News

Netflix has launched a new feature that allows members to watch full-length videos online. After logging into your account click on the "Watch Now" tab. Pick a video, click "Play", and you'll be prompted to download a player. Not all of their catalog is available. Right now the selection consists of mostly older movies and TV series, but this is still good news for people who like to watch videos online or who feed video to their TV via their computer.

I arrived at Moscone West in San Francisco early on Monday so that I could get an amazing seat for my first session of the Web 2.0 Expo 2007. As soon as I got there, I headed to the check-in desk to pick up my badge. There, I was given my first indicator of how this experience was going to be. All the badges were color-coded - mine was yellow, meaning that I only paid $100 for access to a few sessions, the keynote speaker - Jeff Bezos! - and the Expo hall at large. Translation: All people in possession of yellow badges are the lowest form of life at the Web 2.0 Expo. One of the many rude staff members handed me my scarlet letter, I mean badge, with a grunt as I watched all of the blue and gray badge people get bags of free goodies and information while I am excluded. Dejected, I traveled upstairs to get to that coveted "good seat" (or shall I say seat period, since those who did not get seats were forced to sprawl on the floor). I reached my destination - "Jump Start Your Startup," which should have been named "Listen to Dan Roberts from Sun Microsystems drone on and on about Sun products that are too costly to deploy and have nothing to do with my startup." It only took me about 3.5 minutes to realize I was going to get zero out of this session. I got up and headed over to “The Wonderful World of Wikis: Case Studies, Benefits, Dos and Don'ts” presented by Ken Lui (InfoGation, Holographix, HNC Software, Virage, and IPivot.) This session was really informative. Ken talked about the benefits of Wiki compared to Forums and Blogs and laid out some cost effective solutions for companies that wanted to use Wiki as part of their websites or for their intranet systems.

The free online encyclopedia and Web 2.0 phenom Wikipedia now has some competition with this week's launch of Citizendium. Larry Sanger, alleged co-creator of Wikipedia, has launched the new site which is similar to its predecessor and is an answer to many of the problems that Wikipedia readers and contributors face: vandalism, content inconsistencies and serial overwriting.

Apple TVs shipped March 20th, and Apple TV customers are already cracking, hacking, and upgrading their new toy. Lucky for us, they are also blogging it and making videos about it. Since I chose to wait to get one - in case they add some upgraded features - I've been tracking and bookmarking the information being put online. I want to be able to go back to my "Apple TV Unleashed" folder later on and do some of these upgrades myself.Hopefully, keeping a similar folder in your browser's favorites will help you find your own solution to your Apple TV questions. Please keep in mind that cracking the shell on your new Apple TV to upgrade the hard drive or perform some of these other upgrades and hacks will definitely void your Apple Care warranty.

CENTRAL TEXAS -- Data on several sites maintained by the operators of Texxors.com suggests that Google may be manipulating the profits webmasters receive from Google’s Adsense program. Our analysis shows statistical evidence that as a website becomes more popular, it receives less earnings per click (EPC) from Google Adsense. Since the EPC is determined by Google’s algorithms prior to the ad being served to a page, this suggests that Google may be intentionally or unintentionally manipulating EPC to increase their profit and/or Adsense participation. The method appears to be similar to the “throttling” practices that landed online movie retailer Netflix in legal hot water last year.