noobplanet

Ning eliminates free accounts

asana — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:22:51 +0000

Ning, the network of social networks that boasted 20 million visitors a month, is making massive staff cutbacks and has announced a complete end to free services for its users. Those who pay for premium services will be asked to pay more, and those who are getting their social networks free of charge will be asked to fork over or phase off the Ning platform.

I think WordPress is going to fill a huge gap here. With BuddyPress and the new Multi-site functionality in the upcoming WP 3.0 version, people are going to flock to these solutions.

Sony Ericsson CEO: Google asked us to build the Nexus One, we refused

asana — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:23:14 +0000

Sony Ericsson’s head Bert Nordberg has shared with Swedish publication Sydsvenskan the rather salacious news that his company was asked to build the so-called Google phone before HTC… and it turned down the opportunity. Fearing brand dilution or something equally crazy, Nordberg states that Sony Ericsson is committed to building only its own-branded hardware and will not be a subcontractor to anyone. Haughty words from a company whose own Android device is still a good couple of months away from hipsters’ pockets, but we’re sure Bert knows best. After all, it’s not like HTC got a ton of positive press and brand awareness out of its partnership with Google, and it’s exceptionally clear that SE doesn’t need a dime of additional revenue.

Stupid decision?

Look at it this way. HTC got to spend Google’s coin on RD to develop the Nexus One… then take what they learned and put it into the desire with tweaks and improvements (obviously they also removed a couple of features like the noise cancelling, but I’ve never had that so I wouldn’t miss it) then sell it for themselves. They get paid twice, don’t waste time or money developing an OS because Google already did it. We all start to respect the brand more.

Win win for HTC all-round.

Wired Magazine Explains Why You Want the iPad

asana — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:28:14 +0000

Wired magazine has a super cool video (it’s basically an ad to introduce Wired’s collaboration with Adobe on the iPad platform) that shows just how the iPad will improve and expand how we read magazines.

Yeah, I liked digital magazines the first time … when they were called WEBSITES. I’m not gonna pay for any of these, and will stick to sites that don’t erect paywalls.

Like they said in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the internet is GOING THE WRONG WAY. Who is going to have 20-50 subscriptions to their top websites (or emagazines, lol). Good luck with that.

Kevin Lynch discusses Flash on Mac

asana — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:45:20 +0000

Adobe Chief Technical Officer Kevin Lynch comments that the Adobe is working hard on CPU usage during video rendering, acknowledging that such tasks use more CPU cycles on the Mac than on Windows. Regarding the iPhone, Lynch defends the importance of Flash on the Web, noting that he is hopeful that the adoption of Flash capabilities on a number of smartphone platforms will help convince others such as Apple to follow suit.

Well, there’s a lot of Flash content on the Web, and so, right now about 85% of the top websites have Flash on their website. So if you want to view the whole Web, not having the ability to view Flash really is kind of limiting in terms of the experience on the devices, and so we’re really focused on making sure that we can bring the ability to view Flash content and interact with it across all of these devices…I’m hopeful in the smartphone space, for example, that as people start to see that you can get a great experience with Flash in the smartphone, for example on Android, and Palm, and Nokia, and RIM, and these other devices, that that will encourage others to adopt Flash as well on their devices.

I’d like to know who the “top websites” are, and how many there are of which 85% use flash. It seems a bit of a throw away statement. It probably includes those using flash advertisments, something I’m more than happy to not have flash capabilities for!

Google has admitted that their Google Buzz sucks

asana — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:52:39 +0000

We’re very early in this space. This was one of our first big attempts. We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild. If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes.

That’s what Todd Jackson, Buzz product manager, told BBC News. And now the downside of Google’s “test on the public” mentality. They should have at least labeled it a beta.