VentureBeat

Roundup: Tech salary raises in ‘08, Supreme Court knocks down anti-porn law, and more layoffs

Here’s the latest action, depressing as half of it is:

Apple will make an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2010 (at least in spirit) — The company has already said it will stop attending the Macworld event, so rumors that it will go to CES instead, persist. Apple or no Apple, CES is doing its best to woo the third-party developers and manufacturers with what has been dubbed the iLounge Pavilion for iPod and… Continue Reading

YouTube still hunting for money with affiliate ad expansion

Google is expanding its YouTube eCommerce Program beyond the U.S. and the U.K. to allow viewers in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands to “click-to-buy” products (such as songs or DVDs) related to the videos they watch on YouTube.

This is an effort to boost YouTube’s affiliate ads program, with ads that allow you to buy products through sites like iTunes and Amazon. Links to purchase songs and DVDs will now appear as semi-transparent ads within the… Continue Reading

Move over, Celine Dion: Custom themes for your iGoogle homepage!

So maybe Google’s trying to cheer everyone up after it had a tough week with the confirmation of Google layoffs and the discontinuation or “indefinite hiatus” of six of its products. Here’s a bright and shiny new offering, according to the official Google blog: You can now personalize your iGoogle homepage by creating custom themes, an ability previously bestowed only upon artists like glass sculptor Dale Chihuly (a favorite of Google VP Marissa Mayer), Jeff… Continue Reading

SimplyBox lets users organize info, images snagged from the web

Web app SimplyBox has jumped on the bandwagon of companies looking to change the way internet users save and share information they find on the web. Once downloaded, the service lets users take screenshots of content on any web site and put them in categorized boxes via a toolbar at the bottom of the window. For example, someone looking for Paris vacation ideas could take screenshots of hotel rates, airfares and tourist destinations across an… Continue Reading

Roundup: Obama’s potential Blackberry replacement, internet does not equal “To Catch a Predator” episodes, plus layoffs

Here’s the latest action:

Alternatives to Obama’s favorite Blackberry — One option for the email-addicted President-elect is an NSA-approved secure PDA, the Sectera Edge, which costs $3,350 — but hey, you can drop it four feet onto concrete repeatedly without worry (it’s waterproof and dustproof!), according to CNET.

Graphics chip maker Nvidia forecasts steep revenue drop — The company blames sagging PC sales for a drop as steep as 40 to 50 percent for its fourth quarter revenue, following… Continue Reading

Huffington Post, in need of laughs, buys comedy site 236.com

23/6, a political comedy site that boasts “the sluttiest news team on the internet,” will soon have a new home — it’s just been bought by progressive news site Huffington Post, which took $25 million in funding last month. The standalone site launched in November 2007 as a joint venture between HuffPo, as it is commonly called, and Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp. Now 23/6, acquired as a “vertical” site, is going to be blended into HuffPo… Continue Reading

Luxury sample sale sites Gilt Groupe and RueLaLa pick up traffic

Luxury spending may be down, but that doesn’t mean fashionistas aren’t clamoring for deals. Sample sales, which have been around for years, are often a way for designers to get rid of overstocked pieces and clothes that didn’t sell well in stores — at a steep discount. Shoppers in the know can get onto mailing lists to attend boutique and warehouse sales. But now it looks as if that exclusive trend is progressively moving online,… Continue Reading

Evolution of Dance 2: Shaking the moneymaker on YouTube

Evolution of Dance, a toe-tapping journey through the history of dancing styles, is one of the most popular YouTube videos of all time, second only to Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” music video. But how do you make money off your 109 million video views?

Judson Laipply, the motivational speaker/comedian and dynamic dancer behind the original Evolution of Dance, is trying to figure that out with today’s release of Evolution of Dance 2.

Debuting on The Today Show, the… Continue Reading

The U.S. Congress: The new stars of YouTube?

Move over, C-SPAN. The 111th Congress opens today with a virtual bang — YouTube is launching channels for The Senate and the House of Representatives to make it easier for average viewers to connect with their Senators and Representatives (we know you’ve been procrastinating on your letter writing campaigns). An explanation of the new service (delivered with obvious help from a teleprompter) can be seen here:

The YouTube channels are well-designed, with an interactive map that… Continue Reading

Yodle lands $10M for local web advertising

Yodle, a company that helps small businesses buy online ads to market themselves locally, has raised $10 million in third-round funding to continue product development and expand sales nationally. An alternative to Yellow Pages, the New York-based company aims to turn click-throughs into direct-response phone calls and new customers for small, local businesses like salons and mechanics.

Yodle actually purchases the keyword-linked ads called up on search engines like Yahoo, Ask.com and Google (it’s an authorized… Continue Reading

MySpace and Wall Street Journal contest to make World Economic Forum in Davos “a place for friends”?

MySpace has joined forces with the Wall Street Journal for “MySpace Journal,” a competition to send one lucky MySpace user to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The winner will be a “special correspondent” on behalf of the entire MySpace community and get to join the Davos press corps. If this sounds familiar, it’s because YouTube has a Davos contest too.

The World Economic Forum is an annual meeting of political and business leaders, intellectuals… Continue Reading

Burger King: Will sacrifice Facebook friends for free Whopper

It looks like Burger King has been reading into the prediction that cutting down on Facebook friends is going to be trendy in 2009. The fast food chain has developed Whopper Sacrifice, a Facebook application that rewards you for doing just that — delete 10 of your friends on Facebook and score a coupon for the company’s signature burger. That’s much easier than the embarrassing tasks (naked handstand, anyone?) suggested by the application page. As… Continue Reading

Comedy site JibJab raises $7.5 million, no joke

JibJab, the site that spawned original comedy videos and customizable animated greeting cards, has raised $7.5 million in a third round of funding, according to TechCrunch.

The site is known for its parodies and original funny shorts, many of them skewering politicians and the government, like 2004’s This Land:

JibJab also offers irreverent greeting cards you can e-mail to your friends (yes, you can customize the cards with friends’ faces). Many of them are free, while the… Continue Reading

Cisco study: U.S. wins TV and mobile-watching world olympics

Cisco Systems has released results from its new Visual Networking Index survey looking at video consumption habits around the world, and some of them may surprise you. Among other things, it gauged people’s attitudes toward online, mobile and television viewing of video content in the U.S., China, Germany and Sweden. Below, we’ve broken down the report’s findings for optimum factoid digestion:

American internet users spend 2.5 as much time watching professionally-produced content (shows and movies created… Continue Reading

A hard day’s night: Norwegian Beatles podcast yanked

The rumors are true, the Beatles have fled Norway. NRK, the Norwegian public broadcasting company, had to pull all 212 episodes of its podcast “Our Daily Beatles” last night. The free podcasts, which we discovered on Monday, included anecdotes behind the songs and offered the original Beatles tunes in their entirety.

NRK’s agreement with Norwegian composer rights holder TONO, which deals with composers, permits NRK to publish TV and radio programs that aired a long time… Continue Reading

Vain model Googles herself, sues over “skanky” findings

The internet is serious business. Just ask Canadian ex-model Liskula Cohen, who’s suing Google to unmask the individual or individuals behind the blog Skanks in New York, a site hosted by Google’s Blogger publishing service. The blog didn’t release Cohen’s social security number, credit card info or home address — it just crowned her its “#1 skanky superstar,” among other glowing accolades, according to the New York Daily News.

Cohen, who graced the covers of Australian… Continue Reading

Video ad service SpotMixer lands $9M, gets in with Google

One True Media, an online video creation and editing company, has raised $9 million in a second round of funding to market SpotMixer, a video ad service it offers to small businesses.

Small businesses can use SpotMixer to make and distribute their own professional-looking videos by using photo and video templates, along with marketing copy and voice-overs. These videos are essentially ads, which can then be embedded in an email campaign or posted to YouTube and… Continue Reading

From Russia, with love: Livejournal lays off a dozen

Livejournal, one of the earliest blogging services, is letting go of 12 employees, a little under 20 percent of its staff. Yahoo product manager Matthew Berardo, who was hired as Livejournal’s general manager in the U.S., was also laid off.

The company, known for the quirky-interest communities formed by its loyal users, is moving all product development and design to Moscow, where Livejournal’s owner, Russian software company SUP, is based. A company spokesperson says the move… Continue Reading

Facebook: The new battleground for popstars? Lily Allen takes on Katy Perry

British singer/songwriter Lily Allen has revived a feud with U.S. pop star Katy Perry (of “I Kissed a Girl” song fame), threatening to post Perry’s phone number on Facebook should Perry make any more disparaging comments about her. Isn’t that the sort of drama that MySpace is usually associated with, not Facebook? It looks like celebrity tastes in social networking sites are changing, if not exactly growing up.

Perry, who remarked that she was a “skinnier… Continue Reading

YouTube still rules online video, U.S. viewing time leaps 40 percent

The number of videos viewed by Americans increased by 34 percent over the past year with 12.7 billion videos viewed in November 2008 versus 9.5 billion the previous November, according to the latest report from comScore Video Metrix. That means Americans spent a whopping 40 percent more time watching online videos over the course of the year, notes NewTeeVee.

Seventy seven percent of the U.S. internet audience watches online video — that’s a lot of couch… Continue Reading