Sun launches OpenSolaris, inks deal with Amazon

Sun Microsystems on Monday said it has released OpenSolaris, an open source version of its Solaris operating system, and announced a deal with Amazon.com.

The OpenSolaris project has been under development for more than three years. Sun hopes to popularize the operating system with developers, students and other traditional Linux users.

In addition, Sun said it has partnered with Amazon.com to release OpenSolaris as an on-demand service as part of Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). OpenSolaris will be available for operating system and storage services as part of the overall EC2 service, which starts at 10 cents per CPU-hour, the company said. Sun touts OpenSolaris as the most robust Unix-flavored operating system.

OpenSolaris will offer some interesting features intended to appeal to the curious, such as the ability to run the operating system from CD and a system for easily rolling-back installations.

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An elegant solution to social networking clutter :Yoono:

Yoono, a browser add-on for discovering and sharing Web content is launching several new features designed to help you track what your friends are up to online.

The tool now integrates with several popular social networks and microblogging services including Twitter, letting you access and interact with the communities of all of them in one place. Previously users were limited to sending links to friends via e-mail, or interacting more easily with in-network users (called "Yoosiers") than friends from outside social networks.

The company is calling its plug-in a "remote control," but I'd argue to say that it's more a set of highly customized widgets that are interconnected and can share the same piece of content in different ways. Starting today there are just a few that cover different things like photos, videos and music, but the company hopes to expand, adding more tools and services while letting people pick what they want to avoid an overload both in information and desktop real estate.

The pile on of services that are trying to do this is almost as fatiguing as the goal they're attempting to fix, however Yoono's newest offering is inherently stickier because of where it resides. It's not in your taskbar, it's not a separate application--it remains in your browser where you'll be hopping around from site to site.

As a recent user of Digsby, I've come to enjoy this kind of do-it-all functionality, but having one less thing running on my machine is an attractive proposition. If you're ever used Flock features without needing to hop over to a new browser. you'll know what I'm talking about, and in many ways Yoono now gives you some of Flock's best

While the new access to social and chat networks is nice, one of the newer features that lets you view photos off Flickr as an overlay of whatever page you're looking at is far cooler. You can casually search for any photos on the service using keywords, or you can click one button and have it parse whatever page you're looking at for related shots. Is this useful? Not really, but it's addictive and will have you browsing shots for hours. To see it in action, click on the screen shot on the left.

Other small additions include a scaling back of the "buzz it" feature I wrote about last year, a really slick bookmarking tool that lets you grab anything off a page and blog about it while bookmarking it in a set of personalized feeds. The team has made it considerably easier to use in the hopes that more people will take advantage of it. Users will also soon be getting access to their friends and information updates on Bebo, MySpace, Imeem, and Friendster.

I'm impressed with what Yoono is doing, but it's in a crowded market. Recent releases from Me.dium, Digsby, and Adobe AIR apps like Alert Thingy are offering some compelling, and most importantly simple solutions to trying to sort out the influx of information. However, I really do appreciate a service that's trying to add this type of functionality to an already useful do-it-all tool.

Yoono is still in private beta and currently the new functionality only works in Firefox. IE users will be getting an updated version in about three weeks. We've got 200 invites for Webware readers. To get yours just go here.

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Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans

We've got Google Earth and Google Sky. Next up will be a map of the world below sea level--Google Ocean.

The company has assembled an advisory group of oceanography experts, and in December invited researchers from institutions around the world to the Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex. There, they discussed plans for creating a 3D oceanographic map, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The tool--for now called Google Ocean, the sources say, though that name could change--is expected to be similar to other 3D online mapping applications. People will be able to see the underwater topography, called bathymetry; search for particular spots or attractions; and navigate through the digital environment by zooming and panning. (The tool, however, is not to be confused with the "Google Ocean" project by France-based Magic Instinct Software that uses Google Earth as a visualization tool for marine data.)

Asked to comment on Google Ocean, a Google spokeswoman said the company had "nothing to announce right now."

Oceanography researchers, however, say such a tool would be incredibly useful.

"There is no real terrain or depth model for the ocean in Google Earth," said Tim Haverland, a geospatial application developer at the Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "You can't get in a submarine and in essence fly through the water and explore ocean canyons yet."

Google Ocean will feature a basic layer that shows the depth of the sea floor and will serve as a spatial framework for additional data, sources said, adding that Google plans to try to fill in some areas of the map with high-resolution images for more detail.

Additional data will be displayed as overlying layers that depict phenomena like weather patterns, currents, temperatures, shipwrecks, coral reefs, and algae blooms, much like the National Park Service and NASA provide additional data for Google Earth and Google Sky.

"Google will basically just provide the field and then everyone will come flocking to it," predicted Stephen P. Miller, head of the Geological Data Center at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "There will be peer pressure to encourage people to get their data out there."

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AT&T to Launch Mobile TV in 58 US Markets

AT&T will launch its mobile television service on Sunday, behind schedule and nearly a year after competitor Verizon Wireless began offering broadcast TV services.

AT&T's Mobile TV will only be available on two high-end phones, LG's touch-screen Vu and Samsung's Access. The Vu costs US$399.99 and the Access $299.99, although consumers can get a $100 mail-in rebate. Both require two-year service plans.

AT&T had planned to launch Mobile TV by the end of last year. The service will be available in 58 markets, AT&T said.

Much information on Mobile TV was already released at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas in March. But AT&T has revealed pricing, which is in the same range as Verizon's service.

Mobile TV packages start at $13 per month for four channels: CBS Mobile, Fox Mobile, NBC 2Go and NBC News 2Go. Next is a $15-a-month deal for the "basic" package with more channels and $30 for the "plus" service, which includes unlimited TV watching and mobile Web browsing.

AT&T's pricing is close to Verizon's, which offers a limited package for $13 per month, a eight-channel deal for $15 and a $25-a-month package that throws in unlimited air time, e-mail and basic video clips.

All told, AT&T's Mobile TV encompasses 150 simulcast or time-shifted programs from CNN, ESPN, Comedy Central, CBS, NBC, Nickelodeon and PIX, part of Sony Pictures Television, among others.

Like Verizon, AT&T is employing technology from MediaFLO USA, part of Qualcomm, to deliver the service. MediaFLO broadcasts the programming on a network separate from AT&T's cellular network, using parts of the unused television broadcast spectrum.

LG's Vu has a music player, a 2.0-megapixel camera and Bluetooth. Samsung's Access has an internal antenna for TV reception, a camera, external stereo speakers and stereo Bluetooth.

Verizon launched its V Cast Mobile TV service in March 2007. The service is compatible with four handsets: Samsung's SCH-U620, LG's VX9400 and Voyager and Motorola's z6tv.

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how ugly you are see in Facebook app

Nip/Tuck Facebook app tells you how ugly you are (with math)

Normally I steer clear of writing about Facebook apps that have been created for promotional purposes, but this one is too good to pass up. It comes from FX UK, which has put together a very strange experience that tells you how "perfect" your face is in order to promote the plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck.

Users can pick any photos they've uploaded to Facebook and simply map out points on their face for the app to run its algorithm. The end result is a 1 percent to 100 percent scoring scale, with 100 being absolute perfection. The entire process takes about a minute from start to finish, and when you're done, you can see how you stack up with your friends who have used the app, or the general public.

One major flaw with this app from the get-go is that it doesn't access your profile picture album, which is probably going to be where people have the most recent shots of their face. I also found the zoom to be not quite up to snuff when it comes to letting you line up your face on any picture that hasn't been taken for a school yearbook. Otherwise, it's a very enjoyable exercise to claim bragging rights of having the most mathematically perfect face.

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Meebo closes $25 million funding round

Meebo, which continues to release new Web-based instant message and chat applications, is announcing tonight that it has closed a $25 million funding round led by Jafco Ventures. Jafco's investment portfolio includes other online communications plays, such as classifieds utility Oodle, Exchange competitor PostPath, and Web content tracker Attributor.It looks like a good club for Meebo to join.

Also participating in the funding is Time Warner Investments, and KTB Ventures. Time Warner Investments is a strategic investing arm for Time Warner; this investment will give Meebo hooks into major media properties. KTB's portfolio has a Far East bias, with more than half of its portfolio companies based in China and Korea.

Meebo's previous investors, Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also participated in this round.

Meebo has a competitor nipping at its heels: Soashable (review) has the mission of creating an "open-source Meebo clone;" it offers about the same core features as Meebo did when it launched in 2005. Trillian, which also makes a multinetwork IM client, has not kept up with Meebo on the Web front.

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Safari 3.1 adoption spikes for Windows

Remember the whole kerfuffle on 18 March 2008 when Apple pushed out a Safari “update” to Windows iTunes users? (screenshot below) People had a problem with the fact that Apple also included Safari 3.1 with their Software Update service on Windows and it was labeled as an update with the option to install pre-selected.



According to the latest stats from Net Applications, Apple’s gamble may have worked. Witness the end of the graphic below:

Safari 3.0 on Windows never gained much market share, peaking at .07%. However, Safari 3.1 on Windows is rapidly gaining market share, already tripling Safari 3.0’s peak.

On 18 April 2008 Apple changed the behavior of Software Update on Windows and now lists Safari as “new” software if it’s not already installed.

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Microsoft withrawls bid for Yahoo, Google wins

In a press release from Microsoft yesterday, Steve Ballmer said that it officially withdrawals it’s bid for the acquisition of Yahoo, and cites the deal with Google as the main contributing factor for his decision.

“In our view, such an arrangement with [Google] would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons” - Microsoft Press Release

Now that the dust is settling, we can see what kind of impact this withdrawal will have. As Larry Dignan says on BTL, Google is the big winner. Not only do they not have to worry about a combined Microhoo working together to destroy them, they could also get a lucrative ad deal with Yahoo!.

Before Ballmer withdrew his offer to purchase the company, Yahoo! did everything it could to try and derail the efforts of Microsoft. That included reaching out to Google, and asking them to try using AdWords on their own search engine. Mind you, this is still only a “test”, and it could be subject to close scrutiny by regulators, but it is still looking pretty good for Google.

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Most Facebook apps are silly, pointless

The world of social networking may never be the same.

A new study from number-crunching firm Flowing Data did some eye-opening work recently, dividing 23,160 Facebook applications into 22 categories. A whopping 9,601 of them fall into Facebook's "just for fun" category, followed by "gaming" and "sports" with over 2,000 each. In other words, the majority of Facebook applications are goofy time-wasters.

This is an unsettling piece of news that I don't think any of us saw coming.

It's true, though. Since the debut of Facebook's developer platform, there has been an onslaught of annoy-your-friends applications like Slide's SuperPoke and popular gaming apps like Scrabulous. But really "useful" applications have yet to make the same kind of splash, despite a few promising debuts like Six Apart's Blog It and quasi-promising ones like the "social college application" widget.

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Yahoo Messenger for Vista Beta

After months of incubation as a mere preview download, Yahoo Messenger for Vista is now a full-fledged...beta. No matter, let the feedback loop continue with this dark and gleaming desktop chat application that elevates certain aspects of the instant messaging experience while falling a step behind in others. The new look and feel is certainly impressive, and beloved avatar and emoticons take center stage alongside the tinted display. But the multiprotocol IM client Digsby is snapping up a loyal following, and its adoption of Facebook chat adds strength to strength. Is Yahoo's effort strong enough to win back Vista defectors?

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