Webware

Microsoft plans to offer one more public test version of Internet Explorer 8 before releasing the final version of the updated browser, the company said late Wednesday.

The next test, essentially a "release candidate" version will come in the first quarter of 2009. That means the final release won't hit Microsoft's initial goal of finishing the browser this year.

"Our next public release of IE (typically called a "release candidate") indicates the end of the beta period," general manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog posting. "We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in Web browsers to take this update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done."

Microsoft first demonstrated the browser at the Mix conference in March. Among its improvements are malware protection, better standards support, and the ability to carve off a piece of a Web page, known as a Web slice. It also supports having private sessions that don't get logged in a browser's history.

The first beta version was released in March, with a second beta arriving over the summer.

Hachamovitch said that Web site developers should test their sites and report "any critical issues" to Microsoft.

"We will be very selective about what changes we make between the next update and final release," he wrote. "We will act on the most critical issues. We will be super clear about product changes we make between the update and the final release."

Hachamovitch also called on technical users to download the current beta 2 version and let Microsoft know how that goes.

File delivery service YouSendIt announced Thursday that it has released a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 that will allow users to send any file from Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to recipients through the company's service.

Based on my testing, the plug-in, which requires registration to download, works quite well. After surfing over to the company's plug-in page, which is already populated with other plug-ins for iPhoto, Outlook, Photoshop, and others, I downloaded the file in seconds.

Once installed, the plug-in embeds itself in Microsoft Office. On my version of Office 2007, I found YouSendIt's plug-in added under the "Send to" menu, allowing me to send a file through the YouSendIt service without requiring me to surf to the company's page.

As soon as I was ready to send a file and clicked the "YouSendIt" button, the company's Express software popped-up immediately, asking me to input my username and password. Once complete, the process mimics YouSendIt's online version: I input the e-mail address of the recipient, decided how long the document should be preserved for, and sent it. A progress bar displays how much time is left before the document is sent.

There's not much to the YouSendIt plug-in. In essence, it provides you with another alternative to send files. And although I usually send documents and spreadsheets through Office's "Send to email" feature, YouSendIt's plug-in came in handy when I needed to send a large PowerPoint presentation that the recipient's e-mail couldn't handle.

Just like the online service, the recipient receives an e-mail containing a link to download the file, which saves them some valuable in-box space.

Overall, the process to send files was quick and I didn't recognize any lag time between starting the process and completing the file transfer. That said, YouSendIt capped the file size limit at 2GB, which might upset those who need to send huge PowerPoint presentations. But for most us, 2GB is more than enough.

YouSendIt's Office plug-in isn't necessarily a "must have" tool, since I found that more often than not, sending e-mail through Word or Excel is sufficient. But because there are larger files that sometimes crop up, it doesn't hurt to have it installed just in case.

The Office plug-in is available now on YouSendIt's site as a free download after registration.

I was pointed toward a new Twitter ranking tool by Louis Gray. The tool of the day is TweetValue.

Following the controversy surrounding Twitterank, TweetValue assigns a dollar value to your Twitter profile. While the site does not disclose how this value is calculated, it does give a message that reads, "The value is calculated with a Ph.D. algorithm that is based on the public information available on your Twitter profile."

Call me skeptical, but it isn't really apparent that the figures are based on any actual factual valuation of Twitter profiles. Rather, it appears to just be another rank to see how Twitterers stack up against one another. I'm not just saying this because my Twitter account's value is a sorry $125. Rather, I actually believe that there is little to no real basis for this dollar figure. The number would be just as significant if the dollar sign were dropped.

It's a little discouraging to hear that the Twitter account you worked so hard to build is worth $125.

(Credit: TweetValue)

Twitter Grader seems to offer a better service than TweetValue, in terms of comparing Twitter users, offering breakdowns by location and specific information on how your score is calculated. I really don't see a need in the market for TweetValue, when a site like Twitter Grader offers better tools for comparing users and a score that can actually be explained. Everyone likes to see how they compare in a given area every once in awhile, but there is no need for the absurd number of Twitter ranking sites that we are seeing pop up right now. Please, no more!

Local.com, a search site that helps people find places in and information about their community, said Thursday it will start integrating local video ads throughout the company's site in an attempt to increase ad relevance and revenue.

According to the company, it has inked a deal with Jivox, an online video advertising company catering to local businesses, to use its geo-targeted ads for now. Local.com hopes to sell its own local video ad units through its own list of advertisers at some point in the future.

"We believe that video advertising provides consumers with relevant, timely information about local businesses, products and services," Kim LaFleur, Local.com's vice president of product management, said in a statement. "It's natural for video to be integrated into our local search ecosystem over time."

Targeting people based on their locale is becoming an emerging trend in the marketplace. Just Wednesday, real-estate search site Trulia announced it is partnering with 1020 Placecast to target individuals based on their location.

As advertisers become increasingly concerned over the effectiveness of ads, relevance through geographic location could become a coveted attribute.

Music search and recommendation tool Mufin is opening to everyone this morning. The service, which launched in private beta in early October, lets you find music that's similar to a track you know based on a scientific analysis of its composition.

New on Thursday is both a Facebook app and the previously mentioned iTunes plug-in that scans your library to give you recommendations. Unlike Apple's "Genius" analyzer system in iTunes, Mufin actually scans your tracks for relational relevance instead of giving you an aggregate hodge-podge of recommendations based on the playlists and purchases of iTunes users. The only catch here is that you're limited to Mufin's relatively small 4 million-song database, which is roughly half that of iTunes.

Users are also getting the option to save playlists and notes--the service's equivalent to a shopping list. Previously these would disappear between sessions, which kept it from doubling as an ad-hoc music streaming tool.

As for the Facebook application, it's little more than a widget that lets you search for tracks without leaving the social network. It does however give you a "discovery wall," which lets you share and view tracks bookmarked by friends--similar to the MySpace version that was available back at launch. If you're looking for something a little more anonymous, the Mufin team is now providing weekly recommendations for music to look out for, although you'll have to purchase them off-site.

Previously: Mufin lets you discover new music with science

Note: The iTunes plug-in is currently Windows-only. You can download it here (.EXE warning). Here's what it looks like:

The new iTunes plug-in scans your library and offers up song recommendations based on musical similarities. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: Mufin )

Eventful, a service that discovers and promotes local events, announced on Thursday that it has joined forces with Billboard to deliver two new charts to add to the music brand's growing list.

According to the company, Billboard will now feature "Eventful Hottest Demand" and "Eventful Weekly Most in Demand" charts to rank artists who are most in demand for live performances. Eventful's 'Hottest' chart will be updated every 30 minutes, based on the tally of fans that demand artists to perform in their area. The rankings are based on Eventful's proprietary algorithm, which measures demand frequency, currency, and total number of demands.

Eventful's "Weekly" chart ranks performers by the number of performance demands they receive from Sunday to the following Sunday. Much like Billboard's other charts, it includes the current week's ranking, number of weeks on the chart, and the performer's highest overall rank.

"These latest charts take full advantage of the information available through Eventful Demand, which gives fans a way to influence where their favorite performers tour and also acts as a guide to assist performers in scheduling their tours," Eventful CEO Jordan Glazier said in a statement.

Billboard's decision to use Eventful's Demand system is an interesting one. For years, the company has displayed the top grossing concerts, but this marks the first time that it will tell the artists where they're most wanted. And for Eventful, which is competing against a slew of companies, including Zvents and EventOrb, the company's Billboard deal cements it as a major force in the local-events market.

Right now, Paramore tops the list of today's most wanted performers, and Kenny Chesney heads the list as the week's most demanded performer.

Homeowners who dream of their electric meter spinning backward may seek solar panels to slash bills and carbon emissions. But where to start?

Before you call a contractor, these sites can assist with the early steps, like summing up what you could spend or save in your neighborhood.

The pioneering San Francisco Solar Map offers personalized evaluations.

San Francisco Solar Map

The San Francisco Solar Map helps locals lay their solar plans. A Google map pegs projects already up and running. Type in your address for estimates of installation fees and long-term utility bill savings and to find installers listed by the California Energy Commission.

Fog City's municipal rebates, added to state and federal incentives, probably make it the least expensive place for homeowners and businesses to add photovoltaics. Residents taking advantage of all discounts might drop the hardware and construction costs from, say, $25,000 to $7,000. The Web site supports Mayor Gavin Newsom's goal of 10,000 solar rooftops by 2012. It's the work of the San Francisco Department of the Environment and CH2M Hill, a consulting firm.

Solar Boston's map displays the solar potential for an address or even a city block.

Solar Boston

Mayor Thomas Menino's Solar Boston project aims to ramp up installations from half a megawatt to 25 megawatts by 2015. Its Flash-based map tracks solar, wind, biomass, and hydropower sources around town. You can enter an address, select a building, or even highlight an area on the map, to view the potential in dollars and kilowatts for topping roofs with photovoltaics.

Both San Francisco and Boston belong to the Department of Energy's Solar America Cities initiative to fast-track the spread of solar power. The two cities' maps are early, model tools. I'd also like to see peer comments and Yelp-like ratings of services and products. And I'd expect such services to help consumers share tips and report about the longest-lasting equipment as the solar sector matures. For instance, I found more than three dozen installers within 30 miles of my San Francisco apartment, but I'd have to do research elsewhere to decide whom to trust.

How do solar panels affect a home's resale value? Somebody should integrate solar maps with real estate listings, in the style of Trulia or Zillow.

Cooler Planet's maps include regional incentives around the country to estimate solar costs and savings.

Cooler Planet

Cooler Planet's solar maps cover territory from coast to coast. Google Maps mashups from the Seattle environmental marketing firm chart solar rebates, existing installations, costs and savings, and installers around the country. We learned that photovoltaic panels atop a three-flat in Chicago, where only federal incentives are available, could halve the $300 monthly electric bill and pay for themselves after 28 years.

Cooler Planet also rates solar incentives by state, painting Louisiana and Oregon as surprisingly bright. Another map tracks the growth of solar in California since 1999.

Choose your building, and Sungevity will send an estimate of its solar potential.

Sungevity

Sungevity asks you to pick your San Francisco Bay-area building on a map and describe the roofing material in exchange for an e-mail quote of solar costs. Technology from Microsoft Virtual Earth enables the company to take into account the angle of a roof, which affects the light available to solar panels throughout the day. That could lead to fewer measurements in person, saving time and money.

RoofRay relies on your rooftop drawing to figure a slanted roof into its cost estimates.

RoofRay

RoofRay also looks at the slant of a roof, although with less precision than Sungevity. Locate your building on a Google Map, draw an outline of the roof, and estimate the pitch. RoofRay asks for your average monthly electric bill, then spells out a detailed financial analysis. The site requires registration and asks for snail mail and e-mail addresses with a phone number. To put an interactive RoofRay widget on a blog, code is available for a quick cut-and-paste.

This rapidly-growing grassroots effort aims to get more than One Block off the Grid.

1BOG

San Franciscans Sylvia Ventura and Dan Barahona launched One Block Off the Grid in June to help bring cheaper solar power to the people. The effort organizes homeowners to bargain together with businesses to drive down the costs of installation. Several dozen people who joined the first campaign enjoyed savings of up to 40 percent, according to 1BOG.

Last week, the couple sold their nonprofit to Virgance, a social media and activism start-up. The 1,153-member solar effort has spread to 20 cities. It's even taking a stab at solar agreements between tenants and landlords. Neighborhood Solar is a similar grassroots purchasing program in Denver, where 1BOG is establishing a toehold.

Wattbot's recommendations of cleaner energy technologies are set to launch in January.

Wattbot

Wattbot, which remains in preview testing, promises custom evaluations in January to help households save money and carbon emissions. Share your address, and it will detail potential energy-efficiency and renewable technologies for your address. More than a solar-referral tool, it will also evaluate the financial impact of modest tweaks, like swapping old lightbulbs with compact fluorescents. You'll be able to contact service providers, take notes on projects, and connect with fellow users.

For now, there's just a simple U.S. heat map of renewable energy adoption. Wattbot is also building a service for clean-tech companies to track sales leads and get market research. The planned features, if realized, could make this site a unique hub in the clean-energy, green-building marketplace.

Wikimedia CTO Brion Vibber

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

What is the significance of Sun Microsystems' announcement Wednesday that Wikimedia is buying truckloads of Sun servers? It's that the Wikimedia team, which runs Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikibooks, and other sites, is gearing up to change the nature of the reference services. Wikipedia, in particular, is going to get a lot more visual. Limits on the size of upload files will be increased to 100MB. Video--hosted by Wikimedia--will soon be part of the mix.

With the more aggressive support for media files will come, eventually, new ways to edit those media. Kaltura has been working with Wikimedia to create an online video editor that supports wikipedia concepts: users will be able to edit others' videos, and everyone will be able to see the edit history.

Wikimedia is also considering building an online photo editor into the service, so users will be able to do the same things with photos that they do with text--enhance, clarify, and revert the last user's edits. Failing that, Wikimedia CTO Brion Vibber told me Wednesday, Wikipedia users may soon get a way to view the revisions that people make offline to photos by flipping through previous versions of the images.

The one holdup I can see with Wikimedia's newish love of media files is its fetish for open-source technologies. Vibber told me the new video support is being designed first to run in Firefox 3.1, because this open-source browser has native support for the open-source Ogg Theora codec. I'm sure that will make for a good experience in Firefox, but philosophy aside, I'd like to see even support for all browsers, not just Firefox.

Currently, all of Wikipedia, including the photos and audio, fits in less than 5 terabytes of storage. The text alone is less 500 MB compressed. With the new servers and the new media editing services, Vibber expects Wikipedia to be using 10 TB to 15 TB by the end of 2009.

With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. We'll keep updating the chart below as news of company changes comes in. See our complete coverage of how the tech sector is faring here: Tracking the tech downturn.

Know of a layoff not listed here? Let us know on this form or e-mail us.

See also: The spreadsheet of sunshine: Who's hiring.

Visual search engine Searchme has a sexy new iPhone app that brings its signature Coverflow-like interface to the phone's 3.5-inch display. Search results come in the form of large thumbnails with short content summaries underneath. To browse through them you simply flick your finger across the screen, just like you would with album covers in the phone's iPod application.

The app also supports pinch gestures for zooming in on thumbnails. This lets you see the the details of a page before visiting it in Safari--something that can be done with a simple double tap on any result. This may seem like a trivial feature, but it can be immensely helpful, and in some cases even prevent you from having to visit the site at all. In my case I was able to pull up a restaurant's address just by zooming in, saving me some time and data.

Searchme knows when you've flipped it on its side and will display the search results in gorgeous Coveflow-style.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The application makes use of the iPhone's accelerometer, and can tell when you've got it in landscape mode. When flipped, you get an additional two thumbnails on the screen, and it does away with the summaries entirely. It's also marvelously fun to zoom back and forth.

This app is definitely more than eye candy. Over a 3G connection it took just three seconds to bring up search results that I was able to flip through, and another 15 to stream in the thumbnails. During that loading time I was able to browse through the titles and summaries with zero lag which is really impressive.

Searchme is free and can be found in the app store (iTunes link).

Previous Searchme coverage:
Searchme tries music streaming to attract users
Search interfaces of tomorrow you can try today
Searchme nabs $31 million from Google backer, others