Internet Broadcasting Introduces New Online Opinion Tool Slantly
Internet Broadcasting, a local media network for broadcast publishers, announced today the official launch of Slantly, an online opinion tool. Slantly is intended for web publishers to integrate into their site to create discussions and spark debate. Several major web publishers have already partnered with Slantly to use the tool, including Meredith Publishing and NYCtv.
Slantly offers several key features to online publishers. With their customizable polls, publishers are able to create polls on news and issues to engage their readers. Through these polls, users can vote and add comments to a forum attached to each poll, after they vote. These polls and discussions, while hosted on each publisher’s site, are all available on the Slantly site. A very useful feature to publishers is the ability to track the demographics of your voters and commenters. All of this is available on the Publisher Dashboard, where you can create, moderate, and manage your discussions, track activity, and customize the look and functionality of your discussions to match your site. Slantly also offers an open API, enabling publishers to customize the tool to suit their needs. I’ve included a widget from Slantly that rotates through several popular opinions.
var SLANTLY = (typeof SLANTLY!= "undefined") ? SLANTLY : {};
SLANTLY.embedconfig={
version:"1.1",
topic: "Technology",
layout: "custom",
width: "100%",
height: "250",
query_type: "top-opinions"
};
There are several competing online opinion sites, in the form of polling sites like Polldaddy, Survey Monkey, dPolls, SodaHead (recently received new funding, covered here), and Vizu. Slantly does offer a similar service, but a bit differently. After playing around with the site a bit, they focus more on the opinions, not the polls. Given the nature of the associated sites (local news outlets), the audience is a bit older, and presumably a bit more opinionated and educated. This allows for more consistent users, as opposed to SodaHead, for example, which is marketed mainly for MySpace pages.
Internet Broadcasting, a company established in 1996, has been leading the market in local media online solutions. Originally, a web development company for major TV stations, IB saw the potential in the local media market. They have developed a system to optimize the way TV stations converge with the web to enable viewers to access and interact with the local news. Their network currently reaches 16 million unique visitors per month nationwide. Some of their clients include Hearst-Argyle Television Inc., Mcgraw-Hill Broadcasting, NBC, Meredith Broadcasting Group, Cox Television, and CNN.
IB is hoping that Slantly will bring their network a better user experience by enabling users to interact with their local news station and media outlets. Their intention by offering Slantly to any web publisher, in addition to their partners, is to engage readers in active discussion in order to provide meaningful interaction on their sites.
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Microsoft’s Plan B for Search
Moving past the Yahoo saga, the software giant is eyeing semantic search engine Powerset as a way of closing the gap with Google
EBay Gets Buffeted in Europe
The auction site could face millions in extra costs to track down counterfeit goods if a French court's LVMH decision stands
The Worst IPO Market on Record?
The first half of 2008 was dismal for venture-backed initial public offerings, and most VCs don't see the climate improving any time soon
Inside the Skin of a Short-Seller
Investors can learn from successful short-sellers like Jim Chanos, who's known for correctly betting on major meltdowns at companies like Enron
Once Nearly Invisible To Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed
For most people on the Web, if Google or Yahoo cannot find something, it doesn’t exist. That has been one of the biggest drawbacks to creating a Website or application that displays itself as a Flash (SWF) file. Search engines could see the file, but they could not see what was in it. Until now.
Adobe has come up with a way for the search engines to read SWF files and index all of the information they contain. That means any text or links in a Flash application can now be indexed. This is a huge step forward for Adobe and anyone who develops in Flash/Flex. Michele Turner, Adobe’s VP of marketing for its platform business, explains:
We are releasing technology to Google and Yahoo that enables them to crawl and index SWF files. They are now searchable. This will open up millions of Flash files to search.
Adobe has created a special Flash player for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application. It actually goes through the runtime of each Flash application and translates it into something the search engines can understand. So all of those fancy interactive Flash Websites and other rich Internet applications that have been invisible to search engines, can now be seen by them.
Turner acknowledges that this invisibility so far “has been a big problem for those developing rich applications.” After all, it doesn’t matter how pretty your Website is if nobody can find it. Flash applications and Websites (many ironically created by ad agencies) have not been able to take advantage of any of the search-engine juice that so many online ad campaigns depend upon. This should be seen as part of Adobe’s larger efforts to remove any remaining restrictions associated with Flash (in April, for instance, it opened up the Flash runtime as part of its the Open Screen Project).
Google is already rolling out the SWF-indexing technology, while Yahoo still “has some work to do,” says Turner. Even so, this won’t solve all the problems with Flash content showing up on search engines.
Becoming visible is one thing, actually ranking highly is another. Google currently can find about 73 million Flash files on the Web. But until Adobe makes it easy for the average Webmaster or blogger to link deeply into those Flash files, they are not likely to appear at the top of many search results.
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Touch Computing Hits Its Stride
Microsoft's Surface and other touch-sensitive products can simplify complicated interactions, but are software makers and consumers game?
Slide And Vh1 Team Up To Annoy The Hell Out Of You
Slide and Vh1 excel at making products geared towards America’s lowest common denominator. The first makes SuperPoke, a popular social network app that lets you send text messages saying you’ve done “stuff” to your friends. The latter produces reality show classics like “Flavor of Love”, “Rock of Love”, and “I Love New York”. And next week, their powers will combine to bring you VH1’s SuperPoke!Fest: a four day reality show marathon to promote a new show called “I Love Money” that will give users a chance to see their very own SuperPokes live, onscreen!
Beginning July 2, Facebook and MySpace users will be given a choice of 30 Vh1-branded SuperPoke actions that will let users “get romantical with” and “slip the tongue to” their friends. Each of these special Vh1 SuperPokes will be entered into a lottery, and the luckiest 10,000 users will get to see their poke displayed for a few seconds on TV.
I’m sure this sounded like a great idea during a marketing meeting, but did anyone ever pause long enough to realize that SuperPokes can be annoying, even when you know the people involved? I don’t care if OLIVER B has slipped the tongue to some girl I’ll never meet. And why is VH1 taking up about 40% of the screen to display these things?
The event is also likely to flood Facebook and MySpace with spammy messages from Slide as users vie to get their first names displayed on television. Slide probably won’t mind so long as it can maximize the number of users it reaches, but the rest of us may have to deal with a new onslaught of SuperPokes.
According to Slide, we’ve got even more of these promotions to come - let’s hope they take a different approach:
“This partnership, the first of many to come, offers our enthusiastic users the chance to become SuperPoke! stars on the television network they already know and love. Now, SuperPoke! is not only fun and social, but it might get you on TV too.”
Slide has recently been in the news for having their popular Top Friends application disabled by Facebook. The application apparently has a security hole that allows Facebook users to view portions of any Top Friend user’s profile - something that is clearly in violation of Facebook’s privacy policy.
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News Corp Consolidates All Fox Interactive Employees Into New Facility
Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp subsidiary that controls most of its online assets, has signed a 12 year lease agreement for a new facility in Playa Del Rey. All FIM companies in Southern California will move to the new facility once its built. The site will house over 300,000 square feet of commercial space and is part of a development called Playa Vista. The move to the new facility will begin in June of 2009.
The internal memo is below.
About a year ago, I communicated with you about our space and parking challenges, and our ultimate plan to find a facility that could accommodate all of our LA-area team in one location. After an extensive process, I’m thrilled to inform you that we have found the ideal location for Fox Interactive Media’s new headquarters.
The new facility is located in Playa Del Rey (Horizon at Playa Vista http://www.horizonatplayavista.com/) and houses more than 300,000 square feet of commercial space. Playa Del Rey is the first newly-built community in Los Angeles in over 50 years and has become a creative hub for technology companies, including EA, the largest video game company in the world. The site itself should be amazing – including an exclusive gym, internal and external eating facilities, volleyball courts, and lots of green space for outdoor activities. Just beyond the newly-built facility will be a host of restaurants, shopping locations and living options.
FIM has experienced phenomenal success in its three-year history, and we have plans for even greater growth and achievements in the coming fiscal year. Given our tremendous track record, it’s only fitting that we should enter into the single biggest real-estate transaction in Los Angeles in the last 25 years. When we move to our new facility between June of 2009 and January of 2010, not only will we enjoy the distinction of having one of the largest corporate headquarters in the LA area, but we will be housed in a state-of-the-art facility that reflects our corporate identity and culture.
In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be providing you with more information about the site and the surrounding area. We’ll also provide a schedule for the phased move, as soon as those details have been decided.
I have appreciated your patience during the past year, as we’ve shifted groups to new locations to manage our growth and endured numerous space constraints and challenges. Soon, we will have an opportunity to collaborate more effectively, as well as to create a work environment that speaks to the creativity and innovation that has come to be synonymous with Fox Interactive Media.
I hope you are as enthusiastic as I am about this exciting milestone for our company.
Peter Levinsohn
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FriendFeed Finally Gets iPhone-Friendly
FriendFeed, the popular social network feed aggregator, has released a new version of its site that has been optimized for the iPhone. While FriendFeed has always featured a relatively spartan design, the standard version sports small fonts that make text difficult to read on the iPhone’s screen. The new version has increased the font size, and has further tweaked link placement and picture sizes to make the site more accessible to mobile users.
The site also includes a new “Post photos from your phone” link that will let users submit photos to FriendFeed straight from their iPhone. Each user is assigned a unique email address (something like jason+nota483realone@mail2ff.com). To submit a picture, users simply send photos chosen from the iPhone’s integrated photo viewer to the assigned address. The feature works well, but you’ll need to manually enter the obfuscated email address - there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to save it to your address book.
You can read more details at the the official announcement here.
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