Loomia: podcast and videoblog search engine and recommendation system

The Social Software Weblog
"Another site whose stated goal is to help sift through the sea of rich media flooding these here interwebs %u2014
Loomia is an audio and video search engine, community, and recommendation system. You
generate personalized recommendations by training the system with your ratings of the media you listen to or view.
There%u2019s a built-in media player in the Loomia interface, so no need to involve third-party applications, which makes it
more likely that you%u2019ll actually stick around to input your ratings. There are also a number of other ways to find
media items of interest %u2014 via categories and tags, related items, community ratings, and via the recommendations of
users Loomia deems similar to you in terms of media taste."

Yackpack is easy social voice messaging

The Social Software Weblog
"Yackpack is a social voice messaging service focused on ease of use they bill themselves as being usable by children as young as three. Your contacts are represented visually in your circle, and sending a voice message involves clicking on a friend (or clicking send to all), hitting record, speaking your message and hitting send. Your message then shows up in their message inbox. Nobody who is not in your circle of contacts can send you a message, thus avoiding spam."

Understanding the idea of Identity 2.0

OSCON Presentation
"As the online world moves towards Web 2.0, the concept of digital identity is evolving, and existing identity systems are falling behind. New systems are emerging that place identity in the hands of users instead of directories. Simple, secure and open, these systems will provide the scalable, user-centric mechanism for authenticating and managing real-world identities online, enabling truly distinct and portable Internet identities."

Get Klued up about what comes next ...

MediaPost Publications
"The worst thing we can do is limit our understanding of the future to gadgets and technology. Those things will churn constantly, but they comprise one tactical piece of a much bigger puzzle,' warned Jack Klues, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, in his keynote address entitled 'Life After Chaos Scenarios' during Forecast 2006. 'People will change; their desires and demands will change. Their options will change. Channels will change. Clients will change. Our model will change.'
Klues told Forecast attendees that media agencies should be focused on coming up with more powerful and creative ideas for consumer contact ideas. "We should be mapping out and activating against those ideas in a way that resonates with consumers and reinforces what our clients' brands are all about."

Memeorandum knows hot blog news and cares about conversation

The Social Software Weblog
"This is some pretty promising stuff %u2014 the new incarnation of Memeorandum is an automated tech and politics blog news aggregator that hopes to keep an up-to-the-minute
snapshot of what%u2019s hot in the blogosphere. The new code has only been public for a few days, so the sample size is
still low %u2014 but from what I%u2019ve checked out so far, I%u2019m genuinely impressed."

Wells Fargo buys island and is doing business inside of Second Life

The Social Software Weblog
"This is timely considering our recent discussion about Second Life %u2014 Wells Fargo has launched a private %u201CStagecoach Island%u201D inside the virtual world of Second Life, and is aiming to teach young adults how to handle their finances. If this is anything likethe %u201Cfree financial advice%u201D I got from a� session with a Primerica/Citigroup consultant a couple of years ago, it surely involves pushing Wells Fargo-flavored financial services as the solution to handling those finances."

A brand new brokerage .... very interesting

Spy Media
"Whether you witness a tornado tearing its way through South Dakota, or a celebrity visiting a refugee camp in Eastern Europe, Spy Media is the place for you starting October 3rd.

Spy Media will offer consumers and professional photographers around the world the opportunity to make money by capturing news photos. Spy Media is the first web site to offer an automated photo news commerce marketplace that makes selling and buying news photos simple for everyone."

And so's this ...

Word of Blog.net
"Word of Blog is a new and free service that helps you spread the word about things you like, events you care about and worthy causes you want to support.

Bloggers: You can pick and choose any of the ads appearing on this site and display them into your blog or website. Simply copy the HTML code appearing below the ad and paste it where you wish it to appear. The ads have been formatted to fit into most blog columns.

Organizations: If you want to post an ad on this site so that bloggers can start spreading the %u201Cword of blog%u201D about you, please go to the %u201CSubmit Ad%u201D section."

This is VERY cool ...

BBC - Action Network
"Action Network can help you change something in your local area, by:Putting you in touch with people who feel the same way you do so together you can get something done. Providing you with information and advice you'll need to help you change your local area for the better."

It's A Whole New Web

Business Week
" A whole new Web is emerging from the wilds of cyberspace. It's no longer all about idly surfing and passively reading, listening, or watching. It's about doing: sharing, socializing, collaborating, and, most of all, creating. Says Eckart Walther, Yahoo! Inc.'s (YHOO
) vice-president for product management: 'It's the second coming of the Web.'
And this time, it's Your Web. No longer content to be merely viewers and consumers, people increasingly are taking an active part in creating their online lives. With its longtime tagline, 'The network is the computer,' Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW
) made the case that computing transcended hardware. Sun President Jonathan Schwartz thinks another crucial shift is under way: 'The network is now your computer.'"

Make nice now!

Free Press
"At least five online file-sharing companies have started trying to reach an accord with the music industry to convert the free trading of copyrighted music on their networks to paid services, according to several recording industry and file-sharing executives.The most advanced discussions are between the recording industry and Grokster, a small California company that has been sued by the entertainment industry, recording industry executives said."

Viacom Holds Talks to Buy Web Movie Network

WSJ.com: "EW YORK -- Viacom Inc. is in talks to buy IFILM, a closely held online movie network based in Hollywood, for about $50 million, according to people familiar with the situation.
While negotiations are progressing, a deal hasn't been reached, these people said. Spokespeople for Viacom and IFILM declined to comment.
News of the talks was reported earlier by the Web site paidcontent.org.
IFILM's Web site offers movie, television and videogame trailers as well as short films and music videos. Ranking as one of the top video-streaming sites on the Internet,
IFILM says it delivers some 50 million video streams and reaches 20 million viewers each month."

China gets tougher on foreign media

Free Press
"Last year, prospects looked good when China moved toward loosening rules on foreign media investments. But in recent months, Liu and other leaders of the Chinese government have clamped down on foreigners%u2019 participation in China%u2019s burgeoning media industry, declaring last month that they wouldn%u2019t allow more foreign television channels and would tighten their grip on the 31 satellite broadcasters in China.Chinese officials say they want to %u201Csafeguard national cultural security.%u201D But some analysts believe that the restrictions are aimed at keeping advertising revenue in the hands of state-controlled and domestic media enterprises. Even as Beijing has moved to limit foreign companies, it has encouraged the development of private Chinese media firms."

BBC takes media to the edge ...

WSJ.com
"The British Broadcasting Corp. will later this month begin a test that could spur more television networks to broadcast their programs over the Internet, altering the way people view their favorite shows.
About 5,000 selected viewers in the United Kingdom will be issued a computer program called the iMP (interactive media player) that allows them to download and share most of the BBC's TV programs for up to seven days, including its long-running soap opera EastEnders, the nightly news and major sporting events.
No other broadcaster has made so many shows available for download to computers. The BBC hopes its iMP software will become the iTunes of Internet television, allowing viewers to customize their TV schedules over the course of a week.
If the three-month test is successful, the BBC plans to make the iMP freely available in the U.K. next year, becoming the first TV network to show its entire schedule over the Internet."

Kill Google ... first buy AOL ...

The Register
"When Steve Ballmer yelled at a departing Microsoft employee that he would %u201Ckill Google%u201D we had no idea just how direct a method he had in mind. Buying all or part of AOL may be the first part of the master plan, as Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from Yahoo!, since it now syndicates its search to Google.

One estimate suggested that Google would lose as much as $380m of advertising revenue if AOL dropped its search engine and took on MSN's. That would cut Google%u2019s profit by something like 25 per cent, potentially giving its huge share price something of a tumble. No wonder Google is thought to be entering the bidding to partner with Time Warner on AOL instead of Microsoft."

Trust issues hit the news for web users

The Industry Standard
"U.S. Internet users are dangerously ignorant about the type of data Web site owners collect from them and how that data is used, a new study has found.

This lack of awareness makes U.S. Internet users vulnerable to online exploitation, such as personal information misuse, fraud and overcharging, according a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.
For the study, titled 'Open to Exploitation: American Shoppers Online and Offline' and released Wednesday, 1,500 adult U.S. Internet users were asked true-or-false questions about topics such as Web-site privacy policies and retailers' pricing schemes."

Fighting the good fight ... or wasting your time on Media 1.0

Reuters.com
"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood's six major film studios on Monday unveiled a technology venture to find new ways of protecting movies from illegal copying and distribution in black markets or over the Internet.
Motion Picture Laboratories Inc., or Movielabs, will look for new technologies to detect illegal videotaping of films in theaters and evaluate new computer hardware and software that is being used by networks to distribute films.
The venture's goal is to discover technologies that combat piracy then recommend their use to universities, companies, Internet service providers and other network operators, the groups said in a statement from the Motion Picture Association of America.
The movie studios figure they lose as much as $3.5 billion a year in revenues due to the illegal copying of movies on videotape and DVD, and they are deeply concerned about possible further losses due to digital distribution via the Internet."

No-frills, low-tech cell phones come to Europe ... OK ....

Internet News from The Industry Standard
"After spending billions of euros on acquiring new 3G (third-generation) mobile broadband licenses, billions more on building the sophisticated wireless networks and still more on promoting the high-speed data service, numerous mobile phone operators in Europe are now launching new no-frills, low-tech cell phones and services."

In case you were in doubt about what XXX meant ...

Internet News from The Industry Standard
"Numerous groups, including several outspoken U.S. politicians, have been demanding for some time a separate Internet domain for pornography in a move to prevent sexually explicit content from landing on the screens of young Net users. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) took a big step Wednesday to meet that demand by approving a plan for pornographic Web sites to use new addresses that end with '.xxx.'"

User-generated content scales new heights ... audience self-sufficiency closes loop

CNN
"LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while inside its cabin 140 passengers watched their own life-and-death drama unfolding on live television.While satellite TV sets aboard JetBlue Flight 292 were tuned to news broadcasts, some passengers cried. Others tried to telephone relatives and one woman sent a text message to her mother in Florida attempting to comfort her in the event she died.'It was very weird. It would've been so much calmer without' the televisions, Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt."

Back on the block ...

.... after yes almost 2 months silence, a new name for the blog - "Metacoms", which is what our business The Rights Marketing Company is all about (the impact on Media 2.0 of the convergence of telecoms and meta-data) and a very sharp set of new attitudes around "where the money is". Onwards and upwards!