Webware

There's no more room for smut and naughty bits on build-your-own social network service Ning, according to a post on the company blog. Ning has announced that it will shut down its "Red Light District" of adult content, and on January 1 will formally ban it.

"We are exploring ways for adult networks that will no longer be available on Ning to export their content in addition to their members," the post by CEO Gina Bianchini read. The reasoning, she explained, is that it's costly and problematic--something you just can't deal with in a recession.

Advertisers don't like it, Bianchini said. "Our ad partners aren't big fans of the adult networks and therefore require us to identify adult networks or risk our healthy advertising revenue," she explained. "We don't want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that's where this is heading."

And if legal adult-content networks are allowed, the illegal ones invariably weasel their way in, Bianchini said, and that means more work for a small team. The number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices is also higher for adult networks: "Compared to our other social networks on the Ning Platform, the additional work created by adult networks alleged to have violated the copyrights of others is enough for us to discontinue adult networks in favor of investing time and energy in growing the Ning Platform from here," Bianchini wrote.

Ning isn't the only site to be cracking the whip on porn. YouTube, owned by Google, said on Tuesday that it's "tightening the standard for what is considered 'sexually suggestive.'"

Bianchini co-founded Ning with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, and famously raised a $60 million round of funding in anticipation of a "nuclear winter." Guess that was a good move.

Jay Adelson, CEO of social news company Digg, has used a BusinessWeek interview to attempt to quash those long-standing acquisition rumors. From what he said, Digg is not for sale.

"Now I am pressured to keep costs reasonable and focus more on the top-line revenue, which we really haven't done ever," Adelson said to BusinessWeek's Spencer Ante, saying that he now hopes to make the company profitable in one year instead of two.

Not for sale? Riiiiiight.

It's an old (ha) Silicon Valley maxim that any company is for sale, assuming the right buyer comes along and offers the right deal. What's likely is that Digg has come to realize that in this economic climate, it's not going to get the price that Adelson and founder Kevin Rose want.

Digg raised a whopping $28.7 million in Series C funding in September, which Adelson and Rose said would go toward fueling a major site expansion. The company didn't disclose a post-round valuation, but VentureBeat heard that it was only $164 million--significantly less than the $250 to $300 million prices that were oft-whispered about in Valley social circles.

Here's my theory: The longer Digg waits for the perfect bid, the longer it's in danger of having its valuation chipped away. The truth is, it's not very difficult for a site to institute a "social news" feature or other form of Digg-like interaction. Current Media, after Digg spurned an acquisition offer, built Current News and now aggregates user-picked stories into an hourly TV show. Yahoo built Yahoo Buzz, which can propel stories to the front page of its portal. Some Google users occasionally report seeing experimental features in which they can vote on search results. There are smaller ones, too: Reddit, which sold early to Conde Nast, is still alive and kicking. A start-up called Kirtsy puts a girlier spin on the Digg model.

Adelson even remarked to BusinessWeek that buying some of these smaller social news sites could help make Digg stronger, especially now since the recession may make some of them dirt-cheap. "There are Digg clones around the world in every country," he said to Ante. "I could go into those markets and clean up those sites. If I needed more capital to do a deal, I could probably do it."

That, honestly, wouldn't be such a bad idea. Digg's biggest problem isn't user activity--it has one of the most loyal and addicted audiences on the Web--but the fact that its core user base is very niche. It experienced a surge in political traffic as election season rolled on, but its core is geek news; hot topics right now are screenshots from the movie Wolverine and airborne laser weapons.

Google on Monday formally announced full support for the CalDAV protocol along with the release of a small piece of software for Mac computers that lets users easily link up their Google Calendars with the iCal application.

Google had previously launched CalDAV support back in late July, however, consumers had to manually add their calendars directly to CalDAV-supporting applications like Mozilla Sunbird and Apple's iCal. The new Mac utility, named "Calaboration" simply lets users plug in their Google Calendar username and password to send Google calendars over to iCal. The benefit of doing this is the two-way sync. This means whatever changes you make on either end will be synced up to both every few minutes.

I gave Calaboration a spin this morning, and after restarting iCal, it worked without problems. With the current implementation you're able to see other people's schedules, as well as reply yes, no, or maybe to calendar invitations. The only problems I ran into early on were syncing errors where iCal would not let me write data to Google's servers, which was remedied with a closing and reopening of the program after the initial CalDAV setup.

You can grab Calaboration here. If you're a Sunbird user, there's a simple provider extension that does the same thing.

Calaboration lets you pick which Google Calendars you want to sync up with iCal. The same thing can be done in Mozilla's Sunbird or any other calendaring tool with CalDAV support.

(Credit: Google)

Animoto, a company that creates videos from a user's photos and music on-the-fly, announced Tuesday that it has added new features to its software that will turn its videos into online holiday greetings.

According to the company, the new holiday feature will use a snowscape to set the scene for the greeting and with the help of its new text feature, users can add captioning to detail events.

In order to create the holiday videos, users can upload photos using Animoto's service and click the "Santa" button, which turns the video into a holiday greeting. A new holiday genre will be added to Animoto's music library so users can pick the holiday song they wish to have played during the video.

Animoto's service is stellar. I've used the site to create videos on a number of occasions and each time, the videos are unique and attractive. The site allows you to upload images and choose music, but its Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology, which acts as the director and editor, will do the rest. That said, creating videos on the service can be a little pricey and unfortunately, Animoto didn't share holiday generosity with its new offering.

Full-length videos cost $3 and annual subscriptions to create an unlimited number of full-length videos will cost $30. Any video that is 30 seconds or less will be free. Animoto claims all of the videos will be DVD-quality and can be viewed on HDTVs or projectors.

(Credit: Animoto)

eJamming, a service that provides musicians with collaboration technology to help them form bands or work on songs together, said Tuesday it has formed a partnership with the MTV Networks Music Group.

The licensing agreement will allow the MTV Networks Music Group to use eJamming Audiio software for any future projects. According to MTVN, the software could be used in virtual worlds and new music sites.

The decision to use eJamming's collaboration tool makes sense. MTVN caters to people who care about music, and with the help of eJamming's Audiio, it can help them form a band, learn to play an instrument, or join an existing group. More important from a business standpoint, MTVN can use eJamming's technology to keep those musicians on MTV sites.

Jeff Yapp, MTV executive vice president of program enterprises, said in a statement that MTVN's decision to work with eJamming was rooted in the company's desire to become a quasi social network for musicians.

"The combination of interactivity and music speaks to people of all ages today," he said. "Connecting actual players online in real and virtual worlds via eJamming technology underscores the MTV Networks Music Group's commitment to bringing our fans cutting-edge experiences."

Neither company would say when MTVN will start rolling out eJamming's technology, but the service is growing quickly. According to its internal figures, the Audiio software has 18,000 beta testers in 158 countries.

Zoho on Tuesday is rolling out CloudSQL, a layer of code that allows corporate developers to access their Zoho application data through a number of different dialects of the SQL database access language.

Data stored in Zoho services--so far, only Zoho DB & Reports--can be accessed now not just via APIs, but from standard SQL drivers like JDBC and ODBC. Support for these traditional client/server technologies should make it easier for developers to transition to cloud-based data, should they be moving in that direction.

(Credit: Zoho)

I have not tested the performance of this new middleware layer into Zoho's systems, so I don't know if it's a workable solution. But it is a cool tool for companies that want to test the waters with cloud-based apps and storage.

The service is free for now. Zoho spokespeople say they'll be looking at usage and uptake before they "decide if we need to charge for this." Not exactly a cost structure one can budget for, but it's early days for everyone.

Zoho has written a demo of Zoho's CloudSQL that runs on Google's App Engine.

This charting app is running on Google App engine.

Right now, the most famous classical musician on YouTube is arguably Nora the piano-playing cat. She, sorry to say, probably isn't eligible for "YouTube Symphony Orchestra," a new competition from the Google-owned video-sharing site.

Musicians from around the world (legitimate ones: I'm looking at you, Modded Guitar Hero Controller Guy) are invited to audition by submitting videos of themselves performing "Internet Symphony No. 1," an original piece written specially for YouTube by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon composer Tan Dun, in addition to a "talent video."

Judges come from the London Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and a number of other high-end orchestras--they'll winnow the selections down to a set of semifinalists by February 14.

Then, YouTube members will vote on their favorite semifinalists, and winners will be announced on March 2. The prize? A trip to New York for three days of a "classical-music summit" with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and a performance at the legendary Carnegie Hall.

YouTube has sponsored competitions before, like the "Democracy Challenge" filmmaking competition, but this is the first one open to anyone from any country, the company said.

I hope that they at least invite Nora to watch. I'm sure she can sit still.

There's a new OpenID extension for "social browser" Flock, and it was created with the help of password management service Vidoop and News Corp.-owned social network MySpace.

It's now available for download for all Flock users who have upgraded to Flock 2.0. For MySpace, which initially announced its support for OpenID back in July, this is also a push for Data Availability, a universal-login project that the social network announced in May but has since only rolled out with a few partners.

Yahoo, one of MySpace's launch partners for Data Availability, has also thrown its weight behind OpenID.

"As three companies dedicated to empowering users to easily share content and experiences, this was a very rewarding--and relatively fast--collaboration," Max Engel, MySpace's Data Availability product manager, said in a release. "Our goal was to eliminate some of the work involved in jumping between social experiences on the Web so that people can focus on their connections and the incredible content that's out there. This Flock extension will give millions of people an easier way to expand their experiences and expression without boundaries."

The OpenID Flock extension allows for easier credential management within the browser and makes it more apparent when a site will accept an OpenID login. A handful of OpenID extensions already exist for the open-source Flock, but this one's got the seal of approval from some big names.

There are deeper reasons for MySpace being so vocal about OpenID support, though. The standard has seen its toughest rival yet in the form of Facebook Connect, a data-portability project which enjoyed a high-profile New York Times writeup this week and will reportedly be ready for a full debut very soon. (It's already been implemented on a number of sites.)

Flock, unfortunately, isn't an enormous player in the browser space. It has tons of bells and whistles, but is still well behind the likes of Internet Explorer and Firefox in terms of downloads, and has newfound competition from Google's Chrome.

Regardless, MySpace has been paying a lot of lip service to open standards recently, and it's always good to see real developments.

If, for some reason, you've been missing out on a reason not to use your browser's pop-up blocker, here's a new one: Window Pong. The age old game of Pong comes to your browser using separate pop-up windows. You play against a computer that volleys back yet another window that acts as the ball--complete with sound effects. Meanwhile, a fourth window at the top of the screen keeps score of the ordeal, giving the first player to reach five points the win.

Is it practical? No. Is it a great use of JavaScript? Definitely.

I found it to be unplayable on my laptop's track pad, but had slightly better luck with my mouse. If you're looking for a more precise experience, worth checking out is sister project Snake, which emulates the age-old arcade classic popularized by Nokia phones. Better yet, you get to use your arrow keys instead of a mouse.

Both sites were created by Amsterdam-based interface designer Sylvain Vriens as a part of Project-Euh.com, a small collection of interactive Web games and technology demos.

(via Reddit)

Those aren't just random windows, they're paddles and a ball to play the classic arcade game Pong.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Maybe all our refined, enlightened interests are lost in the long tail, because Britney Spears once again was the most popular search subject in 2008 on Yahoo.

For Yahoo, Spears wasn't the only pop-culture icon in Yahoo's top 10 searches. Also on the list were Miley Cyrus at No. 4, Jessica Alba at No. 6, Lindsay Lohan at No. 7, and Angelina Jolie at No. 9.

Apparently a lot of people are curious about World Wrestling Entertainment, because WWE was No. 2. The online game RuneScape was No. 5, anime series Naruto was No. 7, and American Idol finished in 10th place on Yahoo's list.

Yahoo also broke down searches for various other subjects. For economic searches, the top 10 list started with IRS stimulus checks, then followed with oil prices, gold prices, gas prices, Dow Jones, Sallie Mae, stock market, AIG, foreclosures, and debt consolidation. The list reveals that people use general-purpose searches for everything ranging from how-to advice to the latest news.

In the people of politics, President-elect Barack Obama led the list. Next came Sarah Palin, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Ron Paul, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mitt Romney.

AOL also shared its top search terms for 2008, though it didn't break out overall terms.

Ask.com also spotlighted popular 2008 searches, and has a few variations on the standard search categories. Its top questions are as follows:

1. How do I get pregnant?
2. How do I lose weight?
3. How do I write a resume?
4. How much is minimum wage?
5. How much is my car worth?
6. How do I change my name?
7. What is the meaning of life?
8. How do I register to vote?
9. Why is the sky blue?
10. How do I download videos?

And since Ask.com bought Dictionary.com earlier this year, it's releasing top search terms for that site. People's vocabulary expansion efforts concentrated on these terms: maverick, socialism, economy, recession, radical, cyclone, solace, realtor, environment, and potholes.

Apparently Google, which has shared search trends on its annual Zeitgeist list since 2001, didn't get the memo to release its results Monday, but expect it to cough up some new results soon--and, I hope, some of the accompanying graphs.