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MySpace: Unstoppable Force or Unnecessary Click Factory? — So I just read the big article about MySpace in today's New York Times and it got me thinking a lot about growth, monetization, and user experience. People always talk so much about how many pages MySpace serves up and how that represents such dramatic growth.
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What If Media 2.0 Is Less Profitable Than Media 1.0? — The advent of web-based e-commerce fundamentally lowered the costs of doing business, increasing the scalability (and in many cases the viability) of thousands of small businesses. The introduction of micro-marketing through Google AdWords gave …

For MySpace, Making Friends Was Easy. Big Profit Is Tougher.
Discussion:
Guardian Unlimited, Jeff Clavier's Software Only, Clickety Clack, michael parekh on IT, Church of the Customer Blog, Scott Rafer at WINKsite, mathewingram.com/work, Screenwerk, Kareem Mayan's Weblog, the j. botter weblog, rev2.org, IP Democracy, Don Dodge on The Next …, GigaOM, Perceptric Forum, Paul Kedrosky's … and Lost Remote TV Blog


The Last Page — Well, I think it's time to put this weblog to bed. — Yep, after four years and almost 3,000 posts I've decided to close up the Notebook. There's lots of reasons, but generally this is a continuation of the full-reset I started back in January.


Australia and Xbox Break World Water Balloon Record — About 50,000 water balloons are thrown to celebrate the record-breaking launch of the Xbox 360 console in Australia. — SYDNEY, Australia — April 22, 2006 — More than 2,900 gamers from around the world staged the world's largest water balloon event in Australia today.
Discussion:
Kotaku
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Congress readies new digital copyright bill — For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. — Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite.
Discussion:
Don Dodge on The Next …, Techdirt, TeleRead, IP Democracy, Life On the Wicked Stage and Smalltalk Tidbits …


One Day Soon, Straphangers May Turn Pages With a Button — PARIS, April 23 — In the Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller "Minority Report," a subway passenger scans an issue of USA Today that is a plastic video screen, thin, foldable and wireless, with constantly changing text. — The scene is no longer science fiction.

Pioneering Wi-Fi city seeing some startup problems — ST. CLOUD, Fla. - Joe Lusardi's friends back in New York couldn't believe it when he told them he'd have free Internet access through this city's new Wi-Fi network. — It's free all right, but residents are, to some extent, getting what they pay for.
Discussion:
Wi-Fi Networking News


Apple's Earth Day announcements — Apple made two announcements in the spirit of this weekend's Earth Day. — The first is an expansion of its computer recycling program, offering free computer take-back and recycling with the purchase of a new Macintosh beginning in June.


Crawl caching proxy — Several people have noticed content from other Google bots showing up in our main web index, and are wondering... why/how does that happen? Last week I was at WebmasterWorld Boston and I talked about this issue there, but I'd like to do a blog post about Google's crawl caching proxy …

Windows Vista Build 5365 - Beta 2 Preview — This evening, Beta Testers for Windows Vista were given a new interim build - Build 5365 - to test. Microsoft is atleast a month away from releasing Windows Vista Beta 2 and this interim build showcases several enhancements we can expect to see coming in Beta 2.

More on S3AjaxWiki — So, I've put some more work into my S3 AJAX wiki, first mentioned Friday night. After some Virtual PC sessions, editing seems to be working on Firefox and MSIE on Win. Safari and any other browsers not amenable to PUT and DELETE in XmlHTTPRequests will not find joy in editing …

Intel's Hard-to-Define Viiv Doesn't Live Up to the Hype — In January, Intel told the world that digital media would never be the same again. — During a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, chief executive Paul S. Otellini unveiled Viiv — a combination of hardware …
Discussion:
Engadget


Non-Anarchy Tagging for Online Retailers — Note: I'm resurrecting this weeks-old posting to make it easier for people involved in a thread on Tagging at the IAI listserv to find it — Observation: Most of the acid test criteria for Web 2. applications and online customer experiences include …
Discussion:
You're It!

GData and Open Standards — Last week Google introduced GData to "provide a simple standard protocol for reading and writing data on the web". Based on ATOM 1.0 and RSS 2.0, this represents a significant step for Google towards adopting standard protocols that may one day open more of their applications to 3rd party development.
Discussion:
Jeff Clavier's Software Only

Maker Faire (Part 1) — This weekend we're visiting the Maker Faire at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, the end-all be-all event for DIY hacks, homebrew gadgets, and other oddities and phenomena. Just think: a collection of creations including everything from knits to vegetable oil powered cars.
Discussion:
Scobleizer


Will Municator make $100 laptop obsolete before it ships? — "A Chinese company is touting an inexpensive Linux-based computer as a way to close the 'digital divide.' YellowSheepRiver's $150 Municator appears to be available now, with a three-month leadtime, suggesting it could reach market …


Sidekick III Docs Show Up On FCC Website — Turns out those rumors of Sharp being the manufacturer of the Sidekick III were true. The FCC's website coughs up the goodies again, with details that it will have a 1.3 megapixel camera, bluetooth, IM software and expandable memory in the form of some type of SD card.