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China’s Baidu Refocuses on Mobile and Apps

2010/09/03
By Curt Hopkins
China’s Baidu Refocuses on Mobile and Apps

Baidu is the most-visited website in China and has captured 70% of search revenue in that country. Alexa's Top 500 Global Sites list puts it at number 6. But with virtually no penetration outside Asia, can it really be considered a global company at al...
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IBM at the US Open – Analyzing Every Volley, Serve and Overhead Smash

2010/09/03
By Alex Williams
IBM at the US Open – Analyzing Every Volley, Serve and Overhead Smash

One quote from an IBM executive stands out in the post that Chris Cameron wrote today about IBM's augmented reality app for the U.S. Open.Rick Singer, IBM's Vice President of Sports Technology Partnerships said it all comes down tthe information gene...
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Ping Is Neither Social, Nor Is It a Network. Discuss.

2010/09/03
By Cyndy Aleo
Ping Is Neither Social, Nor Is It a Network. Discuss.

Om claimed that Ping is the future of social commerce, but its sole focus on purchases and its presence behind a walled garden may hinder that bright future. Here are the four main issues Apple has to work on quickly for Ping to be successful.
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Oregon Tribes Make Huge Rural Broadband Investment

2010/09/03
By Curt Hopkins
Oregon Tribes Make Huge Rural Broadband Investment

The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Central Oregon have made a commitment to broadband for its largely rural population. Taking advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's broadband funding, the Tribes will s...
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Facebook Ramping Up the Social in Its Search Engine

2010/09/03
By Mathew Ingram
Facebook Ramping Up the Social in Its Search Engine

Facebook has started integrating social activity from the network into its search results, by showing how many people "liked" or shared a page. This is the first step in rolling out the network's social-search engine, which could become a competitive threat for Google and other companies.
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Tumblr’s Improved Attribution is Good News for Publishers

2010/09/03
By Chris Cameron
Tumblr’s Improved Attribution is Good News for Publishers

Tumblr is quickly becoming one of the Web's most popular and unique platforms on which to share and discover interesting content of all media. According to Tumblr, over 5.3 million posts are made each day by the service's over 7.5 million users. Posts ...
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YouSendIt raises additional $15M to bypass email attachment limits

2010/09/03
By Matthew Lynley
YouSendIt raises additional $15M to bypass email attachment limits

File-transfer startup YouSendIt, which allows users to bypass the limits that most email services put on file transfers, announced it raised an extra $15 million in its fourth round of funding on Friday. New investor Adams Street Partners led the round, along with former investors Emergence Capital, Sigma Partners and Alloy Ventures.

YouSendIt allows users to send files sized up to 2 gigabytes through email — though the files aren’t actually transferred via e-mail, but hosted on YouSendIt’s servers and the email recipients are allowed to download them.

But YouSendIt isn’t the only player hosting large files for transfer — RapidShare, MegaUpload and drop.io, among others, also offer hosting services for large files.

The Campbell, Calif.-based company does boast 13 million registered users and more than 210,000 subscribers, and reportedly delivers 15 million files a month. Reuters, Salesforce, Rheem and Ritz Camera are listed as clients for the company.

Robin Murray, partner of Adams Street Partners, was named as an observer of the YouSendIt board of directors. The file-sharing company raised $14 million, $10 million and $4.7 million in earlier rounds of funding.

Tags: email, file hosting, file sharing, filesharing, large file transfer, transfer

Companies: Drop.io, MegaUpload, RapidShare, Reuters, Rheem, Ritz Camera, salesforce, YouSendIt

People: Robin Murray


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Online Viewers Watched 1.4B Minutes of Live Video in July

2010/09/03
By Ryan Lawler
Online Viewers Watched 1.4B Minutes of Live Video in July

While on-demand services like YouTube and Hulu get all the press, live streaming services have posted dramatic increases in viewer engagement over the last year. Time spent watching live online video increased nearly 650 percent in that time, to 1.4 bi...
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Strategy Roundtable: Find High Velocity Channels

2010/09/03
By Sramana Mitra
Strategy Roundtable: Find High Velocity Channels

First up at this week's Strategy Roundtable was Cheryl Yeoh presenting CityPockets, an online destination, and an app for managing daily deals across a wide range of sites. The daily deal and group buying market has really heated up, with numerous site...
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Offerpal Media names a new CEO during a tough transition

2010/09/03
By Dean Takahashi
Offerpal Media names a new CEO during a tough transition

As it adapts to changes on Facebook’s platform, Offerpal Media has named Mihir Shah as its new chief executive and president. Shah replaces George Garrick, who served as CEO since last fall. Garrick will become executive chairman. Garrick himself...
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Is Digital Eavesdropping Evil? Depends Which Country Is Doing It (TCTV)

Is Digital Eavesdropping Evil? Depends Which Country Is Doing It (TCTV)

First we had the Google vs China debacle, then came Saudi Arabia's tussle with RIM. And now it's India's turn: threatening to block RIM, Google and Skype unless the companies agree to set up localised servers, all the better for state monitoring of communications.Curiously, compared to the outrage levelled at the Saudi and Chinese governments, American reaction to India's move has been pretty muted. Could it be that India is somehow perceived as "less evil" than the Muslim/Communist nations? Also: to what extent is India simply doing what every government - including the US government - tries to do: demanding the ability to monitor digital chatter in the hope of foiling criminal and terrorist plots? After all, if Big Brother can't read your BBMs, haven't the terrorists already won?In this week's episode of Why Is This News, we talk to Harvard Law professor Jon Zittrain, who explains the differences between governments who obey the rule of law, and those who don't - and why Sarah's right to criticize the government by email is totally protected, unless she should happen to email it to Paul.Video...
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A Closer Look At Apple’s Latest Patents

2010/09/03
By Devin Coldewey
A Closer Look At Apple’s Latest Patents

Apple has been granted nine new patents, and I thought I'd take a look at the claims therein and see whether they match up to the descriptions, and whether they seem (to this humble blogger) like realistic items for which to gain exclusive rights. I've included links to all the patents, but the USPTO office is behaving strangely, and often returned an error when I tried to pull up documents. Those guys ought to claim a method to buy some new servers, whereby I don't have to submit the patent number five times before it comes up.I'm not going to get in the habit of analyzing in detail every patent that comes our way, but in light of recent lawsuits and all the noise being made about software patents specifically, it seems worthwhile to take a closer peek now and then.
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Tweetmeme’s Button Impressions Collapsed 20% After Twitter’s Button Launched

2010/09/03
By MG Siegler
Tweetmeme’s Button Impressions Collapsed 20% After Twitter’s Button Launched

It was only a year ago that Tweetmeme declared their intention to be the king of retweets. And for most of the past year, that was the case. Their retweet button was everywhere. Of course, that was before Twitter launched its own button last month. The result of that introduction? An immediate 20 percent drop off in button impressions per day, Tweetmeme found Nick Halstead noted today.Luckily for Halstead, Twitter let him know their button-killer was coming and gave Tweetmeme a chance to get out of the way. Twitter even agreed to license some of Tweetmeme's technology and enter into a business agreement with them about the button. The phrase, "killing me softly" comes to mind.
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DoubleClick Ad Planner’s Bestiality Bug (Screenshot)

2010/09/03
By Erick Schonfeld
DoubleClick Ad Planner’s Bestiality Bug (Screenshot)

Is Google serving up ads targeted at sites which categorize themselves as "extreme porn," bestiality," and "child porn"? Rest assured, it is not. But if you are a website publisher using DoubleClick's Ad Planner to select categories to match your site to advertiser's interests, you might think so. The screenshot at right and below shows what one publisher found when choosing self-descriptive categories. Under "Adult" and "Porn" are those three categories. The issue was first brought to Google's attention in this help forum, and subsequently by TechCrunch.It turns out this is a software bug, but what a doozy. DoubleClick, which is part of Google, maintains a blacklist of categories and keywords it will not serve ads against. Those include "extreme porn," "bestiality," and "child porn." Somehow categories from the blacklist started appearing as regular options within Ad Planner. Google is removing those now and says no ads were actually served against those categories even if somebody selected them.
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Offerpal Gets Its Third CEO In A Year, Garrick Named Executive Chairman

2010/09/03
By Leena Rao
Offerpal Gets Its Third CEO In A Year, Garrick Named Executive Chairman

Offerpal Media has just announced that Mihir Shah has been named president and CEO, while chairman and former CEO George Garrick has been named executive chairman. This is Offerpal's third CEO in a year; Anu Shukla left the company last November following the Scamville drama and was replaced with former Mochi Media CEO George Garrick.Shah was the company's chief revenue officer and joined Offerpal in December of 2009. Prior to Offerpal, Shah was VP of ad networks for RockYou. And he previously served as VP and general manager of direct selling services at QuinStreet.
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From the Tips Box: Smartphone Signal, iTunes Mini-Player, and Gaming Mousepads [From The Tips Box]

2010/09/03
By Whitson Gordon
From the Tips Box: Smartphone Signal, iTunes Mini-Player, and Gaming Mousepads [From The Tips Box]

Readers offer their best tips for phones that keep searching for signal, a new iTunes mini-player, and cheap gaming mousepad solutions. More »
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