Webware

I love things that save me money when shopping online. While PriceGrabber and Google Shopping are my two go-to sites for finding the lowest prices on electronics, tons of sites track prices and give the heads-up when something goes on sale or gets its price reduced.

There's also PriceAdvance, a browser plug-in that will pull up competing prices from other online sellers automatically whenever you hit a page with a product and price on it. Its latest iteration for Firefox and IE doubles the number of prices it shows you compared with the previous version.

Right now it only works on 16 major online retailers including heavyweights like Amazon.com, Buy.com, and Wal-Mart. For non-supported sites I'd recommend going with a service like Retrevo (review), which pulls in the prices throughout the day and includes a listing of product manuals--just in case you don't feel like hunting around for the spec sheet.

I've embedded a demo of it in action below.

Other cool price tools:
Use the Web to watch for price drops
Pricepinx intelligently watches for price drops online
Tjoos: Somewhat smarter shopping

If you're among the fraction of Facebook users who have bumped up against the social-networking service's 5,000-friends cap, breathe easy: you might well soon be able to climb into the upper reaches of four figures' worth.

That's according to a Friday post on TechCrunch, where Michael Arrington reported that Facebook is getting ready to lift the limit.

As Arrington wrote, there are only about 1,000 Facebook users--out of 70 million--who have reached the cap, but "a disproportionate percentage of bloggers and press are at the limit, so the issue tends to get a lot more attention than it otherwise would."

The news is not official yet, but TechCrunch suggested that Facebook imposed the limit because of scaling problems.

For most people, though, this will be a non-issue. As one of my colleagues put it, "Thank goodness. I was just 4,750 friends away from bumping into that ridiculous cap."

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I'll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South's most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I'm doing on Twitter.

This post was updated at 1:56 PM.

Social network Facebook announced Friday the debut of Facebook Connect, a new technology for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites. It makes the company the latest major Web site to embrace the concept of data portability.

The formal announcement was made through a post on Facebook's developer blog by senior platform manager Dave Morin, who has been one of the company's most visible evangelists in the developer community over the past year. Facebook Connect will launch within the next few weeks.

Through Facebook Connect, members will be able to use their Facebook identities across the Web--profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook profile content, for example, could appear on other social sites, and Facebook event listings could theoretically connect with external event and invitation services.

Facebook will handle the authentication process, and while privacy controls have not been made clear, the company has stressed that user security will be a priority. And there's reason to believe Facebook will be particularly careful: The company already partners with outside services to share data in its Beacon advertising program, and the PR missteps surrounding Beacon's launch are something that Facebook likely does not want to repeat.

It's a big move for the site. Until this point, Facebook has had a reputation for keeping its cards close to its chest--even banning the account of popular blogger Robert Scoble when he used a script to export his Facebook contact list to Plaxo. But Facebook has a representative in the Data Portability Workgroup, and executives have said that Facebook has wanted to bring its information outside the site eventually.

"These are just a few steps Facebook is taking to make the vision of data portability a reality for users worldwide," Morin wrote in his blog post. "We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It's about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings."

Last month, Facebook started partnering with other social sites to pull external data into Facebook's "mini-feeds," displaying user activity from the likes of Flickr and Yelp on Facebook profile pages.

No partner Web sites for Facebook Connect have been announced yet, but director of platform Ben Ling explained to CNET News.com that "there's been a lot of partner interest." One partner, however, was displayed in mockups on Facebook's developer blog: social news site Digg.

The technical details also remain unannounced. "We're not announcing the details of the partner integration today," Ling said. "What we're announcing at a high level is that we will have a program that's built into partners large and small, and they will be able to access Facebook Connect."

Facebook kick-started the social-networking developer platform craze when it launched the Facebook Platform a year ago. But on Thursday, bigger rival MySpace made a big move when it opened its own profile content to outside sites--in a sense the reverse of Facebook's famous decision to welcome external developers onto its own site. Facebook representatives said Friday that there are now more than 350,000 developers from 225 countries developing for the platform, although one prominent programmer said earlier this week that he believes activity may be slowing.

Facebook has also held over 50 "developer garage" events in 10 countries, and Ling said that Facebook Connect will be discussed at future "garages."

One Facebook insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said to CNET News.com that the project had been in the works for quite some time, and said the announcement wasn't issued as a response to MySpace's "Data Availability" project. "We actually think what they are up to is pretty cool."

Representatives from MySpace were not immediately available for comment.

MySpace has partnered with the likes of eBay and Yahoo for Data Availability, which means that many of the Web's biggest names are now warming up to the idea of social-network identity portability. It's likely to be popular with users eager to quell the onset of "social fatigue" from too many logins and profiles, but privacy and security advocates may raise a red flag--as might advertisers, to whom Facebook's walled-in user base was ideal for targeted marketing. Spreading that data across the Web could complicate matters on that front.

Weblin is a service that allows people to have avatars that appear on the Web pages they visit and communicate with any other Weblin users who are visiting the same pages.

(Credit: Weblin)

If you're a social media addict but think that visiting regular Web sites is a lonely experience, you might want to take a look at Weblin.

Created by a German company, Weblin is designed to make the experience of surfing Web sites social--or make services like Facebook or MySpace.com more social. It does so by letting users create an avatar that they can then, effectively, take with them as they move around from site to site.

If they then find themselves on a site that is being visited at the same time by other Weblin users, then they can communicate with each other.

Weblin's main model is a small download, but it is also about to launch a light version that will require no downloads or plug-ins and will simply auto-assign users an avatar rather than them getting to choose their own.

(Credit: Weblin)

The main Weblin service is a small download that allows users to register and then create their own avatar. But next week, Weblin plans to launch a light version of the service that requires no download or plug-in and which assigns an avatar to everyone who uses it.

That means that users would have less control over the experience, but at the same time they'd be able to use Weblin without doing anything except use the Web. Additionally, the light version will not require registration. Rather, users will just have to enter a URL into a Weblin page.

Down the line, Weblin says, it hopes to make it possible to integrate Weblin with users' existing avatars from some virtual worlds.

For the time being, of course, Weblin's utility seems like it only comes from there being a critical mass of users and when users visit sites that are popular with others employing the service. But over time, if it grows large enough, it could provide a fun alternative to the traditional way of using Web sites.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I'll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South's most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I'm doing on Twitter.

Reuters is reporting that shares of Blinkx, a publicly traded video search site based in the U.K., climbed 50 percent on Friday following rumors that corporate giants Google and News Corp. may be vying for an acquisition.

On Friday morning, Blinkx shares were trading at 36.75 pence, their highest value since September. That puts the company's valuation at 102 million pounds, which is equivalent to $199.2 million.

Blinkx has been publicly traded since 2007, when it merged with search engine Autonomy. As part of a clause in its initial public offering filings, Autonomy is slated to receive $50 million in the event of a buyout--and that clause expires on May 24. That may have fueled the acquisition rumors.

Google could potentially want the video search technology to fuel its YouTube property.

Shoppers who want to save some trees soon will find a new option for rejecting receipts at the checkout counters of major retailers.

A service that will enable consumers to receive digital receipts through big box stores, such as Best Buy and Target, is set to launch May 16.

AllEtronic is an add-in for digital cash registers running popular point of purchase applications. When it recognizes a customer as a sale is rung up, allEtronic blocks the receipt-printing process, triggering details to be sent to its servers instead.

Consumers can visit allEtronic's Web site to view and export receipts to personal accounting software. First, they have to enter the first six and last four digits of a credit card number when they sign up for the program.

To drive home its tree-hugging angle, allEtronic displayed a receipt tree at the Eco City conference April in San Francisco.

(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET)

Participating retailers will likely display an allEtronic decal near the usual lineup of credit card logos. Some shops may add allEtronic kiosks or tout the service in their TV commercials.

Retailers that still use paper receipts for internal records could continue to do so, but without printing a customer copy.

AllEtronic won't give users' e-mail addresses to third parties for advertising, according to CEO Isaac Lay. It will share with stores the names and addresses of users, but a contract will prevent retailers from snail-mailing people coupons and ads.

The company is seeking a stamp of approval from Trustwave, which would mark allEtronic as a secure service for storing partial credit card numbers.

AllEtronic touts its product as green for helping to save the trees felled for some 600,000 tons of thermal receipt paper used by stores each year. It takes 15 trees, 19,000 gallons of water, and 390 gallons of oil to make a ton of paper, according to the company, which is based in Fullerton, Calif.

GreenPrint is another free service built to attract treehuggers. The free utility shaves off extra pages when people print from a personal computer.

Last.fm, the social music service that CBS Interactive acquired last year, is venturing into original content for the first time with a new video series called Last.fm Presents.

The series consists of interviews with popular and rising bands and artists; among the first artists featured are techno legend Moby, rising alternative-pop singer Santogold, and popular indie band Spoon. Last.fm has also made a selection of live concert footage available on its site to complement the interviews.

Members can sign on to Last.fm Presents as they would with any other group on the social network. The videos will also be syndicated across the "CBS Audience Network" of content partners.

A number of social-networking sites have ventured successfully and semi-successfully into pop-culture content: News Corp.'s MySpace.com, which rose to fame as a promotional tool for independent artists, has launched a number of video shows, entertainment programming, and a live concert series as well as an ad-supported music service that will likely compete directly with the one Last.fm announced earlier this year.

Several smaller social-media sites also have begun to expand into original content with the aim of seizing the digital age's equivalent of the pop-culture niche that was occupied by MTV before the rise of the Web. Streaming media site Imeem has started to syndicate video content from partner companies, and Buzznet has acquired a handful of influential music blogs to beef up its editorial offerings.

Last.fm, still headquartered in London, continues to expand--one might say it's moving into MySpace territory. It promoted a number of concerts in the U.K. last year and plans to back new events in the U.S. and Europe soon. Earlier this week, CBS announced that Last.fm would be powering AOL Radio's online stations in Europe.

Later, gator.

Google has announced the shutdown of Hello, a sort of photo-messaging service that became part of the Mountain View family when Google acquired Picasa in 2004.

"All good things come to an end," a placeholder on the Hello.com home page says. "So it is with sadness that we say goodbye to Hello." Guess they weren't so sad that they felt the need to steer clear of goofy plays on words. Hello will fade away on May 15, though Google's photo-sharing service Picasa remains otherwise intact.

"We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello," the message on the site explains. "We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come." That could be interpreted as a hint that Hello's technology may be seen in future Google projects--or not.

As Google Blogoscoped notes, Mountain View now has the domain hello.com. And it's not like Larry, Sergey, and the gang need to sell it for beer money.

Earlier today I had a great demo with Webjam, a do-it-all publishing service that launched at the Le Web conference in late 2006. In many ways it was ahead of its time with a platform that lets you create your own social network, blog, online shop, or iGoogle alternative.

Like Ning (which picked up $60 million in funding last month), it lets users build pages out of various components without needing to know any coding. The twist is that if you come across someone else's design of modules that you dig, you can copy the entire thing to your own page and make it your own. The same goes for individual modules, which can be ported over to any of your Webjam pages, complete with whatever feeds or standalone content they contain.

Like someone else's Webjam? Just grab it and make it your own. If you've created something special you can also set it to private so other users can't take it and make it their own. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Co-founder and CEO Yann Motte, formerly of Yahoo Europe thinks his platform's got what it takes to rise above the noise of other platform services, social networks, and blogging tools because it can do nearly all of those things nonexclusively. "[Users] don't have to split their activities between several Web sites," he says. "It works for you and me, and other people in this industry, but it does not scale for the average user." Does that mean he wants people to give up their Facebook profiles? No, but Motte believes that Webjam offers the average user more possible combinations to post and discover quality content than the competition.

The service has already seen accelerating growth in the U.S. over the past few months. Motte says the site has been growing 10 percent a week and is seeing users spend more than 12 minutes on the site (according to Compete), something I think is due to the page creation tool, which is really well done. If you've ever used Netvibes or Pageflakes it uses the same system; you simply have a bunch of different boxes you can drop down onto a blank editing canvas, which can be skinned and re-arranged to your liking. Motte says that in many ways his system is like Facebook's except more open because you get more control over the privacy controls of each box, as well as the data that goes with it.

These extensive privacy settings might be one of the most complex bits of the service. Each module has its own settings for viewership and editing. Users who visit your creation can become members, and in some cases co-contributors to the content that gets pushed out for others to read. Motte's example was to show me a page where a Webjam user had two different versions of a blog--one for everyone in the world to see, and a member's-only version.

Add new content to your site with little modules. There are tons to choose from, you can even drop in ads. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

One thing I'm not sold on is that people would pick Webjam as a blogging platform over a more established service like WordPress or Blogger. Motte acknowledges that Webjam's blog editor does not offer as many tools or the same level of community interaction, but comes back to say that if you decide to change the focus of your site later on it's not limited to being just a blog, and that's not a freedom most users are used to having. One service that took that idea and ran with it was Tumblr, which lets people change course if they get tired of writing things, and simply lets them republish photos, videos, audio, and IM conversations.

When it comes down to it, I found Webjam's creation tools and skinning to be far easier to use than the ones that come with Ning. I think the results looked a little better too, at least with some of the themes you can apply which are on par with some of the really simple and beautiful ones on iGoogle. What's not as established as Ning is the business model, which for now is simple text ads. The good news for power users looking to potentially get a little cash off of the hosted sites is that the service is rolling out a premium plan in July, which is currently being offered for free until then. Premium members get all the usual perks of services like this, with domain mapping and the option to remove or place banner ads.

To see some examples of popular Webjam pages you can go here. You can also check out a quick demo of the site maker in action after the break.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--YouTube users soon will see some new advertisements around their online videos.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the company is working on new ads for the video site in a meeting here with reporters before Google's shareholder meeting, but he was cagey with details.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt

(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET News.com)

"We have new ad products that are not pre-roll and post-roll," he said, referring to ads that show up before and after videos. "We have new approaches. Think of them as ads that are in the context of YouTube. They use the page around YouTube in interesting ways."

The new ads will launch "over the next few months," Schmidt added.

Schmidt has made no secret of his desire to make more money from YouTube, the dominant video site on the Internet; Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. In an interview last week with CNBC, he said about YouTube, "We're working but have not yet in my view gotten a breakthrough around monetization...We're working on that. That's our highest priority this year."

For what it's worth, Google last year experimented with overlay ads that pop up within the YouTube video player itself for a few seconds. They didn't go over too well with some viewers.

Google, which bought YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock, makes the vast majority of its money from text ads that show up next to search results, but in particular through its acquisition of DoubleClick, it's working to improve its business in display ads.

"We are not the leader in display ads. As far as I can tell Yahoo is," Schmidt said.

And of what will make Google's display ads different from the rest of the market, he said, "We always want to be the most targeted. Greater targeting leads to greater advertiser value."

MagToo is a service for creating really simple slide shows and interactive panoramic photos you can share on your blog or social-networking profile or by e-mail. To help put what you share into context, MagToo also throws in geotagging, letting you stamp any of the content you've added with a specific place where it was taken. Other users can then browse through the items on a large world map like they would photos and videos on Flickr.

Of all the tools my favorite is the panorama maker. While I couldn't get any of the three tests I did to look as good as the example shot, the site offers up a small guide to help get your panoramic-photo-taking skills up to snuff.

Like software that comes with some digital cameras, MagToo will take up to five photos across and several down and stitch them together into a single image. The final result goes into a small viewer that will automatically scroll back and forth, or let you casually pan around with your mouse. It's quite engaging, especially with large photos that have a lot of detail.

One snag I ran into is that it's nearly impossible to add other panoramics you've done into a single slide show viewer without first saving them as their own photographs, then plugging them back in. It's kind of irritating, but easily fixable. Otherwise get used to making panoramics one at a time. The panoramic tool also requires Internet Explorer, as ActiveX fuels the photo-stitching tool.

The service isn't nearly as jaw-droppingly beautiful as ViewAt.org, a geotagged panoramic photo viewer I looked at in September of last year, but it's far easier to compile casual shots into some really beautiful panoramic pictures. You could also just shell out for a DSLR with an $800 panoramic lens, but MagToo will let you get by with that point and shoot you can fit in your pocket.

(Via SociableBlog and MoMB)

Update 3:30 p.m. PDT: A correction: Although only travel modules could be sponsored at launch, now all can be. Also, there's no display ad opportunity at present, though the sponsorship can mean more prominence than text ads. Update 11:45 p.m.: I updated with new detail from Yahoo, further information from the site, and some analysis.

Yahoo Glue Pages build a mini-portal around search results. It's in testing in India.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo has begun testing Glue Pages, a major new way to present search results that caters to its strength as an Internet portal.

Glue Pages, which the company began offering in beta form to Yahoo search users in India, combine traditional search results with a wealth of other related information. Traditional search results appear in a strip on the left side of the page, while other modules appear that spotlight sponsored links, recipes, medical information, Wikipedia entries, stock charts, Flickr images, train schedules, restaurant lists, news, and even Google blog search results.

Yahoo's Indian team developed the feature and so far there are no plans to bring it to the United States or other areas, said spokeswoman Kathryn Kelly.

"We encourage other regions to develop things that work for their regions," Kelly said. "If it does get traction, potentially something like it could launch in the United States."

Yahoo pioneered Internet portals, all-purpose sites where people can find everything they need, but Google found a much stronger business model through an effective search engine that presents bare-bones results with text ads alongside. Yahoo, though, hasn't given up, even though it continues to lose search share; In March the gap widened a bit more, with 59.8 percent of U.S. queries at Google and 21.3 percent at Yahoo, according to ComScore.

The search is interesting for other reasons besides Yahoo's portal strengths.

• First is display ads, the graphics that typically are used to tout brand names and logos. Google's cash engine is built on text ads today, and Yahoo has relative strength in display ads.

Glue Pages have prominent sponsorship opportunities, though not yet display ad opportunities, Kelly said. Glue pages launched with the ability to sponsor travel pages, but now all modules can be sponsored, she said.

• Second is the attempt to be more competitive with Google in its efforts to move to "universal search." Google today sometimes mixes other information such as photos alongside the traditional list of links in its search results, part of an effort to expand to provide a broader answer to what people are looking for.

Yahoo's guide to Glue Pages

(Credit: Yahoo)

• Third, Glue Pages will dovetail with the Y!OS, aka Yahoo Open Strategy, attempt to more tightly wire together its Web site while opening it up to outside programmers as a foundation.

"Glue will leverage the Yahoo application platform...in coming months," Kelly said, though today it doesn't yet. "We will eventually open it up, so developers could develop customized search results for Glue Pages the way we're doing it for Search Monkey."

• Last is the idea of vertical search, in which search results are tailored for a specific domain such as health. Vertical search sites aren't as plentiful in India than in the United States, Kelly said, so Glue Pages can provide a more tailored entry point to the Internet.

There's no date set yet for the feature coming out of beta testing, Kelly said.

The service is definitely in beta, though. I'm not sure why a search for "violin lessons" would produce a blank five-day stock chart from Yahoo Finance, for example.

(Via Search Engine Land)

I finally got a chance to catch up with Avi Muchnick, the CEO of Flash software maker Aviary and of the art contest site it spun out of, Worth1000 (a Webware 100 winner).

Aviary is an ambitious project to create a full suite of online applications for creative professionals. The first application, the image editor Phoenix, is now in private beta (read to the end of this post to get an early invitation). The second, pattern maker called Peacock, was recently added.

Coming up after these applications will be Toucan, a color swatch program for designers (like Kuler on steroids), a 3D-sketching program and modeler, a vector-based editor, and a smart image resizer.

Who needs software? This is a layer-based image-editing application running in a browser window. It's pretty snappy, too.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

After the graphics applications get some traction, the team plans to ship video and audio editors as well.

There are two goals driving Aviary's development. The first is Muchnick's belief that design tools need to be more collaborative. He's trying to build a Google Docs for designers, it appears. While you can't yet do simultaneous editing in Aviary applications, the fact that all the files are stored online, along with all the raw graphics materials that went into them, can greatly simplify the games of "Photoshop tennis" that designers, artists, and their clients have to deal with during the design-and-review process.

The second is economics. Muchnick is trying to bring Photoshop-quality tools to all designers. He points out that the high price of Photoshop--the Design version of Creative Suite 3 retails for $1,799--is "not fair" for freelance designers, most of whom make less than $35,000 a year. Also, the wikilike versioning and revisioning capabilities built into the Aviary suite will enable all contributors to a media project to get their due credit and, if appropriate, to get their share of revenues from a project.

Everybody who sees the Aviary product calls it ambitious. But the ambition to build a Flash-based competitor to Adobe's tools is only half the story--and half the ambition. Muchnick is trying to enable a new economic system for creative professionals. I think that he's onto something and that he's reflecting the reality of creative work today, rather than trying to ram through his own utopian vision.

Internet economics are changing other creative endeavors: music, photography, and writing. The graphic-design field is also in turmoil, and it needs not just new tools, but also new systems.

Aviary is still in private beta testing, but the first 200 people to sign up here can get priority access to the tools. Note that you must click this link from Webware.

Previous coverage: Flash apps are taking over. Phoenix is proof.