I just came across Meebo, which is a browser-based IM client built using Ajax.
Meebo is sort of like Trillian, but inside the browser window. It integrates a user
Category: Web, Tech & Design
eBay Buys Skype
eBay will be acquiring Skype, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock.
It will make a further payout of up to $1.5 billion if certain financial targets are met.
I’m not too sure what to think about this.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the messaging and VoIP bandwagon with or without a goal nowadays.
The press release says a lot about how great a combination the two companies are although I honestly can’t see how.
Ok, there could be an integration between eBay’s auction services and the Skype messenger allowing people to directly get in touch with each other through the messenger or for auction notifications to pop up while you’re chatting.
But I don’t really see this as a good enough reason to go and toss out all that money.
Some people think eBay might be after the 52 million people who downloaded Skype, but I don’t really think so.
I think the Skype users who do buy or sell online through auctions are most probably already eBay users, and those who aren’t won’t really buy or sell online because of this, they’ll only do it when they need to.
Anyway I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out in the end.
The Rockr iTunes Phone
Apple and Motorola today unveiled their long expected iPod phone, under the name Rockr. This phone was developed by Apple and Motorola, and Cingular Wireless will be the exclusive U.S. carrier of the telephone.
The Rokr, which will be available starting this weekend, can hold about 100 songs. It has a color display for viewing album art and features built-in dual-stereo speakers, as well as stereo headphones that also serve as a mobile headset with microphones.
The phone will automatically pause the song when you get a call and songs are transferred to the phone through a USB cable.
Apple also announced a tiny new iPod that can hold 1,000 songs and is thinner than a standard No. 2 pencil, under the name iPod Nano.
Both products look really cool, just like all Apple products.
Whatever Happened to Arabia.com?!
Today, I thought I’d check out Arabia.com, the portal that once was regarded as the jewel of Arab portals.
So much money was thrown into it, with round after round of funding, and investment after investment, the biggest being from Prince Waleed Ibn Talal of Saudi Arabia.
They got into everything from news, to free email, to instant messaging, to mobile logos and ringtones, to forums, to marketplaces, to offering internet connections… the long list goes on.
And they recruited a huge team of people from all fields, both in Amman and Dubai, making them the biggets Arab internet company.
Each new version had a cooler design and released more features making the portal bigger and bigger.
They sponsored TV shows and events, aired a bunch of ads here and there and promoted themselves like there was no tomorrow.
And then, after the internet bust in the west, things started going not too well for Arabia too, as people realized that it was costing too much without making enough money, and so Arabia started falling faster than it rised.
New versions started losing the cool design touch they used to have, as they started working on the designs in-house. The content started to shrink, the services started to dissapear, layoffs started, and well you know how it goes.
The last time before today that I checked on Arabia was a few months ago, and it was still alive with a bit of news and some services.
Anyway today, instead of the orange Arabia homepage, I found the default Apache server page asking me: “Seeing this instead of the website you expected?”
Well, yes, but I can’t say I didn’t expect this day to come.
It’s a big shame.
R.I.P Arabia.
If it makes you feel any better, PlanetArabia.com who were one of Arabia’s main competitors have dissapeared as well.
Google Talk
As expected, Google have jumped into the instant messaging and voice-over-IP arena with a new product called Google Talk.
I’ve downloaded it and played around with it a bit and tried chatting to a friend through it.
I like its minimalist interface and how it directly finds people who are on your email contact list and are online using Google Talk.
The chat interface is very simple and it’s simply all about text. There are no emoticons, nudges, winks, and all those other flashing and jumping things that other messengers have. It just gives you plain text, although it does recognize the popular emoticons and displays their text in blue.
I actually kind of like that. I hate talking to someone and being flooded by a bunch of smiley faces jumping around and making faces at me or some stupid animations coming out of nowhere.
But they could’ve at least put in some text styling options, which aren’t available.
Just like all other IM clients, it notifies you when you get an email in your inbox.
It doesn’t have a search engine box built in, which is weird, as you’d think Google would never forget to include that.
I haven’t tried out its voice capabilities yet, but according to Om Malik who did, the quality of sound was great.
For the tech people within you, Google Talk is based on Jabber, which means it’ll be able to communicate with other Jabber based clients such as iChat on Macs.
I’m not sure if I’ll be using it that often, but well I think it’s quite good for a first effort.
But it still needs some more features, that everyone got used to, to be able to go head to head with MSN, Yahoo or AOL messengers.
Touch And Feel 3D TV
Imagine watching a football match on a TV that not only shows the players in three dimensions but also lets you experience the smells of the stadium and maybe even pat a goalscorer on the back.
Japan plans to make this futuristic television a commercial reality by 2020 as part of a broad national project that will bring together researchers from the government, technology companies and academia.
The targeted “virtual reality” television would allow people to view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor.
WOW…
Japan is making all the world’s sci-fi dreams come true.
From robotics, to 3D TV, to communication technologies to everything.
They’re already living in the future, using technology that the rest of the world including the US will only get after a few years.
The cool thing though is that no matter how far they move into the future, they still hold on tight to their past, history and traditions; making a successful and beautiful blend.
I totally respect them and would love to visit Japan someday. I wish I get to.
Apple’s Mighty Mouse
Apple introduced Mighty Mouse, its next generation mouse with several new innovative features, as their marketing people are claiming.
Mighty Mouse features a Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design. Click, roll, squeeze and scroll.
Anyway, some people think that the only reason these mice will be selling in millions is that they subconsciously make you want to buy them and squeeze them 😛
looool…
Novell To Launch OpenSuse Project
Novell plans to begin opening up development of one of its Linux products to outside programmers in a project called OpenSuse, a strategy similar to that taken by rival Red Hat.
Novell is launching the project in an attempt to attract more outside developers, new users and, ultimately, market share. Novell is the No. 2 seller of Linux after Red Hat.
Novell isn’t the only one trying a more open approach. Sun Microsystems has begun opening its Solaris source code in an effort to regain the relevance the Unix version has lost to Linux.
Of course this seems like a great idea for companies because they get some R&D work done for free for them. But it’s not easy to get a plan like this going. RedHat have been trying for over 2 years with Fedora, and it’s not really going as they wish.
I think the reason why might be because open source developers actually perceive themselves as rebels against the corporate system, who wouldn’t really back a project they feel is one-sided and totally for the benefit of a certain company.
The developers think more in terms of community; something companies don’t really care about in the end of the day when their shareholders and board of directors are banging on the tables.
[More: CNet News]
Current TV
Current TV, a new TV network that will let television viewers broadcast their own videos to the world, was launched in the US yesterday.
Al Gore is an investor in Current TV, and he says that the network wants “to be the television home page for the Internet generation.”
Hmmm, always using his big catch phrases, obviously…
Gore and his fellow investors envision Current as a sounding board for young people, a step beyond traditional notions of interactivity. They want viewers to contribute much of the network’s content now that quality video equipment is widely available.
Most of its programming will be sliced into short pods, just a few minutes long, covering topics like jobs, technology, spirituality and current events from different points of view. An Internet-like on-screen progress bar will show the pod’s length.
Every half-hour, Current promises a news update using data from Google on news stories most frequently searched for on the Web.
I think this could be really cool and interesting. It should give Video Bloggers another practical venue to distribute their content and reach more people.
I’m interested in seeing how this works out.
I wish they would provide a live online video feed though for people outside the US.
State Of The Blogosphere
Technorati’s David Sifry has begun to post his quarterly “State of the Blogosphere” report (which will continue all week), wherein he sums up this quarter’s stats about blogging as derived from the Technorati data-set:
– Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links in July 2005
– The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months
– A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily
– About 55% of all blogs are active, and that has remained a consistent statistic for at least a year
– About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekly
I think these are very interesting numbers.
It seems that in a few years we bloggers will be taking over the world, loool…
[Source: Sifry’s Alerts]