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Microsoft’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will have a new home in the cloud, the company announced at the Microsoft Developers Conference in Los Angeles this morning, adding the Office suite to the cadre of software and services it has said it will provide as it develops its Windows Azure cloud-based platform. The browser-based versions of the apps will run on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, as well as on Windows Mobile devices. It will go into a tech preview for developers later this year, the company said.

Given that Microsoft isn’t talking about when the suite might be released, why the announcement today? The company says it’s because the Office apps are part of its larger shift to the cloud announced with Azure. But it’s also coming relatively late to the game and has let efforts in the productivity space by others go by unchallenged.

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The advertising network business is going to go through a gut-wrenching shakeout, and its just about getting started. The Wall Street Journal says trouble is looming for 300-odd niche ad networks and points to the shuttering of JellyCloud and lay-offs at San Francisco-based AdBrite. Even Advertising.com, a division of Time Warner, is suffering from softening of demand.

Pubmatic recently released its third quarter 2008 data, which showed that the average CPMs continued to be in a free fall, especially on the social networks. This doesn’t bode well for the market at large. Continue »

Liz reports that Revision3, the online video startup behind shows such as Kevin Rose’s DiggNation (and the on-hiatus GigaOM Show), has shut down five of its shows and laid off a reported third of its people. The news prompted Kent Nichols, one of the awesome and funny duo behind the Ask a Ninja video show, to write on his blog:

Rev3 has some of the best behind the scenes talent in the online space. They have a great sales team and good leadership and a solid flagship show in DiggNation. And they can’t make it…Treat deals and shows you create for these online production companies as temporary rent money solutions, not career building moves.

If what Kent is saying is essentially true, then most of the online video networks/studios — and there are many — are in trouble. And like Revision 3, they need to refocus and scale back their ambitions in order to survive the current advertising downturn, focusing solely on their strongest franchises. To recap, I don’t think Revision3 is going away — Tekzilla and DiggNation are two of their strongest franchises with big following. Damn shame, though, that Martin Sargeant’s Internet Superstar show is being canned. Photo courtesy of Revision3

If you’re planning to vote in person this election, you’d better get familiar with regulations in your state around bringing camera cell phones and other recording devices into the polling area.

Some state election statutes expressly prohibit using cameras or other recording devices within a short distance of the polling place, according to Sam Bayard, assistant director of the grassroots journalism organization Citizen Media Law Project. Kentucky even passed a law in June 2005 that appears to make participating in PBS and YouTube’s Video Your Vote project illegal, he said. Continue »

Election Day is just around the corner. So in order to help you get informed about the candidates, the issues, the numbers and the process, we’ve pulled together a list of the top 10 election-related tools on the web. Enjoy — and get out there and vote!

1. Refresh your memory as to what the candidates have said in their speeches. Add election-related gadgets to your site, like Google’s series of electoral map and video mashups that link to clips of major candidates’ speeches and track where and when they spoke.
2. Check out the latest polling data on your iPhone. Polling trend site Pollster.com, published by National Journal columnist and Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal, and contrarian news, politics and culture web mag Slate.com, have linked up to create this handy app, Slate Poll Tracker.
3. Get a closer look at polling data and electoral projections. The breakout success of election-related sites this electoral season, fivethirtyeight.com is run by two guys who’ve said they’re voting for Obama but that the site is about poll data, not partisanship.

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Have you seen the line-up for next month’s NewTeeVee Live conference? You might have heard that the CEOs of Hulu and Netflix are coming, and also the creator of CSI. True! But did you know that we’ve also got a guy who brags that he’s still actively funding digital media deals — including a new one just last week? That would be Richard Wolpert, managing director of The Mail Room Fund, an investment partnership of William Morris Agency, AT&T, Accel and Venrock.

Another highlight should be David Verklin, who’s making one of his first public appearances since being named the CEO of Canoe Ventures, the joint addressable advertising project of the nation’s largest cable companies. Talk about friends in high places.

We’ve also got Alex Withers, managing director of digital media for the USGA. His team put on the biggest single day of live-streaming sports that we know of this year, delivering more than 2 million streams to more than half a million concurrent users who tuned in to watch Tiger Woods’ down-to-the-wire playoff victory at the U.S. Open. And that was on a Monday! Continue »

UPDATED: Dell Computer today announced that it will preload music from Universal Music Group into special music folders on the computers it ships.

• Individuals will be able to select a variety of music bundles to be pre-installed.
• 50- and 100-song music bundles start at $25, each of which includes a curated selection of MP3s.
• These MP3 are going to cost about a half of regular prices.
• Pre-installed music bundles will show up as Music icons on the Dell Dock.

Add-ons such as these have already come under criticism from customers who find them, well, annoying. But these are desperate times for both PC makers and music companies. Their margins are being eviscerated and growth is non-existent, so of course they’re willing to try anything. This experiment, however, is like taking two bricks, tying them together and praying really hard that they won’t sink.

Update: Dell is also, through CinemaNow, doing the same thing with movies. Cost-wise (movie bundles also start at $25) and convenience-wise, this is actually a pretty good idea for movies.