Blogging

The globe shows the activity of Facebook users across the planet at 4:37 AM PST. The East coast of the U.S. is a beehive of social activity.

(Credit: Facebook)

Some Facebook engineers came up with a visualization of user activity by the social network’s 120 million active users across the planet. According to TechCrunch, the concept (named The Palantír of Orthanc after an object from “The Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, was created at a Facebook hackathon and could be turned into a product. Check the video of the visualization.

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Visualizing Facebook from outer space

Om Malik, founder of GigaOm.

(Credit: GigaOm)

Om Malik, the head of the Giga Omni Media group of tech blogs, said on Friday he is moving his ad business from John Battelle’s Federated Media to a new advertising network IDG launched in March.

The companies, which have partnered for three years (and weathered differences of opinion involving a scandal over “conversational marketing” in which the writing of Malik, Battelle, and other bloggers was featured in ads for Microsoft), are splitting amicably. They are characterizing the move as them having grown in different directions, according to Malik and Federated Media Publisher Chas Edwards.

Giga Omni Media’s seven Web sites are small vertical sites, which are more suited for a company with a trade publishing background like IDG, Edwards said in an interview.

Meanwhile, “the Federated Media approach is the Conde Nast or Time Inc. approach, (working with) larger brands, fewer of them, and national and global advertisers,” he said. “Our model has not been well-suited to take those smaller sites where they wanted to go.

“I think it’s actually a wonderful move for Om and, frankly, for Federated Media,” Edwards added.

In a blog posting, Malik explained the situation like this:

“Progress is often accompanied by a divergence of ideas and ambitions within partnerships. At Giga Omni Media, we have been developing a network that revolves around niche verticals. As our needs became more specialized, we sat down with the folks at Federated to try and figure out how we could continue to work together. But both sides quickly realized that instead it was time to wrap up what has been a successful business relationship.”

The situation is completely different from the circumstances that led to news aggregator Digg to switch from Federated Media to Microsoft for its advertising last year. While Microsoft serves up the contextual and display ads on Digg, Federated Media handles the sponsorships, including some banner ads, Edwards said.

Read more here:
GigaOm drops ad deal with Federated Media for IDG

(Credit: Disney-Pixar)

Disney is fighting a piracy war over its acclaimed film, “Wall-E” against a company that its venture capital arm invested in, a report from the Wall Street Journal claims.

The infringing company, 56.com, a Chinese video sharing site that’s similar to YouTube, hosted several full-length bootlegs of “Wall-E” that were freely available on the company’s site. The bootlegs were added by users of the site months ago, but only recently have they been fully removed from its pages.

Piracy in China is nothing new, but the fact that 56.com featured Disney movies on its site is ironic, considering Disney’s venture capital division, Steamboat Ventures, invested in the video sharing company back in 2006. Although the exact amount is unknown, the Journal claims the investment is substantial, but less than $30 million.

John Ball, founder and managing director of Steamboat, told the Journal that his company was aware that pirated content was commonplace on the site when it made its investment in 56.com, but he was confident that the video service would remove illegal material quickly and “help the legitimate evolution of digital content online.”

A quick search of 56.com yielded no results for “Wall-E” on Friday, but it wasn’t difficult to find copies of other prominent films in their entirety. But now that Disney has been affected by 56.com, it will be interesting to see if any more of the company’s films crop up on the popular Chinese site.

Go here to see the original:
Disney takes on Chinese affiliate over piracy

Although text messaging is still one of the favorite pastimes for children and adults alike, software firm Geodesic believes that mobile instant messaging will cannibalize SMS and become the de facto form of communication through cell phones, going forward.

The company offers a tool called Mundu IM, which recently entered its fourth iteration. The software provides users with an IM service that works with AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber accounts, with collaboration across the Web and wireless devices.

Mundu IM is currently supported on most mobile phones running Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Java platforms. The service also has a iPhone Web interface, which allows users of the Apple smartphone to log in to their favorite IM application without requiring a download through the App Store.

(Credit: Geodesic)

I had the opportunity to use the Mundu IM service on my iPhone 3G and found that it worked quite well. I was able to log in to my instant-messaging services without a problem, and upon doing so, I found that chatting with others through the software was quick and just as simple as chatting with them on my desktop.

But where Mundu IM really shines is in its extras. The service allows you to share pictures taken from your phone with friends, transfer files, and cross-conference with contacts across IM services, making it much simpler to talk with people, regardless of their preferred IM software.

Mundu’s design is second to none. It features stylish icons that make it easy to choose your IM service, and the interface during chat was simple, which made the experience far more usable.

(Credit: Geodesic)

Although the software itself is simple and elegant, I’m not quite sold on the implementation. It’s nice to have a full-fledged IM service on my iPhone that will help me save money on SMS, but why not make it an iPhone app and offer it on the App Store? Making Mundu Web-based seems a bit odd and takes away from an otherwise fine service, due to Safari’s annoying quirks and hiccups, which become frustrating after some time.

When evaluating Mundu’s competitive environment, it becomes clear that its IM service takes aim at Agile Messenger, which currently charges customers $44.95 for lifetime use. Based on my findings, the experience is similar, but Mundu IM’s $11 one-time fee puts it over the top and makes Agile Messenger less appealing.

(Credit: Geodesic)

It would have been nice if Mundu IM were free, like Meebo, but I understand that Geodesic needs to turn a profit too, and $11 is more than affordable, considering that you’ll have your phone for at least two years.

With all the versions Mundu IM offers, it should be noted that “your mileage may vary” depending on the version of the software you use. Although the iPhone version works as advertised, and provides an experience that would make me want to use it on a regular basis, phone differences, mobile-OS quirks, and other considerations become an issue when applying that opinion to all versions of the software.

Because of that, I need to qualify my recommendation when I say that Mundu IM is worth using on the iPhone if you use multiple IM services, and you don’t mind accessing them through the Safari browser. But if you only use AIM, I simply don’t see a reason to use Mundu IM–access the App Store, and download the AIM app instead. It’s free.

Read more from the original source:
Geodesic takes aim at SMS with Mundu IM

(Credit: CNET)

It isn’t so much the technology behind Zumobi’s free app Ziibii that refreshes RSS on the iPhone and iPod touch as it is its presentation. Ziibii, which means ‘river’ in Algonquin*, extends the metaphor to depict posts from your various RSS feeds as rafts floating along a stream of information.

Watching posts float by is fun concept–for a few minutes at least–and one that’s heightened by the fact that stories, photos, and friends’ status updates appear in random order as a round-up of all your RSS subscriptions.

Ziibii’s feed flexibility is good, but not great. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube are represented, and you’ll also be able to add presets from Ziibii’s list of popular sites or add your own favorites. Hopefully soon, Ziibii will make it easy to select more popular sources and aggregators, as does Viigo’s thorough RSS reader for other platforms.

Of course, not everyone appreciates this ‘blended’ view, nor the unconventional current-cum-display. My Type-A fellows can escape to a listed view of feeds and flick in either direction to see more mish-mashed headlines. When you’re ready to read up on one feed at a time, the Filter button temporarily hides stories from all but your selected source.

Ziibii earns brownie points for including an in-app browser when you want to read a full article, and for being able to post stories to Twitter or e-mail them to a contact.

With the exception of a small library of feeds, Ziibii is an excellent and creative alternative to your iPhone’s RSS reader.

*Fun fact: The ’ssippi’ in ‘Mississippi’ is derived from ‘zibi.’ The etymology according to Wikipedia: “(cf. Illinois mihsisiipiiwi and Ojibwe misiziibi, “great river,” referring to the Mississippi River.)”

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Ziibii: iPhone RSS with a twist