Syber News

FanIQ Keeps Fans In The Game, Membership Jumps 2000% This Year

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:00:06 +0000

FanIQ, a sports site that focuses more on entertaining its users than bogging them down with the stats and opinion pieces found on the likes of ESPN, has had a landmark year. The site launched in 2006, but hasn't really hit its stride until now: since January, the site has grown by over 2000%, recently hitting as many as 2.4 million unique users and 1.5 million registered members. These figures pale in comparison to the larger sports sites and popular fantasy leagues, but the rate of growth is very impressive nonetheless. FanIQ differentiates itself from other sports sites by offering a set of casual games and community features alongside more traditional sports headlines. To encourage participation, the site has a points system that rewards users who write blog posts and play the site's integrated trivia game. These points are just for show (though CEO Ty Shay says that many users are still intensely competitive about them), but in the future the site will offer virtual goods and other rewards in exchange for points.

Real Girls Media Picks Up Strategic Funding From Meredith

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:46:49 +0000

Real Girls Media, a San Francisco-based online publishing company specializes in—you guessed it—social communities for women, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding led by Meredith Corporation, which took a minority stake in the company. RGM, which was founded in 2006, had previously raised $6 million in Series A funding from 3i and WaldenVC. The agreement adds Real Girls Media Network's traffic (which comes primarily from flagship community site DivineCaroline) to Meredith’s network, which the company claims increases Meredith’s unique visitors to an admirable 15 million uniques each month.

IAB Reports U.S. Online Advertising Almost $5.9 Billion In The Third Quarter

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:35:29 +0000

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers just released their quarterly report on U.S. online advertising revenues. For the quarter, they estimate online advertising revenues were almost $5.9 billion ($5.865 billion, to be exact), which is an 11 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago and a 2 percent increase from the second quarter of 2008. If you look at the (awfully blurry) graph above, you can see that online advertising revenues have been pretty much flat all year long.

Mufin Opens Automated Music Recommendation Engine To The Public

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:29 +0000

Mufin, a powerful music recommendation engine that actually works, has launched to the public. We last covered the site in early October, when it opened in a restricted private beta. The site, which was created by the same organization that created the now-ubiquitous MP3 file format, uses an advanced algorithm to 'listen to' songs and identify similar sounding tracks based on over 40 characteristics. Such automated systems are very hard to pull off (which is why Pandora, another music recommendation engine, uses human experts), but in my testing Mufin had fared surprisingly well.

eMusic: 250 Million Songs Downloaded. iTunes: 5 Billion+

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:52:01 +0000

Will the music subscription business ever grow beyond its current niche? It looks increasingly doubtful. Today, eMusic announced that since it launched its current music subscription service in 2003, customers have downloaded 250 million songs. Apple's iTunes, by comparison, has sold more than 5 billion songs since it opened the iTunes Store in April, 2003. That makes eMusic one twentieth the size of iTunes. The way eMusic works is you pay a subscription of between $12 and $20 a month and then you can download 30 to 75 songs a month and keep them. You can also purchase songs above those limits, starting at $0.25 a track. eMusic has a catalog of 4.5 million songs, and is particularly strong in independent music. It currently has 400,000 subscribers, and the company expects to make $70 million in revenues this year.

Gmail Themes Color Your Email World

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:09:00 +0000

In yet another cosmetic change designed to pretty-up its Gmail web-based email client, Google announced Wednesday that it has added themes. Typical of a cloud-based service, it's rolling out to users gradually, so you may not see it --- a Themes tab in your Gmail settings --- just yet. They say it'll take a couple of days to hit all users.

In their blog post regarding the new Gmail themes, Google said:

We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There's even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers -- it's not exactly practical, but it's great for testing out your geek cred. We've also done a minor facelift to Gmail's default look to make it crisper and cleaner -- you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.

Based on looking through the themes, I might actually try Terminal (above, click to enlarge) for a while. It brings back memories.

Interestingly, some of the themes (below) even alter the Gmail logo, which you would think they would want to keep constant. Keep a lookout for it in your settings, if you're inclined to change.

http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2008/11/gmail-themes-color-your-email-world.html

NVIDIA’s Tesla GPU, OEMs, Deliver Desktop Supercomputers

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:19:00 +0000

Cray has been synonymous with supercomputing for decades, but NVIDIA --- there you usually think gaming. However, as GPUs have become more powerful, tasks normally associated with CPUs have been moved to them.

On Tuesday NVIDIA announced its GPU-based Tesla Personal Supercomputer at SC08 (Supercomputing 08), and on Wednesday it went still further, announcing the incorporation of NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU Computing processors in the new Cray CX1 line of supercomputers, as well as other OEMs.

The Tesla Personal Supercomputer uses the Tesla C1060 GPU Computing Processor in Cray's CX1 line as its heart, and for a mere $9,995 you can have one of these babies on your desk. It has 960 cores, using four GPUs with 240 cores each. It delivers nearly 4 teraflops of performance.

Of course, a supercomputer is in the eye of a beholder. According to Computerworld,

Just what constitutes a supercomputer remains a rapidly moving target, with the fastest defined by the Top500 list maintained by academics in the U.S. and Europe. The Nvidia personal supercomputer would have been ranked among the top 20 fastest systems just five years ago, but it isn't fast enough to make the most recent list. The 500th ranked system is rated at about 12.6 teraflops.

That would make a Tesla Personal Supercomputer more than 4x slower than the 500th fastest supercomputer.

At SC08, a host of OEMs announced deals to use the Tesla GPU, including the aforementioned Cray, as well as HP, Bull, and NEC.

While these systems are out of the reach of most, they're not that far off. After all, some boutique gaming systems run into the $6,000 range or more.

http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2008/10/nvidias-tesla-gpu-oems-deliver-deskside.html

PC Magazine’s Print Edition Folds

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:01:00 +0000

I remember (and this will date me) when the first issues of PC Magazine, founded in 1982, came out. As time progressed, the magazine because huge, pushing 600 pages at the max if I remember correctly (and it's been a while), much of which was advertising. I recall looking at the tome once and trying to figure out how much was actual content.

That was then, this is now.

I'm assuming you don't need anyone to tell you how sour recent times have been for newspapers and all forms of print media. Blame it on the Internet. With many consumers simply going online for information, most of which is free, the age of print media is dying.

On Wednesday Ziff-Davis, which recently exited bankruptcy, announced that the January issue of PC Magazine will be its last; after that it will become all digital. Ziff-Davis also announced that the PCMag Network will be renamed PCMag Digital Network with PCMag.com as its flagship.

The PCMag Digital Network has sites such as ExtremeTech, Gearlog, Appscout, Smart Device Central, GoodCleanTech, DL.TV, Cranky Geeks, and PCMagCast.

Those who subscribe to the magazine will be given a subscription to PC Magazine Digital Edition, which arrives via email and which you can then download. While that's all great, and there are advantages to a digital magazine, like searchability and the like, it's not something you can easily read on a train --- or in the bathroom.

Keeping with the corporate stance of selling as many actions as "green" as possible, in an open letter, PCMag.com cited the following as an advantage to the new all-digital format:

It's Green: You can actually feel good about the amount of paper, ink, and gas we'll all be saving by not producing and consuming a physical magazine.

While true, I still had to laugh.

Not sure if they have your email address? You can go here to set it up.

There is still a question about the gaming division of Ziff-Davis, which includes 1Up and also EGM, which still exists as the only print property still existing at Ziff-Davis.

PaidContent.org spoke with Jason Young, the CEO of Ziff Davis, and received the following information:

PCMag revenues are "in the tens and tens of millions of dollars" (no more specific than that).
Online revenues grew an average of 42% since 2001.
70% of the PC Mag brand's revenues are already digital
The network is profitable.
PCMag brand revenues grew 18% in Q3.

Good luck, Ziff-Davis and PCMag. While this was not unexpected, and this will undoubtedly not be the last print media publisher to go all-digital, it's still the sad end to an era.

http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2008/11/pc-magazines-print-edition-folds.html

It’s Time For The Crunchies!

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:59:01 +0000

It's hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since we gave out those crazy gorilla awards to the best startup and product successes in Silicon Valley and around the world. Some of the photos from last year are here. The Crunchies are back. We are once again partnering with some of our favorite blogs - thank you to co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat (click the links for their announcements). Thanks as well to 1938 Media, our video production partner (see their first video below in the comments).

Lonely Wrestlers Create Their Own Social Network

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:36:17 +0000

It's not easy being a wrestler. Inside the ring your pounding an opponent's head against the corner post, but outside the ring it's hard to meet people. Nobody really wants to be your friend. Not even on MySpace. They say their your friends, but they are not really your friends. Wrestlers aren't stupid. They know everybody thinks they are just a bunch of clowns. That's why the company that employs all the wrestlers you see on TV, World Wrestling Entertainment, created WWE Universe, a social network just for them and their fans. Okay, it's not really a social network. It's just a craptastic promotional vehicle. And some of those wrestlers aren't so bright. But they are lonely.