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Google Delivers Tools for Converting Blog Platforms

Samuel Dean — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:16 +0000

Do you have a blog for which you’re unhappy with the underlying blogging service? If so, it’s not all that uncommon for the issue to arise. Blogging services play a game of leapfrog with each other, and even major blogs are moved to new platforms from time to time.

With this in mind, Google has just released Google Blog Converters. It’s an open source project that can take blogs from most popular platforms and convert them to other popular ones.

According to Google: “This project contains a number of converters to and from different blog services. The code is written in Python with scripts to execute the conversions either on the command-line, through a Windows batch script, or hosted on Google App Engine.” There are converters available for Blogger, Movable Type, LiveJournal, WordPress, and other services. The scripts are released under the Apache 2.0 license.

There is a blog post from Google regarding the project, and there is a ReadMe file that explains how to do the conversions.

As Webware notes, “you’ll have to be proficient in running Python scripts to use the technology,” but because the project is open source, it’s likely that completely automatic converters will follow. I won’t be surprised to see that happen quickly. If you’ve had your eye on a new blogging platform, you may want to take note and follow the project.

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Jing Capture Software Goes Pro

Scott Blitstein — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:13:29 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of Jing capture software for a while now. I use it for all of my screen shots here for WWD, and have also used it to create some short demo screencasts. It works really well for me, and is a great free option for my needs.

Today the folks at TechSmith announced the availability of a Pro version with features aimed at the video capture crowd. For a paltry $14.95 year they have beefed up the service to allow higher quality HD videos, enhanced integration with video sharing sites including a direct upload to YouTube, and removal of any Jing branding.

With the ability to capture H.264/MPEG-4 AVC in addition to the SWF files of the free version, Jing becomes a more flexible option for your video capture needs.

If you’re doing heavy duty video capture, you’ll probably want to consider an upgrade to Camtasia or similar, but for an easy to use screen capture / screen cast solution Jing is a great choice.

Jing is available for both PC and Mac, and is now available in both a free and pro version.

What do you use for screen capture?

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Cyworld Packs Up From U.S., Retreats to Korea

Om Malik — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:58:25 +0000

Cyworld, the South Korean social network that launched in the U.S. with a splashy party in 2006 has packed up its bags and left the U.S. market. The social network, backed by SK Telecom, will layoff its entire U.S. staff and will continue to operate the English-language site from South Korea. The service really didn’t get any traction. Its localization efforts were mediocre at best. I bet other smaller marginal social networks meet the same fate.

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LittleSnapper Preview Screencast

Nick Santilli — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:45:36 +0000

After loving Plasq’s Skitch for a while now, I didn’t think I could have feelings for another screen capture utility. At an early glance, it appears I may need to re-evaluate my former stance. Now a days, I’m really looking forward to LittleSnapper from Real Mac Software.

Today the Real Mac folks have released a great screencast of the application doing its thing, sharing screen captures, and I can’t be more excited! It looks very slick visually, and extremely organized for those hoping to keep their Pictures folder in a somewhat presentable state. Writing for The Apple Blog — and for far less important reasons — I take lots of screen shots, so features such as these have a lot of utility for me.

There’s a lot of other great looking features that I can’t wait to play with. Go ahead and take a look at the video below and you too can get excited.

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TAB Welcomes: Tom Reestman

Tom Reestman — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:00:02 +0000

This is where I’m supposed to write a bunch of stuff about who I am and why you should read my articles until your eyes bleed.

You can read something about me on my author’s page, but here is much more detailed and specific information:

I live in a house.
The house is in a big city.
The big city is in an even bigger state within the US.
I have a cat.
The cat is fat.
I work in some sort of technical capacity with software.
I write quite a bit for work, for fun, and now on the Apple Blog.
Got my first Mac in ’89. There is currently an iMac, MacBook, Time Machine, Airport Express, two iPhones (original), iPod touch, and three iPods in the house.
The cat is still fat.
I like to work on computers and read numerous news feeds.
Until last January I’d had at least one PC in the house for 15+ years; I know Windows quite well.
My daughter has a fish. The fish is not fat. It’s the cat that is fat.
My daughter has her own bedroom. It’s a wreck. Actually, I’ve seen wrecks that look better.
I have an office. It’s spotless.
My daughter is a good student.
Did I mention the rather copious amounts of poundage the cat has accumulated?

Perhaps there will be more later. Honestly, though, after the way I just bared my soul to you how can you not want to come back and read my stuff again and again? I welcome, appreciate, and enjoy any and all comments on what I write.

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Apple Officially Admits to Faulty NVIDIA GPUs

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:00:06 +0000

Following NVIDIA’s July 2008 announcement that a number of their GPUs were experiencing higher failure rates than should be normally expected, Apple today finally released an official support article acknowledging the problem. The article claims that NVIDIA told Apple graphics cards in Macintosh computers were not affected by the problem, which is supposedly related to improper packaging. The reason for the lag time between NVIDIA’s and Apple’s announcements concerning the faulty GPUs is an internal investigation by Cupertino itself which eventually found that MacBook Pro NVIDIA cards were indeed affected.

The GeForce 8600M GT, specifically, is named in the article as having problems, which were used in MBP’s manufactured between May of 2007 and September of 2008. Symptoms include distorted video or no display at all on either the built-in or connected external displays. Anyone affected is directed to take their machine to an Apple Store or authorized service provider to receive a repair free of charge. Those who’ve already paid out of pocket for a fix are also eligible for reimbursement. The offer is valid for two years from the original date of purchase.

Though Apple claims that not all MBP’s made between those dates are necessarily affected, it seems unlikely that consumers who haven’t yet experienced problems will find this terribly reassuring. The two year time limit will have many wary, as well. Still, Apple should be given credit for admitting the full, potential extent of the problem and offering the free remedy for affected customers, both past and current. They’re clearly in damage control mode, and will likely succeed in shunting most of the blame onto Nvidia, who caused the problem in the first place and then apparently lied about it. A steep increase in failures following the two-year mark could come back to bite Apple, but those using MBP’s seem to have a higher laptop turnover rate so they might even dodge that bullet.

If you’ve had or are having problems, share your symptoms below so that others will know what to look for.

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Brick Update: Possible Leaked Photos, Price Points

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:00:01 +0000

A number of photos of what are supposedly new MacBook and MacBook Pro aluminum cases have begun to surface.

Yesterday, Engadget posted a picture of a MacBook Pro case in keeping with rumors of a new production process. The photo originated at a Chinese site, which lends credence to the possibility that they are real, since Apple’s manufacturing facilities are currently based in the country. And as of today, AppleInsider is claiming that their sources “confirm” that this image is in fact of the new 15-inch MacBook Pro.

Soon after the first photos appeared, a Taiwanese site posted three pictures of what it claims are the new MacBook casing, which also show an aluminum body case without keyboard or trackpad components. The space for the trackpad is significantly larger than on the current MacBook, and the case appears to be slightly slimmed down.

In addition to pre-production photos, new price sheets have apparently been circulating at Apple retail stores. The document lists 12 price points for the as yet unreleased laptops. That would mean four more base configurations than are currently offered, although it is not clear how those extra four models will be divided among the laptop categories (i.e., MacBook, Pro, and Air) or if categories will be changed or added. Sources claim the new price points will range between $800 and $3100, which would mark the first time Apple has offered a laptop for under $1000. Previous analyst predictions had included a $999 model, but if Apple can profitably produce an $800 dollar laptop, they will be far better positioned to compete with popular Windows laptop manufacturers like Toshiba and HP. Such aggressive pricing would also make them better able to withstand deepening global financial woes, which has most industry analysts predicting decreased consumer electronic spending. It will be interesting to see what you get at the top of the range as well, since at $3100 that’s a full $300 more than the current best-spec’d MacBook Pro.

More (low quality) photos of the MacBook casing:

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Sequoia Rings the Alarm Bell: Silicon Valley Is in Trouble

Om Malik — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:53:28 +0000

Updated: Sequoia Capital, arguably the smartest venture capital investor in business, is sounding the alarm and asking its portfolio companies to buckle down for what could be the worst economic downturn of their relatively short lives.

The fund organized a meeting yesterday where it invited entreprenuers/CEOs from its portfolio companies. The attendees were greeted by a cute image of a Grave Stone, with a message: R.I.P.: Good Times, my sources tell me.

I was able to confirm this with at least two sources. I am currently trying to nail down more details. Sequoia Capital declined to comment on the news.

The gathering was addressed by at least four speakers, including a brief introduction by Mike Moritiz. Doug Leone was another speaker. I am still trying to nail down more details of the two other speakers. A person who handles Sequoia’s public market investments is said to have talked to the startups. The message delivered to those in attendance was that things could get a lot worse than people think, and it will be a more protracted downturn. To give a historical perspective, Sequoia had a similar meeting back before the last bubble ~~unraveled~~ burst. We know how that turned out.

They want the companies to cut costs, to figure out way to survive and emerge at the other end of this downturn, which could last years. The speakers went through each functional area of the business and told the companies how to cut costs. By holding this special meeting, Sequoia is telling its companies to put survival strategies in place and figure out ways to outlast the broader market troubles.

Uber-investor Mike Moritiz told The Financial Times earlier this week: “It’s pretty clear that demand is going to soften across the board for every company – it doesn’t matter if you’re selling to consumers or companies.” Moritiz isn’t one to mince words, and is one of those few people who likes to get ahead of the fire and not fight it from behind.

Sequoia isn’t the only one advising its startups to tighten their fiscal belts and prepare for a gut-wrenching ride. Ron Conway, a well-known angel investor in the Valley who has invested in companies like Google, offered very sobering advice to his companies via an email earlier today.

Raising capital will be much more difficult now. You should lower your “burn rate” to raise at least 3-6 months or more of funding via cost reductions, even if it means staff reductions and reduced marketing and G&A expenses. This is the equivalent to “raising an internal round” through cost reductions to buy you more time until you need to raise money again; hopefully when fund raising is more feasible.

Letting go of staff is hard and often gut-wrenching. A re-evaluation of timelines and re-focus on milestones with an eye to doing more with less will allow you to live many more days, and the name of the game in this environment in some respects is survival — survival until conditions change. If you are in a funding cycle, you should raise your funding as soon as possible and raise as much as possible but face the fact that if you can’t raise money now you must cut costs.

Folks this is bad news for Silicon Valley, which has been living in a bubble, assuming that it is going to weather the global economic storm without being impacted. We have been following this story since last year, pointing out that the tech is not an island.

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Google Finally Launches AdSense for Games

Om Malik — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:07:17 +0000

Almost a year after we first reported about Google’s desire to bring AdSense to online games and ultimately dominate the game-related advertising business, the company today announced AdSense for Games. We had thought that the advertising for games would go live in November 2007, but apparently even Google can’t move that fast. Google first started talking about AdSense for Games at industry events last summer.

Google has roped in game developers and publishers including Konami, Playfish, Zynga, Demand Media, and games network Mochi Media. They have also signed on beta advertisers such as Esurance, Sprint, and Sony Pictures. Essentially this new program would allow social games and flash-based web games to have video, text and image ads integrated into them.

AdSense for Games delivers video ads based on intended placements, as well as image or text ads based on contextual targeting with keywords and tags supplied by developers and publishers. Advertisers are charged on a cost-per-impression or cost-per-click basis, and ad revenue is split between Google and game developers or publishers.

Google, using comScore estimates, in a press release said that every week, more than 25 percent of Internet users worldwide play online games, which amounts to more than 200 million people. This number is growing at a rate of almost 17 percent each year. The casual gaming business has been on an upswing for some time now, and with AdSense for Games, you can bet many more people are going to try their hand at social and web games.

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Lijit Launches Publisher Ad Network

Om Malik — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:55:53 +0000

Lijit, a two-year-old startup based in Boulder, Colo., today launched the beta version of its publisher advertising network, which will allow the company to sell contextual advertising against search conducted on blogs that use Lijit’s white-label search solution.

In the future the company says it will allow publishers – mostly bloggers – to sell their own keyword-based contextual ads against their search results using Lijit ad-serving technology. Todd Vernon, CEO of the company, talked about this new network last month when he stopped by our offices.

The launch of the network comes at an awkward time – as the global economy is being tossed around like cans on a string attached to a car driving down a country lane. We talked about some of those issues when I had dinner last night in Boulder with Todd and his COO, Walter Knapp.

Like almost anyone whose business is dependent on the constant flow of dollars to online advertising, Vernon and Knapp are nervous. But they feel that they have a better mousetrap, one that will make them more valuable to discerning advertisers.

Vernon repeated the argument that because they have better knowledge of a weblog’s content (and its relevance) they serve up more effective advertising. It is one of the reasons why they go on to claim that they get a “search results to ad click-through rates ratio” of 3.7 percent; in some cases that number is as high as 7.8 percent. This is higher than typical contextual advertising rates. And while those are compelling numbers, I am hard-pressed to feel too optimistic about the immediate future of online advertising networks, though clearly the long-term trends favor folks like Lijit.

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