Valleywag
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In Brief
Six Apart's teen-alien problem
Pity the poor internet executive who runs foul of the fan-fiction community, one of the internet's most bizarre tribes. Barak Berkowitz, chief executive of Six Apart, is the latest: he's just penned an abject apology for suspending accounts on one of the blogging conglomerate's sites, Live Journal. He'd received complaints that some of the contributors to the online diary site were promoting pedophilia, and Six Apart, which hopes to go public one day, was a little too zealous in banning users. More » -
linden lab
The virtual world just got a little more real
TIM FAULKNER — Second Life may face a new threat, the need to apply and enforce real law in its virtual world. A Pennsylvania court has denied two requests by Linden Lab, which would have effectively ended the first legal challenge, Bragg v. Linden, to the Second Life creator. Instead, the decisions may grant greater rights and control of the online world to the users. Maybe that can be viewed as validation, but it also spells trouble for the online fantasy world. More » -
multiverse
Another virtual world to lambast
Multiverse, a Mountain View-based online virtual world play, has received $4.175 million in Series A funding led by Sterling Stamos Capital Management and including several prominent angel investors valuing them, post-money, at $10.5 million. Although similar to Linden Lab's Second Life in supporting in-world commerce, Multiverse is more focused on gaming. Their business model also involves the syndication of distinct MMORPGs using their tools and taking an upfront payment or a slice of individual developers' revenue (if there are any). But they're also dependent on a client download. They've received their funding, boast they have more than 10,000 development teams working on more than 150 distinct worlds, and have a more attractive business model, but we still feel the same way about virtual worlds. Unfortunately, the investors aren't listening. -
In Brief
Choose your game
There are several established games:
1) The Big Game
2) The Little Game
3) The Fun Game More » -
In Brief
Steve Jobs' favorite gadget blog
A sweet moment for Brian Lam of Gizmodo at All Things Digital. Standing with his main rival, Ryan Block of Engadget, the dorkier of the two dominant gadget blogs. Lam spotted Steve Jobs on the way to lunch at the Carlsbad conference. The Gizmodo editor goes over to introduce himself, half-expecting to be frozen out by Jobs. Not at all. "I have Engadget and Gizmodo next to each other," says Jobs, pointing at an invisible screen. And then the punchline: "But I like Gizmodo much better." Even were that true, such enthusiasm seems out of character for Apple's famously irascible founder. Until one remembers that an embarrassingly wrong report by Engadget, on a delay to the iPhone launch, briefly knocked $4bn off Apple's share price. And Engadget's Ryan Block was witnessing the whole exchange. Maybe Jobs was just trying to twist the knife, which would be more his style. [Disclosure: Gizmodo is, of course, owned by Gawker Media, and Engadget is the flagship of the weblogs group owned by AOL; and they are ferocious competitors.] -
Parody
Sporkk
NICK DOUGLAS — The site for fake startup Sporkk is cute enough ("Business Sporkk! Student Sporkk! Kid Sporkk! Minority Sporkk!"), but the parody (yet another fake site from blogger Sean Bonner, creator of isolatr) comes with a Twitter account for the personification of Web 2.0. The account's message last night: "Falling asleep to my 'get rich the pets.com way' tapes I bought at a yardsale today." Update: Sean says it's not his; it's by "some dude" who told him to be the first to blog it. -
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In Brief
Is this the most hated man on the web?
Robert Soloway, one of the world's most notorious senders of junk email, has finally been arrested. The "spam king" — did he ever actually embrace that title? — faces charges that he used other people's internet domains, and in effect stole their identities, to mount "zombie" spam blasts. They're known as zombie attacks because the owners of the computers sending the unwanted ads are often unaware that they've been hijacked by spam marketers. According to the Associated Press, Soloway, who persisted in flooding the internet with junk email despite a judgment against him in a civil suit by Microsoft, now faces decades in prison. That seemed harsh — until I checked my inbox. Spammers are the pedophiles of the internet; they deserve no sympathy. -
Startup Search
A search site for tech bloggers
TIM FAULKNER — Startup Search is a directory of (mostly) web startups with tabs for companies, their products, leaders, investors, and partners. The directory pulls together information from Google Maps, Flickr, and news sources on each topic. Other information like a brief history of the company and funding details are extremely useful. The site attempts to rank the companies by web traffic, buzz, and a "total" factor. How these metrics are determined and their accuracy is unclear. The breadth of data and the decision process involved in selecting certain companies also needs improvement. If the site can address these two concerns over time, Startup Search could prove an indispensable tool for bloggers covering the industry. I, personally, could use the assistance and wish them success. -
google gears
No escape from Google applications
TIM FAULKNER — The search giant has unleashed their latest beta product, Google Gears. Gears enables web-based applications, dependent on a network connection, to run offline. Currently, browser support is limited, and Google's RSS feed reader, Reader, is the only supported application. (Developers will need to build support into their web products.) If the technology delivers on its promise, support is sure to expand, not only to Google's other apps, but other offerings as well. Ultimately, this may be Google's foray into competing for the desktop, but for the time being, it simply removes the only excuse that Google addicts had for the occasional, brief detox... There is no respite from Google. -
In Brief
Steve Jobs' house
Steve Jobs chose to give users of the iPhone, Apple's forthcoming wonder phone, one-button access to Google Maps. But that was, one supposes, before the Mountain View search engine added street-level spy photographs to its increasingly creepy map service. Pictured here, from Google Maps: what we suspect is the Apple founder's Palo Alto residence, on Waverley Street, via the Drudge Report. (Atherton, home of privacy-conscious Eric Schmidt, Google's chief exec and an Apple board member, has not been fully photographed, unfortunately.) Hey, Steve!
San Francisco, 9:16 AM
Sun Nov 23
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