DISQUS

Skype and skypephone logos are clearly in evidence on the sides :) Is it worth waiting for? I'm upgrading on 3 in the next few days thanks to them changing some details on my price plan, giving me early cancellation or upgrade rights.

invited.

please invite:

HPmcxdEmtYITkcrj@spambox.us

Thanks!

But the jury is still very much out on whether or not a lack of pirated shows on YouTube would hurt it in the long term. Sure, much of the current traffic comes from people wanting to view those clips, but user generated content is not a phenomenon which is going away, and the trend is probably even accelerating.

If we end up with a YouTube with only UGC, a few specific content deals and some clips which networks are happy to allow for promotional purposes, that's still a strong set of content.

It also means that this YouTube killer probably isn't a direct competitor; in any case the two services certainly aren't mutually exclusive.

How about putting a tracker script on outgoing links to startups from Mashable to create a popularity chart of startups popular with readers in a given time frame, which could then go in the sidebar.

@Master William: It looked to me like it might be a primarily backend system, so it's possible that the reference to Java is not about the UI being a Java applet but that the whole programme is written in the Java programming language. That would make sense, because many of the Goog's products are written in Java.

It's working for me - the stats graphs are showing up on statsaholic.

Maybe Alexa/Amazon have decided to let it go.

I think it's fine for a company to adopt a dual approach; the bloggers and early adopters watching the space expect a blog post explaining the product launch, whereas the mainstream press still expects to have the shortcut of a press release because that's the way it's always been done.

Whilst the need for press releases is diminishing, I expect they will be here for some years yet. So long as the company is also blogging/engaging properly, I don't see how that's a major problem.

I just did an exclusive interview with Sam, with him giving his side of events.

http://gizbuzz.co.uk/2006/episode-4-exclusive-e...

@Simon - from the interview it sounds like Sam's gonna take that opportunity. I look forward to the result!

Great demo!

I've just done an interview with Alex Bard for a podcast. We talk about their decision to use flash over Ajax, business models and their API that they're launching soon.

http://gizbuzz.co.uk/2006/episode-2-gizbuzz-pod...

More on the ridiculous side - I walked into my local supermarket yesterday to find Christmas products already on display! I don't know whether you have the same in the US, but here in the UK Christmas gets earlier every year, and its just annoying! I like the event itself, not the stupid buildup at the beginning of October.

Do you think you'll get the same kind of access that you got when you were part of Channel 9; will microsofties be more cautious about telling you stuff? Or will they still look on you as one of their own and give you a great scoop!

Hack days like this represent innovation at its best; pure can-do attitude, and it really works. Its amazing how people manage to have such great ideas in such a short space of time.

Its a great way to get an ecosystem going around Yahoo's APIs. Google and Microsoft should start running them too.

Robert - I think you may be having bandwidth issues with PodDev. I'm on an 8mbit connection in the UK, and it is taking an extremely long time (like an hour) to download the 5min demo on Jotspot. It's not a problem at my end, cos I can download other stuff fine.

It's a shame, cos it looks like great stuff!

It's gonna be fascinating who wins. I just bought an iPod Nano, and you're right Dan G, it just works. I still think Microsoft has some massive strategic advantages, which I wrote about here.

This could be developed much further, I think. A device, with the ability to download podcasts as you describe, as well as automatically pull RSS feeds down (possibly even those not on your reading list, using a service similar to Share Your OPML to find similar feeds) as well as maybe a Pandora-type load of music suggestions which are free to listen to a couple of times but then DRM self destruct, would be very popular and useful. Microsoft could help push OEMs along with this by including it in their Mobile Media Center software.

To extend your metaphor, Robert, at the moment, Microsoft seems to be taking the approach that if they sign enough artists, they must manage to catch at least one 'next big thing'. With Xbox360, Origami, Atlas, the whole Live program as well as tons of other stuff that MS is doing which seems to be outside their traditional product category of desktop software, you really are getting involved in as much stuff as possible. And I reckon that you do stand a chance of winning through in at least some of those areas.

Microsoft's biggest challenge seems to me to be it's size. This causes two major problems. Firstly, its inability to adapt to situations and bring out lots of products fast, even if only a few turn out to be successful and innovative. Google's dealing with the problem by having their famed '20% time' policy. Whilst it is clear that this policy has its weaknesses (such as dilution of the corporate image and direction by vast numbers of products which don't necessarily fit with anything else that is going on) it does at least show an attempt to stay like a startup.

The second problem is perception. As far as MS's business clients go, it doesn't look like there's much more they can do to appeal to them; they tend to buy most of the products thrown at them. However, the consumer does not have an ideal view of the Microsoft brand. They respect it to a level which ordinary companies would love to have, but for a tech company hoping to define the future and persuade people to buy into it (both through products and shares) MS needs to have a more 'modern' and forward looking image. Dare I say it, but like Google's. The Terabyte storage idea is the sort of thing which MS has to look at. I think the average consumer would trust MS with their data, and by offering the storage MS would show that they were coming up with new ideas. Whenever Google are in the mainstream news, pictures of there offices in all their multi-olour, lava lamp, spacehopper splendour show that they are different as a company, and futuristic. Microsoft needs to appear ultimately in the same way, but certainly through different means so that Ballmer and Gates continue to look like grownups - unlike Google's Brin and Page - to prevent businesses turning away.

Just my ideas from the outside, and the fact that MS insiders like Scoble are writing blog posts like this show that there is a real appreciation of the problem, and thus hope that it can be solved. Lets hope that it is, because MS is a good company, by in large producing good products.