Archive for December, 2005

Hyperwords, a must have Firefox plugin

Om Malik | Wednesday, December 21, 2005 | 10:42 AM PT | 8 comments

Firefox, just got better, thanks to Hyperwords, a plug-in that allows you to you to interact with all the words on the web. The right click finally put to good use. In limited beta right now. Continue »

Google Bans Kozoru?

Om Malik | Wednesday, December 21, 2005 | 12:09 AM PT | 5 comments

Covad banking on hosted VoIP

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 11:53 PM PT | 0 comments

Covad CEO Charlie Hoffman sees future inhosted VoIP, because “broadband.. is pretty mature … a commodity on the consumer side… [VoIP] represents only 4% of our revenues today, but it increasingly becomes a larger portion.” Continue »

Niall’s unofficial My Yahoo! feed API

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 11:32 PM PT | 0 comments

Niall Kennedy has exposed a way to what amounts to be an unofficial MyYahoo RSS API, which can be used to… Continue »

Performancing for Firefox, Awesome

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 11:29 PM PT | 19 comments

Some ideas, they just need passion, not money to get going. I am typing this post in Performancing for Firefox, a cross platform blog text editor extension, that allows bloggers to type their blog posts within the browser. Continue »

Sell CPU Cycles To CPU Share

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 11:10 PM PT | 9 comments

Seti@Home may have stopped looking for ET, but don’t tell that to recently launched CPUShare, a market place in CPU cycles. Will it work? Not likely, even though I dearly wish for them to succeed, but I am such a fan of grids. It has a lot of shortcomings, the biggest problem is that it works on Linux, and there aren’t too many Linux desktops out there. The biggest concern I have is that the prices of hardware are declining so rapidly that companies or universities, the likely buyers of these CPU cycles can quickly build their own grids for a few million dollars. During the 1990s bubble many grid/distributed computing companies raised hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to build a processing marketplace. Almost all failed. I hope CPU Share avoids that fate, for it is a noble cause. Continue »

Big Week for Blog Tools

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 12:00 PM PT | 3 comments

After the big blog blackout of December 2005, many people are looking for options. WordPress.com is adding nearly 500 new blogs a day, and more recently Mr. RSS Dave Winer has started to play in that sandbox. But that’s not all. WP also has snagged a deal with Yahoo for hosting, much like Six Apart. The much awaited, WordPress 2.0 is finally coming out from under the covers, and is chock-a-block with Ajaxy goodness. (Good timing, don’t you think Jeff!) Also just announced, pMachine’s ExpressionEngine 1.4, a premium product I have become a fan of lately. pMachine folks are also offering a new free version called ExpressionEngine Core. One thing, which i would like to point out, TypePad, despite last week’s problems remains one of the easiest and simplest to use tools out in the market. Those who were affected by last week’s outage could easily take their data and port it to MT installed on Yahoo servers. (Pretty reliable, I presume!) Continue »

Joe Nacchio Indicted On Insider Trading Charges

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 11:37 AM PT | 2 comments

Former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio has been indicted on 42 counts of insider trading, reports WSJ. He made $176.5 million in profits from stock sales in 2002 alone. The prosecutors are seeking a $100 million in restitution. Continue »

Need For Speed… How Real?

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 4:00 AM PT | 61 comments

After years of being stuck in the slow lane, the US consumers are finally going to get a massive speed upgrade and taste the true broadband for the first time. From a 512 Kbps world to 6 Mbps, then 8 and soon 15 Mbps…. it seems the future has finally arrived. And with that, the question…. how much speed is enough? Can we the consumers really tell the difference between 15 and 30 Mbps? Or is it just a way for the broadband operators to get us to pay more… for something which we might use less. Continue »

iTunes king of legal downloading

Om Malik | Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 2:20 AM PT | 3 comments

When it comes to legal music downloads, Napster and iTunes, are the big brands. Napster, thanks to its free-sharing past is still the most recognized brand according to Ipsos’ TEMPO Digital Music Brandscape study. iTunes is no slouch, and has 57% brand share. Not sure, if Napster holds a candle to iTunes sales though. Regardless, the study shows that online digital music has finally hit a tipping point, and most services are seeing a growth, though iTunes/Apple continues to build upon its early lead. Continue »

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Om Malik
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