Technically Speaking

BlogCatalog and SezWho will integrate SezWho’s conversation platform for tracking and ranking comments across BlogCatalog’s social network. The partnership leverages the value of meaningful dialog encouraged by SezWho and the member-driven network of bloggers on BlogCatalog.

SezWho provides eBay-like ratings and reputations, revealing valuable information about the history and expertise of individual readers through embeddable widgets and one-click panels. BlogCatalog is the fastest-growing social network for bloggers on the Internet. Members will be introduced to the feature soon after the news breaks and will include all instructions. BlogCatalog members can extend the reach of their BlogCatalog profile across other sites within the network along with their reputations across the blogosphere.

BlogCatalog is the fastest-growing social network for bloggers on the Internet. Since early 2007, it has evolved from a blog listing service into a vibrant member-driven online community with tools, features, widgets, and forums that help bloggers connect. More than 100,000 approved bloggers interact on BlogCatalog everyday. SezWho, launched in June 2007, is a collaborative review and reputation service that informs and improves conversation across distributed social spaces.

Technically Speaking, blogging is beyond a social network, it could be a super duper social monster if the right people put it together. Many have tried, and many have also failed. BlogCatalog and SezWho seem to realize that collaborating and working together to utilize the other companies technology is better than being the small fish swimming in the big ocean of the blogosphere. hoodia

Hubdub is introducing a new technology platform and community that combines the value of user-generated news aggregation with the accuracy and excitement of prediction markets at DEMO 08.

Hubdub is one of only 77 companies handpicked to launch its new technology at DEMO 08, which takes place in Palm Desert, CA, January 28–30, 2008.

Unlike Digg or Reddit, Hubdub tracks only the stories that people decide are worth creating a market around. To create a market, someone simply asks a question, for example, “Will Barack Obama secure the Democratic Presidential nomination?” They request either a “yes” or “no” answer or offer a multiple choice scenario, then determine the duration of trading.

Other community members can wager “Hubdub dollars” (H$) to compete on predictions – everyone starts with H$1,000. As market creators and predictors build a successful portfolio, they can establish credibility to leverage within their industry or area of expertise. Successful predictors make the leaderboard in topics such as Technology, Politics and Sports, which they can link back to their blogs, sites or profiles on social networks.

Markets allow people to see how opinion on any question evolves and changes over time, similar to the historical views on favorite financial trading sites.

For each market, Hubdub automatically populates the trading page with aggregated news from across the Web to provide background and insight for predictors and bystanders. Depending on activity, the market, representing opinion, will trade up or down.

At the very least, Hubdub helps people discover, track and discuss all major news stories and offers to challenge, excite, and reward them through competitive prediction of story outcomes. It also promotes and facilitates intelligent user comments and intense debates. In addition, markets can be embedded in blogs, allowing bloggers to highlight news stories, issues and outcomes they care about within their own communities.

Hubdub was founded in November 2007 by Nigel Eccles, Tom Griffiths, Rob Jones and Chris Stafford, Hubdub is headquartered in Edinburgh, UK. cpm

Now I was about to finally get done working for today, when I ran across this post by TC. Apparently Mike, along with many other people think that music should be for free. That artists should just keep writing songs for the sake of creating music. Nice to live in a Utopian world, but the fact remains, it costs to be a musician. While you can become a blogger and never make a dime, like probably 95% of bloggers do, musicians on the other hand like to make money for their works. They should. As the saying goes, it’s not all eazy and sleazy as you think it is!

While I agree with the premise that things are changing and hopefully for the better in the music industry, the simple fact is that it isn’t free to record. Yes, you can build your own studio, your own DAW (digital audio workstation), and pretty much do it for free. DIY (do it yourself) is very popular these days amongst the pros and the amateur musicians. No problem there. The problem lies in the fact that it costs money to build such a studio and DAW. It costs money to hire a producer/engineer to do the recording.

Oh you can record on your own, be totally self contained. I have done it before myself. The thing is a lot of musicians don’t like to do both. It can be quite a pain in the a$$ when you get down to it. I for one would rather do one or the other - perform / play my music and let someone else record it - or - in the next case - just be the engineer and twist knobs.

The most fun I had was when I recorded and re-mixed a track for my bud Trashy Feelgood. He wanted to re-do vocals and remix this song - Color Coded Casket - (very timely and thought provoking lyrics I might add), and being the knob twister was actually fun. I had a blast being one or the other for a change. That song should have one of those “Parental Advisory” lyrics. You have been warned.

Now many of you are not into crust punk which is a unique genre, but still the same, the above track has approximately 20 vocal tracks! So there was a bit of work involved, and I received exactly $0 for my work on the track. Not to mention the fact the song is only like 1 minute long, just think if it was your usual pop/rock/country song which is the usual 3-5 minutes long? Think about if I had to record the music also? There is a lot of time involved in creation of a song, even a 1 minute crust punk track.

To the point of “artists can just tour and sell shirts“. Yes and No is the answer on that one. Yes, I agree you can make more money touring and selling t-shirts. That is how the legendary Metallica survived the early days. The fact remains though, not every artist wants to go on the road to play shows. There are many who would rather only put out music, have it bought, and make residuals off of it.

Yes, the system that is currently in place isn’t perfect, but until someone can figure out how to come up with a system where the artist is compensated for writing, recording, and paying for the costs associated with such an undertaking - music will have to be paid for. Right now, TC offers no real solutions, but only a “I told you so!” attitude. What needs to happen is that the recording industry realizing their past mistakes of ripping off artists, and coming to terms with the new way of distributing music.

Technically Speaking, everyone is excited about the data portability group. I would be more excited if there was an organization that actually addressed the concerns of all musicians whether they only wanted to write and record music or whether they wanted to tour and give their music away for free or for promotional purposes. While Mike definitely doesn’t work for free as a blogger, many of us do. Why should musicians be forced into servitude just because someone wants to and think it’s their right to have their music that they put their hard earned time into for free? It’s not right, and I think if Mike wasn’t making money blogging, the whole “I told you so!” attitude might be more like mine - “Let’s get something going here that will make a difference and work it so that musicians can make money all the time - with or without the recording industry.” diamond rings

Kiwee, the online social expressions outlet, announced extraordinary growth in its first six months out of beta, attracting one million members since July 2007. In December, Kiwee hit another milestone; delivering 500 million IM graphics downloads. This exceptional growth has been bolstered by the Kiwee IM Toolbar, recently out of beta, which provides thousands of unique 2D and 3D expressions for the AOL, MSN and Yahoo! instant messaging platforms.

Kiwee currently adds an estimated 14,000 new members every day, and has tripled its number of unique visitors and page views from December to January. Also, Kiwee features a vast amount of original content for social expressions on the web – more than 6,000 items, many of which can be completely customized by adding text, color and even photographs.

As an innovative leader in social expressions, Kiwee speaks to the MySpace generation by creating new content to match their changing moods, and developing new applications for all the major social networking platforms. In the past two months, Kiwee launched a Facebook application, added postCards, and released a line of customizable widgets.

Kiwee, the youth-focused online social expressions division of AG Interactive - a subsidiary of American Greetings Corp (NYSE: AM). American Greetings Corporation is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of social expression products. Located in Cleveland, Ohio, American Greetings generates annual revenue of approximately $1.7 billion. roller shades

Playyoo™, a social networking platform for creating and sharing mobile casual games, today announced the official launch of its public beta site, also they have a mobile site up. Playyoo is a global online community that offers a fun, social experience that brings together gamers and developers.

Playyoo features key innovations that address chief complaints with the current mobile gaming experience. With the platform’s easy game discovery and download process, mobile phone users can effortlessly find games of interest. Playyoo’s game stream presents personalized recommendations based on each user’s preferences and those of their friends within the community. Intelligent filtering ensures that only games supported on a user’s handset will be offered to alleviate the frustration of incompatibility issues.

To help spark development of high quality games, Playyoo is sponsoring the Playyoo Game Contest. Open to all Flash Lite developers, the contest offers $25,000 USD in cash prizes. In line with Playyoo’s community-driven philosophy, winning games will be determined by Playyoo members - based on download statistics and community ratings at the end of the contest on February 28, 2008.

Playyoo is sponsoring an additional $15,000 USD in cash prizes for members of regional Flash Lite User Groups through the Flash Lite Game Contest. Complete details on the Playyoo Game Contest can be found here. Approximately 200 games are currently available for free download, with more added each day. Everyone can join the Playyoo community and start experiencing the fun world of free mobile casual games.

Playyoo is a privately held company based in London, England. Playyoo is a trademark of Playyoo Limited. Adobe, Flash, and Flash Lite are registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Other trade, product, or service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. closed captioning