Why Viacom demanded its videos be removed from YouTube

Turns out Viacom had other plans for its videos and films: tons of its content was on its way to another Internet video service: the hi-buzz peer-to-peer service called Joost. Suspicions arose when beta testers noticed a plethora of Viacom clips on the nascent Joost, the beta project with more clips than users thus far.


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Windows Live Messenger ads serve up malware

Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger client for several days has displayed banner ads that attempted to install malware on user's systems.

Microsoft has acknowledged the incident and has removed the offending advertisements.

"We apologize for the inconvenience and are reviewing our ad approval process to reduce the chance of an occurrence such as this happening again," Whitney Burk, a PR manager with Microsoft said in an emailed statement.

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When you really want to pitch your idea

Aaron has this great idea that he would like to pitch to Google - but how do you get a meeting with someone at Google?

On February 11th, 2007 I'm getting on a plane to fly to Mountain View, California, headquarters of Google, Inc. Once there, I'm going to try to pitch an idea to them that I think fits right in with the Google spirit and business model; catch is, I don't have an appointment, they don't know I'm coming, and I'm literally going to be showing up at their door and hoping they give me a meeting.

And if they don't give me one? Then I'm going to sit in their lobby like a spoiled child in hopes that they'll change their mind. :) Every once in a while you have to give an idea a shot, or you spend your entire life passing up ideas that seem just beyond your reach.

The story is really amazing - and you can follow it from Aaron's site - we wish him the best of luck with his venture.

Google Reader reveals number of subscribers

Google now shows you the number of Google Reader subscribers to your RSS feed. They do that by adding a value to the HTTP user agent field when fetching your feed. You can find the number in your raw logs - it looks something like this:

72.14.199.72 - - [16/Feb/2007:08:44:34 -0600] "GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1" 304 0 "-" "Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 7 subscribers; feed-id=5769402134728990362)"

Microsoft's YouTube rival now in public beta

Microsoft has unveiled a public beta of its MSN Soapbox video-upload service, its competitor to Google’s popular YouTube service.

The service, which Microsoft unveiled last September, has been available to beta testers only by invitation for several months. But now anyone can test out the service by going to this Web site, reports the the LiveSide blog, which tracks Microsoft’s Windows Live Internet services.

Here is an example (very cool advert by the way):


Video: Amazingly Cool Ad

Check out more video from MSN Soapbox - this story was found on MacWorld

Microsoft Windows 'Vienna' in two years

Ben Fathi, corporate VP of Microsoft’s Windows Core Operating System Division, is the suit with the wagging tongue and he says we can expect to see Windows ‘Vienna’ released by the summer of 2009.

“You can think roughly two, two-and-a-half years is a reasonable time frame that our partners can depend on and can work with" he said when pushed on the question by US publication (not store) PC World.

He went on to say the monstrous five year gap from XP to Vista had also changed Microsoft strategies for producing operating systems. “We realized that there were incremental things that we wanted to do, and significant improvements that we wanted to make in Vista that we couldn't deliver in one release," he explained saying that a shift to a more Apple-like incremental OS update system is on the horizon.

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Podcasting to Generate $400 Mil. in Ads by 2011

That’s according to a report to be released by eMarketer this week, which finds that spending on podcasting advertising will quintuple over the next five years, from a paltry $80 million base in 2006 to a $400 million market in 2011. (Granted, this is still on the small side, considering the $20 billion interactive ad market expected this year.)

eMarketer analyst James Belcher is betting that a familiar Web power player will spark much of that growth: Google.

Belcher expects that by 2008, the 800-pound algorithm gorilla will develop a version of AdSense that can be easily adapted to podcasts, theoretically allowing any Joe Schmoe podcaster to implement advertising. “That should help grow the market,” he said.

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