1. Mozilla
2. Facebook
3. Mahalo
4. DoubleClick
5. Yahoo
6. Microsoft
7. Google
8. LinkedIn
9. Jajah
10. Adobe

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• Tech's 10 worst workspaces
• Yahoo
• Mozilla
• Mahalo
• Google
• Microsoft
• LinkedIn
• Jajah
• Facebook
• DoubleClick
• Adobe

The disastrous beta launch of Yahoo Live puts the spotlight on firms like Ustream.tv and Justin.tv. There are more than a few companies that could easily integrate a streaming video service into their content strategy, including Microsoft, Apple, YouTube, or any number of camera and PC manufacturers.

Ustream focuses more on broadcasts of events, rather than lifecasts — those intensely boring 24/7 video streams of people's lives. Ustream has streamed several major concerts, including some from Hannah Montana, and has been used by a number of presidential candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, to broadcast exclusive events. The Republican National Convention will be on Ustream this summer. This focus on "eventcasting" could make it more respectable than a lifecasting startup — and more tempting to a major buyer like Microsoft.

Adobe confirms the function, saying they use information gleaned about user behavior to gain "business insight into how to create better user experiences." Don't want to be their guinea pig? Omniture lets you opt out.

• There's some developer camp at Adobe. Flash! Air! Leah Culver might even show! [Adobe]
• Go for a walk with egoblogger Robert Scoble and Zooomr evangelist Thomas Hawk as they take pictures and yammer on and on and on and on and oh my god, I can't believe we're recommending this to you. Never mind. Take a camera and photowalk your way to your closest bar and take a shot of tequila to make you forget about this travesty. [Upcoming]
• Set your TiVos! YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen will be on megatalkshow Oprah tomorrow. But, if you miss it, we wager you'll be able to catch clips online. [Oprah]

Got a to-do that's a must-do? Send it to calendar@valleywag.com. Check out more events on our Google Calendar:

On some levels, Popfly is nothing new. It's similar to Yahoo Pipes, Apple's soon-to-be-released widget builder Dashcode, personalization tools in various Google properties, and any number of new portals which allow you to build your own web applications. None of these Web mashup builders have attracted the hoped-for audience.

Why? Nondevelopers simply do not develop applications; hence the "non-" prefix. When they do, they build bad applications when there are plenty of existing, free alternatives. Social networks, the Web, and desktops are already overrun by thousands of redundant, useless widgets. This crowded market is dominated by a few quality Web applications built by professional developers who do it for a living. The next innovation is not going to come from an amateur using a dumbed-down beta product.

If someone tries to get you excited about a Popfly widget, the odds are high five other widgets performing the same function already exist. The odds will be low that the Popfly widget will be the best of the class.

But Microsoft should, nevertheless, be excited about Popfly. Rarely has Redmond produced such a simple, visually appealing tool for developers. After playing with Popfly, talented developers will likely migrate to more powerful tools. But Microsoft is badly losing in the battle with Adobe's Flash. Anything that gives Popfly, and the Silverlight technology it's based on, a bit of buzz will redound to Microsoft's long-term benefit. Even if you and I never end up finding a single Popfly-based application worth using.

Today, Microsoft made some major company changes in multiple divisions of their business. Some long time execs including Amir Majidimehr and others are affected and multiple divisions have been reorged. Lots of changes that will affect multiple product lines. I expect we'll see the changes announced shortly, if not tomorrow.

H.264 makes it possible for dramatic quality improvements in Internet video, it's true. However, most loser-generated content is still being produced with crappy cameras, on home computers with cheap editing software. The update to Flash will not create a tidal wave of better content. It only removes one of many roadblocks.

And, needless to say, a more advanced algorithm won't improve the subject matter of Web videos. YouTube will remain just as inane and crappy as before. The difference between professional and amateur content, however, will become more and more distinct. We'll still be inundated with videos of dressed-up pets and teenagers lip syncing two feet away from the camera (always original and entertaining). We'll just be more aware that we're watching crap.

For Adobe, it's a timely move. Content producers were beginning to eschew Flash video's universality for higher-quality download formats; startups like Joost were hoping to develop alternative video delivery mechanisms by emphasizing better image resolution; and Microsoft thought it saw an open door to compete with Flash through Silverlight, its competing multimedia platform which supports another HD-video format. Adobe just closed the door on competitors and cemented its control of online video for the foreseeable future. And if it renders people's home videos that much more tiresome, all the better.

Commenter rheiser says:

Google occupies buildings that Adobe once occupied when they were in Mt. View across from the Amphitheater parking lot. I haven't looked to see if the statue we used to call "Gumby" is there anymore in front of the green buildings.

Those certainly look like the acrobat sculptures that used to be outside the Adobe buildings — I used to pass by them every day when i worked at Sun in the early 90's. I had always assumed that Acrobat was named after the sculptures ....

A potentially interesting factoid: The statues referred to in #10 are holdovers from when Adobe occupied these buildings, and are why it's called 'Acrobat'.

Total coincidence. No relation to Acrobat the product. However, like most big tech companies Adobe has an agreement with it's local government (now city of San Jose) to provide some level of public art in its environs. Adobe now has a couple of rusty sculptures in front of its San Jose HQ. And that funny light thing on top of its building. Funnily enough Apple has a similar agreement with Cupertino. But Steve Jobs took down the art (it was a collection of big software icons in front of Infinite Loop) because he didn't like it.

I don't know whether or not that building was ever Adobe, but I do remember when Bldg 45 was owned and occupied by Sun, back when the Google Campus was SGI. I used to work for SETI (yes, *that* SETI), which was in the building just on the other side of Landings from the one marked marked "1965 Charleston" on your map at that time, and drove by those statues every day. I always thought they were a bit odd, since Sun isn't in the habit of littering their campus with giant kids. Except for the executives, of course.

I remember those sculptures of acrobats outside of an Adobe building. Perhaps building 45 used to be used by Adobe, and the artworks remain? I had wondered at the time if there was a correlation between the name Adobe Acrobat and the sculptures.

My regular day job is graphic design (if you guessed editor, you were wrong), currently I'm freelancing at a company in downtown San Francisco for the time being. The marketing firm is stocked with the newish Intel-powered iMacs, and being a designer those iMacs are mostly running the Adobe CS2 suite; Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.

We brought up an issue to our IT guy about the dialogs in InDesign displaying weird repeating numbers after the decimal place (shown here). The tech ran all the OS and Adobe application updates and spent some time on Adobe's Knowledgebase scouring the support documents for a solution. After coming up empty-handed we called Adobe's tech support, hit speakerphone and started reading War and Peace. As I finished the venerable tome, a support person chimed in and we explained our situation, and this was the response:

Adobe Support: "Yeah it's a known issue with the Intel iMacs, you'll have to wait for CS3 to have it fixed. We're slated to ship it sometime in 2007."

Us: "That's a cartload of horse pucky. Is there anything else we can do?"

Adobe Support: "Go on Craigslist and buy an older Mac."

Us: "You people are dumb, greedy assh...{click}."

Methinks it like a weasel. Don't forget Adobe, Express lost market share because of Quark's disinterest in fixing their buggy software, it can happen to you too.

• Today's "Reason that San Francisco is cooler than San Jose" is a warning to vegetarians: In Silicon Valley, waiters forcibly stuff meat down your throat. [Metroactive]
• Apparently everyone who didn't know about the Adobe/Microsoft fight over the PDF format has their heads in the sand. Yeah, they're all probably worrying about obscure news this week, like the US killing the world's leading terrorist. [Planet PDF]
• Thanks again, SloshCon sponsors! To everyone else: If you want to give people money to drink, please sponsor the Gnomedex parties coming up in July. [Ponzarelli]
• Is the Glam.com blog network scamming its writers? (Ha, name a blog network that isn't.) A tipster says, "Apparently their $11m in funding doesn't cover paying out a few cents to their partners." [Celebitchy]
• Songwriter Billy Bragg takes his music off Myspace, saying the site's terms and conditions let Rupert Murdoch's media empire re-use all posted music without paying a cent in royalties. One wonders if News Corp would ever get away with acting on that clause, but either way, YAY FOR LEAVING MYSPACE. [Register]
• Pictured: Best. Caption. Ever. The Register snarks at Dell for throwing Wall Street Journal editor Don Clark...a birthday party. [Register]