Home / mashable.com rss archive / September-18-2007


Google Gadget Ads are Here
We caught wind that Google Gadget Ads would be launched today, and they’re actually here. We’ve got a few more details on the Gadget Ads now. The widgets will be able to support real-time data feeds, images, video, and more. They can be developed in Flash, HTML, or a combination of [...]

Digg Relaunches Today: MySpace-style Features Coming
Social news site Digg is headed for a major overhaul on Wednesday. As promised multiple times by founder Kevin Rose, the site is launching social networking features that will make the site a lot more personal: complete “MySpace”-style social networking profiles with a comment section, and the ability to share stories with a group [...]

3G iPhone Confirmed
Steve Jobs has said that there is a 3G iPhone in the works. There’s still no word on exactly when it will be available to buyers, though it’s expected to be ready some time late next year. This confirms speculation that a 3G iPhone will be on its way, after Apple teamed up [...]

Google Gadget Ads Launching Tonight?
Word is that Google will officially launch its gadget ads by the end of the day today. As mentioned previously, a gadget ad is an ad unit thats actually an interactive widget:It’s basically a more interactive AdSense ad unit, allowing advertisers to use flash apps, videos, real-time feeds and transaction capabilities within the ad. [...]

Breaking: MySpace and MTV Partner for Presidential Debate Series
MySpace and MTV are announcing a partnership to host what they are calling Presidential Candidate Dialogues on the social network. The first event will take place on September 27th at the University of New Hampshire featuring Democrat John Edwards and will be moderated by correspondents from MTV News and WashingtonPost.com. The event will [...]

Steve Jobs Will Fight iPhone Unlocking Hacks
Steve Jobs has said that he’ll be fighting against those companies that allow you to unlock your iPhone. Darn. As with most security measures, it will be a back and forth relationship between those that will manage to unlock the iPhone, and Apple. With the emergence of companies that are offering [...]

Learn Foreign Language for Free with Mango
Mango is a new site that lets you take language lessons for free. The site has just launched in beta.The lessons are presented to you with slides. They’re interactive, as you can click words on the slide to hear them repeated. You can select the slide you’d like to move to, as [...]

Streetfires Video Network Gets $6.1M
Car enthusiast site Streetfire has raised $6.1 million in a Series A round of funding.The network, which operates around the premise of video-sharing, managed to survive the dot-com bust by opening up for user-submitted content. The funding will pretty much go towards building out the site, and bringing in more premium content from [...]

AOL Selling Dial-Up Access Service?
AOL may soon be selling its dial-up Internet access business, as Time Warner, its parent company, has indicated that it will be looking in the next 12 to 18 months at this possibility.This would be similar to what AOL did in Europe, though the company says that it would be a more difficult undertaking in [...]

Send Voicemails through Facebook
FwdNet, a VoIP service provider, has launched a Facebook application, aptly named Voicemail, that lets you leave voice messages for friends. This is essentially a voicemail system that lets you deliver messages to buddies in your Facebook networks. You have the ability to record a message without sending it, though you’ll still need [...]

Mobicious Free Ringtone Converter
Mobicious, the online resource for all things mobile, now has a free service for creating ringtones. Using an mp3 from your desktop, you can choose a 20 second clip for Mobicious to convert into a ringtone. Send it to your phone, and you’ve got a free and easy way to personalize your [...]

GodTube Named Augusts Fastest Growing Site
GodTube was the #1 fastest growing website in the US for the month of August, ranking as a top 1000 web property. With a 973% growth in August, reported by comScore, the site has done well since its launch in August. Well, its official launch, really. The site came with [...]

Firefox 2.0.0.7 is Live; Eliminates QuickTime Security Flaw
A serious vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox has been addressed in release 2.0.0.7 which is now posted to the Firefox web site. The exploit involved an issue in QuickTime that could reportedly lead to a full compromise of the browser and possibly the underlying operating system. The official Mozilla security blog described the issue as [...]

Manage IT Systems From Google Maps Mashup
Zenoss is an open source management software provider, providing an alternative for enterprise IT infrastructure monitoring. With its upcoming update release, which will be available tomorrow morning, you’ll be able to utilize Google Maps mashups in order to have a geographical look at what’s going on with your network. In essence, you’re [...]

Lawyrs.net is Social Networking for Legal Professionals
What do you call 2,000 lawyers on a social networking site? Apparently Lawyrs.net. The site is a social network for the legal profession, allowing lawyers to setup profiles, make connections, and join groups. Similar to LinkedIn, the focus of profiles is on your professional history, education, and affiliations. Legal specific questions [...]

Ustreams Live Drama Webisode: If the Real World Were Contrived
To coincide with the upcoming fall TV lineup, ustream is debuting a new live drama called “35” in partnership with synchronis.tv. Starting tomorrow, September 19, at 9 pm EST, you’ll be able to check out the first webisode. As ustream describes it:On the cusp of their long-awaited success, an unwelcome house guest [...]

FOWA = A Feast Obviously Worth Attending
Yesterday we asked readers for their funniest acronyms for FOWA (which is actually the Future Of Web Apps conference) for a chance at two free passes to the event. After a bunch of amusing suggestions, we selected A Feast Obviously Worth Attending, as our top pick; a fine choice given the selection of restaurants [...]

Veoh & NCAA Offer Customized Highlights Reels
Veoh has teamed up with the NCAA to launch a new tool for its video service that lets you create your own college football highlights. Veoh already has an NCAA branded channel, and this new offering essentially lets you customize its content for your own player.With this tool you can select from a [...]

SEOmoz Gets $1.25M in Funding
SEOmoz, the consulting and Internet marketing and search engine optimization company, has taken a $1.25 million in funding.This comes as a big shock to many that follow SEOmoz, as it may seem to go against some of the objectives initially laid out by SEOmoz. Nevertheless, the funding has been in exchange for a reportedly [...]

Mint.com Offers Web-based Financial Tracking Tools
Ed note: this is our original post from August 2007, which was later pulled on request of the Mint team. Apologies if you’ve read it before.Mint.com is a new service that will help you track your finances and improve cash flow. With this service, you can insert the data from several financial institutions, [...]

Turkey Blocks YouTube. Again.
A Turkish court has ordered telecom authorities to block access to YouTube as a result of videos that are considered as offensive to the country’s political leaders. Again.After a resident in the Turkish city of Sivas sent in a complaint that YouTube was hosting insulting videos against the country’s founding father Mustafa [...]

Shocker: 30% of People Submit False Info to Social Networks
A recent study done by London-based emedia reveals that nearly two thirds of social networking users are worried about the safety of their personal data on these sites. About 31% of those surveyed have used false information about themselves to protect their identity. This is an important consideration as the walled-garden effect of [...]

ShopIt Store Widgets for MySpace
ShopIt is an online store creation tool that lets you sell your items, and post them to other networks using its widget offering.With your ShopIt profile, you can add items as well as commercials to sell your products. When adding an item, you can include up to 4 images, which can be uploaded [...]

Google Losing in China
A report from China IntelliConsulting Corp. has shown that Google is losing more ground to China’s Baidu, which has increased its lead in China’s top cities. Yahoo China has fallen in ranking as well.With Baidu holding a 69.5% market share in Bejing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, up 7.6% from last year, it’s a warning [...]

First Look: Mixxs Digg Alternative
Mixx, currently in beta, is a new player in the social news space that combines Digg-like features for voting on content with a personal start page. Mixx allows users to submit and vote on stories, videos, and photos, once again highlighting Diggs lack of an image section. Within each topical category (such as [...]

Murdoch to Set the WSJ Free?
Murdoch, who is in the process of buying the Wall Street Journal’s parent company Dow Jones, says that he will probably make WSJ content free.While this goes against everything most of his investors are saying, Murdoch sounds pretty determined to open up access to the online version of the newspaper. As WSJ Online is [...]

Swarmcasts Video Streaming Boosts for Veoh
Swarmcast’s Autobahn Accelerator, the free tool for boosting download speeds for online videos, is now available for Veoh. This latest release for Veoh lets you boost streaming rates for videos hosted on Veoh as well as those hosted by Veoh that have been embedded on other sites. This comes in time for the Fall [...]

Amazon S3 Competitor Gets $12 in Funding
Nirvanix, the recently launched Amazon S3 competitor, has closed a $12 million equity financing round, led my Mission Ventures and Valhalla Partners. Windward Ventures participated in this round as well. The company has already received an undisclosed amount of funding.The funds will be used to expand its core product, which is a B2B [...]

Metacafe Launches Directors Cut Channel
Video sharing service Metacafe has launched Directors Cut, a channel for showcasing the sites best filmmakers. The channel features videos that have been nominated by Metacafe users and approved by editors at the company. Videos will be accepted in four different categories: comedy, action & drama, animation, and documentary.For Metacafe videos that are [...]

Yahoo Widget Badges for Your MySpace Page
Yahoo Widgets now offers badges to be used on your website as a way to spread the widgets of your choice. Through these widget badges, site visitors can directly download the widgets that you’re promoting, and add them to their computer desktop. GirlSense has already worked with Yahoo to [...]

Google Reader Graduates, Launches International Versions
Users of Googles popular RSS reader might have noticed a subtle change in the past 24 hours: the removal of the Labs moniker from the logo. According to the Google Reader blog, the company has decided to graduate the product from Labs following the recent addition of search and earlier upgrades such as trends [...]

Metacafe Launches Directors Cut Channel
Video sharing service Metacafe has launched Directors Cut, a channel for showcasing the sites best filmmakers. The channel features videos that have been nominated by Metacafe users and approved by editors at the company. Videos will be accepted in four different categories: comedy, action & drama, animation, and documentary.For Metacafe videos that are [...]

Web 2.0 Marketplace Listings for September 18th, 2007
The Web 2.0 Marketplace is a place to list Web 2.0 and New Media websites for sale, job offers, consulting services, Facebook development services and more.New listingsSenior User Experience / Interaction DesignerJaxtr is a social communications startup in downtown Menlo Park backed by August Capital, Mayfie… 150k+ User Blog and Social Networking CommunityMindSay is a [...]

Web 2.0 Invites for September 18th, 2007
Invites for new, exciting Web 2.0 services are waiting…all you need to do is pick them up!Yahoo Mash InvitesYahoo Mash is a new social network from Yahoo. … Delicious InvitesInvites for the new private beta version of the Delicious social bookmarking site.Cre8Buzz InvitesShowcase yourself, showoff, post your pictures, blog your opinions, and share your videos. [...]

eBay Re-Focuses on Auction Business
While eBay has moved into new areas with recent acquisitions including Skype, StubHub, and StumbleUpon, its core auction business has been struggling. In fact, in eBays most recent quarter, users posted 6% fewer new listing than in the same time period last year. BusinessWeek has taken a look at what eBay is doing [...]

Facebook JavaScript Now Live
Facebook has announced that Facebook JavaScript (FBJS) is now out of beta and into version 1.0. This essentially allows Facebook applications to have the same type of interactivity and desktop-like functionality that is commonplace in Web 2.0 applications that live outside of Facebook. FBJS has been in beta for about a month.For more [...]

Facebook JavaScript Now Live
Facebook has announced that Facebook JavaScript (FBJS) is now out of beta and into version 1.0. This essentially allows Facebook applications to have the same type of interactivity and desktop-like functionality that is commonplace in Web 2.0 applications that live outside of Facebook. FBJS has been in beta for about a month.For more [...]

Warner Music to Sell iPod Compatible James Blunt Album on MySpace
Starting today, US consumers will be able to listen to all the tracks on James Blunts new CD on the artist’s MySpace profile for free. They can then opt to purchase the entire album for $9.99, which will allow them to play the album on an iPod and also send the user the CD [...]

Reuters Labs Launches Search People in Video Feature
News giant Reuters has launched a new video search product that uses facial recognition technology to find specific people within videos. A search on the site for a prominent public figure such as Hillary Clinton provides a list of videos with details on precisely where in the video the person appears. Additionally, the [...]

Koinup Launches Social Network for Your Virtual Life
Too many social networks for your real life? Koinup is launching the first social network designed for your virtual one. The site features the ability to create profiles, share multimedia, and publish stories relating to your experience in Second Life, World of Warcraft, IMVU, The Sims 2, and other virtual worlds. Aside [...]

1-800-Flowers.com Launches Gimme Love Facebook Application
1-800-FLOWERS.com has launched a Facebook application that combines their existing loyalty program, Fresh Rewards, with activities users can participate in on Facebook to earn benefits with the retailer. Created by Loyalty Lab, the application allows users to earn points with Fresh Rewards for referring friends to 1-800-FLOWERS.com, making purchases, or showing off virtual versions [...]

Reuters Labs Launches Search People in Video Feature
News giant Reuters has launched a new video search product that uses facial recognition technology to find specific people within videos. A search on the site for a prominent public figure such as Hillary Clinton provides a list of videos with details on precisely where in the video the person appears. Additionally, the [...]

Warner Music to Sell iPod Compatible James Blunt Album on MySpace
Starting today, US consumers will be able to listen to all the tracks on James Blunts new CD on the artist’s MySpace profile for free. They can then opt to purchase the entire album for $9.99, which will allow them to play the album on an iPod and also send the user the CD [...]

Hot or Not Abandons Free Dating Experiment
After being overrun with spam and fake profiles, Hot Or Not has decided to reverse course and end their free dating experiment. According to an email from founders Jim and James:You also warned us that this would probably lead to more spammers and fake profiles. You were right, this is exactly what happened. [...]

WeeWorld Launches WeeRooms. Living Spaces for Your Avatars.
WeeWorld has launched a new feature called WeeRooms, which let you add a bit more customization to your animated avatar.You could already add backgrounds to your WeeMee, and now you can expand on this by creating rooms. Select just about everything from the wallpaper to the posters on the wall. Add items [...]

PETS ONLINE: 25+ Pet Related Sites
The pet industry has become a multi-billion dollar one, and pet ownership has never been higher, so it is only natural that pets have spread to the web too. We’ve collected together 25+ social sites you may find informative and fun.Recommended: MySpace MP3 Player at Mashcodes!Share This

Google Presentations vs. Microsoft Powerpoint
Google has rounded up their office package with Presentations, and it’s time to take it for a spin against the presentation heavyweight - Microsoft Powerpoint. Of course, direct comparisons were sometimes tough to make, as Google Presentations trails behind feature-wise, and in some cases obviously doesn’t even try to stand up against the big M’s [...]

Bloody Hell: iPhone in Britain, November 9th
The iPhone’s UK launch is currently being announced. O2 has the deal, and it goes on sale on November 9th. Cost is 269 including VAT for the 8GB model.Recommended: Piczo Layouts at Mashcodes!Share This

Lunarrs Online Document Collaboration: Write on the Back of Papers
Lunarr is a new tool for document creation, sharing and collaboration. It launches its alpha version today. The idea is that you share and send messages around a document, instead of the other way around. The current concept of sending documents to others is to attach it to an email. [...]