouTube, we have now entered the age of transparency. Joe argued that because we are always on record, the only sensible thing to do is to tell the truth. The panelists agreed that YouTube, and the online video movement, is fundamentally changing our society.

The panel was indeed thought provoking, but there was another conversation at the Summit that got me thinking that the second largest search engine may be on its way to becoming the largest.

The story of one 9-year-old boy

During one of the conference breaks, I met Ian Kennedy, one of the heads of Service Innovation at Nokia. (You've seen a lot of Ian around the web because he used to be the product manager for MyBlogLog at Yahoo!.) Ian and I started talking, and he mentioned that his son accesses the web through YouTube. At first, I didn't get it and thought Ian was making a joke.

But then I realized he was not. Whenever his son needed any information, he would open up YouTube, type in the search term and then just watch the videos that showed up as matches. He never Googled anything; he never went to any other site; his entire web experience was confined to YouTube videos. It was rather puzzling, I thought. Could it be that there are YouTube videos on any topic? My curiosity was piqued, and I decided to run a little experiment.

The YouTube experiment

To get an idea, I ran several different searches:

• Chicken Noodle Soup (bad results)
• George Washington (bad results)
• Astrophysics (bad results)
• Donkey from Shrek (good results)
• Lance Wataru (good results)
• vacuuming carpet (good results)
• Gavin Newsom (good results)
• Bakugan (good results)

Like any search engine, YouTube is not perfect. In general, short queries on generic topics, like Astrophysics, do not work very well. Somewhat surprisingly, George Washington and Chicken Noodle Soup do not yield good results either. But some searches do work very well. Ian said that his son frequently searches for episodes of Bakugan, which come up perfectly. Another likely search for a 9-year-old, Lance Wataru (a Pokemon character), works well, too. More specific searches, such as Donkey from Shrek, work even better.

Anything that can be a video will be a video

I walked away with the impression that we are not quite there yet, but was intrigued. Clearly a lot of things lend themselves to video, not just movies and music clips, but educational videos, tourism and a lot of other things. If video content continues to grow, could video eventually replace text?

Most likely not. The main reason that text rules the web today is because of hyperlinks. Linking pages via text links is what makes the web possible. Hyperlinking videos would be a harder thing to do. Not impossible, of course, because you can link objects and insert text in videos, but it's just not as elegant as text. Besides the linking issue, not everything would be an effective video. For example, a research paper could be made into a video but would not be as easy to follow as the text.

But there is definitely a shift. Because video was not possible before, the web was dominated by text. Now that video cameras and broadband are cheap, information that is better served by video is getting converted. As a result, YouTube is now the second largest search engine, and traffic is through the roof. And because kids like Ian's son are video natives, this is just the beginning.

Generation YouTube

Imagine a whole generation of kids growing up and learning about the world through YouTube. In the first half of the 20th century, people grew up reading books and newspapers. Then there was a generation that grew up on movies and television. The last shift was to the Internet. And now web video is creating yet another generation.

Kids no longer learn about the world by reading text. Like the television generation, they are absorbing the world through their visual sense. But there is a big difference. Television was programmed and inflexible. YouTube is completely micro-chunked and on demand. Kids can search for what they need anytime. This is different, and powerful.

True, the current model of YouTube is still raw and still skewed to entertainment. But imagine online video 5 years from now, geared to kids, where entertainment, games, education, travel -- everything for kids -- is mixed and delivered via searchable channels. This would be a big change on the Internet and in the world. Just as we no longer think twice about Googling, kids of the future will be consuming huge volumes of information via video.

And now tell us your stories. Are you seeing your kids use video more than text? Do you yourself use YouTube to find information? Let us know. We want to hear from you!

Discuss

While the tech world eagerly waits to see who Barack Obama will appoint Chief Technology Officer of the United States, a similar appointment of more immediate impact to many people has just occurred. Terence Milholland began work this week as the first Chief Technology Officer in the history of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

He enters an IRS that the General Accounting Office said last week suffers from technology so outdated it leaves the agency with inadequate integrity, reliability and security for sensitive taxpayer information. Check out our coverage of the first IRS CTO and the daunting problems he'll face on our new blog the RWW Jobwire, sponsored by VisualCV.

Sponsor

Successful Creative Commons music store Magnatune announced today that they have made another radical transformation in their business model. Customers can now pay as little as $5 per month for unlimited streaming and $10 per month for unlimited DRM-free downloads, they can purchase as little as 1 month of membership and they can use Paypal's recurring payments feature to stay subscribed if they wish. The company, whose motto is "we are not evil," then gives 50% of revenues to the artists.

We really like what Magnatune is doing and we think this business model is great, but we're concerned that the service is still too antiquated in its music delivery to get customers beyond the fact that it has a really obscure catalog.

Sponsor

The Problems With Magnatune

Unfortunately, Magnatune doesn't offer much in the way of discovery of the best music on the site. There's some playlists by genre and that's good. You can see a handful of the top sellers. In this era of recommendation technology, though, the company should really facilitate discovery better than it does. Millions of people are now used to visiting Last.fm, entering a known artist's name and then getting hours of high-quality related content. It's going to be hard to get too many of them to go back to a black box point and click catalog.

That's especially the case when you're looking through a catalog of items you've never seen or heard of before. Independent music stores are at a huge sales deficit because their products have no name recognition. Additionally, and no one likes it when I say this (but it's true), most of the music on sites like this isn't any good! If you've ever looked for Creative Commons music before you know that's the case. I dare you to post links to your favorite independent and CC music in comments.

None the less, you've got to admire what they're doing at Magnatune. For fans of classical music and new age piano, there may be a lot there for you. Otherwise, we're not so sure.

Additionally, it's going to be hard for even a business model this cool to top the all around awesome new music service that Lala just rolled out, for example.

Discuss

According to a new report by Accenture, a large number of Millennials (those born between 1977 and 1997), expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, including their preferred computers and applications. More than a third of Millennials also indicated that they were dissatisfied with the technologies their employers currently provide.

Among other things, Millennials would prefer to use instant messaging, text messaging, and RSS feeds to communicate with their clients and customers, though very few companies currently support these technologies. The report also highlights that a lot of employees are simply bypassing corporate IT departments if those don't offer them the services they need.

Sponsor

Going Rogue

One of the most interesting results of this study is that this difference between expectations and reality has led over a quarter of the employees surveyed by Accenture to use technology that is unsupported and unsanctioned by their corporate IT departments. Almost half of all Millennials who use social networks, blogs, vlogs, or Twitter do so without support from their IT departments (and often against the IT policies of their companies). Millennials also see no problem with using unsupported mobile phones or instant messaging services at work.

Interestingly, a quarter of those who use online collaboration tools and open-source software also do so without support.

A staggering 60% of the employees surveyed by Accenture argue that they are unaware of their companies' IT policies or that they are simply not interested in following them.

The End of Email?

The report also highlights that the slow shift away from email as a preferred way to communicate continues. While older Millennials still spend around 9.5 hours a week writing and receiving work-related emails, younger Millennials in the workforce only spend about 7.7 hours on email. In contrast to this, high school and college students only spend about two hours a week on email and clearly prefer instant messaging, text messaging, or social networking sites to talk to their friends.

Of course, these are also exactly the forms of communication that most employers are not supporting yet.

Choices

The Accenture report argues that, in the long run, companies will have to adapt to their employees' technology preferences. After all, over half of the respondents in this study (52%) said that a company's use of technology was a major factor when they select an employer (though the current economic climate might turn this into a luxury for many employees).

This report definitely makes it clear that IT departments can either choose to adopt some of these technologies, or they will risk that a large number of their young employees will simply go rogue.

Discuss