Microsoft Corporation plans to cut back on Soapbox, the video website that was supposed to be a YouTube competitor. Microsoft VP Erik Jorgensen said that they are pulling back out as the result of a tough economic environment. Jorgensen’s division also decided to shut down Microsoft Money.
Microsoft Soapbox launched back in 2006 when Google bought out YouTube. Soapbox had never really took off to be a real threat to YouTube. Back in 2007, Microsoft stopped allowing access to Soapbox. Microsoft plans to turn Soapbox into a forum for bloggers and journalists to post videos on lifestyle, entertainment, and finance.
“We definitely look at it and say we want Soapbox to stand for something and add to our overall video strategy,” stated Jorgensen. ”We haven’t decided whether you just continue to support it or whether it is too expensive and out of our focus to do.”
Looks like Apple underestimated what brown can do for them because they have asked United Parcel Services (UPS) to slow down. Notice where it says “The Receiver Requested A Hold For A Future Delivery Date. UPS Will Attempt Delivery On Date Requested.” The future delivery date is not specified. Why is the delivery date being slowed down? Maybe Apple wants their consumers to get their phones on a Friday so they can go ecstatic and buy some apps over the weekend.
This past weekend, the Los Angeles Lakers NBA team won the championship against the Orlando Magic. Shaquille O’Neal is a former player for the Lakers and he felt the responsibility to congratulate his former teammates on Twitter. Below is what he had to say to the Lakers:
Kobe Bryant: ”Congratualtions kobe, u deserve it. You played great . Enjoy it my man enjoy it. And I know what yur sayin rt now ‘Shaq how my a** taste’”
Phil Jackson: “Congrats to you to phil jackson. When the general doesn’t panic the troops don’t panic. You are the greatest now.”
Derek Fisher: “Congrats to u to d fish, big shots the other day. Enjoy my man enjoy”
Pau Gasol: “Congrats in spanish pau gasol, muchas gracias pappacito”
DJ Mbenga: “Congrats to you to, mbengaaaaaaaa”
Bill Russell: “Its nice to see the greatest big man ever on stage, smilin havin a good time. I love bill russell”
TweetDeck is one of the most used Twitter third party software programs, powered by Adobe AIR. Without TweetDeck, I probably would never be able to use Twitter. Now that program made its way to the iPhone. ”I can say now that it’s going to replace tweetie as my default twitter iphone app,” stated Rose on his blog.
Some of the features include column based friend groups just like the TweetDeck desktop software. There is also TweetDeck desktop syncing so that any changes made on the iPhone gets reflected on the computer. There is also a way to track status updates on Facebook in a toolbar format.
After the jump are several screenshots that I grabbed from Kevin Rose’s blog. The application is available for free on iTunes right now:
Around the time that the Palm Pre launched, one of the features that was low key was the ability to sync with iTunes. This feature was major because the Palm Pre is supposed to be a major iPhone competitor. The fact that this feature did not appear in the limelight until close to the release date, it seems like Palm did not want Apple to prevent the feature from happening.
I can understand why because Tim Cook even indicated that they were willing to do anything in their power to prevent competitors from ripping off their intellectual property. ”We like competition–as long as our competitors don’t rip off our IP. And we’re going to go after anyone who does. I’m not talking about any particular company, but we are ready to suit up and go against anyone. We will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we will use every weapon at our disposal….” stated Cook.
In the support area of the Apple website, an entry appeared about unsupported third party digital media players. Below is the text of the article:
Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.
The Palm Pre may no longer have the ability to be synced with iTunes in the near future.
Digg has announced a new set of APIs that give developers access to Digg content. The new API set gives developers access to search endpoints. The Digg APIs will allow developers to use advanced shortcuts, common search tricks, and search by domain name.
Another API gives developers the chance to find related information on other Digg stories and find similar stories that diggers have dugg. There is also an API that returns Digg stories with similar keywords. In the near future, Digg plans to add Digging and burying capabilities to the APIs.
Another major limitation that was removed from the API license is the commercial agreement. Developers will now be able to use Digg APIs and have full ownership of the fees for free.
Facebook is currently testing a real-time search engine for the news feeds of users. The built in Facebook search engine isn’t that sophisticated and the Advanced Bing.com search engine is no different than just going directly to Microsoft’s website. Facebook’s search engine could definitely use the ability to search through status messages, images, videos, and links that are connected to your profile and your friends.
Facebook is doing this as a challenge against Twitter’s search engine too. Twitter’s search engine has the ability to search for keywords on all tweets that were sent out sorted by date. You may remember how Facebook made an attempt to buy out Twitter last year.
“You will be able to search your News Feed for the most recent status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. You will also be able to search for status updates, posted links and notes in Search from people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to everyone. As always, you can control what content you’re sharing by editing your privacy settings here,” wrote Facebook engineer Kari Lee.
“Weird Al” Yankovic has created a new song called Craigslist. Yankovic imitates Jim Morrison of The Doors throughout the song and he dresses in leather pants and a white shirt in the video. Ray Manzarek of The Doors even helped putting the song together and is playing the keyboard in the background.
Yankovic plans to release this song out of a five song digital download package later this summer. The digital EP is called Internet Leaks. Lyrics are available after the jump just in case you want to sing along with the video.
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