The Kodak Zi8 will be arriving on the shelves just in time for back-to-school. The Zi8 has 1080p recording, face tracking, image stabilization, 2.5″ LCD display, SD card slot, YouTube uploading, and Facebook support. The Zi8 will be available in colors such as blue, red, and black. The price tag is roughly $180. This would be a great way for your kids to begin their hobby as an amateur videographer.
Despite breaking Sprint’s sales records in June, the Palm Pre was not able to help steer the troubled telecommunications company out of the red-inked bottom line. Today Sprint announced a net loss of $384 million. The loss was due to the loss of 257,000 subscribers. Next quarter the company will also be reporting the acquisition of Virgin Mobile. One of the biggest reasons why customers are switching from Sprint is because of AT&T’s exclusive rights to the Apple iPhone.
AOL social network subsidiary Bebo.com has named a new head of global operations, Stephane Panier. Panier will be responsible for scaling the social network’s media operations and advancing the global reach of the service. Currently Bebo has 24 million users around the world. Panier was previously the VP and COO of Bebo. Panier will be reporting to Jon Brod, the EVP of AOL Ventures.
Before joined Bebo in January 2009, Panier worked at Google for 6 years in finance and operations positions. “Stephane is a proven strategist and operator with executive experience from some of the world’s leading brands and businesses,” stated Brod. “He is the ideal leader to build on Bebo’s existing successes, to chart a course for its future, and to execute against that vision.”
I still remember the day Microsoft made a bid to buy out Yahoo! and the day Yahoo! rejected the offer like it was yesterday. Today marks the day that the two companies resolved their differences and have made a partnership agreement.
Real-time search is where its at! This is why Bing and Google are trying hard to make themselves as real-time as possible. But nothing out there is as real-time search capable as Twitter is. ”Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved,” stated Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on the company blog.
The new Twitter homepage also features trending topics, updated every minute. When clicking on a trending topic, the latest real-time results when appear below the search engine. The service that Twitter is using to produce the trending topics is What The Trend?
Personally I like the changes. The old Twitter homepage just featured a login screen and a registration link. The new homepage helps people that do not know much about Twitter discover other features about the service and even encourages them to do some searching on specific topics. Well done Twitter, well done.
I believe that choreographed dance moves have a special place in YouTube’s heart when it comes to becoming viral. One of the latest viral hits is “JK Wedding Entrance Dance.” The video has hit over 12 million views from about 100 different clips since arriving on the web on July 19th.
The video features a dance that took place while walking down the aisle at the wedding of Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz. The couple was later interviewed on The Today Show. The song that the wedding dancers decided to perform was Forever by Chris Brown. Brown’s song hit the top 10 charts on iTunes shortly after the wedding video became popular on the Net. The wedding took place at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Another viral video featuring a couple’s first dance on YouTube is when the bride and groom were seen dancing to a slow song, but quickly changed into a choreographed dance to Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-A-Lot. These videos are exactly the reason why YouTube got bought out for a good amount of money.
This past May, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said that the search engine company is open to a deal with Microsoft as long as it involves “boatloads of money.” This is probably what Microsoft decided to pay because the media is going wild about a deal that the companies are planning to announce later today. Through the agreement, Microsoft search engine Bing will become the default search engine on the Yahoo! homepage.
Yahoo! currently has about 30% marketshare for search while Google has about 65%. However Yahoo! is the #2 most visited website in the world because of all the services they offer which include Fantasy Sports, News, Video, Music, etc. The deal will give Yahoo! the chance to get out of the search-advertising technology platform business and focus more on its media properties. Microsoft will manage the inventory of advertising through their AdCenter platform.
It seems like many advertising companies support a Microsoft-Yahoo! partnership because they believe that they are a less monopolistic search-advertising business combined than a combined Google-Yahoo! partnership. The deal would still have to clear the Department of Justice. Microsoft was highly critical of the Google-Yahoo! partnership to the government when Yahoo! rejected an acquisition bid from the software giant.
In an effort to compete with Apple’s App Store, Microsoft has opened its Windows Mobile marketplace to developers. The company is now accepting developer submissions from 29 countries.
The company is running a developer “challenge” where developers will get prizes for having popular or valuable apps.
Windows Mobile applications are developed using Microsoft’s Visual Studio. It costs $99 to become a certified developer. Microsoft is running a promotion until the end of the year where developers get five application submissions at no charge with their initial free registration.
The Windows Mobile Marketplace will open for consumers this fall. Marketplace will come pre-installed on all Windows Mobile 6.5+ devices.
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