Facebook Payment Live
The Facebook Payment platform in wild life: new payment terms have just been released; http://tr.im/mRWQ
Updates from May, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Twave
Google Wave‘s team has already introduced Twave: a Twitter extension to integrate tweets to the Wave; http://tr.im/mKVK
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Gerrit Eicker
Bing, Bing, Bing!
Microsoft reveals its new search engine Bing and released a promotional site for a first sight; http://tr.im/mH3o
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Gerrit Eicker
Microsoft: “We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster.”
TC: “Bing also takes advantage of Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset to provide better previews and snippets of text when you hover over a result. Also, whenever a search brings up a ‘reference’ tab in the guided exploration pane, clicking on that will bring up an enhanced Wikipedia article with semantic tags. – Onstage at the D7 conference, Steve Ballmer acknowledges: ‘There is no way to change the whole game in one step.’ But search ‘deserves a good feature war.’ And Bing will be rolling out new features as it goes forward. But is it enough to get people to switch? Bing is certainly not a game-changer, but it does cut out a lot of the back and forth that happens with so many searches today. If Bing can help people find what they are looking for faster, it will put pressure on Google to keep advancing the ball as well.”
SEL: “I cannot predict how you or others will react or whether Microsoft’s reportedly massive ad campaign for Bing will drive adoption. Advertising can generate awareness or curiosity but that’s about it. The bottom line is whether people find the results and their presentation to be compelling enough to actually use Bing. – So to provide a more concrete sense of Bing in advance of the launch, I conducted a range of basic searches that one might do in a given week and captured screens from both Google and Bing to offer a visual side-by-side comparison.”
SEL: “Similar to Greg Sterling in his head-to-head piece, I’ve been fighting my Google Habit for the past week and deliberately running searches on Bing to compare to Google. The relevancy has been solid. Sometimes Bing gets beat, but sometimes Google does, too.”
AdAge: “But whether the changes look different enough to make consumers switch isn’t clear. Perhaps that’s why Microsoft is helping the service, which will be full deployed on June 3, with an $80 million to $100 million campaign from JWT. – Branding shop Interbrand helped conceive the name Bing, which was chosen because it was memorable, easy to spell around the world and could be used as a verb, as Microsoft hopes to convert people from ‘Google it’ to ‘Bing it.’ – Finding words like that these days ‘is getting harder and harder,’ said Paola Norambuena, senior director-head of verbal identity at Interbrand. She added that linguistically Bing had a lot of applications. ‘It’s the sound of found.‘”
RWW: “For the most part, Bing’s interface resembles that of today’s Live Search, with a large ‘cover image’ on the front page that surrounds the search box. The major difference in the user interface is the addition of guided searches in the left sidebar, though Microsoft says that the real changes are under the hood. The company argues that it can bring a new approach to Internet search by providing a richer, easier, and more organized search experience. This, for example, means that Bing will integrate data from consumer reviews when a search brings up a restaurant, for example.”
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Wave
Will Google Wave become the new tool for communication and collaboration on the web? – http://tr.im/mGYx
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “What is a wave? A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. – A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when. – A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.”
Googleblog: “Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content – it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use ‘playback’ to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”
TC: “Web Workers helps turns the browser into a more full-fledged launch pad for the next generation of web apps. That was the main point of yesterday’s keynote and today’s provides the best example thus far of one of these new-style apps in Wave. – It’s a really interesting concept, one that you really do need to see in action. It’s ambitious as hell – which we love – but that also leaves it open to the possibility of it falling on its face. But that’s how great products are born. And the potential reward is huge if Google has its way as the ringleader of the complete transition to our digital lives on the web.”
TC – Exclusive Video: “Yesterday we had a chance to sit down with that founding team – brothers Lars Rasmussen and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon – to talk about the initial idea behind Wave, and Google’s philosophy in rolling it out. VP Engineering Vic Gundotra also makes a cameo appearance at the end.”
RWW: “Google is also making a set of APIs available to developers today. These APIs should give developers the ability to enhance Wave by building extensions for the core product, but also to embed Wave’s features on other sites to make them more collaborative. … Interestingly, Google is taking a very open approach with this new product. Not only will it give developers access to Wave’s APIs, but the team also plans to open-source the protocols at the core of Wave, which really points at the greater ambition of the Wave team to see Wave and its protocols replace at least some of today’s standard communications systems.”
Mashable: “You’re going to have to wait a while though: Google Wave will not be available to the public until later this year. Right now it’s only available to a select group of developers, who will be able to create their own Wave servers. It’s also an open-source project with a lot of API integrations, so we can expect a lot of user-driven innovations and extensions for the platform as well. – So, back to the big question: could Google Wave really redefine web communication? Clearly it’s too early to tell, but we’re already very impressed with the client and its potential. We’ll be testing out its sandbox soon and giving you our assessment, as well as updating you with any more information coming out of Google I/O today.”
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Gerrit Eicker
TC: “We’re here in the press room at Google I/O for the follow-up press event to the Google Wave unveiling today during the keynote.” – Live Notes (paraphrased)
VB: “VentureBeat writer Anthony Ha live-blogged Wave’s pre-launch demo from the Google I/O conference this morning, but here’s a quick wrap-up of the product’s features: … This list already seems impressive, but there’s a reason Google chose to unveil the product at its developer conference: There’s still a long way to go. Right now, Wave resembles a bunch of services that already exist on the web, from Twitter to FriendFeed to Facebook. Putting them all in one place is a breakthrough in itself, but for truly radical innovation, it’s a masterful idea to tap into third-party enthusiasm. It will be interesting to see how different the product looks by launch time.”
Mashable: “We have compiled key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications, (i.e. the Twitter Wave app Twave), and goes over ways to keep yourself informed. We know you’re excited about Google Wave, so here’s what we think you should know…”
Gerrit Eicker
Time Warner Separates AOL
Time Warner will separate all of AOL by the end of the year, Tim Armstrong will be the CEO; http://tr.im/mFui
Gerrit Eicker
Bildungsniveau in Europa: Frauen überholen Männer
Destatis: Beim Bildungsniveau haben junge Frauen in Europa die jungen Männer weitgehend überholt; http://tr.im/mDKf
Gerrit Eicker
Are Baby Boomers Leaving Facebook?
Facebook keeps on growing, reaches 60 million U.S. users, but fewer people over 55 are coming back; http://tr.im/mDnM
Gerrit Eicker
Google Earth Businesses
Google has added a Businesses layer to Google Earth on its iPhone and desktop version; http://tr.im/mAQj
Gerrit Eicker
Tinychat
Opening chats through one simple link: Tinychat is adding video conferencing and screen sharing; http://tr.im/mAMD
Gerrit Eicker
In-game Advertising
Screen Digest, GroupM: In 2008 advertisers spent roughly $55 million on dynamic in-game advertising; http://tr.im/mAJL
Gerrit Eicker 07:50 on 30. May 2009 Permalink |
TC: “The application GroupCard is currently testing the new payment system live for all accounts that have it installed. I included some screenshots below. It’s very straightforward: There’s a big ‘Pay With Facebook‘ button, similar to the ‘Facebook Connect’ buttons you see throughout the web. Next to that, there are the other options to pay with Visa, Mastercard, etc. – Clicking on the ‘Pay With Facebook’ button pops open an overlay which asks you to confirm payment via your Facebook Credits. My $2.99 card cost me 30 Facebook Credits. Expect to see this roll out to other applications soon.”
VB: “Third party applications on Facebook are beginning to test out the social network’s new, in-house payment system, presaging what has been described as a wide-ranging war to among many companies to offer a single, universal virtual currency. There’s been no formal announcement of a launch yet, but an implementation is already live on an app called GroupCards, as spotted by TechCrunch earlier today.”
VB: “All of this is not to say that there will be only one currency. There will always be places for specialized currencies, as well as tools to clear/exchange different virtual currencies. – But the domination that would come from a consumer-embraced universal virtual currency is just a massive opportunity. And while right now it’s just startups, game-centric portals, and minor social networks who are playing with shared currencies, Facebook’s impending tests are going to escalate the current skirmishes to-all out battle. – The universal currency wars are coming. It’s going to be interesting to watch.”
TC: “You can read through the proposed list of rules (there’s also a FAQ). Most of them are pretty straightforward – Facebook basically says that it licenses all of your virtual goods and credits to you (you don’t own them), and it can do whatever it wants as far as changing the price of credits. It’s also not responsible for anything you buy (aside from ensuring that your Facebook Gifts are delivered), and there are no refunds (though the company says that it may intervene in disputes betwen users concerning payments, but that it is under no obligation to do so). Some of the language refers to transactions between users and third parties, which is indicative of the upcoming payment system.”