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March 12, 2006 5:05 PM PST

Second Life: fantasy site a prep for life

Can online avatars help you? Sometimes, asserted Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, a site where people create their own products a lead imagined lives.

In one experiment, a small island was set up for patients with Asperger's syndrome, he said at PC Forum taking place in Carlsbad, Calif. People with the disease are uncomfortable with social situations. The island created for them contained artificial, difficult social situations. Some patients said it helped them later in some aspect in real life, according to Rosedale.

There are roughly 150,000 participants on Second Life, he said.

Second Life is also used for escapism, Rosedale stated. Most people can fly, Rosedale noted. It would also be tough to substitute it for real life. You could also conceivably spend an inordinate amount of time designing the ultimate virtual salad dressing but then die of starvation in the real world.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
March 11, 2006 11:39 AM PST

How can tagging be more useful?

AUSTIN, TEXAS--These days, two of the hottest words in interactive Web circles are "folksonomy" and "tagging."

In general, the words are somewhat interchangeable and refer to the user-created keywords that bring context and meaning to online content. Examples are the tags that make the millions of photographs hosted by Flickr or the millions of bookmarked Web pages on Del.icio.us searchable and more usable.

But in a panel entitled "Beyond Folksonomies: Knitting tag clouds for grandma" at the South by Southwest conference here, a panel discussion with more than 200 in attendance was the place for some of the most clued-in taggers and fans of folksonomies in the world to vent about how they find the technology sorely lacking for true usefulness.

In general, the conversation went, tagging is a wonderful tool, but often doesn't meet users' needs because as it stands today, it leaves out too much context: What does the tag "afghan" mean? Is it a dog, a blanket, someone from Afghanistan?

That means, the panelists and audience members argued, that while tagging offers the promise of fully contextual content, it can still be too hard for users to find what they want, or to re-find something they've bookmarked or manually tagged.

The point of the discussion was to begin the process of arriving at a solution. But as the panelists acknowledged, we're not far enough along for the technology to exist that can truly bring meaning and context to content. And yet, each day, new attempts--social bookmarking services, automatic tagging services and such things?-come along in the hope that they will be the magic answer.

Still, while no one yet knows what will provide the solution for mass numbers of users, and not just the power users in attendance Saturday, it is heartening to know that people in positions of influence in social media are the ones pushing for this kind of change. And thus, it is easy to imagine that a year or two from now, everyone will know what tagging is because it will just work.

Posted by Daniel Terdiman
March 10, 2006 4:04 PM PST

YouTube to reconsider review process for 'objectionable' clips

YouTube is rethinking the way it decides whether material posted on the video-upload site violates its user agreement, according to reports.

Any video clip can be pulled if a certain number of people find the material objectionable. That's exactly what happened to a popular short film called "MySpace--The Movie," according to a story on AdAge.com, a trade publication.

The parody of the social networking site, MySpace, has drawn more than 4 million viewers since January and helped persuade MTV to sign the film's maker, David Lehre, to a development deal, Adage reported. Nonetheless, some people were apparently offended by the movie and triggered the company's "red-flag" system.

Once a clip receives enough red flags, it's automatically pulled down and reviewed by YouTube executives. If no user-agreement violations are found, it goes back up, which is what happened in the case of "MySpace--The Movie."

YouTube plans to add another level of review before taking down any more films.

Posted by Greg Sandoval
March 8, 2006 3:04 PM PST

Study: Internet more popular than telly

Surfing the Web has topped watching TV in terms of Britons favorite pastime, according a Daily Mail story about a new Google survey.

The survey of more than 1,000 adults ages 16 to 64 found that on average, residents in the UK spend 164 minutes online every day compared to 148 minutes watching television, the story said.

Men are the biggest Net users, averaging 172 minutes a day compared to 156 minutes a day for women. Shopping is one of the most popular online activities. And Londoners spend the most time and the most money on the Web, the story said.

Posted by Michelle Meyers
March 8, 2006 10:36 AM PST

Blog: Greasemonkey on fire

Mark Pilgrim, author of "Greasemonkey Hacks: Tips & Tools for Remixing the Web with Firefox," gave a talk Tuesday afternoon at O'Reilly's ETech Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego to show off the promise (and peril) of the Firefox Web browser add-on, which is nearly at its one-year anniversary.

Greasemonkey is not a car mechanic, but a tool for manipulating and customizing the design of remote Web pages (without the knowledge of publishers) when sites are viewed through the popular open-source browser, Firefox. Pilgrim is an expert on the user JavaScript extension: He identified a major vulnerability in it last year that allowed attackers to view files on a user's hard drive.

After retelling the story of the security breach, Pilgrim highlighted some of his favorite Greasemonkey user scripts among the thousands out there, including his own "Butler," which was one of the original scripts that modified Google by stripping it of ads and adding links to rival search engines including Yahoo and Lycos.

Pilgrim's top Greasemonkey hacks? Book Burro is one, adding a script to Firefox that calls up comparison pricing whenever the user hunts for a book. For example, if the script detects the user is looking at a book sold at Amazon.com, it will automatically search rival bookstores, including BarnesandNoble.com, and list prices for the same book on the page.

Similarly, the Wikipedia proxy user script will add links to any Web page with relevant pointers to the community-based Wikipedia encyclopedia. The Greasemonkey hack called Omnifeedster will display the incoming links to any Web page on that page. The Omnifeeder hack is based on Feedster API.

Finally, the RIAA Radar is Pilgrim's professed favorite Greasemonkey adaptation, and what he calls a "passive activism" script. The RIAA Radar agent, whose code is less than one page long, will look up the sponsoring record label behind any album sold online and provide data on whether it supports the efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has notoriously filed lawsuits against people who have traded copyrighted songs online.

The script will detect when a user is looking to buy a record, and then automatically show an icon next to the record image to illustrate whether it is pro RIAA or an independent label. "It shows evil record companies," Pilgrim said to a packed audience at O'Reilly's conference this week.

"What's the future of Greasemonkey?," he asked, then answered that for end users, it's likely more of the same. And that is scripts to block ads online and fix broken Web sites. But sometimes, there will be break-out prototypes like Book Burro and CustomizeGoogle.

Posted by Stefanie Olsen
March 8, 2006 10:30 AM PST

EVDB's wishlists for events

EVDB, the Events and Venues Database, unveiled Wednesday a new set of tools that let fans kick up demand for an unplanned performance or event.

Called "eventful demand," the service lets visitors post a wished-for event, e.g., to see a Prince concert at San Francisco's Filmore theater. Other fans might then join in that demand, creating a marketplace or critical mass for such a performance. EVDB then would contact the performer, and notify fans if the event is in the works.

EVDB said the service takes a page from Amazon.com's "wishlists," in which people post ideal gifts for friends or family to buy. The service also adds greater community for fans to connect on its search engine for posting and finding events.

"This isn't to benefit the industry, as in selling data to the music industry?the reason we're doing this is because we believe it's time to turn the Net over to fans and performers," said Brian Dear, founder and CEO of EVDB.

Dear, who founded EVDB in 2004, announced the tools at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference here in San Diego this week.

Posted by Stefanie Olsen
March 7, 2006 12:01 AM PST

LinkedIn to be profitable

Business networking Web site LinkedIn is going to be profitable this month now that it is charging subscription fees, according to a news release from the company scheduled to run on Tuesday. LinkedIn began charging between $60 and $2,000 a year for premium services seven months ago. The company, which received venture capital rounds of $4.7 million and $10 million in 2003 and 2004, will not need further investment to fund operations, the statement said. LinkedIn has begun recommending jobs offered by people their colleagues know and plans to launch new features, free of charge, that will help members get in touch with past co-workers and classmates. The site has 5 million members and expects to double that by the end of the year.

Posted by Elinor Mills
March 6, 2006 5:12 PM PST

Microsoft lets people drive in online map

In what looks like a newfangled video racing game, Microsoft is previewing new technology in Windows Live Local that shows a driver's-perspective street-level view and includes an interactive element that lets a user "drive" down the street using a keyboard's Up and Down arrows. On the bottom half of the screen, a cartoon car navigates the city streets in a view that combines an aerial satellite map and a road map with street names. Users can change the border of the driver's window to "race car," "sports car" or a walking view. For now a limited number of city streets are covered in downtown San Francisco and Seattle. The street-level photos are reminiscent of Amazon's A9.com maps site which shows photos of both sides of a street.

Posted by Elinor Mills
March 6, 2006 2:47 PM PST

Studios want teens to just say 'no' to file sharing

Fearing that the Napster generation has grown conditioned to sharing digital content without paying for it, the Motion Picture Association of America launched a program designed to teach teens the importance of copyright laws.

The MPAA introduced the Copyright Awareness Week on Monday in partnership with the Copyright Society and other groups "dedicated to protecting creative works."

The goal is to encourage educators to teach students about copyright law this week, and the consortium has made curricula available online.

"We need to change the way people view intellectual property in America," MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said in a statement. "Creative works are property just as much as a car, a piece of land or a building. Copyright law was designed to protect creative ownership and that right has allowed our creative industries to flourish during the last two centuries."

What the MPAA didn't mention in its statement is how it would motivate teachers to spend precious class time protecting the entertainment industry.

The movie and video sectors are desperately trying to avoid repeating the music industry's fate. For years, scads of teens and young adults have shared digital music files at the expense of the music industry.

The recent rise in video-file sharing has Hollywood studios moving to stop the practice from spreading.

Posted by Greg Sandoval
March 2, 2006 10:47 AM PST

Toys 'R' Us wins judgement against Amazon

At the height of the dot-com boom, Amazon.com was supposed to be the answer to Toys "R" Us' long string of Internet blundering.

The two companies agreed in 2000 to jointly sell toys on Amazon, but the partnership soured in 2004, when Toys "R" Us accused the online retailer in a lawsuit of violating their agreement. On Thursday, Toys "R" Us announced that it had won its case and can now return to operating an independent store.

Toys "R" Us alleged in the suit that Amazon failed to honor the toy store's exclusive right to sell certain products. Back when the deal was signed, Toys "R" Us' decision to sell goods online via Amazon.com helped persuade dozens of other retailers and independent merchants to do the same.

Some of those retailers sell toys.

Amazon denied the accusations and made its own counterclaims that Toysrus.com broke the agreement by failing to stock enough top-selling items.

In 2000, analysts and Wall Street loved the partnering of a stalwart bricks-and-mortar retailer with a high-flying e-tailer. To that point, Toys "R" Us had stumbled badly adapting to the Internet. For instance, during the Christmas rush of 1999, the retail chain delivered gifts to customers' doors in some cases on Dec. 26.

Posted by Greg Sandoval
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