AmazonKindle: iBook?

Perfect timing for Amazon's launch of its self-branded AmazonKindle, a device to wirelessly download and read the book or newspaper you want. Available Dec 5th. $399.
Not the first try on this mobile book readers. Will this one be a success?
What do you think?

2 netvibes widgets in 2 first place on Live and Vista galleries

netvibes Video Widget featuring full length episodes of the 3 CSIs is enjoying a great success!
1000 installs on live and vista gallery within first 24 hours and 1st place, just ahead of another netvibes widget, CBS News multi-RSS... how cool is that?
Wanna try it? Click here

Busted: Chocolate dracula

Well... after a while, we told him :-)

Bring your favorite CBS programs with you. Full length, of course!

Available since this morning: the CBS Video Widget featuring full length videos of CBSNews and lots of other programs such as all CSIs (Las Vegas, NY, Miami), Showbuzz, etc...

Click on left and right arrows to change program.
Click on any picture to start the video!

Take it with you:
Add it to your personalized page:

netvibes | iGoogle | Live.com

Add it to your desktop:

Apple Dashboard | Windows Vista | Opera

Or add it to your page or blog with a simple cut and paste of the following code:

<iframe src="http://nvmodules.netvibes.com/api/uwa/
frame/uwa_standalone.php?moduleUrl=
http://www.netvibes.com/modules/multipleFeeds/multipleFeeds.php
?provider=cbs" frameborder="0" height="400" scrolling="no" width="320"></iframe>

McGyver 2.0. Load your iPod with an onion and more...

This video has been posted a week ago on YouTube. Only on YouTube, it has had 200,000 viewers this day and, at time of this post, accumulated 1.7M viewers. It's also on MetaCafe and others.
This guy is this week most subscribed to on YouTube, and his site reveals much more interesting stuff to transform your kitchen into a lab. Check it out at HouseHold Hacker.
Definitely interesting but brings security questions...
What do you think of this? Can everyone be McGyver?

250,000 internet addicts in South Korea

South Korea is one of the most Internet connected country in the World with more than 2 third of the population on the Web. That's 34M out of 51M.
Broadband is fast and cheap and secondary effect, like with Gaming are showing up: addiction.
According to the NY Times, 250,000 South Korean are addict. That's 7 out 1000.
To help them, Desintox programs are offered and promoted in the street, like this ad.
We are 1.25 billion on the net today, that would mean, at South Korean standard, 8.75M addicts...
Scary.

Why your widgets need to install everywhere

What greater demo could we give on the benefit of using netvibes' UWA (Universal Widget API) technology?
On the homepage of Microsoft's Live and Vista galleries, the #1 featured widget is... a netvibes widget! CBS News' Premium Widget, that includes in one single widget, all major RSS feeds from CBS News. All other Premium Widgets are here.

So point is simple: you develop once, you truly can install on all major platforms, including the unique capability of installing on desktops like Vista, Apple or Opera and this without one additional line of code... Result: your distribution is maximal. Period. :-)

Songza: UI 2.0 + social music = cool site

Wow! Check this site out. Songza, the music search engine and internet jukebox. (tag line sounds familiar ;-))
I simply love the new User Interface using Ajax in a new way. A click on a song gets you to a 4 directional menu, very clever as it's not only contextual but it's friendly and doesn't take any real estate on screen. Very smart!
I also love the rating of the recording. This should fix the problem SingingFish (now AOL) and others had with broken links. Good recording goes to the top of the list, pushing your search to be more precise.
I like the way you create playlist. Super easy.
Finally, the Share process is super easy. (less sexy and powerful than Hulu.com (I'll review this one in a short while)). Check out this box down here...

Well, did I mentioned I loved it? :-)
And you, do you like it?

A netvibes widget on your page or blog?

Want to insert a netvibes Widget to your page or blog (check USA Today in the right column)?

And offer direct, one-click install to all major platforms and desktops supported by netvibes UWA,
like for example Windows Vista or Apple Dashboard?

Like this FoxNews Premium Widget featuring major live content from Fox News? Super easy...

install this widget on: Windows Vista | Apple Dashboard

First, select your Widget in netvibes ecosystem. In this example, FoxNews

1. Insert the widget
Get the exact widget address by right-clicking on the word "source", in this example: http://www.netvibes.com/modules/multipleFeeds/multipleFeeds.php?
provider=foxnews, and replace the address in green in the following code with the address of your selected widget

<iframe src=
"http://nvmodules.netvibes.com/api/uwa/frame/uwa_standalone.php
?moduleUrl=http://www.netvibes.com/modules/multipleFeeds/
multipleFeeds.php?provider=foxnews
frameborder="0" height="400" scrolling="no" width="320"></iframe>

Note: adjust the height parameter to best fit within your page

2. Get one-click installation links
You can just grab the link from the links to install on different platform from the ecosystem page or insert the following code within your page. Replace the code in green by the Widget ID displayed in the URL of the page after /widgets/XXXXXX/

<a href="http://eco.netvibes.com/subscribe/205109
?platform=vista" title="Get widget for Windows Vista"><img src="http://eco.netvibes.com/style/public_v2/
img/install-vista.png" alt="Vista" height="16" width="16" /> Windows Vista</a>

To install on a different platform, just replace the parameter "platform" with: igoogle, vista, dashboard or opera.
Remove the parameter to install on Netvibes ;-)

Enjoy and feel free to share where you've installed those widgets...

RobotTaxi?

How about a race car where pilots would be robots? Nice idea but still a dream?
Well, no. Last week was the 3rd edition of the Darpa Urban Challenge, featuring robot driven car developed by highest University like Stanford. Quite amazing! [source article: NY Times]
So soon a service where on your telephone you can order a cab that would drive you, securely, where you want, 24/7 and... no tip?
Or, simply the smartest GPS?
Or, for me, just allowing me to go to the back seat with the kids and watch a movie with them ;-)
... and all tickets would go to... the robot!

Call the insurance!

Titanic? Well, no passenger liner but a 900 feet container ship, no iceberg but a pillar of the Bay Bridge and fortunately no casualties but 58,000 gallons (about 250,000 liters) of oil spread in San Francisco bay. Happened last Wednesday am. Yes, it was foggy...

[photo credit: SF Gate]

netvibes in the US

I couldn't resist. here's netvibes measured by compete.com. compete.com gets most of its data from ISPs, that's why they solely measure US traffic. Not bad, no?
Note: iGoogle is not totally relevant as Google doesn't use this domain all the time.

Does Social made me popular?

Can hardly be more cliche, if not has been, than saying we are living a fantastic of change in the way we communicate. Well, today is my birthday and I'm experiencing a new effect of this communication revolution:

I never received so many "happy birthday-ish" messages. Ever!

Am I suddenly more popular? nah. But with Facebook, emails, Plaxo et al, I now think not getting a Happy Birthday from my friend will be rude! The reverse way: now that you have all to know, if you don't do, it will be offending.

That being said, I love it. For a long time, it was common thinking to believe we were living in a self-centered, selfish, individualist society only generating depressing loneliness. Is it me being overoptimistic on my BDay full of sudden unexpected attention or a real encouraging trend?

Who knows? I'll let you know next year ;-)

Question: do you think Social creates a environment with less-loneliness?

In my next life, I want to be an app developer

Over the past few months, we've seen VC funding solely focusing on Facebook application businesses. In lieu of a long due diligence and endless powerpoint, the process became a simple form to fulfill. Facebook was inventing the fast food side of the VC money. Getting funding became similar to getting a loan. 24 hour approval max. Bad credit welcome :-)

We also had Google claiming to pay up to $5000 per new gadget submitted. Finally, Google decided to not do it.

Last month, Facebook itself thru the voice of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg was announcing at TechCrunch 40 on stage with Mike Arrington, the creation of a $10M Facebook fund to grant, not invest, grant between $25k to $250k your desire in business, featuring a Facebook app, of course.

If the money doesn't do it, the next step is to talk return on investment. Here's the simple idea: if you develop for Facebook, you reach 48M people. Google is planned to announce tomorrow Open Social, an API supposedly adopted by a bunch of social network like Friendster or Hi5, which when adding them all up would make 100M. Use my API and double your reach.

Well, too short Google! at netvibes, we have released our UWA (Universal API) early 07 and have announced 2 weeks ago the direct install to Windows Vista and live.com, which adds to iGoogle, Opera, iPhone and netvibes of course. So, talking numbers: UWA is already reaching 23M of Mac OS and 88M of Vista = 111M not counting iGoogle and netvibes users ;-)

The real point being to be really open. And to that extend, can Open Social claim to be really open when it's not adopted by the 2 major Social networks: mySpace and Facebook?

The real winners, the center of all attention are the application developers. The more they develop apps, the more it enriches the social network and, today, weaken the new $15B gorilla. Must be good to be an application dev these days :-)