By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

A mashup is “a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool.” For example, you might combine data from one site that tells you the leg room on available flights with a travel site to determine which flights have the greatest leg room.

While this is a great way to extend and combine the power of different sites, there’s no way my mother-in-law or my wife could create their own mashups, much less find one that did what they wanted (short of perhaps searching for it via Google). Certainly everyone’s needs are different, and even if you found a mashup it might not do everything you wanted.

This is the set of problems Intel Mash Maker, an Intel Research project, wants to solve. First to allow non-programmers the ability to create such useful applets - and to share them, and second to make it easy to discover the available mashups for a site. As Intel told me, “it allows you to have the information you want, presented the way you want it.”
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By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Since Yahoo!’s brilliant move Wednesday afternoon, outsourcing, at least for now, search ads to Google Adsense, there has been still further punch and counter-punch between Yahoo! and Microsoft - involving both News Corp. and AOL.

First, the New York Times reported that News Corp. is involved in talks with Microsoft to perhaps join in its unsolicited bid for Yahoo! The combined bid would join Yahoo!, Microsoft’s MSN and News Corp.’s MySpace into … I’m not sure what, but it would be powerful.

This would certainly be surprising, as after Microsoft first announced its bid, Yahoo! approached News Corp. as a possible “white knight.” The addition of News Corp. would allow Microsoft to raise its bid, which was originally valued at $44.6B and was rejected by Yahoo! as being too low. Since then, Microsoft’s stock price has dropped, resulting in the value of the bid dropping to around $42B.

According to the Times,

News Corporation would probably contribute its Fox Interactive Media unit, which includes MySpace, and possibly cash to a partnership with Microsoft as part of an acquisition of Yahoo, they said.

At the same, the Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo! is very close to a merger with Time-Warner’s AOL division. The merger would be just part of a three-part plan Yahoo! would present to shareholders.

The other parts of the plan would involve buying back billions of dollars of its own shares, as well as outsourcing its ads to Google. According to the Journal:

Under the terms being discussed, Time Warner would fold its AOL unit into Yahoo and make a cash investment in return for about 20% of the combined entity, the people said. The deal, which wouldn’t include AOL’s dial-up access business, would value AOL at about $10 billion. As part of the deal, Yahoo would use the Time Warner cash and additional funds to buy back several billion dollars worth of its own stock at a price somewhere in the middle of the range between $30 and $40 a share, the people said. Any deal would be taken to Yahoo shareholders for approval, the people said.

The AOL / Time-Warner merger was a fiasco and Time-Warner’s been looking for a way to make AOL viable again, so for Time-Warner, the deal certainly would make sense.

Meanwhile, the Google portion of the scenario should certainly be attractive to shareholders. In February Citigroup Global Markets analyst Mark Mahaney estimated that Yahoo! could boost its cash flow more than 25% annually by outsourcing its search advertising to Google.

Now the question is: which part of this opposing factions can get their deal done first? AOL / Yahoo! or Microsoft / News Corp.? If at all, of course.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

On Wednesday Adobe launched both Adobe Media Player 1.0 (AMP) as well as Adobe TV.

AMP is an offline Flash video player. It was originally released in beta form last September. The software, written with Adobe’s Integrate Runtime (AIR), runs on Windows and MacOS (both Intel and PowerPC).

Adobe already has a number of partners lined up. In a press release, John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe said:

“With Adobe Media Player, we’re bringing viewers and content owners closer together, with an experience that doesn’t constrain them by platform or proprietary software application. It’s a merger of TV Guide and DVR for Internet video content. Some great shows, like The Hills from MTV and CSI from CBS, is already available to view and more will be coming soon.”

AMP will allow users to subscribe to and search for content. Adobe doesn’t host any content, rather AMP pulls content from partners via RSS feeds. Users can add any video RSS feed into the player. As the press release says:

Users can also subscribe to television shows and other online video content and then automatically receive new episodes of the shows as they become available. To help viewers discover new content, a broad, searchable catalog of shows from leading media companies and networks is available and it is expected that it will continually expand to include video from additional broadcasters, studios and independent producers. Some of the initial content available on Adobe Media Player includes: CSI: New York, CSI: Miami, Big Brother, Star Trek, Melrose Place, Hawaii Five-O, The Twilight Zone and MacGyver from CBS; clips from The Hills, MTV News and Yo! MTV Raps from MTV Networks; select shows on HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network and Fine Living Network from Scripps Networks; Epicurious.com, Style.com and Wired.com from CondéNet; PBS programming and music videos from Universal Music Group. Additional content from MTV Networks’ brands including MTV, Nickelodeon, COMEDY CENTRAL, VH1, CMT, Logo, Spike, The N, GameTrailers and Atom Films will be made available over the next several months.

Speaking of content, Adobe also launched Adobe TV. But don’t get confused. Adobe TV isn’t really about TV. It’s a web site and AMP “channel” dedicated to tutorials and more about Adobe products. As said in a separate press release, it’s

“a free online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products, including the company’s Creative Suite 3 family of world-class creative tools.”

In other words, a cool way of using AMP to get out the word on other products. Smart move.

We Say: So, does the world really need yet another player, and I don’t just mean AMP, but rather another competitor in the seemingly crowded online video /TV / content / you-name-it arena? Adobe seems to think so, and it has plenty of partners lined up that seem to think so as well.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

You can forget ever having to send a “belated” Birthday email again with Gmail’s new Custom Time feature (although if the person doesn’t rate more than an email - not even an emailed greeting card - why bother?). Using an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality, the new feature allows you to send emails to the past, but only to April 1, 2004, the day Google launched Gmail. You also get only 10 Custom Time emails a year. When asked about the limitations of the feature, Google said:

If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born — crazy talk.

and …

Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless.

The feature has already garnered a great number of fans and praise, with Delivery Girl Miriam S. saying:

“The entire concept of ‘late’ no longer exists for me. That’s pretty cool. Thanks Gmail!”

On the other hand, Epistemology Professor Michael L. said:

“This feature allows people to manipulate and mislead people with falsified time data. Time is a sacred truth that should never be tampered with.”

Please note that I personally hate time travel — too many paradoxes. This is why I hated every single Star Trek: TOS / TNG / DS9 / Voyager / Enterprise — and lets not forget B5 or any other TV show episode / movie ever written. Don’t get me started on “dream” episodes either.

BTW, since I Custom Time emailed myself the results of 9 sporting events and bet heavily on them, I no longer need to work, so this will be my last post ever. With the 10th Custom Time email I sent myself the location of Jennifer Aniston after Brad Pitt broke the news about Angelina Jolie to her, figuring she could use some comforting — so I’m also Mr. Aniston now.

We Say: I’m assuming by now you remember that it’s April 1. I hate this day, actually — it’s too hard to sort out the pranks and find real news!

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

On March 27th, Wikipedia reached a milestone: its 10 millionth article. The article, on 16th century painter Nicholas Hilliard, was entered at 00:07 UTC by user Pataki Márta. The count of articles is across all the Wikipedias, in 250 languages.

In an emailed press release, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation said,

“It’s incredible to think that we’ve grown from one Wikipedia in English to over 250 language Wikipedias. Ten million articles is something we could never have imagined happening so fast when we embarked on Wikipedia in 2001. This is a testament to the incredible dedication of our volunteers around the world.”

Despite the fact that some are concerned about the accuracy of Wikipedia due to the fact that anyone can edit any article, in December Germany’s Stern magazine announced in an independent study of 50 articles that the German version of Wikipedia was more accurate, complete and up-to-date than the print encyclopedia Brockhaus.

Congratulations, and let’s get started on the next 10 million articles.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

You may recall that Chris Avenir, a first-year chemical engineering student at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, faced expulsion after it came to light that he had created a Facebook-based chemistry study group.

The study group, called “Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions,” after a campus-based engineering study group called “The Dungeon,” attracted the attention of school administrators over the winter break.

As there were 146 members in the group, Avenir was charged with 147 counts of academic misconduct and recommended for expulsion. At the same time, his class grade was changed from A to F.

However, Avenir stated that the group was no different than any other study group, providing tutoring and tri-mentoring, not cheating as administrators claimed. Other students expressed outrage as well.

The university had somewhat of a change of heart last week, telling him that he wouldn’t be expelled. However, he will still receive a zero on the assignment section of the chemistry course. That is worth 10% of the grade, but since, as previously indicated, he had an A originally, he still passed the course easily.

It’s possible that Avenir could still appeal through the Ryerson Students’ Union, but as he had been facing expulsion, this is already a victory of sorts. He still faces mandatory attendance in a academic misconduct workshop.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

In a surprise move, Time-Warner’s AOL division on Thursday announced it has acquired Bebo for $850 million in cash. Bebo claims a global membership of about 40 million users and is the top social networking site in Ireland and New Zealand. It is No. 3 in the United States behind MySpace and Facebook, but it trails badly there.

Rumors about Bebo being acquired have been circulating since February. In a press release, Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO, AOL said:

“Bebo is the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media. What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social web, and the monetization opportunities that leverage Platform-A across our combined global audience. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”

Meanwhile, as we’ve seen lately with Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, Randy Falco sent a similar email to AOL employees, with full use of the shift key, however. An excerpt is below; the full email can be read here.
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By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Rumors flew yesterday about today’s YouTube announcement. Some thought it would be high-definition videos (long desired); others thought it would be a deal with Hulu (which would have been cool). The real announcement was an opening up of YouTube, turning it into a service that could power your own application, site, whatever, via new APIs.

No longer, for example, will you have to embed YouTube’s own player and its branding; you’ll even be able to upload videos and more.

According to the blog post announcement, these are the new APIs, which “build upon our existing APIs for querying the YouTube library and playing embedded YouTube videos”:
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